UFO: The Vault

6. Directing

The Director - the one who envisions their view of the production onto the screen. Their vision is what you see.

With the sudden and unexpected cancellation of The Secret Service, Century 21 could now use some of the puppetry crew for the first live-action TV series of UFO. The first episode was directed by Gerry Anderson himself. Identified was his first role as a director since the opening episode of Fireball XL5 - Planet 46 filmed in Spring 1962. His first direction of on-screen actors was Crossroads To Crime in 1960. One thing Anderson noted about having live actors instead of puppets was that with actors you are stuck with their features they have (e.g genetics, height, face, eye colour, etc), unlike with puppets you can create your own characters. Plus, Anderson would also receive some backchat from several actors, including the guest stars who thought they were just playing puppets without the strings.

David Lane, born in Uxbridge in 1940 has also a vast career with the Andersons from writing, directing and editing right from Stingray all the way up to Space: 1999 and The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity, directing both Thunderbirds feature films; Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6. He would return for New Captain Scarlet directing 10 of the episodes. His other credits include the original Superman and Supergirl movies and the Santa Claus movie (1985). His UFO episodes he directed included Computer Affair, Exposed, Sub-Smash and The Man Who Came Back, and The Sound Of Silence (which he actually co-wrote with Bob Bell). Alan Perry, born January 1941, is another director who has a vast career with Gerry Anderson, directing the UFO stories such as Survival, The Daltoek Affair and Close up. Perry was also special effects camera operator for the last nine episodes of the series, as well as being a camera operator for The Sound Of Silence. He was a camera operator for 19 episodes of Stingray and 13 of Thunderbirds, before he was promoted to director for Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and The Secret Service. Before he worked with the Andersons, he had previously worked as a clapper loader on uncredited roles for films such as Green For Danger (1946), Escape (1948) and Svengali (1954).

Ken Turner (born in Westminster, London in 1944) directed six episodes for the series, with his earliest work for Anderson being an uncredited art assistant for the opening episode of Thunderbirds, Trapped In The Sky. He would later be assistant director for Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) to direct 8 episodes of Captain Scarlet, 6 of Joe 90, and direct two episodes of The Secret Service (School For Spies and More Haste, Less Speed), as well as being an assistant director to shoot the location footage for the episodes A Case For The BISHOP and The Cure. He also directed the movie The Love Pill (1972 - which he also wrote) and the TV series The Bubblies (1978). Ron Appleton is another director, like Ken Turner with a relatively small career in the entertainment industry, only directing the episode Court Martial as well as assistant directing five of the first ten episodes. Appleton also assisting directed fourteen episodes of The Avengers, as well as the movies Hysteria (1965) and A Nice Girl Like Me (1969). Aforementioned David Tomblin would direct two out of the three stories he wrote, The Cat With Ten Lives and Reflections In The Water, whilst Tomblin's The Long Sleep was tackled by Jeremy Summers.

Summers directed The Long Sleep and also The Psycobombs. Born 1931, and son of Walter Summers (a British writer and director who went into the industry in 1913, directed silent movies up until 1940. Jeremy had worked through the film industry to work as second assistant director in films such as The Dam Busters (1940). He worked on the booming TV sector with Overseas Press Club Exclusive (1957) until working on International Detective (1959) he entered in a vast career of directing. Summers was established as a director when he worked on Tony Hancock's The Punch and Judy Man (1963). With the film being a financial success, Summers quickly became one of ITC's most in-demand directors with a long list from Danger Man, Gideon's Way, The Saint, The Baron, Jason King, Return Of The Saint to The Protectors. Just before UFO, Summers had been working for ITC's Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), until he died in 2016.

Meanwhile, Cyril Frankel was born in London, 1921 and was one of ITC's most experienced directors - called in to direct Timelash. Frankel had been directing documentary shorts in the 1950s before moving to direct feature films for Group 3 - a company forged from the National Film Finance Corporation in 1951 to help find new talent. He did direct several films before joining ITC like Never Take Sweets From A Stranger (1960) and The Witches (1966). Frankel has a long career of ITC shows with not only The Baron, Gideon's Way, The Champions, The Avengers, Jason King, The Adventurer, Return Of The Saint and even The Protectors, but also acting as a creative consultant on Monty Berman's Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - just before he came to work on Timelash.