Saturday 17 November 2018

U-Friend Or UFO




U-Friend Or UFO

It's a very strange part of Cricklewood that 'The Goodies' seem to live in, and in 'U-Friend Or UFO' (4th February 1980), you might be forgiven for thinking that it has more in common with Portland in Dorset, especially given the name of the company that the crane comes from when Tim is impersonating Superman...


We're still working our way through Series Two in our Watching-It-All-In-Order journey, but we were home earlier than usual on Friday and I just felt like jumping ahead to a later one, as I felt there was more potential to talk about stuff.

And you can barely move for the copyright infringements here, with Graeme's EB-GB robot sure to ring a few bells with George Lucas. Even when it dons a slight disguise, it only trundles into Terry Nation territory, which is equally dangerous ground.


The influence of 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' and 'Superman' are blatant, but it took Andrew Pixley to tell us that there really was a show about a flying nun. Logically enough, it was called 'The Flying Nun', which at least meant you got what it said on the tin.



But one suspects that Graeme's UFO-spotter persona was on the minds of Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons when they created the character of Maxwell Edison in the 'Doctor Who Monthly' comic strip 'Stars Fell On Stockbridge'.


We liked the way the activities in the park were strictly regulated with each interest group having their allotted time period. All 'Dirty Persons' should arrive between the hours of 11pm and midnight, though you can hang around longer if you're also a Tramp. The cross-over between these two tribes is not made clear.


There is no specific hour for Copyright Infringers, however, as the events of this episode seem to indicate that you can do this 24 hours a day, so long as nobody notices...

Our video about 'U-Friend Or UFO' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)

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