SUMMARIES OF UFO COMIC STRIPS IN `COUNTDOWN' & `TV ACTION'

- I welcome all corrections, information, and matter to fill in gaps. Please send such information to Anthony Appleyard.
- The stories take turns being on the front and back covers. The pages are numbered in reverse order with page 1 at the end!
- With thanks to Marc Martin for passing me the SHADO-USECC matter.
These stories appear in various issues:- IN THE UFO MATTER IN COUNTDOWN:-
- The alien spacesuits drawn are all what I call `Type 2', i.e. the type with the flat silverish areas and no chainwork. They and SHADO spacesuits are often drawn without life-support backpacks.
- The alien rifles drawn differ from in the TV episodes thus:- They never have the lower bar joining the ends of the handgrips. Sometimes they are drawn with metal frame butts like on some AK47's. They are sometimes called `ray guns', although the TV episode `Survival' showed one used to fire a projectile.
- UFO's often have a pilot only and no other crew.
- Spelling variation `Carlin' / `Karlin'.
- Aliens are sometimes shown speaking English and being understood by ordinary humans who would not have known alienese.
- ETT seems to mean `expected termination of trajectory' = `where the UFO is expected to land'.
- From #40 on the aliens sometimes have a small one-hand ray-pistol.
% I have the comic.
C I have a photocopy of the UFO matter from the comic.
H Information from Paul Helleur.
{curly brackets} matter not shown, but I deduced that it happened.
[[double square brackets]] technically doubtful or queryable matter
[iin square brackets, after title or issue number]: number = how many pages, C = colored, BW = black and white.
CONTENTS
UNNAMED STORY 1
UNNAMED STORY 2
TOO OLD AT 32
THE NEW BOSS
THE FORCEFIELD
ARCTIC AFFAIR
THE SNATCH
THE RENEGADE
TROJAN HORSE
THE ALIEN HEART ATTACK
CATCH OF DOOM
THE COLOUR IS GREEN
THE HILLBILLY AFFAIR
ALIEN ESPIONAGE
STRAKER SMELLS A RAT!
THE MOVIES
THE ALIEN ALLY
CLOUDS OF MADNESS
A NEAR THING
SHOCK-WAVE
THE GHOST SHIP
WATERS OF FEAR
THE KIDNAPPERS
TERROR IN THE TANK
THE ALIEN REVOLUTION
ALIEN BRAINWAVE
LET THE ALIENS LAND
THE FINAL CLIMB
SMALL WORLD
EYES OF TERROR
VOYAGE OF DISASTER
BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL
THE DESTRUCTIVE DECOY
SCANNER SHUT-DOWN
THE MILLION-YEAR-OLD TRAP
THE RIVER OF DEATH
SPIRIT OF FEAR
A PROJECT OF DOOM
THE ASSASSIN
RECORDBREAKERS
THEY WALK IN DARKNESS
THE LAST PHARAOH
THE ALIEN TOTEM
ROBOT RENEGADE
THE CIRCUS
SMASH AND GRAB
THE HAUNTED MINE
OPERATION BABYLON
UNNAMED STORY 1
- #1 C [5 BW] (Its introduction describes in detail much of the SHADO scenario.)
- A UFO comes in, dodges the Interceptors, lands in England, and fifteen seconds later lands just as Mobile 1 arrived. It gets away. Freeman hears that Prof.Robinson of the Central Space University and Dr.Sinsted have not reported for duty. Freeman went to where the UFO landed. In ruins of an abbey nearby an alien clubs him. Freeman, as he falls, fires, and holes the alien's helmet. Foster goes there. The alien, now helmetless, shoots Foster in the shoulder. Straker guesses that the UFO dropped off the alien to kidnap Robinson and Sinsted, and that a 5-man-sized alien craft will have to come soon, to carry its pilot, the rescued pilot, Robinson, Sinsted, and Freeman. A large cylindrical alien craft (not a spinner) comes in undetected by Moonbase, but an Earth-Moon ferry detects it and shoots at it. It dodges, turns back, and ?destroys the ferry. In the abbey ruins, Freeman loosens his bonds and runs away, and the Mobiles see him. The alien tries to chase him, but is weak from poisoning by Earth atmosphere, and later dies. The big UFO comes in to the Abbey ruins. The Mobiles can't fire there, or an explosion might hurt Freeman. The big UFO lifts away, and a bit later Sky 1 obliterates it.
From #2 onwards UFO has 2 pages per issue and is colored.
UNNAMED STORY 2
- #2 C [2] A newspaper called The Clarion has front-paged `What is SHADO? Public enquiry demanded ... Is Earth in danger of invasion from outer space'. Straker covers up for the leak as routine. A UFO comes in, avoids the Interceptors, is damaged by Peter Karlin in Sky 1, and a civilian (Robin Johns, a young draughtsman) sea-angling in a small cabin cruiser sees it ditch in the sea in dense fog. He had read the Clarion article. He goes to the spot and sees an alien in a spacesuit floating in the water.
- #3 C [2] Johns fishes the alien out and sees that he is still breathing. Sky 1 comes [[and hovers]] and orders him with a loudhailer to go to "the harbour" for questioning. Johns sails into Robbicombe Cave and hides the alien there and sails out to the harbour. Foster helicopters to the harbour and interrogates Johns, saying that a secret aircraft had crashed there, but finds nothing from him, and flies away. Johns phones a reporter called Mr.Mason at the Clarion. Mr.Mason comes and meets Johns at the harbour. Mason and Johns go into the cave, but the alien has gone.
- #4 C [2] Mason and Johns look for tracks. Straker orders Skydiver to look for the UFO. Skydiver detects a metal object on the starboard beam. A diver (drawn with his aqualung regulator correct!) goes out from Skydiver and sees that it is a UFO, and it looked intact or nearly so. A surface salvage craft is called and recovers the UFO. Freeman looks inside it and finds that it is empty. The diver, who still has his kit on, calls in alarm, as the UFO starts to make a pulsing droning hum and starts to glow. The crane operator recognizes the usual UFO auto-destruct sequence and swings the UFO clear. A split second later it explodes. Mason visits his original source of information, a SHADO controller called Warren Spencer, and says that he wants to uncover facts for reporting. Mason orders Spencer to get him into SHADO headquarters, or else he will tell Spenser's superiors in SHADO that Spenser had leaked information. Spenser, blackmailed, alters some voice print security gear and gets Mason in. Spenser sends Mason to a dressing room to put a SHADO uniform on. Spenser switches the security gear back on, but in the meantime the alien has got in.
- #5 C Mason puts a SHADO uniform on. Skydiver finds no sign of the alien. Freeman realized that Johns had time to hide the alien. Freeman calls on Johns's apartment. Johns tells all he knew about the matter, including "a contact in a secret organization" and the name Spencer. Freeman brings Johns to SHADO headquarters and radios in. In SHADO headquarters Straker calls for Foster and goes to see Spencer, who is on duty at the staff security entrance. Spencer is trying to cover up for his crimes; he looks for Mason and plans to shoot him and saying it was while resisting arrest. Spenser looks in the transport area and sees that someone is in the machine shop, which was dark. Spencer goes in, and the alien is in there and shoots Spenser. [[It is not explained how the alien got from the sea coast to SHADO headquarters.]]
- #6 % Straker finds Spenser dead, and sees a security film of the alien shooting Spenser. An alien rifle is described as a raygun. Mason sees the Mobiles and the excitement and plans to take some photos and scarper, but Straker sees him on a security camera. Straker tries to take Mason's camera. The alien shoots at Straker, but Mason jumps in the way of the alien's raygun beam. Foster shoots the alien dead with a pistol. Mason was badly wounded but has hope of recovery.
From #8 the UFO stories start to have a story name on their first frame in each issue.
TOO OLD AT 32
- #7 % Frank Harris (Interceptor pilot) is 32, the oldest astronaut in Moonbase. He has a flight in an Interceptor-simulator on Earth and there are worries that his reactions are starting to slow, but he is kept on. He goes to the Moon. A UFO comes in. SID announces it. Harris and 2 other Interceptor pilots take off.
- #8 % Harris chases a UFO too far as his missile firer keeps jamming. He finally fires and damages the UFO, which rams (kamikaze?) SID and disables it. He runs out of fuel and has to land on the Moon away from base. A long way to go!, since SID is anti-lunar! Another UFO lands on the Moon, and its alien pilot comes out and shoots and wounds Harris. [[That would have holed Harris's spacesuit, and he would have died quickly.]]
- #9 % Straker orders Foster to lead a search for Harris. Harris wonders why the alien didn't finish him off. Harris finds the landed UFO, and is getting weaker from his wound. He gets back to his Interceptor and flies it as far as its fuel allows, then lands out on the Moon again. He has a painful knee. He walks towards Moonbase. The alien plants a devices on the Moon, then another 20 miles from Moonbase, and activates it.
- #10 C Harris is rescued and warns about the landed UFO. The alien flies away in his UFO, but an Interceptor destroys it. The alien devices are emitting a homing signal for alien missiles fired at Moonbase from beyond Interceptor range; one of those missiles holes Moonbase.
- #11 % Moonbase seals off its damaged part. A repair quickly team gets SID working. Interceptors and ground defences stop most (not all) of the alien missiles. Paul Foster in a moon hopper finds the alien homing device and destroys it with a ?bazooka, and the alien missiles start going wide. Harris is praised but has got too slow in reaction to be an action pilot any more; he is made colonel.
THE NEW BOSS
- #12 % A UFO gets in and strafes and wrecks General Henderson's car; he is unconscious and taken to hospital. General Calper is flown in from USA to replace him. A UFO goes after the plane.
- #13 C The UFO shoots the plane with a ray but it stays flying. Skydiver launches Sky 1, which destroys the UFO. Calper starts to act strangely.
- #14 C Calper starts different policies and wants SHADO to go public. A quarrel between him and Straker. Calper draws a pistol. Straker punches Calper and is arrested but gets away from Calper, who sends Foster in a Mobile to stop him.
- #15 % Straker escapes in a racing car from his film studios.
- #16 % Foster sides with Straker, and other SHADO men there ditto.
- #17 C Foster and Straker in a Mobile in an industrial back street meet another Mobile coming the other way, driven by Calper's thug Crawford. Both fire missiles. Crawford misses; Foster hits Crawford's Mobile in the cab and ?kills him. Straker and Foster in their Mobile ram through an armed police roadblock which had at least 4 police cars there, and gets to an isolated ruin where a UFO had exploded recently. Freeman arrives there with some files on Calper, including medical records which might give some clue about Calper's strange behaviour. Calper had had hypnosis for dental treatment; that might have left his mind open to an alien hypnotic beam in episode #13. Straker remembers that Calper had almost fainted when he saw an alien spacesuit in a test lab. Calper still trusts Freeman, so Straker gives orders to Freeman. Calper is due to speak to the world about SHADO in a few hours. Freeman goes to headquarters and to that lab and fetches the alien spacesuit. Calper's cavalcade (at least one car, and motorcycle outriders) sets off for the TV station. Along a narrow country lane they find the Mobile blocking it. Someome in an alien spacesuit walks out of a wood beside the road. Calper's guards, fear on their faces, aim at the apparent alien to shoot him. [[#18's initial summary says that Calper was leading a force to SHADO headquarters to reassert his authority.]]
- #18 % Straker is in the alien spacesuit (but air-breathing). He orders Calper to stop. Calper obeys him, thinking that he is an alien, so proving Straker's theory. A UFO arrives and shoots Calper dead; Sky 1 destroys it. The International Astrophysical Committee makes Straker commander of SHADO again.
THE FORCEFIELD
- #19 C [2] A SHADO backroom scientist called Skipton has designed a new device, but keeps getting brushed off when he tries to tell Straker about it. Straker and Freeman go out of Straker's office and run into a strange invisible wall in the air. It is a force field wall designed by Skipton; setting it up there was the only way Skipton could get Straker's attention. Straker is yet again telling Skipton to call later when an alarm sounds that 6 UFO's are entering the Solar System, and then 6 more. Gay Ellis in Moonbase sees that the UFO's are going to Mars. The UFO's seem to disappear.
- #20 C [2] Ellis sees that Moonbase's tracking beams are being blocked. Straker realizes that the UFO's are going to attack a survey team on Mars. The 12 UFO's strafe the survey team's base and destroy it, and the only survivor is a geologist called Jack Lewis who is out of the base, returning from a survey trip. Jack watches in horror, and wonders why Moonbase didn't destroy those thins before they could reach Mars. [[The range of SHADO craft here does not match the usual scenario!]] Foster is on the Moon; Straker sends him to Mars in a "lunar module" (= the trilobite-shaped craft used as shuttles between Earth and Moon.) As Foster gets near Mars, his controls go crazy like in a gigantic electrical storm, and a curved invisible wall forces him away.
- #21 C [2] Foster radios to Straker what is happening.Straker calls Skipton for advice about the force field. Skipton says he might have a way to get through the force field. Jack Lewis watches the UFO's which are standing by the remains of the survey base and sees there are only 11; where is the missing one? It is flying; it sees Lewis, who gets in time to his vehicle (like a car but with tank tracks) and flees in it, but a UFO shoots the front end of his vehicle and it crashes into rocks. The UFO's crew think Lewis is dead, but he gets out of the wreckage and tries to get a message to Moonbase. SID sees that 6 more UFO's are coming in to Mars, and Foster, who has returned to Moonbase, guesses that the aliens on Mars must switch their force field off to let the new UFO's in.
- #22 % Jack Lewis (sole survivor of the Mars mining base) gets a message away, then the aliens find and chase him in small one-man armed craft which are not UFO-shaped. Lewis falls through into a hole.
- #23 % Lewis has fallen through into the mine. SHADO has interplanetary missiles in a silo near Moonbase. A SHADO lab finds how to get missiles through the alien forcefield. Lewis finds the alien control centre; there he sees many alien missiles and he sees on a monitor screen that they are targeted at SHADO headquarters.
- #24 % Foster flies from the Moon to Mars in a small red ship. As he reaches Mars, SID fires a laser which lets him through the forcefield. He lands on Mars. The aliens on Mars launch their missiles at Earth. Foster is now driving a SHADO tracked Mobile - on Mars! Lewis radios to warn, hoping that someone can hear. Foster hears. His Mobile's radio reaches Moonbase as the aliens switch their forcefield off to let their missiles through. Moonbase launches missiles against the alien missiles, but that leaves its defences at full stretch - and a lot of UFO's from Mars fly off for Moonbase.
- #25 % Moonbase stops the alien missiles but is left drained of ammunition. The UFO's take off from the alien base on Mars. Foster on Mars gets a radio message about them to Straker on Earth when the alien force field is switched off to let the UFO's through. SHADO sends every possible Mobile to surround SHADO HQ, and launches Sky 1. Foster rendezvous with Lewis and together they attack the alien installations - Foster using the mobile to destroy the surface installations while Lewis uses a bazooka on the underground control centre. Aware that their base has been destroyed, the fleet of UFOs in space call off the attack and change course.
ARCTIC AFFAIR
- #26 % Carlin in Sky 1 goes after a UFO over the Arctic. The UFO shoots and holes Sky 1, which has to descend. The UFO descends also. Sky 1 chases the UFO, complicated by not wanting to be seen by an Army plane in the area. Sky 1 fires and damages the UFO, which crashlands in a blizzard. The UFO's pilot escapes with his helmet broken. The Army plane descends to aid the UFO, thinking that it is an Earth plane, but crash-lands in the blizzard.
- #27 % The alien rescues Braydon and Sgt.Lucas from the crashed plane just before it explodes. Carlin due to a fueltank fracture has to land Sky 1 at a US Army comms base in the Arctic. The alien knows English well, and lies that he is on a secret mission and came for an appointment with Gen.Craddock. Craddock does not know about SHADO. Craddock for some time has been picking up strange radio messages and suspects a coming alien invasion, and connects Carlin with the aliens and has him locked in a cell.
- #28 % At a SHADO airfield in southern England Foster knows about this and sees a chance for SHADO to collect a live alien and an intact UFO. The alien uses a parachute to make a lean-to shelter against the side of the plane for the crashed Army pilots to shelter in; in the extreme cold the Earth air does not poison him. The Army search and rescue plane finds and picks up the alien and the 2 pilots. Craddock has the alien locked in the same cell as Carlin. The alien collapses.
- #29 % Carlin realises that the extreme cold has stopped the alien from the usual fast aging in Earth's atmosphere. Carlin radios on his wrist radio, and is heard by Straker flying to there. He takes a gas capsule out of his boot and stuns a guard with it and takes his rifle. The alien is weakening. Carlin picks the cell lock, and he carries the alien out into the blizzard.
- #30 C An Army search party goes out after Carlin. They are in thick fur coats, but he is only in his flying suit. Carlin carries the alien to shelter behind a building. The alien talks to Carlin, in English. The alien has aged much, and recovery from being taken into cold again after that is only temporary. One of the Army men shoots and wounds Carlin, who collapses from the wound and hypothermia. The alien strides away into the blizzard. Carlin calls after him in vain, then radios SHADO and tells them what happened. Straker in a search plane tries to find Carlin before the Army find him.
- #31 % A search party finds Carlin and brings him back into the base, which by then has been told from high up that SHADO exists and to release Carlin. They go to look at the alien and his UFO. The alien is dead, from having been brought into warm Earth air in the base; he had told Carlin that "the ice can't save him twice". The UFO self-destructs as the SHADO men get near it. Craddock puts himself and his base under SHADO control rather than have the amnesia treatment. SHADO thus gains the services of him and his base, and also now knows how to keep an alien alive.
At #35 the issue number starts to be inside the letter `C' of the title.
THE SNATCH
- (Distinguish from a different text story in an annual, which is also called `The Snatch')
- #32 % A UFO comes in on a strange zigzag track. Straker on Earth orders Foster on the Moon to fly one of the Interceptors himself after it, in case it is in trouble and can be captured. The Interceptors take off. The UFO acts odd, as if it wanted Foster to follow it. A big alien craft (not UFO-shaped) appears and shoots the other two Interceptors in or near their cockpits (not known how much damage). Foster fires his missile at the big craft, but it explodes harmlessly against its defensive force field. His Interceptor is drawn towards the big craft. This implies that the aliens have tractor beams.
- #33 C The alien ship opens its front end and swallows Foster's Interceptor. Foster radios for Moonbase to destroy the alien ship. Moonbase tracks it, but it quickly goes far out of reach. Foster comes out of his Interceptor, but his pilot suit was not meant to be used as a spacesuit, and he collapses. He wakes in an alien spacesuit leaning against the front of his Interceptor. Although breathing liquid, he and the aliens can talk, and they speak English. He gets his pistol from his Interceptor cockpit and gets into the alien ship's control room and there finds 2 aliens, who he orders at gunpoint to take him back. One of the aliens makes the ship jerk. Foster falls against something, and his helmet splits and his gun falls.
- #34 % The aliens put a new helmet on Foster and say that they are going to the alien homeworld. The three in their spacesuits go into suspended animation on special couches. Foster is drawn with his own colored face through his helmet faceplate although he is breathing liquid. The 3 sleep as the ship rushes across endless emptiness. The 3 wake. Foster sees in wonder the alien homeworld. It is orange-red as if it is mostly desert. A ground scene at night shows sand and rock, the ship flying over, a dried-up tree, and mist in a hollow. The aliens tell Foster that nearly everybody on the planet is a physician or a space scientist. The ship lands among some alien buildings. They go indoors. Foster is ordered to keep his helmet on, as he can't breathe the planet's atmosphere. The place reminds Foster of a gigantic hospital. They go along a transit tunnel (it runs by gravity nullifiers and a current of air.) At the other end, someone shoots him with a pistol.
- #35 % The pistol was a special sort that administered a drug that adapted Foster to breathe the planet's atmosphere. (An alien name is given: Robart: he fired the pistol.) Foster wakes 3 hours later out of his spacesuit in an `internment room'. (Alien ground personnel on their own planet don't wear spacesuits.) Foster is put in a table and bombarded for 6 hours by special equipment (not overtly pain-causing) to make him reveal the secrets of SHADO, but his mind resists it. The interrogators lock him in that room to rest. He wakes feeling dizzy. He adapts the brainwashing machine to make a beam that shoots the door down. As he goes through it, two men lurk behind it.
- #36 % The two jump him. After a scuffle, they realise that he is not a alien, and they let him go. The two are a physicist and a surgeon who the aliens had taken from Earth and had been transferring the two's minds into computers. The 3 use the adapted brainwashing machine to shoot two more locked doors down and get into a corridor. They meet nobody. Robart watching them on a surveillance camera decided to let them run, to see how they acted, to find why the brainwashing machine had so little effect on Foster. Foster remembers seeing racks of UFO's by the hospital entrance. The 3 get into a transport tunnel and get to the hospital entrance, where aliens with rayguns (somewhat different shaped from the usual alien rifles; but sometimes undoubted alien rifles are called rayguns in the comic) in spacesuits and what may be security guard helmets (not space helmets) are guarding. A loud alarm hurt their ears and brought the guards running.
- #37 % Foster punches a guard, and in the fight Foster grabs a raygun, and the guards flee. He shoots a door open into a UFO-hangar. There are alien spacesuits hanging up, and a big tank of the green liquid for filling alien spacesuits. The 3 put spacesuits on, and take a UFO each and fly back to the Solar System, in suspended animation part of the way. The journey takes `many days'. (Here Foster's face inside his helmet is depicted green.) SHADO sees the UFO's coming. The Interceptor pilots see that the UFO's are flying oddly but decide that it another alien trick, and fire. The 3 humans in the UFO's bale out of their underbelly hatches just in time, and are picked up.
At #38 the UFO stories start having more than 2 pages per issue and being black and white (with some grey shades).
THE RENEGADE
- #38 % [6 BW] On the alien homeworld, an alien scientist named Sagum has invented a belt that can let an alien breathe Earth atmosphere safely. He expects public acclaim for himself and for his associate Bromat for this work, but Bromat says that it will let aliens survive on Earth and control there and bring the Earthmen to the alien planet at will. Sagum feels bad about this, and does not want to bring any more troubles on Earth, By night he goes to his lab and destroys his work and records with a small one-hand raygun. Bromat tries to stop him. Sagum shoots Bromat and steals a UFO and runs for Earth, pursued, taking the belt with him. The Interceptors see that the front UFO is being shot at by the others. They destroy all but one of the pursuers. Sagum runs for Earth, towards northern France, still pursued. Peter Carlin in Sky 1 destroys the pursuer and follows the other down, but below the clouds finds some French Air Force fighters and has to run away to keep secret. The UFO lands in a wheat field. Sagum takes his spacesuit off, puts the belt on, disguises himself as an Indian, leaves his UFO, and ?remote control detonates it. Sagum gets to a university and finds a professor called Alphonse Lemarq. Sagum collapses from alcohol in offered drinks. Lemarq finds that Sagum is completely cold with no body heat but is alive. 8 UFO's come in. As the Interceptors attack, the UFO's go into a complicated flight pattern, and 3 get past. One of those gets past Sky 1 and lands in Northern France. Foster says "That is the most expensive penetration the aliens have ever made.".
- #39 % [6 BW] The other landed alien (hereinafter X) shoots a motorcyclist and takes his motorcycle. Lemarq realises that Sagum is not human. Sagum says what he is and why he has come. SHADO enquires about and finds a lorry driver who had given a lift to someone who may have been an alien. Lemarq goes out, locking Sagum in for safety. Straker gets to the room just too late to stop X from climbing in through a window and taking the belt and riding away. Sagum without the belt dies of poisoning by Earth air. Straker chases X in his car but is stopped by a horse and cartload of hay that came out of a field just then. X reaches his UFO and flies away just as the Mobiles reach it. It leaves Earth, but the Interceptors destroy it.
TROJAN HORSE
- #40 [6 BW] % Freeman is off duty, c.10 miles east of Keighley (Yorkshire, UK) when he gets a radio call to where a UFO is expected to land in 2 minutes 2 miles south of him. The UFO is landed. He draws a pistol and creeps up to the UFO. An alien comes out and puts a pistol to Freeman's head. The alien is Foster in an alien spacesuit, and the UFO is an imitation, to test if he could trap a real alien thus. A UFO comes. The Interceptors are ordered to shoot and miss it, and Skydiver not to launch. ETT is "point eight miles north of Manchester" (UK) which would be in an inner city area, but the comic shows open country. Foster puts his alien spacesuit on. A furniture van takes him and the mock UFO to the ETT. The real UFO comes in. Foster lies beside the mock UFO as if in trouble. The real UFO lands. Its pilot (hereinafter X) comes out and goes to aid Foster. Foster punches X in the solar plexus. The SHADO men rush in. X gets up. Foster grabs his leg. X unexpectedly pulls a ray pistol. A SHADO man has to shoot X to save Foster. X before dying shoots his UFO, and it auto-destructs.
THE ALIEN HEART ATTACK
- #41 H,% [6 BW] 3 UFO's come in, and the Interceptors routinely destroy them. Meanwhile a bigger faster more powerful spinner craft gets past the Moon and lands in the grounds of a remote mansion in Sussex in England. Straker guesses that that UFO was special, to sacrifice 3 others for it. A Shadair tilt-rotor finds it. The mansion's owner returns to find 2 aliens waiting for him. He is Sir Richard Conroy, Earth's leading heart specialist. The Aliens know who he is - they want him to perform an operation on an alien patient that they have brought with them, or else they will kill him. They order him to get them into his hospital unnoticed. Straker and Foster arrive in a mobile just as the aliens and Conroy leave in Conroy's private helicopter. Sky 1 is scrambled to intercept the helicopter but, just before it lands at Conroy's hospital, an alien leans out and shoots Sky 1 down with his hand gun [[hmmm]]. Carlin gets out of the wreckage just in time for the aliens not to catch him. He reports that he's OK and heads for the hospital on foot. Straker is also on route in a Shadair jet. In the operating theatre, Conroy finds that he can't do the transplant without needing to do some modifications that he hasn't got the equipment or experience to do. (The patient is shown wearing his helmet and the lower half of his spacesuit.) One of the aliens is about to shoot him when Straker arrives and shoot the guns from the alien's hands. Straker orders the alien at gunpoint not to move. The other alien comes behind Straker to shoot him. Carlin shoots the gun out of that alien's hand. The alien patient reveals that he is high in the alien leadership, but won't say any more. The aliens are taken prisoner in a mobile, but Carlin notices that one of them is glowing and he and Straker jump from the mobile just before the Alien self-destructs, destroying it. At the same moment, the UFO under guard in Sussex starts glowing, but does not explode but lifts off (remote control?) and heads away from Earth.
CATCH OF DOOM
- #42 % [6 BW] A UFO comes in, ETT at sea a few miles north of Spitsbergen. Sky 1 chases it, has to dodge it, comes back, hits it, and it ditches, but its pilot lives. Later that day a trawler [[using a rocket-fired net made of metal!, and it also has a harpoon gun]] catches him along with fish. The alien shams dead while the crew take him inside thinking he is a crashed human air pilot. When the crew go to take his `flying gear' off, he draws a ray pistol and takes the boat over at gunpoint. He can speak English. He grabs the skipper and shoots the rest of the crew dead. He orders the skipper to make a bomb from the spare harpoon gun charge, and then to shoot the net as ordered. It catches Skydiver. [[In reality a full-sized sub so caught would drag the trawler under.]] The alien throws the bomb into the net beside Skydiver. The skipper, who is wounded, shoots the alien dead with the harpoon gun. Carlin comes out of Skydiver and throws the bomb into the sea just in time.
THE COLOUR IS GREEN
- #43 % [6 BW] A hovercraft-tanker full of X12 (a green secret ingredient for a new rocket fuel, it keeps the fuel stable even under excessive acceleration) sets off by road for a new international space base on the coast of Cornwall. A UFO comes in, dodges the Interceptors, and comes in to Cornwall. The UFO shoots the tanker's motorcycle escort, who radio a warning away before the UFO lands and an alien comes out and shoots {them and the tanker's crew}. The UFO and the tanker {both now driven by aliens} go to a factory. It is night. The UFO fires a special ray that makes a segment of the factory's electrified fence disappear while the tanker drives through it, then reappear intact afterwards. SHADO must recapture the X12 intact, as it takes 6 months to make that much. 2 men creep into the factory grounds, but the 2 aliens stop them. Foster gets away in the dark, and the aliens burdened by their spacesuits can't run as fast. Foster can't reach the hole in the fence. He hides among oil drums and throws an alien against the fence, electrocuting him. That shows that alien spacesuits conduct electricity. Freeman reckons that X12 is the same as the green stuff in alien spacesuit liquid, and that the aliens were short of it. By now all SHADO mobiles carry a `bogus' (= imitation? modified?) alien spacesuit. Straker puts it on and goes up to the two aliens, leading Foster as if he had just caught him. There are 3 aliens there. An alien orders Straker to take over processing the X12. The speech balloon is in English, but Straker does not understand it, as if the author realised that aliens among themselves talk alienese. Straker puts back in the tanker the X12 already taken and replaces it with an imitation, hands it to an alien, gets away and plans quickly with Foster and Freeman, then gets back to the aliens and goes to follow them into the UFO, which is nearly ready to lift off. Foster or Freeman rushes in and shoots Straker {with a blank cartridge, or purposely missing}. Straker pretends to fall dead. The UFO takes off to get away in a hurry. 1000 miles out in space the aliens find that their X12 is bogus, and come back to retaliate. It shoots, damaging the hover-tanker's skirt. Sky 1 destroys the UFO. The tanker, with Straker driving it, falls over a cliff into the sea and is lost; Straker is rescued. Losing the X12 delays the space rocket launch by 6 months, but stops the aliens from perhaps using all that X12 to send 100 UFO's to invade Earth.
THE HILLBILLY AFFAIR
- #44 % [6 BW] In the Kentucky backwoods in USA some local people are distilling moonshine liquor when a UFO comes in and lands. Sky 1 had been after it, but lost it among the geography in the Appalachian Mountains. Some of the local people think it is a secret Earth plane. They guess that the alien is not a normal human, and decide to keep him secret and make money out of it. Foster is already in the USA, so Straker puts him in charge of a ground search. He flies in a Shadair plane from Kennedy airport to Louisville in Kentucky. In a Mobile they search wearily in a tangle of forested mountains. The natives hold to the old ways and don't like strangers; enquiries find nothing. The Mobile crew fond recent tyre tracks leading to a farm where they had been told that nobody lived any more. Foster and another SHADO man investigate. They find two local men (Tully and another). Foster tries to warn them, but the local men won't listen. In a scuffle Tully shoots the other SHADO man. They drag Foster inside to the alien, who they address as "Colonel". The alien praises them for the capture. He had lied that he was an Air Force high-altitude pilot and that the SHADO men were foreign spies. Foster tries to tell them what the alien is. Tully rejects such an unlikely tale. The other local man is not sure any more and says better take both Foster and the alien to the sheriff, and the alien to come with him. The alien shoots him with a ray pistol and orders Foster at gunpoint to tell the secrets of SHADO. Tully splits the alien's helmet with a rifle butt. Tully locks Foster in the house and sets it on fire to destroy all evidence. Foster crashes out through a closed window. The fire sets the forest on fire. The Mobile chases Tully, who climbs on top of the UFO and aims his rifle. The UFO explodes. The local sheriff arrives and says that strangers mean nothing but trouble; Straker agrees, at least with non-Earth strangers.
At #45 the first frame of UFO episodes starts having a round logo with "a Countdown kingsize story" around "UFO".
ALIEN ESPIONAGE
- #45 % [6 BW] High above Surrey (UK) a new SHADO type of assault plane called X1 is being tested. A UFO arrives and gets on X1's tail and shoots X1 down before X1 could fire its rear-facing cannon. That was the 4th secret project that the aliens had smashed that year; Straker suspects espionage. He plans an attack on the alien homeworld, and says he won.t release full details until 2 hours before the attack. SHADO computer operator 319 Owen drives out of town to a lake, puts scuba gear on, dives, and surfaces beside 2 aliens and a UFO {in what may be a cave}. An alien tells Owen to get more information. Owen booby-traps Freeman's car to fire an anaesthetic dart into Freeman when he starts the car. Owen takes Freeman to the 2 aliens, and phones Straker to tell him what to do to get Freeman back. Straker drives the route as ordered, goes into a building, and sees Freeman tied up. An alien knocks Straker out with a pistol butt. The aliens wire Straker to a device to make him talk, but nothing comes out. When Straker woke, they asked him how to get the plans; he tells them; it needed a SHADO code card, which they had found on him. They blank Straker's and Freeman's memories of the last 12 hours and leave the two by Straker's car. Straker finds something of what had happened from a mini tape recorder hidden in his shoe heel. Owen takes the code card to SHADO headquarters and opens the vault with it; but someone inside the vault pulls a pistol on him. Owen punches him, takes the pistol, runs, shoots 2 guards, gets to his car, and starts to drive away, but Straker arrives and blocks him in. Straker and another draw pistols and order Owen to reveal the plot. Owen, scared, does so. Straker and Owen go with several Army-type tanks, which surround the lake. At once the UFO takes off. It turns back and shoots Owen, but the delay gives time for the tanks to destroy it. The hidden alien base self-destructs. Straker reveals that there had been no real plan to attack the alien homeworld.
From #46 Countdown starts to be called "Countdown for TV Action".
STRAKER SMELLS A RAT!
- #46 % 3 UFO's come in. The Interceptors pursue. One of the UFO's runs straight at SID, and at the last moment turns away. Just before the Interceptor's missile destroys it, the UFO fires at SID a small object that sticks to it. It causes SID to make a loud painful jamming noise over all Moonbase radio channels, so Moonbase is incommunicado except for a laser relay. An Interceptor pilot called Dave Sayers goes in an Interceptor and docks with SID. Sayers deactivates the alien bug somehow from inside SID and puts a spacesuit on and goes out to the bug. He radios to the aliens that `Mars fleet, the way is open'; Moonbase does not hear, as their radios are switched off because of the jamming. At least 26 UFO's come out from behind Mars and run for Earth. Sayers comes back to Moonbase and says he has repaired the damage, but he acts oddly, and plastic plugs are found in his ears. Sayers reveals all when threatened. SHADO stops the UFO fleet. Straker had suspected Sayers because of (i) the earplugs, and (ii) if Sayers had been working on the bug, he would have had to take his gloves off, and his hands would have been wet with anti-ultraviolet cream, but they weren't. (Bloopers: (a) the author confuses infrared with ultraviolet; (b) If you expose your hands bare to space vacuum, you get severe decompression injury or worse; (c) The Interceptor is shown with a large internal cabin instead of merely a cockpit.)
THE MOVIES
#47 % A space movie is being made; Buzz Peters (who played an alien) is dissatisfied with his role. Meanwhile 40 miles from Los Angeles a SHADO Mobile is going to a real UFO's last ETT. The Mobile and the UFO destroy each other, but the UFO's pilot survives. The alien waves a car down; its driver thinks that the alien's spacesuit is an advertizing stunt. The alien throws the driver out and takes the car and drives and sees a spaceship to get back to his fleet with and drives in crashing a gate to reach it; but it is the movie set; they think he is an actor in the space story. SHADO thinks there may be an alien loose. In the desert, Foster finds the car driver, who says what happened and dies from (?wounds ?exposure). In the movie set, the alien starts to guess that something is wrong. Buzz accuses the alien of being an actor sent to replace him and pushes the alien. The alien punches Buzz hard. The movie director praises Buzz and thinks that the alien is an actor. Foster arrives and tells everybody to freeze. The movie director complains at the interruption. The alien gets in the spaceship and finds that is only a toy. He sets it on fire with his gun. Ambiguous between whether the alien (a) burns himself along with the spaceship or (b) walks away. Perhaps the original ending was (a), but it was changed to (b) to remove unpleasant matter.
THE ALIEN ALLY
- #48 % General Karasko is dictator of the Balkan (SE Europe) republic of Moldavia. He does not cooperate with SHADO and will not let their personnel or craft in; several UFO's have evaded pursuit over the Moldavian Alps in the past weeks. Freeman reports to Straker (who just then came back from leave) this incident: "I and a SHADO man called Matthews in a Mobile chased a UFO to the Moldavian border. Their border guards refused to let us through, and we were tired of being kept out, so we crashed their barrier and got through. The UFO vanished. The Moldavian Army captured us. We asked them to take us to Karasko, which they did. I explained to Karasko, but he impounded the Mobile and expelled me and Matthews.". Straker goes to Moldavia as a movie director looking for film locations; he is allowed in. He goes to the Dvarkberg Mountains, where the UFO's had been landing. A native tells him of old legends of dwarves kidnapping children in the Dvarkberg, and that legend seems to have got new meaning, as some local farmers had disappeared. A policeman hears and arrests the native, for the Dvarkberg is a state secret. The police report reaches Karasko, who orders for Straker to be arrested, and himself goes to the Dvarkberg. Straker's car comes to a landslide, so he continues on foot. He sees Karasko arrive alone in a small helicopter. Karasko goes to a cave mouth and warns an alien guard that a spy is around. Straker steals Karasko's helicopter. The alien shoots at him but misses. He sees a big landed 2-rotor helicopter and some armed men in helmets: Karasko's guards. Straker swoops in, shoots at the ground with his pistol, and flies away. The guards get into their helicopter and chase him. He lands near the cave mouth and runs in. The guards land and chase him into the cave. He finds Karasko and some aliens. He shoots at them; they shoot back. Karasko has an alien rifle. Straker is out of ammunition, but shows the Moldavian guards a ?stasis cabinet full of natives {stored to be shipped out in UFO's}. Karasko orders his guards, but they refuse, and shoot Karasko and all the aliens. Straker and the Moldavian guards run out of the cave just in time before the alien base detonated violently, and the explosion kills the aliens' prisoners {if they weren't brain-dead already}. It is likely that Moldavia will cooperate with SHADO after that.
CLOUDS OF MADNESS
- #49 C The Interceptors destroy a UFO, but it releases some metal canisters, which go to Earth. Sky 1 destroys one and runs out of ammunition: they are too small targets. Some of the canisters soft-land in open country and release a gas that makes people and animals mad. While combatting the enraged animals, a remark about shotguns gave SHADO the idea to quickly make some Interceptor missiles containing several small scatter-shells. They destroy the rest of the gas canisters in space. {And the shrapnel becomes yet more unwelcome orbiting space-debris.}
A NEAR THING
- #50 % SHADO have a new ship (which was not their idea but the Pentagon's) called a `Space Scout', to patrol far outside the Earth and Moon system. It blasts off on a test flight. After 2 days' flight later it finds a UFO and shoots at it, but the UFO dodges. The UFO flees. The Space Scout chases it far, despite orders to merely test their craft. Here a frame shows a UFO's control panel. At least 6 UFO's come in from various directions and trap the Space Scout. Aliens with backpack rocket propulsors board it and clean out its crew and take it over. The Space Scout returns to Moonbase. It does not answer hails; Foster guesses a communications failure. The Space Scout lands; Foster is there to meet it. Armed aliens come out of it and ** take over Moonbase's control room. They know that Foster is resistant to alien hypnosis, so they order him to obey them, else they will destroy Moonbase and all its staff {which they likely would do later anyway, or take them for organs}. The aliens order all humans except Foster out of the control room. Under alien orders Foster radios Straker, who asks why the 15 minutes' radio silence. Foster, trying a coded warning, says that "the new operative, Raymond Franklin, who took over from Osborne, threw a few wrong switches.". Franklin had been an agent for the aliens, who killed someone and posed as one Osborne. That tells Straker that aliens were in Moonbase. 24 or so UFO's come in. SID warns about them, but the aliens have Moonbase. The UFO's go into Earth orbit. The alien commander's UFO lands by Moonbase. Two aliens take Foster to go to `the craft' (= ? the Space Scout, ? the alien commander's UFO). At a door Foster suddenly pushes the 2 aliens and gets alone to the Space Scout and flies it away, pursued, to Earth. In Earth gravity it can't fly level, only come in and land. Sky 1 destroys the pursuing UFO just in time. The Space Scout splashes down. Foster is rescued, treated in hospital for a ?broken arm, and then tells Straker what has happened in Moonbase. The alien strike commander orders `attack'. *** Anti-aircraft missile units are put just in time round many strategic targets such as fuel dumps; some UFO's are destroyed, the rest retreat. In Moonbase, the alien commander and his two assistants prepare to destroy Moonbase, but two Moonbase personnel run in with pistols and shoot the 3 aliens. I would have expected the aliens to use many more men and precautions to secure and disarm so many enemy personnel in such a big enemy base with so many hiding places. Also, all the events from ** to *** would have to happen in less time than it takes UFO's to get from limit of detectability to low Earth atmosphere. Matters returne to normal. Straker goes to Washington to have a few words with a few people about all this.
SHOCK-WAVE
- #51 C [3] In a work building on the alien homeworld the aliens are testing a new weapon-resistant spacesuit. It has a bulky rectangular backpack. Its chest control unit is the usual shape but a lot bigger and symmetrically placed. One of them wears the suit while others fire two small artillery sized rayguns at him, but he and the suit are unharmed. One of the alien research staff knows about Straker. The alien staff (except the one in the spacesuit) wear what looks line sleeveless jackets over overalls, and high boots that go nearly to the knee, Some days later, 3 UFO's come in on track bearing 776, rate 450. The Interceptors go against them. 2 of the UFO's are destroyed, but the one with the alien wearing the special spacesuit gets through. The UFO lands. At least 5 Mobiles close in on it, with orders to capture alive if possible. An alien gets out of the UFO and stands in full view as if tempting fate. After some minutes Straker in headquarters suspects a trick and orders the Mobiles to fire on the alien. Their guns hit him, but he is unharmed. The alien fires his gun at the Mobiles and reduces them to smoking wrecks; only one man of their crews survives to warn headquarters. The alien walks to SHADO headquarters, and gets there 5 or 6 minutes after the warning. Straker goes out on foot and confronts the alien.
- #52 % [3 BW] Outside Harlington-Straker studios, Straker gets away from the alien by flying up, as he is wearing a backpack jet or rocket pack. The alien shoots at him. Straker sets his jetpack to make a lot of smoke and flies back into the building, and gets to his car and drives it out fast. The alien takes a car and chases Straker at over 100 mph south and round London on the M25 {This seems to agree with the `Harlington-Straker's = Elstree' theory.} and to the Sussex coast where Carlin is waiting in Skydiver. Straker waits a bit for the alien to catch up, then both cars go over a high vertical sea cliff. Straker ejects in a jet fighter type ejection seat and is safe. As the alien in his car hits the water, a missile from Skydiver with a powerful electron charge makes an end of him. On the alien homeworld, this failure of this attempt gets the suit's designer into trouble with his superior.
THE GHOST SHIP
- #53 % In the Pacific Ocean Skydiver rushes to a UFO's ETT (= Estimated Termination of Trajectory). It launches Sky 1; Carlin is flying it. He goes at the UFO. His missile firing system fails, so he must use his cannon, but the UFO damages Sky 1 and sets it on fire. He must land on the sea, and manages it, just in time. He radios for help, but his radio is out of order. A very out of date USA naval vessel is near. Carlin swims to it, hoping to find a working radio on it. Shadair's tilt-rotor plane is looking for him. He climbs up an anchor chain and gets on board. He sees someone in the bridge and goes there, but the man is a dummy. Carlin looks in the radio room. There is an alien in there, with a small one-handed raygun. The alien threatens with it, but does not fire, so clearly wants to abduct Carlin. Carlin puts his hands up to the gun, and then grabs something overhead and swings himself at the alien. He knocks the alien down, but the alien recovers, and the two fight; the alien's spacesuit makes it like fighting a man in armour, and Carlin is knocked out.
- The warship is a target for the US Navy to test a new nuclear torpedo on, and just then 40 miles away the torpedo is fired. The firing ship sees the Shadair plane with its radar and warns it off. The Shadair plane sees Carlin and hovers and lets a man down a rope ladder to pick him up. Carlin warns him about the alien. The alien shoots at the plane, cutting the rope ladder. The alien now intends to shoot them, knowing that he himself will die [which I suppose means that he can't reach his UFO]. Carlin and the Shadair man quickly jump overside and get into Sky 1, and Carlin makes it submerge just in time before the torpedo hits the old warship as the alien sees 3 UFO's (or one UFO drawn 3 times to represent movement) coming in to land.
WATERS OF FEAR
- #54 % Two anglers are fishing in a boat on a freshwater lake in northern England. A hand appears from below the water, grasps the boat's gunwale, and pulls it over. Something drags the two anglers under. There were at least 4 recent UFO landings in the area, burnt-out UFO's found but no sign of their pilots, and people have started to disappear. Another UFO comes in. Sky 1 chases it and fires a missile. Straker calls Sky 1 off; Sky 1 manages to make the missile detonate early just in time. The UFO's ETT is on a moor in Northern England, near the lake. Foster and a SHADO man called Maine go there in a Mobile in a snowstorm. The Mobile slips sideways into a snow-hidden ditch and throws its right track. They find a burning UFO wreck, no sign of its pilot, but a set of footprints in the snow leading to a river and stopping. A ripple on the water attracts Maine's attention. He goes to the river edge, and two aliens under the water drag him under. Underwater are several aliens. One of them sees that Maine is a SHADO man and thus that their base (in a cave with an underwater entrance) has been found. The aliens walk along the riverbed in their spacesuits towing humans in plastic bubbles. Another Mobile gets to the place, and its crew see the marks in the snow where Maine was dragged in. No time to get diving gear; Foster strips to the waist and goes on tied to a rope for 90 seconds; he finds a cave but no sign of aliens. He would see little anyway, with no diving mask on; and other faults; the author here should have got advice from a scuba diver. They drive the Mobile down the river (it is shown as amphibious). As it passes over the aliens, they all fire upwards, and the Mobile sinks. One of its 2 crew gets out, stays underwater for 2 minutes using some sort of thin tube as a snorkel, then surfaces and radios Carlin in Skydiver: his walkietalkie had survived immersion. The aliens reach the river's estuary. Skydiver fires torpedoes into them, killing them all, but the humans in the plastic bubbles are rescued alive.
THE KIDNAPPERS
- #55 % [6 BW] A UFO evades an Interceptor attack and lands in countryside in Surrey in SE England. 2 aliens come out of it. One of them throws a wire up and taps a phone line and sends an emergency call to a hospital. An ambulance comes. Its crew see an alien lying on the road. They go to pick him up, but he gets up and shoots them. His gun has a mode to stun its target. {The aliens hypnotize the ambulance driver.} The aliens in the ambulance go to a hospital, where the ambulance driver leads the aliens to Dr,Isaacs's office. One of the aliens shoots Dr.Isaacs in stun mode and telepathically orders the 2 ambulancemen to carry Dr.Isaacs into the ambulance.
- A SHADO team led by Straker with at least 2 Mobiles find the UFO hidden among vegetation. He doesn't want to move it in case of the self-destruct, and because he wants to capture its crew. One of his men guesses that the aliens are likeliest after Dr.Isaacs and the heart clinic. The aliens go to a store room and load up with heart surgery gear including artificial hearts. They shoot the ambulancemen in stun mode. One of them stays a bit conscious and raises an alarm but too late. The UFO glows and then explodes as the ambulance reaches it. The Mobiles chase the ambulance, and plan to shoot it with cannon on the next straight, but Freeman warns them by radio in time that Dr.Isaacs is on it, and Isaacs is the world's best expert in artificial hearts, and left alive he could save thousands of people - or thousands of aliens. The Mobiles follow it, not too close. An alien leans out of a door-window and shoots the lead Mobile's driver in the shoulder, and it goes off the road and crashes into some thin trees. The aliens drive to London Spaceport and go to the nearest moon ferry; SHADO had told the gate-men to let them pass.
- Straker has SHADO marksmen put as close to the ferry as possible and radios to the ferry that it has been given enough fuel to carry only 2 men. The aliens argue and then fight at the ferry's outer door over which is to stay behind. The ferry's second stage with Dr.Isaacs in takes off, leaving the first stage and the aliens on the ground. Straker wants to capture the aliens alive, but as the 3 Mobiles approach, the ferry's first stage explodes and kills the aliens. Dr.Isaacs is recovered safe. SHADO gives amnesia drug where necessary to protect their secrecy.
TERROR IN THE TANK
- #56 H,% A UFO over London at night is forced to land by a savage electrical storm. The storm also affects SHADO's tracking and they are unable to pinpoint the landing site. The UFO has landed in London Zoo. As the Alien explores, the big cats growl at him. He is found by a night watchman who want to investigate the noise. He kills the watchman, but his helmet faceplate is broken in the fight. As day breaks, the zookeepers find the UFO in the grounds. SHADO pick up the police report and Foster soon arrives with several mobiles. One of the zookeepers shows Foster the Alien's helmet with its faceplate broken. Foster suspects that the Alien will seek liquid to survive, and he finds the Alien alive in a large fish tank in the aquarium. [[Fault: the alien would need a special liquid to breathe, not aquarium water.]] SHADO transport the tank to a nearby hospital where the Alien is fitted with a temporary helmet, but he escapes, steals a laundry van, gets out past Foster with a human hat and raincoat over his spacesuit as disguise, and makes his way back to the zoo. The UFO is under SHADO guard so, to create a diversion, the Alien releases several of the big cats. He runs for his UFO but, just as he reaches it, is overtaken by a cheetah which jumps onto the UFO, setting off the self-destruct mechanism. The UFO explodes, taking the alien with it.
THE ALIEN REVOLUTION
- #57 H,% A new oilrig off the coast of Galveston, Texas, is actually the cover for a new underwater SHADO base. The aliens have found about it. It is still 14 days before the day when it will start to be able to defend itself against the aliens. Meanwhile near Veracruz a group of Mexican revolutionaries plan to hijack an atomic powered ship arriving in the morning carrying a large shipment of arms for the government forces. None of the guerillas know how to pilot an atomic ship, so the plan is to move the arms off the ship and into their trucks before government reinforcements arrive. A UFO eludes the interceptors and lands in Mexico, seen by the guerillas. They capture the Alien, but the UFO self-destructs. Realising that the Alien is not a government spy, the leader of the guerillas comments that they have found their pilot for the ship. The Alien nods, apparently agreeing to help them. In the morning, the attack takes place but the government troops prove more resistance than expected and only the Alien and the guerilla leader manage to board the ship before it leaves port. At the Galveston base, Foster hears of the hijack and then also that the mobiles seeking the UFO have found UFO debris near an abandoned guerilla camp in Mexico. Intercepting the ship in a helicopter, Foster sees the Alien on board and advises SHADO before being shot down. The guerilla leader realises that the ship is off course and fights with the Alien. They kill each other but, before dying, the Alien staggers to the ship's controls and completes what he was secretly doing: turning the ship into a floating atomic bomb on a collision course with the Galveston base. SHADO try to get aboard the ship but cannot land because the deck is now ablaze with fire. With seconds to spare, Sky 1 appears and blows the ship out of the water.
ALIEN BRAINWAVE
- #58 H,% The World President is opening a new hovertrain link between London and Edinburgh. A TV news helijet hovering above the train actually contains 2 Aliens. When the President is temporarily alone, one of the Aliens clambers aboard the train and shoots the President in the back of the head with a strange projectile gun, which puts him under mind control. Days later, the President calls a meeting with Straker and announces that he wants to shut SHADO down. When, by chance, Straker turns up some press photos from the hovertrain opening that show the Aliens when blown up, he realises what has happened. He calls the President to SHADO HQ with a threat to blow SHADO open to the world and let public opinion decide the fate of the organisation. The President's car arrives, followed closely by a TV news helijet, but the Aliens discover that SHADO HQ is surrounded by a forcefield, blocking their control. Under medical examination, an implant is found at the back of the President's head. Disguised as the President, Straker leaves SHADO HQ using the implant, doctored to allow communication but not control, to request a meeting with the Aliens. A helijet takes him to the Surrey countryside in SE England. But at the meeting, the Aliens realise the deception. Straker shoots one of the aliens, and the other alien shoots Straker but not fatally. The live alien gets in the helijet, but as it flies away. the wounded Straker fires at its fuel tanks and blows it up.
At #59 the comic starts to be called `TV Action + Countdown', and the round UFO logo stops being used. UFO has 2 pages per episode. Its page numbers run from 1 at the front in the usual book order.
LET THE ALIENS LAND
- #59 % A UFO lands in southern England. Its pilot gets out. A Mobile approaches, with orders to capture the alien alive. The UFO explodes. The Mobile chases the alien north through some woods. The alien runs into a road just in front of Straker's car, which runs into him and kills him. On him are found notices advertizing free gifts at Burdon's store in a town called Downmarket. Straker drives to Downmarket and finds it full of traffic jam. He guesses that the cause is an overturned hay wain ahead or something, and drives on the pavement to get past it, but another driver accuses him of queue-jumping. He sees what looks like a crowd looting Burdon's store, and finds that Burdon's are giving the goods away free.
- #60 Straker tries to find what is going on, and finds a big notice "Friendship between planets! Gifts from space for the people of the Earth!", and tries to warn the manager about enemies, but the manager thinks Straker is from a rival firm, and the crowd think be is mad, and to escape he has to break a window by running through it (with his forearms over his face to protect it) and gets to his car and away. Foster sees on TV news that Burdon's stores right across the country are giving their stock away free; other stores are complaining about it. Straker realises that any aliens who landed publicly now would be very popular.
- #61 H,% Straker finds that a Greek shipping and property magnate called Dimitri Krassos controls all the stores taking part in the scheme, and may be the man in contact with the aliens. Straker and Foster fly to Athens in a Shadair transporter, but over the Adriatic Sea 3 fighters come and shoot near him and order him to follow them and land, on Talus Island in the Adriatic. Once on the ground, they investigate the jets and discover that they are pilotless, flown by remote control. Suddenly, one jet's guns fire, destroying the Shadair transporter, their only way off the island. A voice comes out of it, telling Straker and Foster to start walking.
- (In a Dr.Who episode in this issue, dinosaurs versus Daleks!)
- #62 % They follow the voice through a wood to a dome building. At its door, an electric force field makes [all hidden metal objects on them including] hidden weapons electrically live, and they must disarm. Krassos arrives, and shows how he built his base, and how when he finished he killed them with some sort of electric ray. Krassos plans to take over the world, with aid of at least 7 aliens who landed and were caught by him and are being held in ?stasis cylinders. He plans also to get help from Straker and Foster in this.
- #63 % Krassos presses a button on his desk, and Straker and Foster are trapped in plastic bubbles.
- Carlin in Skydiver is in the Adriatic. He surfaces and sees Talus Island, which just then fades away leaving open sea.
- Straker and Foster find that their bubbles drift freely but do not touch the aliens' cylinders, and they guess that if they force a touch, that might release enough force to burst the bubble. This they do, and Straker's bubble bursts, causing him a lot of pain, but he is free.
- #64 % He pushes Foster's bubble against a cylinder, and it bursts. Then they see that 2 of the aliens are now free also. They and the aliens are in the same trap, so they make a truce with the 2 aliens. Krassos sees on a monitor and sends a hallucigenic force field, then comes there with a ray pistol and goes to shoot Foster.
- #65 % As Krassos fires, Foster ducks, and Straker jumps on Krassos. But Krassos is very strong and they can't hold him. The 4 run away down a corridor to an open door. One of the aliens goes to go through it. Straker tells him not to, as it is likely boobytrapped. The alien ignores him and is incinerated by a powerful built-in ?propane flamethrower. The other 3 get through by crawling on their bellies under the flame. In the next room Krassos switches an anti-gravity on, so the 3 float helpless. But the alien's suit has its own gravity device, and he gets into Krassos's powerhouse and works out what to do - to get rid of Straker and Foster as well as Krassos.
- #66 % Krassos on a small flying vehicle goes into the control room and sees that the alien is not with Straker and Foster. He switches the antigrav off. Straker and Foster jump on Krassos's vehicle, which flies out of the building. Straker and Foster jump off it just before it flies into some special trees with hard razor-edges leaves, which cut him to pieces, and that is the end of him and his plans to dominate the world. In a tower the alien sees on a monitor what is happening. Straker and Foster run to the airfield and find a radio and call for help. Sky 1 hears him. Straker tells him where to shoot. The island is still hidden by the null-opticon screen. The alien frees the other aliens, and they all run onto the beach chasing Straker and Foster, who get into the sea as Sky 1 comes and fires. Krassos's power source explodes, destroying everything and killing all the aliens. Straker and Foster are safe.
THE FINAL CLIMB
- #67 % 3 UFO's come in. The 3 Interceptors go after them. One UFO explodes without being hit, screening the two others, who get away. Sky 1 launches from the Indian Ocean after them, and intercepts them over the Chinese border. 2 Chinese anti-aircraft missiles are fired at him, and he must use 2 of his own missiles to stop them, and during this the 2 UFO's get away.
- #68 % Skydiver's intrusion has threatened international relations, and governments order Straker to keep his men away from the area. Sir William Truscott will lead a mountaineering expedition to climb Mount Djhoubli in the area: a risk of the aliens catching its members. 3 more UFO's come in. The Interceptors destroy 2 and damage 1; it lands in the Chinese border mountains near Mt.Djhoubli. Straker, acting as a movie maker, offers to fly the expedition there as a cover to get SHADO there.
- #69 % SHADO flies in. One of the mountaineers in a blizzard sees an alien, but the rest think it was an altitude hypoxia hallucination. A blizzard forces the SHADO helicopter with Straker and Foster in to land, near a ruined abandoned Buddhist monastery. They ignore the place, but 3 UFO's are parked in its courtyard. On the mountain, the mountaineers' camp near the summit can't raise their Camp 10 on their radio.
- #70 % In the monastery, aliens are transshipping abductees (some of the mountaineers) from a saucer-shaped craft to an ordinary UFO. Straker and Foster come out of their helicopter and go to the door of the monastery. They see a Chinese missile site and wonder if they had been spotted coming in. Straker goes in through the monastery gate and sees UFO's. Some guards from the missile site go to the helicopter and confront Foster, but Straker explains the situation over his radio. Foster and one of the Chinese go up in the helicopter. Straker and the other Chinese go to the monastery. One of the UFO's takes off, but a missile from the battery destroys it. After a shoot-out with aliens the ground force go to the UFO's, which auto-destruct. Straker explains why the aliens come.
From here the UFO episodes have 3 pages each, the first two colored and the third black and white.
SMALL WORLD
- #71 % In Moonbase, a scientist called Brant is working in secret. Straker is impatient at lack of reported results, and goes there himself. Brant has developed a way to miniaturize things and animals, and wants permission to test it on a human. Straker volunteers to be the subject himself. He is shrunk to half an inch tall; he is given an astronaut spacesuit (grey body, red helmet) already miniaturized to match. Brant takes Straker into a Moon-ferry. It takes off. In space it is caught up in a dogfight between Interceptors and several UFO's.
- #72 % The ferry is out of control heading away into space. Straker wants Brant to bale out with him. [[Here the author did not realize that anyone who jumps out of a spaceship carries on at the speed of the spaceship!]] Brant panics and bales out without Straker. Spacemen come in another Moon-ferry and pick up Brant. In the damaged ferry Straker, still miniaturized, manages to switch the emergency power unit on. It causes a signal which 2 UFO's hear, and they come and take the ferry under tow. Straker guesses that the aliens plan to take it to their homeworld, and that he will thus find much about the aliens but does not have a chance in a thousand to get home to Earth. In Moonbase Foster questions Brant and at first thinks that Brant is in with the aliens but then finds what had happened. Far out beyond the Moon the UFO's tow the ferry to a big wheel-shaped alien space station, probably somewhere in the Solar System. He realizes that the aliens could attack Earth from it.
- #73 % The UFO's leave the ferry in a big airlock. Straker hopes that he can breathe the station's air, as his spacesuit only has 20 minutes' air left. By clinging like a flea onto the outsides of moving aliens he gets to their communications centre and hopes that at his size he can operate the alien communications equipment to warn SHADO about the alien space station. He manages to transmit to Moonbase on it, ordering them to get a direction fix on the space station and destroy it. An alien catches him. In Moonbase Dr.Jackson hears Straker's radio message. In a lab in the space station two aliens (not in spacesuits) start to examine Straker in a transparent box connected to equipment.
- #74 Straker wakes. The aliens start to interrogate him. They use powerful ultrasound to cause pain as an interrogation aid. In Moonbase Foster is umwilling to destroy the space station while there is a chance of rescuing Straker. Brant says that there is a way, and shows Foster an alien. Foster pulls out his pistol and goes to shoot the alien and accuses Brant again of being in with the aliens. Brant stops him and explains that the alien is a robot that could be controlled by a miniaturized human. Brant miniaturizes Foster to half an inch high. Foster in the robot alien flies in a Moon-ferry (which has nuclear engines) and sets off for the alien space station.
- #75 % In the space station, the aliens realize that Straker is resisting the ultrasound torture, and instead shows to him in a glass container an alien creature like a centipede, many times bigger than Straker, with claws like a scorpion's but smaller. An alert sounds in a UFO-hangar as Foster's Moon-ferry appoaches. At least 3 UFO's go to the ferry and examine it. Foster in the robot bales out, hoping that the aliens will think that the robot is an alien escaping from SHADO. The UFO's blow the ferry apart with gunfire. A UFO shoots out a grab in a long flexible line and catches the robot and tows it into the space station. 2 aliens approach Foster, who guesses that they are trying to communicate by telepathy. Foster (in the robot) plays dead and is carried into the space station's medical center and into the lab. They take the robot's helmet off and leave it on an examination bed. The aliens guess that SHADO is in chaos, since there was no attack on the space station and (apparently) a captured alien had managed to escape. Foster sees what is happening, (gets the robot to) stand up, comes behind the alien scentist, and knocks him out with a sideswipe with the robot's open right hand. The glass container with the insect in falls in with Straker and breaks. The insect goes to attack Straker.
- #76 % The robot picks up Straker and holds him up to his face. Straker sees Foster in the robot's right eye socket. Foster goes out onto the robot's arm and carries Straker inside. The robot puts the fallen scientist's white lab coat on - over its apparent spacesuit. A passing alien in a spacesuit without helmet suspects that something is wrong and shoots at the robot. Straker and Foster realize that they better abandon the robot. The robot runs into another room and puts its left land up to a ventilation grille. Straker and Foster run up its arm and in through the grille. After walking what at their scale is several miles they come to a grille which shows a room where an alien (without spacesuit) is adjusting a nuclear reactor. The two jump onto the alien's right shoulder and together stab the side of his neck. The sudden pain makes the alien drop what he is doing and swat the place. The fuel rods that he was handling fall in a heap. The alien looks frightened, and so Straker guesses that he might have done what he was planning to do.
- #77 % Straker & Foster jump off the alien and climb over things and jump and find themselves in a fast current of the green liquid that is out in aliens' spacesuits. It flushes them into a big tank with several motionless aliens (naked except for what looks like orange swimmingg trunks) on floating about in it. Foster guesses that those aliens are not dead but in suspended animation waiting to be sent on UFO missions. The 2 find a submerged door held shut by circuitry. They get the door open. They cling onto a floating alien and are carried in the current as it floods the floor in the space station. They end up near the robot, and get in it. The aliens were too confused to check another apparent alien as the robot goes to Foster's Moon-ferry and blasts off in it and gets away just in time before the space station's main reactor explodes as an end result of the fuel rods being dropped.
EYES OF TERROR
- #78 H,% SHADO mobiles are closing in on an area where a UFO is coming in to land in southern England. Alec Freeman is also searching the area in a SHADO car. The UFO lands on a road in front of a haulage truck. The truck's crew guess that the UFO is a secret airforce plane in trouble and they get out and go to help its pilot. The pilot comes out, and the men see that he is not human. They run, as the alien goes to the truck. The UFO self-destructs, throwing the men down. The alien drives the truck away just as Freeman and the Mobile reach the place. The wounded driver tells Freeman what had happened. Freeman gives pursuit and catches up with the truck on the motorway. He tries to force it off the road, but the SHADO car's weight can't match the truck's, and he crashes. Stopping the truck, the alien sees Freeman lying on the grass verge, decides not to kill him as that would waste time, as he had a plan to eliminate all of SHADO. He inspects his cargo, which includes a crate labelled "Harlington-Straker Film Studios". [[The alien seems to die, cause not known, but in the next episode he is still alive.]]
- #79 % The alien opens the crate. It contains clothes, which the alien sprays something over. Freeman wakes and goes into the truck. In SHADO base the clothes are examined and nothing is found wrong with them. They were addressed to the studio's staff, who see no reason not to put them on.
- A UFO comes in and is routinely disposed of by an Interceptor, but as it explodes it fires off towards Earth a lot of small spheres, which are too small and fast to be stopped. On Earth Straker hears of this and calls for all the jackets to be returned; but Freeman is away in his car wearing one of them. One of the small spheres falls into his car through the windscreen; he thinks it was a stone from a boy's catapult. Someone in SHADO radios Freeman to being the jacket back, but the ball displays an eye and hypnotizes Freeman.
- #80 Across space, an alien in a space station or a big spacecraft sees Freeman through the eye ball and orders him to find a powerful weapon of destruction. In SHADO base, someone finds that the jackets have been dusted with particles not made on Earth. Freeman in a car goes to a Shadair base and said he wanted to imspect a Shadair flying-boat. The base captain wanted Freeman to answer the phone call about the jacket. Freeman knocks the captain down and flies away in the flying-boat.
- On Harlington-Straker Studios forecourt, Straker puts one of the jackets on. One of the alien eye spheres comes. It starts to hypnotize Straker, but he refuses to look at it, and takes the jacket off and tells some of his men to use it to cover the eye. They go to take it to a lab, but across space that is detected and the eye explodes, killing a man. Freeman radios Skydiver with a order about a special mission.
- #81 % At the same time Straker radios Skydiver warning Carlin about Freeman. Freeman comes onboard Skydiver with an order sending Sky 1 on a special order with nuclear missiles. 2 crewmen meet him. One of them queries the procedure of the order. They argue. They try to overpower him, but the hypnosis gives Freeman superhuman strength, and he throws the 2 in the sea. Across space the alien watches this through the eye. Carlin gets sees that Freeman is acting strange, but the eye hypnotizes him also. Skydiver sets off. The 2 who were thrown in the sea get to the flying-boat. In the studio, Straker has an idea and orders some hurried filming. In Skydiver, the eye orders Freeman to fly Sky 1 against SHADO headquarters.
- #82 % Freeman flies Sky 1 against SHADO headquarters. As he reaches it, by back-projection onto a lot of cloth screen covering it, it seems to turn into a rock face with a waterfall coming down it. Then it becomes a factory. The alien voice orders him to attack. Straker radioed him to land. Freeman's mind is overstressed by all this contradiction, and he cracks up. He lands. The alien presses the button to make the eye explode and kill Freeman, but just then Straker and another grab Freeman and pull the jacket off him, and Straker throws it at the eye, which explodes harmlessly. Freeman recovers after a long rest.
VOYAGE OF DISASTER
- #83 % Robin Jackman is in a yacht called Ariel in a yacht race round the world. he has reached the South Pacific. (His yacht has outriggers both sides.) A UFO which Sky 1 has damaged, ditches near him. He thinks it is some sort of aircraft, and rescues its pilot. He takes the alien below, guesses that the UFO might be a returning spacecraft on a secret experiment, and starts to radio for help. The alien pulls out a one-hand raygun and shoots the radio. The alien threatens Jackman with his gun and points to a chart, to tell him where to go. {Sky 1 returns to Skydiver.} Skydiver is still looking for the UFO. It finds the Ariel, and asks Jackman if he has seen a saucer-shaped weather balloon (saying that Shydiver is part of an Australian meteorological expedition). Jackman says that he knows nothing, for the alien has a gun on him and could shoot both Jackman and the man in the sub.
- #84 % Jackman says he saw something come down in the east. He puts up signalling flags "danger, keep away, I have plague on board", telling the alien that not putting flags up would cause suspicion. The alien directs Jackman to the Great Barrier Reef. Jackman takes an opportunity to push the alien overside, but in his rush also goes overside himself. The two fight. The alien can breathe underwater in his spacesuit and soon wins. Skydiver finds the yacht abandoned. Jackman reaches land and goes in a cave and in it sees a lt of big equipment and several aliens. He sees on a screen the sub that met him. Jackman smells danger for the sub and confronts the aliens. Skydiver's controls go dead, and Skydiver hits a reef and starts leaking.
- #85 % Carlin orders some watertight doors to be closed, but it can't be done, as all Skydiver's systems are dead. The aliens throw Jackman in a cell, where he finds some men in plastic stasis bubbles. Skydiver's crew manage to close the watertight doors manually. They try to radio SHADO headquarters, but the radio doesn't work, and they find that all systems are in working order but won't work. In SHADO headquarters Straker wonders what has happened to Skydiver, then hears that all contact with the NE coastal area of Australia has gone and that a Shadair patrol is investigating. As the Shadair plane (not a tilt-rotor) flies into the area, its engine cuts out and it crashes and explodes and its crew die. Straker realizes that the aliens have started something big and is told that the cause is some kind of alien negative force field and that it has to be smashed quickly. He flies to Melbourne in Australia. At least 6 aliens in spacesuits come out of their base underwater and go towards Skydiver. [[They are shown walking upright as if on land, ignoring buoyancy and water resistance. I can tell that the author was not a diver!]] Carlin does not know this. He sees that Skydiver is held fast on the reef, and jumps off and swims towards Jackman's abandoned yacht. As he swims, he sees the aliens boarding Skydiver.
- #86 Carlin reaches the yacht, nearly spent by a long hard swim. He gets the yacht under way. The aliens overpower Skydiver's crew and put them in stasis bubbles and take them underwater to their base. In the alien base, the negative force field is now to 20% power, and soon all the Southern Hemisphere will be without power, and SHADO won't be able to stop them. Straker lands at Adelaide and tries to get a flght to Melbourne, but is told that all flights east from there are cancelled and the dead zone is only 5 miles from there. He and 3 SHADO men set off by camel along the railway to Brisbane, hoping to catch a train if one passes; one of his men reckons that the force field won't affect old-style steam engines.
- Carlin is becalmed and has to swim, and after 2 hours, utterly exhausted, reaches a beach and collapses. Far away, Straker's party are crawling at camel pace across burning desert.
- In the alien base, Jackman has or finds something sharp and cuts open at least 2 (and likely all) of the stasis bubbles, and the men inside them wake. [[Why didn't the aliens put him also in a stasis bubble?]] They start to chip at the coral rock that the cell's bars are embedded in.
- Carlin wakes to find himself surrounded by aborigines armed with spears and war boomerangs. He asks them for transport, but they tell him that the nearest white men's town is 200 miles away and that nothing powered is working.
- #87 % The force field spreads to the rest of Australia. The police give warnings until the power of their cars etc gives out. Some men take advantage of the situation to loot shops. Straker is still crossing desert at camel pace; he has made progress, and is well inside the dead zone.. Carlin explains the situation to the aborigines, who agree to help him. They attack the alien base in dugout canoes. Aliens attack them, by grappling with their hands {as if the force field also stopped their guns from working}. Fight in the water. The aborigines kill the alien attackers with their spears. Carlin leads the aborigines into the alien base at the same time as the prisoners break out of the cell. Carlin recognises which device is the alien source power. One of the aborigines smashes it by throwing a heavy war boomerang at it. The alien equipment runs wild. Two alien technicians are caught up in it, but all the humans swim out and reach the surface. Straker is still in the desert, but with the force field gone he now can radio to Carlin. A Shadair transport takes the SHADO men away.
BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL
- #88 % A boy or young man called Ahnsen is missing in the village of Hexdorf in a remote valley high in the Austrial Alps under the slopes of the Hexberg, whose name means "Witch Mountain". His father blames the evil spirits of the Hexberg. The abbot of Hexberg Monastry, who had come down to hold the funeral, told him off for being superstitious and blamed an avalanche. But the monks have got corrupted and in secret worship Satan. The abbot goes back up the Hexberg to his monastery. The monks hold a service worshipping Satan, where the abbot is about to sacrifice Ahnsen on the altar when a UFO, damaged by Sky 1's gunfire, crashes into the monastery. Its alien pilot falls through the broken roof and lands on the altar. The monks think that he is Satan made manifest at last after much calling. They acclaim him as Lucifer. The alien knows via information from agents about that sort of occurrence among men. The abbot asks him if he should still sacrifice Ahnsen. The alien reaches out and puts his hands on the sides of the abbot's head, as if to honor him, and in the process puts a tiny implant crystal in the abbot's head. The abbot now thinks and talks as the alien. The alien says that he does not want Ahnsen, but rather wants as sacrifices members of a brotherbood called SHADO.
- #89 % The alien (via the abbot) orders the monks to hold Ahnsen in custody, as there is another use for him.
- A Mobile comes to Hexheim and one of its crew (named Richter) asks about a "fireball" that fell there. The abbot gives orders to a monk called Hans. Hans invites Richter in for hot spiced wine. The wine has some sort of fast-acting mind-affecting drug in it. SHADO radios the Mobile in vain. (The Mobile has a serial code `Emerald 6 0'; that and Richter's German-type name look as if SHADO has many more than 3 Mobiles including some based abroad.) The monks push the Mobile off the cliff below the monastery, and its wreck burns where it lands.
- Richter sees from the damage that the `aircraft' must have crashed there, and says that his search ends. As he sees the alien and reacts in alarm, the monks seize him and tie him to the altar and gag him. The abbot use his dark powers and the effects of the drug to see in a glass or crystal "scrying-glass" what the SHADO man knows. It shows the film studios and Straker {and perhaps other things}.
- At SHADO headquarters Straker knows that the Mobile is missing and where. He guesses that the alien has landed safely and destroyed the patrol. He orders a full-scale search of the Hexheim area.
- 5 monks gather round the altar and invoke names of Satan and his associates. The alien ties the psychic force released by this superstition with genuine alien science, and hundreds of miles away in SHADO headquarters something like a tornado appears and throws papers and men about. Straker desperately tries to reach an alarm button.
- #90 % The alien sees through the scrying glass that Straker is still alive, and in anger he throws the scrying glass against a statue. In SHADO headquarters Freeman has been ordered to rest, and Foster is still unconscious. Straker (whose left arm is in a sling) orders Foster to be guarded. The monks start another ceremony, this time striking at one alone. Foster awakes in a hypnotized state and comes behind the guard and knocks him out and takes his gun and goes looking for Straker, who starts to realize what is happening. Foster finds Straker. As he shoots at Straker, Straker shows a square of paper, and the image on it seems to hurt and distract Foster.
- #91 Straker ducks, but realizes that he won't likely be as lucky next time. Foster grabs the piece of paper, and at once is unhypnotized, for the piece of paper has on it a black magic diagram, which Straker had copied from an old book. Foster drops the pistol in alarm, realizing what he had been doing.
- After 2 failures, the alien realizes that the monks' powers are not enough, and he goes to leave the place. The abbot guesses that the alien is not Lucifer but an impostor, and has him locked up with Ahnsen and Richter in a dungeon, for all 3 to be sacrificed on Walpurgisnacht. The abbot tells the monks to be on guard, as likely those who escaped their spells will try to strike back.
- And that is happening. Straker and Foster and Freeman (all in black jumpsuits) get in a helijet, which flies out of a hatch hidden in a grass field and sets off for Hexheim. In the dungeon, Ahnsen and the SHADO man have managed toloosen a stone block in a wall. Richter tells the alien that he can come with them or be left to be sacrificed. Richter plans to get the alien live into SHADO custody. The alien plans treachery, and guesses that if he can alert the monks, he might get away while they hunt the Earthmen down. The helijet comes in low over Hexheim Monastery. Straker and Freeman jump out of it; Foster stays in it. The monks invoke Abaddon and Beelzebub to defend them. A huge shadowy shape in human form appears towering above Straker and Freeman. Straker reminds Freeman that it is all in the mind, he must resist its mental effects. The shape reaches its hand at Freeman, who is on the edge of a cliff. Foster in the helijet swoops and drops its rope ladder, and Freeman catches it. The rope ladder swings wildly, and Freeman falls through a stained glass window into the ceremony room. The monks go to seize him to be sacrificed also. Freeman refuses to be scared by any more spook stuff, but fights back. Straker tells Foster to put the helijet on automatic and come down also.
- #92 % Straker and Foster and Freeman manage to barricade the monks in. Ahnsen and Richter and the alien get on the roof of the monastery, where the helijet is hovering on autopilot with its rope ladder out. The alien pushes Ahnsen and Richter down and grabs the rope ladder. By the time the 2 humans have got to the base of the ladder, the alien is starting to fly the helijet away. Richter is trained for emergencies, and manages to jump at the bottom of the ladder and grabs it. He gets into the helijet unnoticed, and jumps at the alien. The helijet crashes. The alien and Richter escape. As the alien goes to shoot Richter, an avalanche started by the crash sweeps down and kills the alien and all the monks.
THE DESTRUCTIVE DECOY
- #93 % New UFO's have bee routinely outflying the Interceptors. SHADO now have on the Moon 2 prototypes of a new sort of Interceptor called Vanguard which should catch those new UFO's. A Moon-ferry releases a UFO-shaped target drone. A Vanguard comes out of a door in a side of a mountain and takes off, chasing the target. Its pilot (Franks) sees a second UFO coming in to attack, and radios that he must bale out. Moonbase did not see the second UFO in any way. Franks bales out. The Vanguard crashes into the Moon. Straker sends an Interceptor to pick up Franks and orders Franks to be examined in the sick bay and court martialled.
- #94 % Franks is adamant that the second UFO existed and attacked him. After a "lunar day" a static test of the other Vanguard pointed to pilot error. Foster, who is current commander of Moonbase, wants to take Vangaurd 2 up. SID announced a UFO coming. Straker orders the old Interceptors. Foster wants to use the chance to test Vanguard, and Straker allows him and takes over command of Moonbase. Foster in Vanguard (in a spacesuit) sees another UFO, and says so to Moonbase. Ellis says that SID did not see it. Foster said he did see it, and sent his missile after it while the real UFO got away. (Vanguard has a long nose that the missile is kept completely inside; it carries at least 3 missiles.)
- #95 % Straker in Moonbase wonders how to bring Foster to reality. Foster still chases the phantom and wastes another missile on it. Straker, taking a gamble, tells Foster that he destroyed the UFO. Foster looks and sees no UFO any more, and obeys Straker's order to chase the real UFO, and just manages to reach it to destroy it with a missile. (Vanguard missiles are a different shape from old Interceptor missiles.) Foster lands Vanguard. Straker orders Vanguard to be dismantled to find what caused the hallucinations, which in the end were blamed on an alien electrical impulse.
SCANNER SHUT-DOWN
- #96 % A Moon-mobile goes from Moonbase to the United Earth Space Exploration (UESE) Centre (which is on the Moon). A big rocket craft flies up from the Centre. As it flies away, Communication with SID goes dead for 20 minutes; it is thought that the cause was a magnetic force field created by the rocket engines. That had been happening a lot, and Straker got angry and called an emergency meeting with the International Astrophysical Committee over this. The IAC rejects Straker's plea, and sees no reason why SHADO can't find another means of long range scanning. Very angry, he returns to SHADO Control and there hears of another UESE craft in the same day: this time an incoming Venus probe carrying spacemen who have been away for 3 years. Straker admits that its men are heroes but wonders why they have to come to close to the Moon, and is told that to save money they are using SHADO facilities. The Venus ship comes in. SID shuts down as usual. Straker blames the Venus ship. The Venus ship's ?radar sees 3 fast echoes. It tries to radio Moonbase, but its electronics have packed up. The 3 objects come near, and are seen to be UFO's.
- #97 % The UFO's force the Venus ship to stop. The aliens force the Venus ship's hatch and come in, and throw the spacemen out into space. The Venus ship, now crewed by aliens, blasts off for the Moon. The 3 UFO's explode. Foster sees that the Venus ship is off course, and sends 2 Moon-mobiles with 2 men in each to the possible crash site. The Venus ship lands in a horizontal skid on a flat area. 3 aliens get out of it.
- #98 % Search does not find the Venus ship's crew on the ground. Straker finds what had happened. Foster guessed that they may have baled out, and sends out a search craft. Freeman guesses that aliens might be involved, and gives the searchers new orders. They find alien spacesuit footprints. The Venus ship's crew are still adrift in space, with 20 minutes' air left. A Moon-ferry has been sent to look for them; its scanner sees 3 specks. The Moon-mobiles come up to the aliens, who are alert and hide behind a pointed rock. The Moon-mobiles follow the aliens' footprints to the rock, and go to look round the other side of it. The aliens shoot at the Moon-mobiles, destroying them. (The aliens use alien rifles like in the TV episodes, but shown as firing a ray.)
- #99 % The Moon-ferry pick up the 3 spacemen as their air runs out, and they are brought on board unconscious. Foster tells Ellis to take over in Moonbase and goes out in a Moon-mobile. He finds the wrecks of the two Moon-mobiles, and sees that the cause was aliens. He follows their tracks on foot. He sees an alien doing something with instruments and creeps up silently, but his boot dislodges a rock. [[OOPS! The author likely forgot that sound doesn't travel in space!]] There is a gunfight; Foster is more used to moving about on the Moon than aliens are, and he shoots two aliens dead. Foster retuens to Moonbase with his air dangerously low. He and Straker debate by radio whether there is another alien out there. Straker realizes that it is yet another alien suicide mission. Foster wants to talk to the 3 spacemen, but they are still under sedation. And an alien is doing something under a building in or near Moonbase.
- #100 % The Venus probe's commander wakes and says that there were 3 aliens. An explosion set by the remaining alien destroys Moonbase's provisions sphere. Foster hurries to the control center and orders to switch on the local scanners and a search for explosives. Foster sees the alien on a monitor. The alien expects that. Foster sets a Moon-mobile to remote control and goes to the Interceptor crater and puts a spacesuit on. He remote-controls the Moon-mobile to fly out, and the alien destroys it with a shot. Foster, behind and above the alien on a rock, plans to capture the alien alive, but his shadow warns the alien, who swings round, and Foster must shoot him. The rest of the alien explosives are found and defused. Straker gets the IAC to close down the UESE center and move it to the other side of the Moon.
- #101 NO UFO STORY
- #102 NO UFO STORY
- From here each UFO episode has 2 pages, both color.
THE MILLION-YEAR-OLD TRAP
- #103 % [2 C] Foster and Swann go in a Moon-mobile to Plotinus crater, where instruments have shown an unexplained underground hollow. Meanwhile the 3 Interceptors are chasing a UFO. One hits it with a missile, but only damages it, and it crashlands in Plotinus crater. As the Moon-mobile lands in the crater, a man in it sees smoke go up, then realizes that that is impossible in space and it must be dust. The Mobile tries to fly up out, but can't, as the dust chokes its motors. [[Erh??, in space where the motor won't have an air intake!?]] The Moon-mobile falls to or through the floor of the crater. The dust is being driven by a wind, which they realize is impossible on the airless Moon. There is a bright light. They find a big reptilian-looking alien (not the usual aliens) who calls himself Dagon and says that the Earthmen trespassing have set off a countdown to the Moon being destroyed in a day's time.
- #104 % Dagon is a statue with a recorded voice. A big door came down, sealing the men in. Dagon says [[in English!]] that he is of an alien race called the Csassk, peaceful explorers, who came to the Moon a million years ago and built that base, but had to leave it to defend their homeworld when other aliens attacked it; but before that they set a destruction device to make sure the Moon coundn't be occupied again. He says that the Earthmen will be subjected to some tests, and if they pass the tests, the destruct sequence will be halted.
- The UFO-alien comes, and plans to make sure the Moon explodes, but meantime he wants to hear as much as he can of Ckassk technology in case it is any use to him.
- Test 1: a giant spider comes. One of them wants to shoot it, but the other says to ignore it, as the Ckassk would not destroy something merely because it was hideous, and it fades away.
- #105 % Test 2: the gravity stops, and reverses, and they fall upwards towards a lot of spikes. They realize that the test is cooperation; they touch hands and push away from each other, and both miss the spikes. The UFO-alien arrives and falls up towards the spikes, but one of the humans saves him. TRhe gravity goes back to normal, and the 3 land on the floor.
- Test 3: On a wall appears a maths problem in an unknown language, and there is a light-pen there. The humans can't understand it, but the UFO-alien grabs the light-pen and solves the problem.
- Test 4: The 3 come to a multi-crystal pink object suspended in a beam. Dagon's voice says it is the destruct device, and it will explode when the dark bands closen in on it. The only thing to stop it will be a living body entering the beam and intervening, and whoever it is will die from it.
- #106 % Foster wants to do it. Swann says that Foster is too important for that, and offers to do the job. Moral reasons stop them from pushing the alien into the beam. Swann goes to go into the beam. The alien attacks him, to stop him from preventing the explosion, as the explosion would destroy Moonbase. Foster jumps in under the alien's rifle. Foster and the alien fight. With seconds to destruction, Foster kicks the gun out of the alien's hand. Foster is lying on his back [[none have life-support backpacks]], and the alien jumps on him, looking for a stranglehold. Foster shoves the alien off him with his feet, and the alien ends up in the beam, and is burnt up, and the Moon is saved. Dagon's voice tells the 2 men that they have won, and they now must go. They go out. The outer metal door closes, and the whole place collapses.
THE RIVER OF DEATH
- #107 % [7 BW] Straker flies to a movie conference in Sao Paulo in Brazil as a cover for checking up on SHADO's set-up in South America. The man meeting him at Sao Paulo addressed him as Commander and mentioned SHADO in full public earshot. Straker sharply told him off for lax security and realized why UFO landings were not being properly intercepted there. The man meeting him said that he did as Major Enchada had ordered. A dark-skinned man in a heavy coat shook the coat off, revealing himself as an Amazon forest native; he took out a blowgun and with it blew a dart into Straker, who at first ignored the wound as a scratch, then collapsed and seemed to be dead. At SHADO's secret base in Brazil, Straker was laid in a coffin with a window over his face. Foster looked into the coffin in farewell to his boss and saw mist on the window over Straker's face. Straker proved to be in suspended animation caused by an unknown poison administered by the dart. The culprit had been shot trying to escape but proved to be a Curara native from the forests of the interior, a tribe never visited by white men.
- Straker needs an antidote to the poison within 24 hours to avoid irretrievable brain damage. Foster and Enchada go to look for the Curara tribe to find the antidote. They go up a jungle river called Rio del Muerte in a Mobile, which is fully amphibious. They come to 2 natives (a man and a boy) in a canoe. Foster orders stop, to avoid swamping the canoe, but the Mobile swervew and the canoe sinks. Enchada apologizes. Foster catches the native man, and tells Enchada to go after the boy. A big alligator approaches the boy. Foster realizes why the river has its name (= River of Death). He swims to the alligator and grabs its nose to hold its jaws shut, and wrestles with it until Enchada shoots it. The natives are thankful and come onboard the Mobile. Foster manages to explain by sign language what he wants, and knows that only the natives' medicine man will have it. The natives look about inside the Mobile. One of them finds a picture of an alien standing in front of a UFO, and makes a noise that sounds like he knows what is on the picture. The natives make signs that seemed to say that there are 3 aliens at their village. Enchada said that he, gided by the boy, would circle round and make a disturbance and draw the aliens away while Foster and the native man carry Straker to the medicine man. When they get to the village, the medicine man comes, and circles his hand over his head as if trying to say something about aliens or UFO's.
- Straker is taken into a hut. The medicine man makes the antidote and administers it. Enchada and two aliens comes in. Foster thinks that Enchada has been captured, but Enchada reveals that he is in league with the aliens since they first landed in Brazil and plans to rule in their name after they take over, and now he has both Straker and Foster in his grasp. Foster angrily attacks Enchada, but the aliens quickly overpower him. Straker wakes. The natives are too scared of the aliens to act against them, but the boy who Foster saved helps Straker to escape. Foster talks defiance, but realizes that that might not be enough against alien truth drugs and electronic mind probes. Enchada and an alien go into a hut to take Straker, but Straker is gone. The alien is angry and shoots Enchada, and that is his reward for treachery. The aliens force Foster towards their UFO's. Straker gets to the Mobile and drives it onto land and charges at the aliens in it. He shoots 2 of the aliens with the Mobile's guns and sees that Foster has a chance of catching the 3rd alien alive. The alien turns to shoot Foster. Foster grabs a blowgun from a native, hoping that it is loaded. With it he shoots the alien just in time. Straker is very thankful to the natives, but found that he hadn't captured a live alien, as the dart drug made the alien's body crumble to dust. That was the end of a dangerous traitor and a possible alien breakthrough.
- #108 NO UFO STORY
- #109 NO UFO STORY
SPIRIT OF FEAR
- #110 % [2 BW] In the Lofthaussen Metaphysical Institute in Leignitz in Germany, Dr.Kurt Frestein and his team are developing a new X-ray technique. [[OOPS!: Since 1945 Leignitz has been in Poland and is called Legnica: it is in the `Oder-Neisse Lands'.]] Walter (one of his men) accidentally walks through a special X-ray beam and finds that his spirit left his body while it was in the beam and went back afterwards. Frestein realises the possibilities of it. One of his men, Junior Technician Horscht, plans to sell the method to the aliens.
- 4 UFO's set off "in a distant galaxy", and come to Earth. Straker and Freeman are in Moonbase. SID sees the UFO's. The Interceptors destroy 3 of them, and one gets through. It is estimated to land within 20 miles of Leignitz around 7.20 pm. The UFO lands in the evening. 2 aliens get out, right on time to meet their contact, and they see the meeting signal. Horscht picks the aliens up in his car and takes them to the research center. Horscht explains the technique to the aliens. Walter comes in and sees the aliens and asks who they are. One of the aliens shoots Walter. Horscht complains at that. The alien says that that is Horscht's business, and the aliens' business is to destroy SHADO.
- #111 % [2 BW] Foster and Freeman get to the landing site and find the UFO abandoned. In the institute, the aliens test the technique and find that as spirits they can go through walls and still move solid objects. Then the operation proper begins. Horscht hides the aliens' bodies while their spirits set off for SHADO HQ. Walter is not dead, and he wakes and sees what is happening. At 2 a.m. Walter rings Herr Schnell (the center's chief of security) and explains what is happening. Straker sends Foster (who is still in Germany) to bring in Horscht and the contents of Horscht's car. Horscht is about to leave the research center for lunch when Foster arrives. Horscht recognizes Foster from the aliens' description and drives at him. Foster manages to shoot one of the car's tyres. Thus he captured Horscht and the aliens, but the aliens' spirits have come invisibly to SHADO HQ.
- #112 % [2 BW] Horscht is brought to SHADO HQ. He admits what he did, and boasts that nothing can stop the aliens from destroying SHADO. Meanwhile the aliens' spirits wander around SHADO HQ destroying and deactivating things. Straker tells Freeman to radio Karlin (thus spelt there) in Sky 1 to bring Dr.Frestein and his machine in. The SHADO men sometimes feel a sort of coldness, and thus they realize that there is a way to detect the spirits. A SHADO scientist has set the sighting sensors to detect any variations in temperature, and has adapted an experimental ray gun to emit a ray that disperses `antimatter'. [[This is not antimatter as so called in the real world, and the story is getting like Ghostbusters.]] With this ray gun Straker and Foster go after the alien spirits. They detect the spirits. But before Straker can fire, one of the aliens swings a heavy spanner and smashes the ray gun. Seconds later a big explosion wrecks much. The aliens keep on destroying SHADO HQ.
- Carlin flies in bringing Frestein and his machine. Frestein says that his machine can't be used to bring the spirits back to their bodies unwillingly, and the only way to combat the alien spirits is for Straker to become a spirit and go after them like that.
- #113 % [2 BW] Straker and Foster go in front of Frestein's machine, and their spirits leave their bodies. To Foster it is like space-walking. They find the aliens in the atomic reactor room, just in time. Some sort of force field stops the humans from attacking the aliens and vice-versa. Stalemate. Straker and Foster go back to their bodies and call a conference. Straker and Frestein talk of a `Controller' of the spirit world who would treat spirits of the living as trespassers and would order them back to their bodies. Straker quickly organizes a light and sound show pretending to be this Controller. The aliens are deceived by this and go back into their bodies, which have been brought there. (One of the SHADO men seems to be armed with an alien rifle.) Frestein asks SHADO to destroy his machine and give him an amnesia injection. {This seems to leave SHADO in possession of 2 live aliens, and perhaps also their UFO that they left near Leignitz.}
A PROJECT OF DOOM
- #114 % [7] Greg Masterson, engineer and millionaire, has built a space station called Earthport 1 to start space tourism. SHADO is worried about this giving opportunities to the aliens. Harlington-Straker Studios is allowed to film inside Earthport 1 but not everywhere. Straker suspects that the military are involved. SID detects 3 UFO's coming; the Interceptors destroy 2 of them. The other UFO is on a collision with Earthport 1. Inside a secret area in Earthport 1 some military open missile ports. The UFO loops round Earthport 1. 2 Army men in Earthport 1 fire missiles at the UFO, at nearly limit range; it gets away. SHADO Interceptors destroy the UFO. Straker is very angry, because that event showed the aliens that if they take over Earthport 1 they could dominate Earth. SHADO helps Foster to infiltrate the company that runs Earthport 1. Foster bugs a man's clothes and so finds that the restricted areas of Earthport 1 are military. A UFO gets through the defences and lands on deserted moorland in the SW of England. 2 aliens come out of it and hijack an Earthport Supplies lorry. An hour later their UFO self-destructs as a Mobile finds it. Meanwhile the lorry gets to the Earthport spacefield. The SHADO man watching there was not allowed in until after blastoff. The lorry came and crashed the gate. The SHADO man shot one of the aliens with a pistol, and realized that the other was on his way to Earthport. Straker tells about this to a top Army man, who accuses him of scaremongering. The alien gets into Earthport 1's life support and poisons the air. But Foster is still in his spacesuit and safe. He finds the alien in a control room setting things. He fights with the alien and manages to electrocute him, but some missiles have been fired. Foster presses a button to make the missiles self-destruct. Foster finds that the alien had aimed the missiles at every important capital on Earth. The Earthport project is scrapped. General Craddock is to face an enquiry.
- #115 % NO UFO STORY
- #116 % NO UFO STORY
- #117 % NO UFO STORY
THE ASSASSIN
- #118 % [2 BW] An expedition to Venus ran into a meteor storm and had to return damaged to Earth. Its crew are Col.Butler (USA), Ryshkov (USSR), and Swann (UK). Butler had risked his life going out in a spacesuit in the meteor storm to get their ship's guidance system working. They splashed down in the Pacific. Straker realizes that the meteor damage had happened in an area where aliens are active. At the White House Col.Butler is given the Congressional Medal of Honour, but he feels strange and had to be taken inside. Someone intrudes in the White House grounds and shouts "You'll all die!" and throws a bomb - it is Straker!
- #119 % [2 BW] There is an explosion, and some die, but the USA President is safe. What Straker threw was a radio transceiver: his act was the only way to get the people to scatter in time; the real bomber was Butler. Butler got away. Meanwhile Ryshkov and Swan tried to assassinate the Soviet President and the UK Prime Minister.
- Butler and Ryshkov and Swann go to Harlington-Straker Studios and insist on seeing Straker. The 3 scan completely clean.
- #120 % [2 BW] The 3 are controlled by the aliens. Straker goes to see the 3, pretending to be on their side. The 3 emit a force, which makes Straker obey them genuinely. Straker leads the 3 towards SHADO's control center. Freeman and Foster resist them. Straker shoots them and wounds them, or seems to, but realizes that the shots will have alerted the place, and got the 3 to get away and try again later.
- #121 % [2 BW] Straker and the 3 run off in a car (?Strakers's). The 3 tell Straker that what the Venus expedition actually ran into was an alien deep space craft (like a spinner, but with only 4 gravity plates, and far bigger) and how the aliens treated them with a `mind mist' to reprogram them. Swann contacted the alien ship. Straker revealed himself not to have been affected by the mind mist, and that the mind mist has no effect on Earth, only in space. Freeman and Foster are unharmed; they had realized what was happening and shammed dead. The 3 will return to normal as the effect of the mind mist returns to normal. Straker had heard the coordinates of the alien base craft, and soon SHADO will destroy it with missiles.
RECORDBREAKERS
- #122 % [7 BW] In Netherdale in the Lake District Alf Kidd is running a sports centre called `Supasports' where young men are being got very fit. Peter Sharpe, a long-distance runner, gets to the top of a mountain near there when a helicopter arrives and shoots at him. In dodging, he fell off a cliff to his death. A month before, a UFO landed in the Lake District and was lost track of. Straker and Foster go to Supasports and tells him about UFO's and aliens and advises Kidd to keep his trainees out of the dales. After they go, Kidd radios to an abandoned barn 10 miles away telling 2 aliens what was happening and advising them to keep low, but the aliens see a chance to catch Straker and Foster. Straker runs along Sharpe's route in running gear while Foster watches from a Mobile. A helicopter arrives and shoots at him. Straker jumps off the cliff into the lake. Foster shoots at the helicopter and misses it, and it backs off. Straker shows Foster an anaesthetic dart that he had found where Sharpe had been shot at. The anaesthetic dart's casing is found to be made of the same alloy as alien rayguns. SHADO suspects that the young men at Supasports are being got very fit to be given to the aliens {? for reprocessing into UFO-crewmen.} SHADO evacuated Kidd's sports centre while he was away. Kidd radioed the aliens about what had happened, but SHADO jammed the channel, so he had to go to see the aliens in person. Kidd drives away; Straker and Foster follow in a Mobile. Kidd gets to his helicopter. He and the aliens fly away in it, and the Mobile tries to follow it, but it is too fast. The Mobile crew radio the SHADO transport plane to take off. The aliens are dragging their UFO out of (? a hideout dug into a cliff) when the transport plane (which is armed) comes and fires and destroys the UFO. The explosion disarms the aliens. Straker and Foster try to capture the aliens, but they have self-destructs built into their spacesuits. Kidd slips on the mountainside and falls to his death.
- #123 % NO UFO STORY
- #124 % NO UFO STORY
THEY WALK IN DARKNESS
- #125 % [2 C] Fred Jones is on trial at the Old Bailey for murdering his uncle during a pot-holing expedition. He claims that a ghost with a green face was the culprit, but is not believed, He hears the final summing up. They adjourn for the verdict but, on the way back to the holding cell, the police car carrying Jones is forced off the road by another car. It is Paul Foster, who leads Jones into his car while the policemen are still dazed. As Foster drives away, the police radio in his car's description and direction, but Foster tells Jones: "Don't worry. Straker's arranging a few diversions for them with the Mobiles". Jones wants to know who Foster is and who Straker is, and Foster replies that they are people who believe his story and that they are now en route back to the caves - a place of so much danger that he'd wish he was safe back in prison.
- #126 % [2 C] Foster and Jones go into the cave. They came to the place where his uncle slipped. Foster holds the rope at the top while Jones goes down. They find that in the accident, a rope had been belayed round a projection that hinged down and let the rope slip; it was a lever that opened a door. Foster suspects aliens. An alien appears and pushes Jones off the cliff.
- #127 % [2 C] Jones falls into an underground river and is washed along it. He sees a place to get out of it, but someome throws big stones at him, cursing the "green-eyed freaks". It is his uncle, who becomes friendly when he sees that it is Jones. He had been there several days, living on fish from the river; he had not been able to get out because of the aliens. Foster and 2 other SHADO men come into the caves. (All the torches here are burning wood torches, not electric torches!) The aliens close in on Jones and his uncle.
- #128 H,% [2 C] Forcing his torch into an alien's face, Foster realises that they can't stand bright light because they are so adapted to living in darkness. As they run, they recognise that they are near the surface. The torches are almost burnt out and, although he has a gun, Foster knows that he hasn't enough ammunition to deal with so many aliens. But then he has an idea: A few well aimed shots at the cave roof could bring the roof down on top of the aliens. Foster's plan works a little too well and, as the entire cave system begins to collapse, the humans only just reach the entrance. SHADO are waiting at the entrance to give Ivor and his uncle their memory "treatment" and Foster smiles, knowing that Ivor's murder conviction can't possibly stick when he turns up with his supposed victim alive and well.
THE LAST PHARAOH
- #129 % [7 BW] Straker and Foster are in Alexandria port in Egypt where 12 Mobiles are being landed for a new SHADO base at Cairo. A UFO swoops in and strafes the port and destroys the Mobiles. Foster calls in Sky 1, which chases the UFO. A sandstorm hinders the chase. Sky 1 comes out of the sandstorm and finds a big pyramid just ahead. It pulls up just in time. The UFO flies into a hole in the side of the pyramid. In it are 2 aliens, but its pilot is a human, Omar Ben Saeed, an Egyptian madman living in the pyramid who believes that he is the rightful pharaoh of Egypt. The 2 aliens know what is happening and tell him that they are servants of Osiris and Isis, and that they will help him to gain his throne if he helps them to catch Straker and Foster. He plans to use the aliens to steal the treasure (coins and jewels) of Ben-Sheba Ram Saboth, which will be transported past in 3 days as the start of a tour of the world's museums. 2 days later the treasure is loaded in Alexandria onto a cargo ship which sets off with a naval escort for Italy. An hour later out at sea the UFO comes over the fleet and sinks the escorting gunboats and orders the crew of the cargo ship to put the treasure in the ship's lifeboats and lower them, and not to radio.
- A Shadair fighter cerrying Straker and Freeman to Cairo flies over and sees the UFO floating and Omar Ben Saeed loading the treasure into it. The UFO takes off and streaks away to the desert. The fighter chases, but runs into a sandstorm, and the fighter's instruments stop working, and Straker and Freeman must eject, and the fighter crashes. They find that the sandstorms were caused by a giant electric fan. SHADO men from the new base at Cairo surround the pyramid. In the pyramoid, Omar and the aliens accuse each other of letting this happen, and shoot at each other. Omar gets in the UFO and flies away in it. Sky 1 comes in and fires near the UFO to force it down. It seems to be landing properly, but its flight sensors had blown out of control and it crashlands and breaks up, and Omar is thrown clear of it, draped in treasure and claiming to be Pharaoh. An alien appears on the pyramid and shoots Omar. Foster shoots the alien. (Unclear whether Foster or Straker or Omar shot the other alien.) All the treasure is accounted for. A representative of the government of Egypt thanks the SHADO men and gives Straker a cheque. Straker says better give it at Captain Asif, as he will need it, to help save up for 12 new Mobiles.
- That was the last UFO comic strip.
- #130 % NO UFO STORY
- #131 % NO UFO STORY
- #132 % NO UFO STORY (25 Aug 1973: last issue of TV Action)
THE ALIEN TOTEM [in Countdown Holiday Special 1971]
- A UFO dodges the Interceptors; ETT is the southern USA. Skydiver is in the southern Atlantic. Sky 1 damages the UFO, and it crashlands in the Brazilian jungle. A Shadair plane brings a Mobile in. The plane sees the UFO, apparently intact, at the end of a long crash trail in the jungle. The plane finds somewhere to land 5 miles from the UFO crash. The Mobile goes a short way but is stopped by the tangled jungle. Foster and Jefferson carry on on foot. As they reach the UFO, it glows and then self-destructs. They have to flee from spears thrown by angry jungle natives. The natives are in ceremonial dress as if worshipping something - treating the alien pilot as a god? They get to their Mobile and crash the natives' clearing in it. They come out, and after a fight get into the hut. In there the `god' was not an alien but an alien surveillance device. Likely the UFO was remote-controlled. The alien device started to glow: the alien self-destruct device again. They run with it, pursued by natives and spears, but the natives back off from the Mobile. They threw the device out of the Mobile at speed, and got away from it in time before it exploded.
ROBOT RENEGADE [in `TV ACTION + COUNTDOWN' holiday special 1972]
- {The UFO's in it are drawn without `gravity plates'.}
-a A Mobile goes after a UFO, and finds it already landed. It looks abandoned and intact. A SHADO man goes into it. It auto-destructs with him in it. That had happened twice before. They get a robot called `Tin-Can-Tommy' made by a Dr.Lisman, to go into UFO's. `Tommy' has various weapons and is also well enough armoured to withstand being in a UFO which is autodestructing. A UFO lands in a suburban area. Tommy is sent in. The UFO explodes. The explosion upsets something inside Tommy, which starts firing weapons about. After a chase-around Straker manages to hold all its sensors shut at once, until technicians arrive to make it safe.
THE CIRCUS [in `Countdown' annual 1972]
- Flaxman's Circus is touring Ireland. Its owner is Bertie Flaxman. One of its men is a mystic called Mermoda. One evening Mermoda feels that an unwelcome visitor will come, and he tells Flaxman so. Next morning before light a UFO lands near the circus. Flaxman approaches it, thinks that it is some sort of secret aircraft, reckons it will make a handy side-attraction, loads it onto one of his lorries, and takes it away. Which is just what its alien pilot sitting inside it wanted to happen. Straker and Foster go after it in a Mobile. They find the usual UFO landing marks, and evidence that a circus had been there. At the circus, the UFO is labelled "Is it from outer space". Its pilot gets out of it (not shown where the hatch is). Mermoda sees the alien's face in his crystal ball. The alien goes to catch Mermoda, wanting him to take away to an alien base for his psychic abilities. Mermoda pleads with the alien to be left alone. Straker and Foster arrive. Foster accuses Flaxman. Straker warns that the UFO is glowing. The alien is leading Mermoda to his UFO when Straker and Foster confront him. The alien shoots and wounds Straker. Foster shoots the alien through the head, killing him. The UFO explodes. Straker and Foster amnesia-treat all concerned.
SMASH AND GRAB [8 C] [In Countdown annual (1973?), published Autumn 1972]
- Freeman and another in a Mobile have destroyed a UFO and are driving along a country road when they come to a tree fallen across the road. When they get out and try to shift it, 2 men run in from a hedge and and knock them out with ?iron bars and tie them up. They see from the dashboard that the Mobile has a cannon. They drove it to a place where they planned to ambush a security van carrying nearly 100,000 pounds in payroll. One of them knew that SHADO existed and had been listening to a SHADO wavelength to know when the Mobile would pass. (Surely SHADO radio would be scrambled?) Straker, getting no signal from the Mobile, goes in his car to investigate. Freeman gnaws through his bonds. The Mobile comes out of a cart track entrance and rams the security van. The impact knocks both guards in the van out. The van's back doors are jammed, so the 2 men blow it open with the Mobile's cannon and take the payroll and drive back to the ambush site to transfer to their own car. Freeman and the other have just freed themselves when Straker arrives and picks them up. Their car and the stolen Mobile converge at a crossroads. The thieves see that Freeman and the other are in the car, and want to ram it, but a UFO flies in. One of the thieves runs away, and the UFO shoots him with a heavy mounted raygun. Straker runs to the Mobile, pushes the other thief aside, and makes the Mobile dodge just before the UFO shot at where it had just been. The UFO comes in for another pass. Straker orders "Fire!", and {the other thief has to obey} to save his life, destroying the UFO. Straker and his men take the surviving thief to the local police and return to SHADO headquarters.
THE HAUNTED MINE [6 CW] [In Countdown annual (1973?), published Autumn 1972]
- A coal mine in England is said to be haunted. Davy (one of the miners) hears noises from some old blocked-off workings. The rest scoff at him. Davy goes off to look for the cause of the noise. On the surface, Foster and Murray in a Mobile rush past to investigate the 4th UFO landing reported that week, but like the others this UFO came down on a nearby moor and vanished. The Mobile goes onto the moor and finds no trace. As it goes back to the road, it falls through a thin cover of branches over an old mineshaft. Foster jumps out clear onto the edge of the hole, but Murray goes down with the Mobile. Foster climbs down the mineshaft, and finds that the Mobile is a total wreck and Murray is gone. He walks into the old workings and sees at least 3 UFO's in a passage. 3 miners go to look for Davy. Some timbers are loose, as if someone had opened the old workings. They go into the old workings and find Foster and jump on him as a suspicious intruder and suspect that he had harmed Davy. Foster tries to explain about the aliens and the UFO's and is not believed. Just then Dave comes back to them, with Murray leaning on him, and says that the 2 had been chased by men with green skin. The miners decide to flee. Then at least 4 armed aliens come, and seem to `have them cold', but Foster calls for an attempt to fight out of the trap, else the humans there would be shipped away in a UFO. (The aliens' helmets are the usual shape but completely transparent.) But the rest of the miners come with picks and shovels, thinking that the resulting noise from the old workings is a roof fall. They see what was happening and attack the aliens with their pick and shovels. One of the aliens breaks away. Foster wonders why, and chases him, and grabs the alien as he is about to operate a small control panel, guessing that it is a self-destruct. He calls the miners to leave the fight and run back to the new workings. They all get away, but the aliens do not follow them. The old workings blow up behind them. Davy has a motorcycle and sidecar: in it he takes Foster and some explosive to the top of the old shaft. Foster throws the explosive in just as the first of the UFO's gets near the top of the shaft as it tries to escape. The alien base and the UFO's explode, self-destructing rather than be captured.
OPERATION BABYLON [In 1974 TV Action Annual]
- SHADO is planning to set up new bases in 3 new countries. Straker will take the countries representatives on a tour of SHADO, including Moonbase. A security van carrying new dress uniforms for SHADO is hijacked by a pair of Aliens who knock out the security men and implant tiny black devices into the back of each uniform's collar. They then erase the memories of the security men so that SHADO suspect nothing. Next day, with all SHADO personnel wearing the new uniforms, Straker meets the representatives and they travel to Moonbase. As 3 UFOs streak towards Moonbase, the Aliens activate the collar devices which fire needles and drugs into each of the wearers. It affects the SHADO personnel's speech, which becomes garbled and unintelligible. With complete communications breakdown, the UFOs land outside Moonbase and easily gain access. Each of the foreign representatives is fitted with "Translator Earphones" so that the Aliens can offer them a deal: Help in the invasion of Earth and their own countries will be spared. Foster arrives back at SHADO HQ after a week's leave, to find everyone's speech garbled. They write down what has happened and Foster takes off in a lunar ferry. He destroys one UFO in a dogfight and crashlands the ferry outside Moonbase, entering on foot. He makes his way to Straker via the air ducts and, on inspecting Straker, finds a mark on the back of his neck and then the tiny needle. With the needle extracted, Straker can immediately talk properly again. They force the door and break out. Meanwhile, the foreign representatives have refused to cooperate, so the Aliens decide to take them back to their home planet. They leave, first setting Moonbase's reactor to overload to destroy the complex. Foster stays behind to fix the reactor while Straker and Freeman go after the UFOs in a ferry. Firing missiles near the last UFO, they force it to jettison a pod containing the hostages. The next day, the foreign representatives advise Straker that SHADO has their full cooperation and can build its bases, and Freeman reports that all the new uniforms have been accounted for.