Underwater laser weaponry

[Karl Heidenreich]

Funsucker, you dont have to look at the topic if it doesn't have a discussion you like.

[RF]

Coming back to Karl's reply to my comments about UFO, I was curious about his reference to the lunar module, as the craft shown was only a passenger shuttle - it had no capacity to carry a substantial cargo or ordnance. Also like SID it was unarmed so a UFO could zap it at will.

One major criticism of UFO - to use Derek Meddings models and sound effects to the full the series ignored the facts that there is no sound in space (as it is a vacaum so no sound waves) and that the Moon has only one sixth of the Earth's gravity (so the crew on moonbase and out on the surface of the moon would have been bouncing around as per the Apollo astronauts who actually were on the moon).

All this discussion of the UFO series is not completely off topic as it invarioubly has naval aspects, including underwater warfare of a nature very similar to that of WW2 - as per the sinking of Atlantica 4 which featured in the intro to ''Subsmash''. If you have seen the series you will see what I mean, if you haven't then you won't.

We could of course have a discussion on Star Trek. It has aspects very closely naval related, as the USS Enterprise - named after a US Navy aircraft carrier - was run like a naval ship, with officers and men under naval rankings. It is just that it is set in a different age.

[lwd]

Funsucker, you dont have to look at the topic if it doesn't have a discussion you like.

So now it's down to insults. Real mature on your part. Part of what makes forums like this work is the expectation that when you click on a forum or thread it will the title will have some bearing on the discussion taking place. I've been known to wander off topic as well. Indeed this discussion is off topic. However the political opinions had no bearing on anything discussed in this thread to date. Karl simply feels he has to throw them into almost any discussion. As a curtosy to the others who are watching this thread I will let it drop a this point.

[Ramius]

Alright, funsucker wasn't nice, but you were and are acting like one Yes, Karl maybe should open a thread in Off Topic about UFO's, but that is no reason to attack him or anyone else on this site whenever they do something you do not like or agree to. Now, if you are so exited about our little discussion about underwater lasers, what is your opinion???

[Karl Heidenreich]

RF:

There is another chapter, of the second season, in which the SHADO operatives finds an underwater alien base. The base was used by the aliens to recreate a complete replica of SHADO main command in order to deceive the Earth defenses when attacked by a massive UFO offensive. After a comando operation the base was blown and the UFO offensive was caught by the moon interceptors and Sky 1 fighter. A real cool battle (for a 1970 ies TV). Lot´s of explosions.

About some of the effects Gerry Anderson series always had sound in space, posibly for the sake of the action. The interceptors engines sounds like a jet plane.

SID was unarmed and, yes, in a chapter a UFO got it with a laser beam.

Anderson´s UFO as Stanley Kubrick´s 2001 don´t show any difference of movement of the astronauts walking over the Moon surface than over Earth´s one. Only in Space 1999 they walk like jumping at slow motion.

Star Trek had many episodes that are very related to naval aspects.
Also, the five motion pictures from the original crew had a couple of episodes in which Enterprise is engaged in combat, naval style like the one in which Khan finally escapes and hijack a Federation Spaceship and combats Enterprise in a way very much like to "The Enemy Below".
The other motion picture is Nemesis (with STNG and Picard´s Enteprise) were a super battle takes place against the Scimitar, cinema´s most powerfull spaceship ever. And the combat was very, but very nautical.

Enterprise seems to be a name traditional to the US Navy.

About my political remarks having been born at a free country I say whatever it pleases me because no dictator will ever put me in jail. But this I will say, and I say it as a person who admires the US, the US armed forces and history and supports it´s foreign policy: US does not have (and have never had) a monopoly over thruth, over doing every thing right, over having the best technology (after all the US did put a man on the Moon thanks to a bunch of nazi war criminals the had their joytime bombing London). The notion that the best BB has to be US, the best fighter has to be US, the best tank has to be US and best damm sub has to be US is as free as the notion that the US won at Korea or Vietnam.
Whilst I believe that some US military men are some of the greatest geniuses in world history (as Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Longstreet, Hanckock, US Grant, George Patton, Curtis Le May or Douglass McArthur) the US have achieved some Custers, Hookers, Burnsides, Meades, Powells, Westmorelands and a incredible vault full of idiots like Robert McNamara, Jimmy Carters and the guy who designed the Space Shuttle.
But it comes to zero because, at the end, I can have my own opinion, free from national pride (because being from Costa Rica puts me aside of this) so I will speak what I want, when I want as a free soul.
And, moreover, I don´t know what the fuss is all about, maybe it´s because of the Yamato vs. Iowa thread in which I brought forward so many information against none of the Sacred Gospel that I´m become the target of any moronic attack.

And, to finish, why are you so pissed because Ramiuss called you "funsucker"? You have insulted me for months and believed that you are so right to do it. I have never answer with an insult, though, even when you plainly deserve it. If it´s good for you to insult then it´s good for you to be insulted.


Best regards.

[RF]

RF:

There is another chapter, of the second season, in which the SHADO operatives finds an underwater alien base. The base was used by the aliens to recreate a complete replica of SHADO main command in order to deceive the Earth defenses when attacked by a massive UFO offensive. After a comando operation the base was blown and the UFO offensive was caught by the moon interceptors and Sky 1 fighter. A real cool battle (for a 1970 ies TV). Lot´s of explosions.

That was the penultimate episode ''Reflections in the water'' which again featured the sinking of a merchant ship in the intro, by alien ''flying fish''.

This episode is interesting as it is another example of overwhelming force being comprehensively defeated by grossly inferior forces. The aliens obviously didn't learn from the Battle of Midway - their operation was far too complex against too many targets.
Incidently if you watch the attack on moonbase, count the number of interceptor kills - there are actually four....
And also notice that those sequences are also included in the intro to ''The Cat with Ten Lives'' where three UFO's attack moonbase, with absolutely lousy shooting.

Perhaps the spirits of Yammamoto and Lutjens had infiltrated the alien forces....or even Oscar Kummetz, who lost the Blucher and then got Raeder the sack with the fiasco of the Battle of Barents Sea....

[RF]

A further thought Karl - I wonder what would have happened if Ed Straker had commanded Bismarck on Rheinubung......

[Karl Heidenreich]

Ed Straker, as the character in UFO, was a quite competent and agressive commander. I remember a chapter in which he had to choose between using an SST to travel to the US in order to retrieve an sphisticated medicament foe his dying son or divert it to cover an emergency concerning the landing of a UFO.
He choose to do his duty and his son died.
And there was another chapter were he pushed his superiors to send a mission to find the alien planet in order to "carry there the war".
So, we must assume he was quite a good commander. Maybe to good to becoming top brass as usually happens in western democratic armies where is better to be a political animal than a superb field commander (look what happened to poor George Patton at the hand of a bureaucrat as Bedell Smith).
Of course, he could have done better than Lutjens at Bismarck´s helm. At least he would had damaged further PoW.

What´s your opinion of Space 1999, the other Sci Fi Anderson´s TV series?

Best regards.

[RF]

Aha, we are now officially off topic!!!!!!!!

Space 1999 was originally intended as an update on UFO.

UFO itself, first broadcast in the UK in 1971, was itself a development from Captain Scarlet which was broadcast three years earlier.
So you can see a continum running fom three separate series. UFO was supposed to be set 10 years in advance from its original transmission, with the events portrayed as happening in the early 1980's (hence the flashes of ''1980'' in the intro sequence showing Straker's car).
Space 1999 was planned as a ''next generation'' version of UFO, rather like the next generation series of Star Trek. The series was to focus the action on the Moon rather than on Earth, using the ''Hawk'' fighters as the replacements for the moonbase interceptors, as it was apparent from the UFO series that the lunar based activity episodes were more popular than the other episodes where moonbase etc. never featured. Shows such as ''Court Martial'', ''Timelash'' and ''Confetti-check A-OK'' were Earth based and contained little or no alien activity, and in part suffered from what I would polltely describe as rather silly plots.

At some stage the focus on Space 1999 was switched from alien attack on Earth to the idea of the Moon breaking free from Earth orbit and escaping the solar system. This series then followed a similar format to Star Trek, but without regular alien races like the Klingons etc.
I don't really like Space 1999. Some of the plots are really silly, particulary in the second series of Space 1999 after actor Barry Morse had left. It looks to me to be a poor imitation of Star Trek and I think it was a mistake to deviate from the original premise of the series.
I suppose the best comment I can make on Space 1999 is that it was a backhanded compliment to Gene Roddenberry.