Den & Angie on the Radio Times

Back to the good old days of Den & Angie at war behind the bar at the Vic. This cover of Radio Times celebrates EastEnders 1st Birthday back in February 1986.

1960 Motorola Television Sets

From Motorola for 1961, The New Reliables. The most reliable TV ever - guaranteed in writing. Now with new Golden Satellite Perfected Remote Control, turns TV on or off, changes channels, adjusts volume or mutes sound - all from where you sit. It's wireless and has no tubes to wear out

Billboard Hot 100 (1960)

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday to Tuesday. A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by Billboard on Thursday. Each chart is dated with the "week-ending" date of the Saturday two weeks after. Example:

• Monday, January 1 – sales tracking-week begins
• Wednesday, January 3 – airplay tracking-week begins
• Sunday, January 7 – sales tracking-week ends
• Tuesday, January 9 – airplay tracking-week ends
• Thursday, January 11 – new chart released, with issue date of Saturday, January 20.

The first number one song of the Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson on August 4, 1958.

1960, what a year it was! Elvis Presley is discharged from the Army and he hits the ground singing. The album "Elvis Is Back" was released and included three No1 singles, "It's Now Or Never", "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Stuck On You". Two more songs "Wooden Spoon" and "Surrender" rounded out Elvis's chart entries.

SONG ARTIST No OF WEEKS DATE Why Frankie Avalon 1 12/28 El Paso Marty Robbins 2 1/4 Running Bear Johnny Preston 3 1/18 Teen Angel Mark Dinning 2 2/8 The Theme from "A Summer Place" Percy Faith 8 2/22 Stuck on You Elvis Presley 4 4/25 Cathy's Clown Everly Brothers 5 5/23 Everybody's Somebody's Fool Connie Francis 2 6/27 Alley-Oop Hollywood Argyles 1 7/11 I'm Sorry Brenda Lee 3 7/18 Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini Brian Hyland 1 8/8 It's Now or Never Elvis Presley 5 8/15 The Twist Chubby Checker 1 9/19 My Heart Has a Mind of It's Own Connie Francis 2 9/26 Mr. Custer Larry Verne 1 10/10 Save the Last Dance For Me The Drifters 1 10/17 I Want To Be Wanted Brenda Lee 3 10/24 Georgia On My Mind Ray Charles 1 11/14 Stay Maurice Williams & Zodiacs 1 11/21 Are You Lonesome Tonight? Elvis Presley 6 11/28

John Denver - Back Home Again (1974)

JOHN DENVER Back Home Again released in 1974 US RCA Victor label 12-track vinyl LP - the fantastic multi-platinum album from the renonwed singer-songwriter, featuring the tracks Annie's Song and Sweet Surrender, plus the studio version of, Thank God I'm A Country Boy.

1. Back Home Again
2. On The Road
3. Grandma's Feather Bed
4. Matthew
5. Thank God I'm A Country Boy
6. Music Is You
7. Annie's Song
8. It's Up To You
9. Cool An' Green An' Shady
10. Eclipse
11. Sweet Surrender
12. This Old Guitar

Action Man ( Part Six) Combat Engineer

This was the Action Man Combat Engineer from 1967 in tunic, trousers and boots. The figure comprised of, helmet, surveyor's theodolite, and Machine Pistol.

The Beatles rare Collection

THE BEATLES Collection of 7" Singles is a Rare quantity of 6 Brazilian Odeon/Odeon 33 Compacto label 7" vinyl singles/EPs comprising We Can Work It Out, Hey Jude, Twist And Shout, Anna, Please Please Me and A Hard Day's Night.

1) Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out [7-BT-01]

Brazilian white label varient boxed Odeon label vinyl .

2) Hey Jude/Revolution [7-BT-12]
Brazilian white label varient boxed Odeon label vinyl.

3) Twist And Shout/A Taste Of Honey/Do You Want To Know A Secret/There's A Place [7TC-762]
Brazilian blue 'Odeon 33 Compacto' label with black & white individual portrait picture sleeve.

4) Anna/Chains/Misery/I Saw Her Standing There [7BTD-2.002]
Brazilian white label varient boxed Odeon label.

5) Please Please Me/From Me To You [7I-3044]
1963 Brazilian first issue 7" vinyl single.

A Hard Day's Night/I Should Have Know Better [7I-3083]
1965 Brazilian second issue 7" vinyl single.

Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Viva Las Vegas, was released back in 1964 and is a romantic musical movie that co-starred the King of rock himself, Elvis Presley and the actress and dancer Ann-Margaret. This movie is regarded by many fans of these actors and by film critics as one of Presley's best movies, and it is noted for the apparent on-screen attraction between Mr. Presley and Ms. Ann-Margret. It also presents a strong set of ten musical "song-and-dance scenes" choreographed by David Winters and featuring his dancers, and a reasonably interesting story. Viva Las Vegas was a hit at movie theaters, becoming the number 11 movie in the list of the Top 20 Movie Box Office hits of 1964.

Lucky Jackson (Elvis Presley) goes to Las Vegas to participate in the city's first annual Grand Prix Race. However, his race car, an Elva Mk. VI, is in need of a new engine in order to keep running. Lucky raises the necessary money in Las Vegas, but he mislays it when he is distracted by a nubile local swimming instructor, Ms. Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret). Soon, Lucky's main competition arrives in the form of "Count Elmo Mancini", (played by Cesare Danova), who attempts to steal both the auto race and the affections of Rusty.

In Great Britain, both the movie and its soundtrack were sold as Love In Las Vegas, since there was another, different movie called Viva Las Vegas that was being shown in British movie cinemas at the same time that Presley's was released.

The chemistry between the two stars was apparently quite real during the filming of Viva Las Vegas. Presley and Ann-Margret allegedly began an affair, and this received considerable attention from movie & music gossip columnists. This reportedly led to a showdown with Presley's worried girlfriend Priscilla Beaulieau. (Elvis and Priscilla married in 1967.) In her 1985 book Elvis & Me, Priscilla Presley describes the difficulties that she experienced when the gossip columnists erroneously "announced" that Ann-Margret and Presley had become engaged to be married. However, there probably was another reason for this big hullabaloo about the "romance" between Presley and Ann-Margret in 1964. It probably was stirred up to help promote popularity for Ann-Margret, who was then a little-known Hollywood starlet.

In her memoirs, Ann-Margret refers to Elvis Presley as her "soulmate", but there is very little revealed about their supposed romance. In his critical study on the "dream machine" that publicists, tabloid newspapers, journalists, gossip columnists, and TV interviewers use to create semi-fictional icons - often playing tricks with the truth - Joshua Gamson cites a press agent as "saying that his client, Ann-Margret, could initially have been 'sold ... as anything'; She was a new product. We felt there was a need in 'The Industry' for a female Elvis Presley.

In addition, the filming of Viva Las Vegas reportedly produced unusually heated exchanges between the movie's Director and Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who for once was not credited as a "Technical Advisor" in the credits for this movie (The movie's director was film veteran George Sidney). The arguments reportedly concerned the amount time and effort allotted by the movie's cinematographer, Joseph Biroc, to the music and dancing scenes that featured Ann-Margret, ostensibly on the orders of the director. These scenes in Viva Las Vegasinclude multiple views of Ann-Margret's dancing, taken from many different camera angles, the use of multiple movie cameras for each scene, and several retakes of each of her song-and-dance scenes. David Winters from the original cast of West Side Story, was the film's choreographer and was recommended by Ann-Margret for the job. This was Winters' first job as a choreographer on a feature film and Ann-Margret was his dance student at the time.

Some critics in 1964 disliked Viva Las Vegas, such as one for the New York Times, who wrote: "Viva Las Vegas, the new Elvis Presley vehicle, is about as pleasant and unimportant as a banana split." However, many others deduced the reasons why many members of the North American public liked the movie so much. Variety Magazine stated in its review: "Beyond several flashy musical numbers, a glamorous locale, and one electrifying auto race sequence, the production is a pretty trite and 'heavyhanded' affair..." Critical reaction notwithstanding,"Viva Las Vegas" has become one of Presley's more popular films.

Recording sessions took place on July 9, 10, and 11, 1963, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California. By now film and soundtrack obligations were starting to back up on each other, and six weeks after the aborted "lost album" sessions of May 1963, the stable of Presley songwriters were required to come up with another dozen songs for yet another new picture. Song quality took a back seat to the need for volume, and Presley's filming schedule made it difficult for song publishers to live up to obligations. Memphis Mafia pal Red West had written a "Ray Charles Styled" number, but so little good material had surfaced that an extra session was scheduled on August 30 for an actual Ray Charles song, later released as a single to promote the film with its title song.

Twelve songs were recorded for the film, but only six were issued on records. The idea of a full-length soundtrack long playing album was not considered, which has garnered much criticism from various accounts, including Elvis: The Illustrated Record. "Night Rider", "Do the Vega", and a medley "Yellow Rose of Texas" would be released on Elvis Sings Flaming Star in 1969, and the Neapolitan song "Santa Lucia" would be placed on Elvis for everyone "The Lady Loves Me" would be issued on Elvis: A Legendary Performer Volume 4 in 1983, and the duet between Presley and Ann-Margret "You're the Boss" on Elvis Sings Leiber & Stoller in 1991. The other duets between the pair in the film, along with Ann-Margret's solo numbers, would wait until later retrospectives to appear on record.

(Above) On the set of Viva Las Vegas Elvis signs autographs.

(Above) Elvis on the set of Viva Las Vegas

Musical Express - Part One

The New Musical Express (better known as the NME) is a music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 80s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. During the period 1972 to 1976 it was particularly associated with gonzo Journalism, then became closely associated with Punk Rock through the writing of Tony Parsons and June Birchill.

Krissi Murison was named the publication's eleventh editor on 29 July 2009. She took over as the first female editor in September 2009.

The paper's first issue was published on 7 March 1952 after the Musical Express and Accordion Weekly was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, and relaunched as the New Musical Express. It was initially published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint. On 14 November 1952, taking its cue from the U.S. magazine Billboard, it created the first UK Singles Chart. The first of these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK. The first number one was "Here in my Heart" by Al Martino.

During the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were frequently featured on the front cover. These and other artists also appeared at the NME Poll Winners Concert, an awards event that featured artists voted as most popular by the paper's readers. The concert also featured an awards ceremony where the poll winners would collect their awards. The NME Poll Winners Concerts took place between 1963 and 1972. From 1964 onwards they were filmed, edited and then transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place.

The latter part of the 1960s saw the paper chart the rise of Psychedelia and the continued dominance of British groups of the time. During this period some sections of pop music began to be designated as Rock. The paper became engaged in a sometimes tense rivalry with its fellow weekly music paper Melody Maker; however, NME sales were healthy with the paper selling as many as 200,000 issues per week, making it one of the UK's biggest sellers.

(Musical Express - 1956)

The editions of Musical Express featured below all originate from 1956.

The Trumpton Book (1968)

The Trumpton Story book was printed in 1968 and contained 58 pages featuring all your favourite Trumpton characters. The Book was slightly bigger than the average TV Annual.

Bonnie's Heartache

"It's a Heartache" is a country rock song that was recorded separately by Bonnie Tyler and Juice Newton in 1977. Tyler's version charted in the UK in November 1977 and both versions charted in the United States in 1978. The song was also recorded by Ronnie Spector of the Ronnettes in 1978, but it was not a hit. Authorship is credited to Ronnie Scott & Steve Wolfe, who became Tyler's managers, songwriters, and producers when they saw her in Wales in 1976.

Tyler's version of the song, which was produced by David Mackay, proved to be the most successful, peaking at No4 in the U.K. and No3 in the United States (where it was also a Top Ten hit on the Country Music chart), and No1 in several European countries and Australia. Many re-recordings were produced by Tyler, with the 2004 version in French with French singer Kareen Antonn on Tyler's album Simply Believe and the 2005 version on Tyler's album Wings. Although the 2005 version did not receive chart success as it was not released as a single, the 2004 version reached No12 in France on the week of release.

Juice Newton's version of "It's A Heartache" was released on select foreign editions of her "Come to Me" album. When released as a single in Mexico in 1977, the song garnered a gold record. Newton's version was released in the United States the following year and peaked at No86.

Dear Blue Peter.

Blue Peter broadcast its last ever show from the BBC's Television Centre after more than Fifty years. Blue Peter means something to children of every generation from the 1960s onwards – whether it’s the theme tune, the pets, the sticky-back plastic, or the legendary mishaps.

But one little known aspect of the programme is the extraordinary correspondence it generated almost from the day that John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and co. first went on air. By the late 1980s, Blue Peter was receiving an average of 7,000 letters per week.

In this wonderfully entertaining book, Biddy Baxter – the programme’s founding editor, and the woman who invented the Blue Peter badge to encourage children to write in with ideas, pictures and stories – introduces some of the very best letters received. Original, engrossing, funny – and sometimes remarkably rude – they provide a unique snapshot of life in the second half of the 20th century, of people from all over Britain (and beyond) and c hildren of every conceivable
background.

"Dear Blue Peter

I couldn’t believe my ears this morning - my mum said come down stairs Wendy – there’s a letter for you - I couldn’t believe it had come from Blue Peter and I had won a badge! I took my letter to school to show to my teacher - Mr Herbert - he said “Not now Wendy” but when he saw it was from the BBC he said “Oh alright”. He read it once, he read it twice and then he read it again - then he said “My goodness” and took it to the Head Mistress Mrs Smith.

Mrs Smith read my letter to the whole of the school at Assembly – she said it was the first time anyone from school had had a letter from the BBC.

I'll never forget the day I won my badge!"

Wendy, aged 10

Biddy Baxter was the editor of Blue Peter, from 1962 to 1988. She was awarded a gold badge herself when she left the programme.

The Beatles in Liverpool

THE BEATLES In Liverpool (1987 Japanese 95-page book tracing the Fab Four's early life in their home town. Featuring Peter Kaye's fantastic seldom seen photographs including practising at The Cavern, with Little Richard, on stage and a plethora of brilliant promotional session shots! Also includes a Japanese biography, sheet music and lyrics).

Fabulous 208 (October 14th 1967)

Another front cover from the classic Fab 208. This edition is from October 14th 1967 and on the cover is The Beach Boys. Pin-ups - Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, The Cream, Kika Markham, Jimi Hendrix, The Mama's and The Papa's (double page)

Car Life (1966)

Car Life was a magazine printed in the USA. This particular cover dates back to 1966 and features on its cover the new 1967 Chevrolet Camaro.

Djokovic lands Wimbledon crown

Novak Djokovic crowned his rise to number one in the world in perfect fashion with a dramatic 6-4 6-1 1-6 6-3 victory over Rafael Nadal in the Wimbledon final.

The Spaniard was looking to make it three titles in four years at the All England Club and win back-to-back French Open and Wimbledon titles for the third time, but it was the player in his first final in SW19 who held his nerve the best.

Having been sublime in the opening two sets, Djokovic, the Australian Open champion in January, dipped in the third but he was not to be denied.

The Serbian began to come out on top in the long, brutal rallies Nadal so loves, and two stunning forehand winners took him to 30-30 with his opponent serving to stay in the first set.

Rarely does Nadal crack, but this time he did, dumping a tame shot into the net to hand Djokovic the set point and then missing with his favourite forehand down the line.

Djokovic promptly created two more break points in the second game of the second set and he took the first with a beautiful dinked backhand off a Nadal drop-volley, celebrating as if he had won the match. Murray had let the Spaniard off the hook but Djokovic simply got better, breaking again in the sixth game and clinching the set with ease.

The question was whether the 24-year-old would be able to keep up his almost superhuman level, and the answer arrived in the second game of the third set when a forehand error was followed by a backhand one and Nadal had his first break from his first opening.

Djokovic saved two break points in game six but a third brought the first double fault of the match, and Nadal served out another emphatic set to love.

They traded breaks early in the fourth set and the crucial break then came in the eighth game. Nadal started ominously with a double fault, and two more errors made it 0-40.

He saved one break point with a stunning forehand but on the second the coolest man in sport showed his nerves and blasted a forehand long and a brave serve and volley gave Djokovic a first match point and this time Nadal had no answer, drilling a backhand long.

Remembering UFO

UFO is a British television science fiction series created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson and produced by the Anderson's and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company. The Andersons had previously made a number of very successful marionette-based children's science fiction series including Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet. They had also made one live-action science fiction movie, Doppelgänger, also known as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, and now felt ready to move into live-action television and aim at a more adult market.

UFO first aired in the UK and Canada in 1970 and in US syndication over the next two years (the shows were copyrighted in 1969). In all, 26 episodes, including the pilot, were filmed over the course of more than a year, with a five-month production break caused by the ultimate closure of the MGM British Studios in Borehamwood, where the show was initially made.

UFO was the Andersons' first totally live-action TV series. Despite the assumption of many TV station executives, the series was not aimed at children but deliberately sought an older audience; many episodes featured adult themes such as adultery, divorce, and drug use. Most of the cast were newcomers to Century 21 although star Ed Bishop had previously worked with the Andersons as a voice actor on Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

The show's basic premise is that in the near future – a fictional version of 1980 (a date indicated in the opening credits) – Earth is being visited and attacked by aliens from a dying planet and humans are being covertly harvested for their organs by the aliens. The show's main cast of characters are members of a secret, high-technology-equipped international agency called SHADO (an acronym for Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation) established to defend Earth and humanity against the mysterious aliens and learn more about them.

The extraterrestrial spacecraft can readily cross the vast distances between their planet and Earth at many times the speed of light, but they are only large enough for one or two crewmembers. Their time on station is limited: UFOs can only survive for a couple of days in the Earth's atmosphere before they heat up, deteriorate and finally explode. The alien craft can survive for far longer underwater; one episode, "Reflections In The Water," deals with the discovery of a secret undersea alien base, which shows one UFO flying straight out of an extinct volcano, which Straker describes as "a back door to the Atlantic." A special underwater version of the standard UFO design is seen in "Sub Smash." In flight they are surrounded by horizontally spinning vanes and emit a distinctive pulsing electronic whine that sounds like a Shoooe-Wheeeh! (This was actually produced by series composer Barry Gray, on an Ondes Martenot.) The craft is armed with a laser-type weapon, but can be destroyed by conventional explosive warheads. The personal arms of the aliens resemble shiny assault rifles; these have a lower rate of fire than that used by SHADO. Later episodes such as "The Cat With Ten Lives" show the aliens using other weapons, such as a small device which seemingly paralyses victims. This is presumably for organ and body harvesting purposes, since pilot Jim Regan's wife Jean is taken for her organs in that episode.

To defend against the aliens, a secret organisation called SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation) is established. Operating behind the cover of the Harlington-Straker Studios in England, SHADO is headed by Commander Edward Straker (played by Ed Bishop), a former United States Air Force Colonel and Astronaut who poses as the studio's chief executive.

In reality, this was a clever cost-saving move by the producers – the studio was the actual studio where the series was being filmed, originally the MGM British Studios, later Pinewood Srudios, although the Harlington-Straker studio office block seen throughout the series was actually Neptune House – a building at the former British National Studios, in Borehamwood, that were owned by ATV. Pinewood's studio buildings and streetscapes were used extensively in later episodes, particularly "Timelash" and "Mindbender," the latter featuring scenes that actually showed the behind-the-scenes workings of the UFO sets when Straker briefly finds himself hallucinating that he is an actor on a TV series and all his SHADO colleagues are likewise actors.

Typical of Anderson productions, the studio-as-cover idea was both practical and cost-effective for the production and provided a ready-made vehicle for the viewer's suspension of disbelief It removed the need to build an expensive exterior set for the SHADO base and combined the all-important "secret" cover (concealment and secrecy are always central themes in Anderson dramas) with the trademark ring of at least nominal plausibility. A studio was a business where unusual events and routines would not be remarkable or even noticed. Comings and goings at odd times, the movement of vehicles, equipment, people and material would not excite undue interest and could easily be explained away as "sets," "props," or "extras."

The show's concept was unusually dark for its time: the basic premise was that alien invaders were abducting humans to use as involuntary organ transplant donors. A later episode, "The Cat With Ten Lives," contains a sinister plot point which suggests that the UFO pilots are not humanoid aliens at all, but are in fact human abductees under the control of the alien intelligences, suggesting that, as in Captain Scarlet,the aliens, in the dialog of Dr. Jackson, "may have no physical being at all and therefore need a container, a vehicle, our bodies."

The show also featured realistic, believable relationships between the human characters to a far greater extent than usual in a typical science fiction series, showing the clear influence of American programmes like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek and British action series such as Danger Man. One early episode, "Computer Affair," strongly hinted at an interracial romance between two continuing characters--something that was uncommon on British TV in those days, while others showed the heroes making mistakes with sometimes fatal consequences. Furthermore, relatively few episodes of the series actually had happy or (for the characters) satisfying endings.

The episode "Confetti Check A-OK" is almost entirely devoted to the breakdown of Straker's marriage under the strain of maintaining the secrecy of the classified nature of his duties. Another, "A Question Of Priorities," takes this exploration further, and hinges on Straker having to make an agonising life-or-death choice: divert an aircraft to deliver life-saving medical supplies to his critically injured son, or allow the aircraft to continue on its mission to attempt a last-chance intercept against an incoming UFO. Two key images from "A Question Of Priorities" – Straker's son being struck down and his ex-wife declaring she never wants to see him again – are repeated in flashback in two subsequent episodes, "Sub Smash" and "Mindbender," suggesting that Straker remains haunted by these unresolved emotional issues.

Another episode, "The Square Triangle," centres on a woman and her lover who plan to murder her husband. When they accidentally kill an alien from a downed UFO instead, SHADO intervenes and doses the guilty pair with amnesia drugs (decades ahead of a similar story device in Men In Black, and one deployed for similar reasons). Straker realises, however, that the drugs will not affect their basic motivation and, worse, he cannot reveal the truth to local legal authorities. The end credits of this episode are run over a scene set in the near future, showing the woman visiting her husband's grave and then walking to meet her lover.

Some critics complained that the emphasis on down-to-earth relationships weakened the show's science fiction premise and were also a means of saving money on special effects. The money-saving argument might have been true to a limited extent, but the Andersons made a virtue of necessity. They had always hoped to direct live action TV drama, and although the marionette shows helped them develop impressive skills in effects and scripting, they had always considered them as essentially being a way of keeping in work and earning money while they tried to break into "real" TV drama. Others countered that the characters were more well rounded than in other science fiction shows and that science fiction concepts and special effects in themselves did not preclude realistic action and interaction and believable, emotionally engaging plots. Ultimately, the mix of dark human drama with traditional science fiction adventure is probably the reason for UFO's enduring cult popularity and what sets it apart from the rest of TV SF series. For example, the time-freeze plot of the episode "Timelash" is similar to The Outer Limits episode "The Premonition." But UFO adds a drama twist: Straker repeatedly injects a drug (X 50 stimulant) to remain awake during the time freeze, which results in Straker being hospitalised in SHADO's medical centre. The ending not only shows him lying in bed recovering from the harmful effects of drug use, but has a subtext that the plot of the episode may, in fact, have been a drug-induced delusion. This SF and dark drama mix is why UFO cuts deeper than most similar series.

Two years after the 26 episodes were completed, the series was syndicated on American television and the ratings were initially promising enough to prompt ITC to commission a second season of UFO. As the Moon-based episodes appeared to have proven more popular than the Earth-based stories, ITC insisted that in the new season, the action would take place entirely on the Moon. Gerry Anderson proposed a format in which SHADO Moonbase had been greatly enlarged to become the organisation's main headquarters, and pre-production on UFO 2 began with extensive research and design for the new Moonbase. These developments were not without precedent in the earlier episodes: a subplot of "Kill Straker!" sees Straker negotiating with SHADO's financial supporters for funding to build more moonbases within 10 years. However, when ratings for the syndicated broadcasts in America dropped towards the end of the run, ITC got cold feet and cancelled the second season plans. Unwilling to let the UFO 2 pre-production work go to waste, Anderson instead offered ITC a new series idea, unrelated to UFO, in which the Moon would be blown out of Earth orbit taking the Moonbase survivors with it. This proposal developed into Space 1999.