Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2021

20 ASTRO PUBLISHING NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021 part: the lunar landscapes are so re- alistic that they seem real, and in a certain sense they are based in real- ity. When the first two landings of the Apollo missions on the Moon took place in 1969, the production of UFO was already underway and there was no way to draw inspira- tion from the photographs taken by the astronauts. Nonetheless, scenographers and special effects workers managed to recreate (with- out computers) absolutely realis- tic landscapes, drawing inspiration from the images taken during the previous Apollo missions and from the automatic probes landed in dif- ferent lunar sites. Less credible, con- versely, is the pace of the characters on the surface of our satellite, who move without consideration of the reduced gravity. This is partly due to tight special effects budgets and partly to the fact that, at least ini- tially, no one had ever seen humans walk on the Moon! The fact that everyone inside Moonbase moves as if they were on Earth can be taken with less criticism: some imaginative device simulates opti- mal gravity. The fourth episode (fifth for pro- duction), “Exposed”, is essentially dedicated to the recruitment of Colonel Paul Foster (played by actor Michael Billington), who in his pre-