Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2021

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021 Headquarters, Alien Defense Organ- ization, is set up by the govern- ments of the United Kingdom, USA, Soviet Union, France and West Ger- many. The assonance with “shadow” is not accidental. In fact, the agency operates in the shadows, hiding alien raids from ordinary people. SHADO’s command is also hidden from the public eye, having been built 30 meters below a seemingly fictional British film production house, the Harlington-Straker Film Studios, which coincided with the actual recording studios. Placing the SHADO command under the struc- tures of the real production com- pany that made the TV series, as well as shooting many scenes in both environments, allowed a con- siderable saving of money, a need that arose several times during the making of UFO. From a plot point of view, the Harlington-Straker Film Studios were the ideal cover for SHADO because any strangeness no- ticed by foreign eyes could be inter- preted as an element of the pro-