UFO (TV Series) - Predictions

Predictions

UFO, which was filmed in 1969 and 1970, made a number of predictions about what life in the 1980s would be like, some of which have come true. Among the innovations predicted by the series:

• Car telephones, a.k.a. cell phones.
• Gull-wing doors on automobiles (Actually, these had been pioneered over a decade earlier in real life, in the Mercedes-Benz 300SL, but were not widespread in 1969.)
• Spacecraft launched from an aircraft; as in the episode "Computer Affair"
• Extensive use of computers in day-to-day life, even to the extent of predicting and analysing human behaviour.
• Electronic fingerprint scanning and identification against a database.
• Voice print identification systems; also, vocal analysis used to identify individuals in the same way as fingerprints.
• Metadata and a space observatory (called an "electron telescope") ; as in the episode "Close Up".
• The episode "Survival" indicates that racial prejudice will have "burned itself out" on Earth in the mid-1970s, a prediction which did not come true.
• That cars would drive on the right-hand side of the road in the UK and be converted to left-hand drive, another prediction which did not come true.
• UFO also featured episodes dealing with issues that would become topical in later years, such as space junk and the disposal of toxic waste.
• Cordless telephones. (The three telephones on Straker's office desk had no cords between the handsets and the base.)
• MP3 players – In "Court Martial," Straker's secretary has one playing on her desk.
• Liposuction - In "Ordeal" the Doctor threatens "When all else fails I'll remove that blab around your middle surgically"