With the end of Supermarionation, Gerry was hoping to move onto another movie project and late in 1968 he and writer Wilfred Greatorex went to Portugal to write the script for a film called Youth Is Wasted On The Young, a film inspired by the pioneering heart transplant surgery work of Dr Christian Barnard.

Set in the 21st century, an aging dictator tries to cheat death by having his brain transplanted into a younger body. A press announcement was made in February 1969 but soon after the project fell apart reportedly after problems with the script. However, that same year Gerry’s long awaited ambition to make a full live action TV series was finally realised.

Lew Grade agreed to bankroll UFO to the tune of £100,000 per episode. The impending Apollo Moon landing and the publics fascination with the possibility of extra terrestrial life inspired this series and Gerry hadn’t entirely abandoned the use of a transplant thread within the storyline. Set in 1980, the Earth is visited by a humanoid race of alien visitors from Alpha Centauri. Their people are dying and the only way to help them is by kidnapping humans and stealing vital organs for transplant. Earth’s last line of defence is the worldwide security organisation SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation), led by USAF Commander Ed Straker. In order for SHADO to remain a secret organisation (to avoid widespread panic among the population) SHADO has its headquarters below the Harlington-Straker Film Studios in Harlington West, Wessex, England.

The usual Anderson hardware was designed for the show including the Skydiver fleet, which were able to launch a powerful supersonic front section called Sky One. There were custom designed vehicles for SHADO’s operatives as well as more heavy-duty equipment such as Seagull supersonic passenger transport jets, Albatross long-range rescue aircraft, and the SHADAIR fleet. All in all the elements looked right for another highly successful Anderson production. Unfortunately, behind the scenes there were a number of problems.

Firstly, after shooting seventeen episodes, it was announced that the huge MGM studios at Borehamwood were to be closed down with immediate effect. As this doubled as a studio and many of the exterior scenes for the series it was a crushing blow. The production team were forced to close down for six months until they were able to move to Pinewood Studios. Then, within weeks of restarting, production ground to a halt again when actor Ed Bishop (Straker) broke his ankle whilst filming a gunfight sequence.

Sylvia Anderson remembers the problems they had with Lew Grade and the casting of as Alec Freeman, the second lead in UFO, played by George Sewell. "Because we were always being accused of only having beautiful people in the series I thought he would give an air of realism as the sidekick to Ed Straker, and it worked extremely well. He's a very good actor, a charming person to work with, and was a good foil for Straker." But after two or three episodes the Anderson's had a call from Grade who said he'd shown the pictures to the Americans who were buying it and they said they hated the man with the pockmarked face. "He told me we'd have to recast immediately and that he wanted someone by the following week."

During the casting process Sylvia had seen a young actor called Michael Billington who had impressed her even though he didn't fit the part of Freeman. Billington was re-called for a screen test but turned up looking very nervous. Things were not made any better when a prop door fell on him. However, Sylvia still felt he was right for the role and when Lew Grade saw the test he agreed. So Billington was taken on as Colonel Paul Foster from episode four onwards and turned out to be the series most popular characters.

When the series finally did air it seemed broadcasters were unsure whether to promote it as an adult or children’s series. As a result it meandered between Saturday morning and late night 'graveyard' slots until, eventually, a planned second season was cancelled to make way for the Anderson's next project, Space: 1999.

During the production of UFO, Gerry was invited to the offices of Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, the owner of Eon Films, the company that made the highly lucrative James Bond movies. It was Saltzman who offered Gerry the chance to wrote the script for the next James Bond movie, Moonraker. Thrilled by the chance of working on one of the most famous film series in the world, Gerry went away and read the original Ian Fleming novel, but felt as though there was very little for him to work with. So, enlisting the help of writer Tony Barwick, Gerry eventually delivered to Saltzman a 70-page treatment that bore absolutely no resemblance to the original.

Saltzman was so impressed by the script that he offered Gerry $20,000 for it. Gerry turned him down because he felt that by accepting it his involvement in the film would come to an end and he desperately wanted to see the project through to conclusion. Saltzman, however, broke off all contact with Gerry and the project was never referred to again. However, several years later, when The Spy Who Loved Me was released, Gerry noticed significant similarities between that James Bond film and his originally submitted script. Gerry threatened to sue Eon Films, but when they threatened to counter-sue he backed down. Eventually the company made an out-of-court settlement and Gerry got a mere £3,000 for his trouble, but only on condition that he hand over his story outline and destroy all copies.

As production on UFO was drawing to a close Gerry formed a new company with Sylvia and Reg Hill. They called it Group Three and their first commission came, naturally enough, from Lew Grade. But the format for the new series was a total departure for Gerry Anderson. “I had one of my regular early morning meetings with Lew and on this day he was in a particularly foul mood. He handed me a piece of paper and asked me to read it.” The paper contained a brief outline for a new action-adventure series. It read: ‘There is a small group of private detectives who are able to work more efficiently because they are operating outside the law.’ Gerry accepted Grade’s offer to make the series feeling that there was sufficient scope to tailor the brief to his own liking. Grade immediately made an initial order of 26 episodes.

The series was to be jointly financed by Lew Grade and John Barry of the Fabergé perfume company which allowed for a bigger than usual budget and for a generous helping of foreign location work. Gerry and Reg Hill developed the concept of a brotherhood of the world’s top private detectives led by a London based American called Craig Bradford. A German investigator, Kurt Neilson and the beautiful Contessa di Contini, formerly the British aristocrat Lady Caroline who was in fact modelled on Sylvia Anderson’s puppet creation Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds, would assist him.

Actors considered for the part of Bradford were Paul Burke, Chuck Connors, Robert Culp, William Shatner and Ben Gazzara, amongst others. But before any of them could be approached, Lew Grade phoned Gerry to say that he had personally signed former Man From U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn in the lead. Gerry turned his attention to the second lead and signed actor Tony Anholt to play the part of Kurt Neilson although at this point his nationality changed, as did his name. He was now known as Frenchman Paul Dubois and before the series reached the screen that changed again to Paul Buchet.

Some weeks after the casting of Anholt, Gerry attended a Screen Writers Guild dinner. Lew Grade was there too, and so was actress Nyree Dawn Porter, who had been a hit in the classic BBC series The Forsyte Saga. “I was sitting at my table when suddenly a cigar appeared over my shoulder followed by the legendary Lord Lew,’ remembered Nyree. “He said to me, ‘My dear, I’d like you to do a series for us.’ Of course, I was thrilled and said ‘How lovely. Could I see the scripts?’ He answered ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be written for you. Now, who would you prefer as your leading man, Gene Barry, Chuck Connors or Robert Vaughn?’”

Gene Barry had already been approached by Grade to star in his own series for ITC but luckily Porter said that she would like Vaughn to be her leading man. She only discovered later that he had already been cast. It was a deliberate ploy by Grade to make the actress think that she had a say in the casting process. With the shake of a hand the deal was done and Grade then sought out Gerry whom he found at the bar. “I’ve got marvellous news for you!” He told Gerry. “I’ve just signed Nyree Dawn Porter for the second lead in The Protectors.”
Gerry thought this less than marvellous. “But Lew, the second lead is a male!”
“Oh well,” said the TV mogul with a shrug of his shoulders. “You’ll just have to rewrite the scripts, won’t you?”

The Protectors became Gerry Anderson’s most successful TV series since Thunderbirds and a second season was quickly commissioned. Guest stars included UFO’s Ed Bishop and Thunderbirds' Shane Rimmer as well as Stephanie Beacham, David Suchet, Eartha Kitt, Anton Rogers and John Thaw. The series theme tune, Avenues and Alleyways became a top forty hit for Tony Christie and until 2005 remained the singers longest-running chart hit. A third series was planned but cancelled when Fabergé’s John Barry and Lew Grade allegedly fell out.

In 1973, Gerry made an attempt to make another Supermarionation series called The Investigator. A twenty-three minute pilot was shot on location in Malta, for the NBC Network in America, but the radio controlled models that were made for the series were prone to radio interference, and often went out of control. Unfortunately it was one of those projects that seemed doomed to failure right from the start and was ultimately abandoned. The pilot has been screened at Gerry Anderson conventions and concerns the exploits of young John and Julia, who are shrunk to approximately eighteen inches in height, by a benevolent alien called The Investigator (who is only represented as a flashing light in a cave) as it tries to obtain a better understanding of life on Earth by helping to fight crime.

Julie was voiced by Sylvia Anderson (Lady Penelope) and John by Shane Rimmer (Scott Tracey), with Peter Dyneley (Jeff Tracey) as the alien. The filmed pilot did not show how the youngsters first encountered The Investigator nor how they were first reduced in size, although it is hinted that they are reluctant agents. No doubt this would have been fleshed out in the series, but there wasn’t to be one.

A little before that, in 1972, Gerry was still under the impression that a second season of UFO would be commissioned and the storyline was expanded to develop SHADO’s Moonbase headquarters as a more major part of Earth’s defence. Sylvia Anderson remembers that the new series would have fleshed out a feature of later episodes of UFO; the relationship between Ed Straker and Colonel Virginia Lake. “The main characters were, for the first time in a science fiction series, a couple.” But when the second season was cancelled Gerry and Sylvia decided to move the focal point of their new series to take place entirely on the moon.

Space: 1999 was set, as the title suggests, in the year 1999. Moonbase Alpha is a self-contained community for scientific research and deep space exploration. It is also a dumping ground for nuclear waste following a thermonuclear war on the earth in 1987. On September 13th, 1999 a sudden surge of magnetic radiation detonates the waste, hurling the moon out of Earth’s orbit and into a black sun from where it finally emerges hundreds of light years from our own galaxy.

Alpha’s commander, John Koenig retains command of the 311 men and women as their home drifts aimlessly through space encountering different alien life forms, in the hope that one day they will find a planet with a breathable atmosphere where they can finally settle. Lew Grade was suitably impressed with the story outline to give the new series a budget of £3.5 million, making it, up to then, the most expensive British television series ever made.

Gerry’s next task was to find a US actor with a suitably high profile to attract the American networks where it was vital the series succeed. The actor he decided on former I, Spy star Robert Culp. Sylvia Anderson thinks that Culp would have added an extra dimension to the series: "I wanted Robert Culp. When we met him he was quite outrageous, but he would have given the series a very interesting angle. He would not have been the stereotyped hero; he would have been scared at times, he would have made the wrong decisions." However, Gerry’s memory of meeting the star was different from that of his wife’s: “He said ‘there’s something I have to tell you. I want you to know that I’m a great actor. Something else you should know is that I’m an even better director and an even better writer.” Gerry says that at that point he decided that Robert Culp was not going to be suitable for the series.

Abe Mandell, the President of ITC in New York, had his own idea about casting. Mandell suggested the husband and wife team of Barbara Bain and Martin Landau who had been a big hit together on the US series Mission Impossible. Gerry agreed. Sylvia didn’t. “I battled very hard and stood up to Lew Grade and said 'I don't think they're right. They were okay in Mission Impossible, but having seen them, I don't think we're going to get what we should get.' But he said that they were very popular in Mission Impossible, and that they were a good commercial bet, and that was that.”

The casting wasn’t the only disagreement that the Anderson’s had behind the scenes during the creation and shooting of their latest venture and it soon became apparent that their marriage was falling apart. The first season of Space: 1999 took two years to complete and during this time tensions rose to breaking point. The break, when it finally happened was on the evening of the end of filming party. Gerry allegedly told Sylvia that he wouldn’t attend if she were going and she apparently replied, “Okay, you go.” But some time after he arrived, Sylvia turned up. According to Gerry, later that night he went home and packed his things. Their fifteen-year marriage was over.

As far as producing was concerned it was business as usual. America had received Space: 1999 very well and wanted a new series, however, Abe Mandell was insisting on a format change and also wanted to bring in an American writer. Gerry set off to the USA where he finally met Fred Freiberger, an experienced TV writer who had written and produced on the third season of Star Trek. Gerry phoned Mandell with the good news. Mandell asked if Freiberger were available. Gerry said he was. There was a pause from the other end of the phone before Mandell asked, “why is he available?”
Gerry responded: “What are you saying…you want me to hire someone who’s not available?” There was another pause before Mandell asked, “but why isn’t he working?”

In spite of Mandell’s concerns Gerry got his way and made Freiberger producer of series two, whilst Gerry himself became Executive Producer. However, Mandell was not finished. He wanted a new character introduced to the series, an young actress called Catherine Schell. This caused problems with Barbara Bain who was concerned that her role of female lead was being threatened and Gerry had to go to great lengths to keep the peace.

Abe Mandell contacted Gerry one day during the production of the second series and told Gerry that he was very disappointed that there were no monsters in the show. “In America,” he said, “monsters are all the rage and every science fiction show has to have them.” Gerry hurriedly arranged for scripts to be rewritten and called in sculptors and animatronics experts to give the show the required ‘extras’. A few months later Mandell visited the set and looked in horror at Gerry. “What are you doing, you’ve got monsters in the show?”
“Of course we have!” said Gerry pointing out that they were put there because Mandell had said US audiences wanted them.
“But that’s all changed now,” said Mandell. “Monsters are out!”

Looking back Gerry has a few regrets about the second series of Space: 1999. He would have been happier without the US interference and realises that maybe he should have retained more control himself. But he wanted to ensure an American airing for the show and realises that without their money, the second series may not have been made at all. The first series, he said, was definitely the better one.

The end of Space: 1999 signalled the end of more than one era for Gerry. It was 1976, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were no more and neither was there any more backing from Lew Grade. Gerry’s sixteen-year association with ATV was at an end and for the first time he had to go it alone.