Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. The complete transcript of the message reads: " This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. It is commonly believed that the hijacking was a protest against nuclear weaponry and the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. Hundreds of worried viewers flooded Southern Television with calls on Saturday night after the incident.
ITN also reported on the incident in its own late-evening Saturday bulletin. Later in the evening, Southern Television apologized for what it described as "a breakthrough in sound" for some viewers. The interruption ceased shortly after the statement had been delivered, transmissions returning to normal shortly before the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Reports of the incident vary, some calling the speaker "Vrillon", "Gillon" or "Asteron". The hoaxer claimed to be Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command. The audio was replaced by a distorted voice delivering a message for almost six minutes. UTC, the TV picture wobbled slightly, followed by a deep buzz. Perhaps this is a case only a Time Lord can solve.On Saturday, 26 November 1977, Southern TV's Andrew Gardner was presenting the early-evening news bulletin.
Loyal Doctor Who lovers were taping the show at the time. Fair warning - it does containg some foul language and bare buttocks. You can watch the WTTW footage on YouTube. To this day, the perpetrators remain anonymous. Yet, the television pirates were never caught.
The FCC engineer declared that the people responsible could face up to a $10,000 fine, a year in prison - or both. The Chicago incident made national headlines. Only static could be heard, which is somehow more disturbing. Headroom did not speak in that first interruption. Earlier that evening, this prankster had hacked into another station, when he suddenly popped up during NFL highlights in WGN-TV's Nine O'Clock News. The same can probably not be said for Chicago Bears fans. Undoubtedly, fans of Doctor Who were aware of, if not fans of Max Headroom.
A TV series for ABC followed in early 1987. Matt Frewer performed the character under prosthetic makeup, and admitted that Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show inspired his performance. The stuttering, hip pseudo-computer-generated character had first appeared in a 1985 British cyberpunk movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into The Future. To be honest, if any television audience was going to be amused by such a prank, it would this one. The pirate broadcast continued for a little over a minute, entering vulgar territory when this "Max" dropped his trousers and got spanked with a fly swatter. The real Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesman. He - presuming it was a he under the rubber - declared that local sports broadcaster Chuck Swirsky was a "fricking liberal." The phony Headroom then held up a can of Pepsi and muttered, "Catch the wave!" which just so happened to be the slogan for New Coke. With crackling audio and radio distortion, this unsanctioned Max Headroom spewed a series of strange statements. A person disguised under a Max Headroom Halloween mask hijacked the WTTW PBS airwaves. However, on the evening of November 22, 1987, at 11:15 p.m., Whovians viewing Doctor Who in the Chicago area were puzzled by a strange and unsettling broadcast intrusion. Aliens, robot dogs, giant maggots, curly-haired men with scarves traveling through time in a police box - nothing was off limits in the strange world of the classic British sci-fi show. Regular viewers of Doctor Who are quite used to witnessing strange phenomena. Image: The Museum of Classic Chicago Television