Any fans of Gerry Anderson? (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999)

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by goodiesguy, Jul 24, 2011.

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  1. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    When I was younger, I found Thunderbirds to be boring, and always prefered Joe90.

    Thunderbirds is still probably my least favorite out of all of them. My favorite is probably either Stingray, Supercar, or Captain Scarlet.
     
  2. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Have just been watching it, and it actually doesn't look that bad, the intro makes it look worse than it is. For one, I'm yet to see any noticible strings. Though there are quite a few jokes about Women telling men what to do etc..
     
  3. I too grew up with most of them although they screened here in New Zealand much later than they did in Britain. I only vaguely have recollection of 'Supercar' and 'Fireball XL5'. I was only a baby when the first two shows were first released. I absolutely loved 'Thunderbirds' and 'Captain Scarlet' back in the day and also 'UFO' and 'Space 1999'. 'Joe 90' and 'Secret Service' I do remember watching but I don't recall having the same level of fondness for these two shows.
     
  4. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    They would of screened a lot later down here in Dunedin, due to us not getting a TV channel till 1962, in which Supercar and Fireball XL5 were already done (and Stingray was already in production), so your recollection is correct.
     
  5. apple-richard

    apple-richard *Overnight Sensation*

    I watched some Thunderbirds episodes as a child and saw the first movie at the theater in my small town. Fast forward 20 years and I'm stationed in England with my wife and two small boys watching reruns of Stingray on Friday nights. Move ahead another 15 years and I bought Supercar, Fireball XL 5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet (my personal fave) Joe 90, The Secret Service and Terrahawks all on DVD. Yes I love these shows.

    Now if you want to see something really interesting check out Clutch Cargo.

    Vidiot touched on something earlier that struck a chord with me. The shows especially Supercar and Fireball XL 5 have an innocence that is lacking today. These shows bring me back to a happier time.
     
  6. That's correct. I'm also pretty sure I was only 5 or 6 when my family got our first TV set so that is 1965 - 66. A glorious 22" Black and White set it was too! :) TV was also regionalised in New Zealand back then so different parts of the country received different coverage and shows. Stingray and Thunderbirds would not have screened in Dunedin until probably 1966 or 67 it may have even been a little later?
     
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes, very much so: the shows have a lot of charm and fun that you don't see much anymore. Gerry's later shows, particularly UFO and Space: 1999, I think tried too hard to be gritty and serious, and I think they suffer because of it.

    Anderson's 1969 feature, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, has a totally depressing ending where basically everything blows up and all the major characters die (well, on one world, anyway), and I thought, "jeez, he thinks this is how you make a dramatic movie? Kill everybody?" :eek: The later TV series, UFO, kind of continued along that depressing, downbeat (and often preposterous) path. A British movie studio that's a cover for a top-secret anti-alien terrorist force? Yikes...

    Loved the theme song to Fireball XL-5. "I wish I was a spaceman, the fastest guy alive..." It works great when you're 10. I have very fond memories of the show as a kid -- I was sure I had seen it in color, and was completely befuddled to discover it had always been shot in B&W. Just shows you, you can't always trust childhood memories -- you remember the world through completely different eyes.
     
  8. apileocole

    apileocole Lush Life Gort

  9. fitzysbuna

    fitzysbuna Senior Member

    Location:
    Australia
  10. apple-richard

    apple-richard *Overnight Sensation*

    I saw Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun at the theater as a 9 year old. At that age I thought it was a cool film but as you said the ending was a bit over the top.

    Funny you should mention the Fireball XL 5 theme song. When I first got the DVDs and watched the series I liked the theme so much I went online and got the lyrics so I could sing along (they're tucked into the DVD case). My wife thought that was hilarious. She had tears in her eyes when we watched episode 18 Flight To Danger where it looked like Lieutenant Ninety was lost in space and not going to make it. A pretty dramatic episode, we both had a good laugh about crying over puppets. I told her that was an Oscar Winning performance.
     
  11. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I personally prefer Supercar to Fireball XL5, and I also really like UFO, for what it is.

    Stingray probably has the best intro sequence of all of them, and Captain Scarlet has the best ending theme tune (the original, not the Spectrum one with words).

    I'm suprised the sound has never been remastered on the dvd's, I mean, there are 5.1 mixes on some of them, but the original master tapes for all the music still exist, so they really should of gone back, and edited them in, for better sound.
     
  12. Anthology123

    Anthology123 Senior Member

    I remember Fireball XL5 being in B&W, but I thought for sure Supercar was in color. Oh, well it was a long time ago. When they came out on DVD, I bought Supercar, Fireball, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. I never saw Joe 90 or Secret Service, so I didn't get either of those.
     
  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    When you think about it, Joss Whedon kind of stole the plot for Dollhouse from Joe 90: a character is temporarily given new knowledge and abilities through a computer transfer. Only in Joe 90, it was a kid who'd learn karate and learn how to fly a jet for 90 minutes; in Dollhouse, it was hookers trying to please rich guys (for the most part). But really, the same core idea.
     
  14. longdist01

    longdist01 Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
    Wonder if Katie Perry will try out for this venture??

     
  15. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Anyone else notice that the Captain Scarlet episode "Shadow of Fear" has a different voice during the "This is the voice of the mysterons" intro?
     
  16. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Here's the 2010 attempt to colorize XL5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz1IvNckPlc

    It looks too fake to me. On my dvd set "The Gerry Anderson Collection" which has Supercar, XL5 and Secret Service in one box, it has some early colorization attempts from ages ago, and it includes a very convincing colorization of the XL5 intro, which looks a million times more realistic than this one seen in the link.
     
  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes, I saw the Fireball intro, and it actually looked pretty good. Usually, I'm opposed to colorization simply because it generally looks very fake. I think the concept can be done right as long as you spend a boatload of money and take a lot of time and effort to do it.

    Has nobody ever commented that the whole Fireball XL-5 rocket launch is a total steal of When Worlds Collide -- the train-track, the curved launch, the whole deal? I had no idea until I saw that film years after Fireball aired. Still a fun show -- you gotta love Robert the Robot:

    [​IMG]

    "Fullllll powwwwwwer!"
     
  18. apple-richard

    apple-richard *Overnight Sensation*

    Part of the fun of watching these shows is checking out how they miniaturized everything. Watching explosions, seeing the mountainside crumble and the water and flying sequences are really cool to watch. How this stuff never caught on in the US, especially the 60s shows is a mystery to me. These shows should have been main Saturday morning fare and not relegated to regional syndication. The few spinoff toys and books are all highly sought after collectables today. I wish I had bought the die cast Thunderbirds vehicles when I lived in England.
     
  19. I had most of these as a child but I either destroyed or lost them all! Like all my toys I ended up pulling them to pieces out of curiosity or in an attempt to modify or improve them! I also remember my father finding my long lost die cast Joe 90 car while he was digging in the family garden on one occasion. :D
     
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I agree. The two things that hurt the show for me in terms of believability (even in this fantasy world) were 1) the closeups of hands clutching objects, which were clearly human hands in rubber gloves, and 2) the marionettes' inability to walk. Gerry Anderson himself has commented a hundred times that the latter drove him absolutely nuts, and was the primary reason why he wanted so desperately to work in live action. They could never get the marionettes to walk convincingly. Both of these issues look very clumsy in all their shows.

    If only they had CG, the puppets could've moved like this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rAMAjVJqsA

    I think the shows had too much of a British feel and sensibility, despite the vast number of characters with (mostly) fake American accents. The shows have a weird kind of nature that's kind of indescribable... my take has always been, they're great if you watch them when you're 10, but I think most adults would be mystified by them, and I think even teenagers would be a little embarrassed by them. Warner Bros. cartoons are always cool, whether you're 9 or 90, but these puppet shows... I dunno.

    I also think the shows were so different from anything else on the air, American TV executives just turned them down on the assumption that British shows couldn't be as good or as accessible to American viewers. (I think this was eventually proven false with the success of shows like The Avengers, even cult hits like The Prisoner).

    I got to know a local TV programming exec in Tampa, where I grew up, and he told me another additional fact: ITC was difficult to deal with, and often charged fairly high prices for their shows. It was a lot cheaper to slug in old Hanna-Barbera cartoons or Three Stooges shorts, so that's another reason why many of the Supermarionation shows were relatively ignored in America.
     
  21. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I don't think they used the real hand close-ups on early ones like Supercar and Fireball XL5, at least not on Supercar as far as I'm aware. I also know that they almost got rid of shots of the puppets walking by the end of the sixties. Supercar has lots of bouncy puppet walking, wheras Joe 90 and The Secret Service have almost none.
     
  22. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member

    The GA shows had an epic feel to them. They looked better than made-for-TV cartoons of the day, and the music was also miles beyond anything on shows geared for children.

    As for the bouncy nature of the walking, I've read that's why there were lots of high-tech gadgets designed to move the characters around (like the slides to get the Tracy brothers into the Thunderbirds, or the moving walkways in Captain Scarlet).
     
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I agree with that -- Barry Gray's themes are really, really good, and uplifted the level of the shows quite a bit.

    Even as a kid, I thought, "hey, look at that! They avoid having to show the marionetts walking by sliding them down chutes or rushing them along in moving chairs!" After awhile, you realize it's a gimmick to try to fool you into thinking they can walk.

    I do love the shows, for all their limitations. You look at a movie like Team America (which did badly, but I thought was very well-done), and you realize that in the right hands, these puppets can be very entertaining, if not 100% convincing. The charm is in the fact that you know the characters have strings, but you willfully buy into it -- and somehow it works.

    BTW, even at 7 years old, I said, "hey! Supercar is underwater, and there's strings going up through a hole in the roof! Why isn't the water coming in?" (I asked a lotta questions, even as a troubled child.)
     
  24. Todd Fredericks

    Todd Fredericks Senior Member

    Location:
    A New Yorker
    I have a fondness especially for UFO since my acting teacher and friend Michael Billington starred in it. Miss you Michael.
     
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  25. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Zealand
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