Terrahawks

Contrary to other user reviews, I find Terrahawks far more enjoyable than Thunderbirds and Stingray, and a little more enjoyable than Captain Scarlett. The plots of Thunderbirds always seemed very one-dimensional, with the good-guys consistently getting on with each other and being good. Terrahawks has a little more depth to the characters, and some splendidly horrible running jokes (Tiger's consistent failure to beat the high-score on his game, the horrific mocking of Hiro's 'accent' ("Exactry!"), and the rivalry between the football Sgt. Zero and the speciesist Tiger).

The plots also get a bit darker, later in the series, which adds further depth, and brings it closer to the more compelling style of Captain Scarlett, without giving up the humour.

For Americans, trained by Hollywood to always expect a fluffy happy original-Star-Trek ending, I recommend Thunderbirds. For anyone who'd prefer a bit more of a Blake's 7 or Babylon 5 puppet show, I recommend Terrahawks.

I can't belive that all of Gerry Adersons other series (like Stingray, Thunderbirds, Capt Scarlet, Joe 90 and Space 1999) get repeated every couple of years but Terrahawks has been left unshown since the early 80's. I luckily managed to track down a copy of series 5 though a Blackstar Video hunt and belive it was well worth the wait. What sets Terrahawks apart from the other Anderson shows is that it does'nt take itself too seriously which can be seen in such plot lines as the evil Zelda challenging Kate Kestral to the Intersteller Song Contest! For me the best thing about the series is the army of robotic sphere's known as the Zeroids under the command of Sargent Majoir Zero who I can only describe as Obidia Hakeswell from ITV's Sharpe turned into a goodie and a small robot football type thing! Also the inventiveness of having secret launch exits for ships by creating stately homes that open up and turbines to enable Hawkwing to fly up though a whilepool is more than the equal of anything on Tracy Island. Zelda dispite being an old hag of an android is a truly briliant Villan! "We're ready Earth scum!!!"

I have recently bought all the re-released Terrahawks programmes on DVD and I think its great. I never really liked Thunderbirds as it seemed a bit bland, but this has a continuous theme going throughout the shows.

Just a quick thought, what is Gerry Andersons obsession with Mars, I mean first it was the Mysterons and now its Zelda and her rabble.

Strange.

Terrahawks is EASILY THE MOST BRILLIANT of ANY of Gerry Anderson's puppetry programmes/series. I have not seen it since the early eighties and it is the ONLY one I wish they would repeat. Why has it, like so many other programmes and films from various people, been forgotten about? There is nothing bad that I can think about the programme. If you like science-fiction then you will love Terrahawks! it is THE most sci-fi of the lot, is FULL of humour and constantly takes the mickey out of itself.

Oh what a fantastic, classic struggle of good against bad. Thankfully good ALWAYS won by the end of each episode/story line.

Some people have written that it is childish and is now dated; how wrong can they be?! It worked on an adult level as well and it is only dated because nobody learns the lessons and values it teaches anymore due to an ever deteriorating society. As a child I would much rather watch a programme that teaches that if you do something wrong you will get punished for it and that if you do something right you will get rewarded. In the programme, as in life, you don't get anywhere if you are bad whereas the good side were always pleased that they had yet again thwarted Zelda's plans and saved the earth from yet another horrible invasion attempt. That was the basic message. If you do good you will like the feeling it gives you and therefore want more of those wonderful feelings. If you do bad the complete opposite happens. To learn morals such as these as a child is great and doesn't happen anymore.

So if you can, beg, borrow, buy or steal (no don't steal. It's wrong to steal) one or more of the programmes. Get every one ever made and sit and enjoy a science-fiction programme that has, in my eyes, EASILY stood the test of time and is as good today as it was back in the eighties! How do I know it has easily stood the test of time if I haven't seen it for twenty years? Well if other series are being shown again now and this, as I stated at the start of this review, is EASILY THE MOST BRILLIANT of ANY of Gerry Anderson's puppetry programmes/series, will also have stood the test of time and therefore be as good now as it was back in the eighties!

This was the first Gerry Anderson programme I ever saw when I was a kid, and I still love it. Okay, so it CAN be cheesy at times, especially with Zelda and her family always doing the 'evil laugh' thing and the joke about Lt. Hiro's accent (Exactry!), but I still like it as it has a great sense of humour and adventure about it.

I was glad when the series was released on DVD because that means I could now see the entire series! The extras on the DVDs are great as well, particularly the original shooting scripts which are contained. TERRAHAWKS also has some unintentional laughs in the guise of the preposterous sounding writer's pseudonyms used by Tony Barwick to disguise the fact that he wrote 98% of the episodes (examples include T.I. Gerstein, Koo Garstein, Leo Pardstein and P.U. Mastein, geddit?).

The Terrahawks are a colourful team themselves, although team leader Dr. Ninestein is a real jerk most of the time, particularly towards Sgt. Major Zero, leader of the Terrahawk robots the Zeroids. But Zero more often than not gets his own back on Ninestein. The Zeroids are a rather enjoyable set of characters too. Each one has his own personality: there's the aforementioned Zero, who is a real soldier type, Five-Five, who always talks in rhyme, the French-accented Dix-Huit (or Dicks-Hu-It, as Zero pronounces it) and the camp Space Sergeant 101). Villainess Zelda and her family are rather two-dimensional but at times, they display interesting personalities.

One element of the show which could be overdone is the amount of time Terrahawk pilot/pop star Kate Kestrel spends singing, but the songs are generally good. The storylines are pretty good too. One of the best is when some kind of mind control force is loose in the Terrahawk base, causing the team to face their worst fears.

I give TERRAHAWKS a thumbs-up. It may probably never be considered a classic, but it is certainly enjoyable!