Thunderbirds

An ancient kids T.V. show featuring string puppets and models suspended on wires. Nobody's gonna watch this, right? Wrong.

From the superb intro sequence on you'll be hooked! It wins in every department: music, production, direction; even the model sequences, dated though the techniques now are, work brilliantly (and so they should - the guy who supervised them was Derek Meddings, who went on to do the effects for several of the Bond films, as well as Batman and Superman).

Find this series on tape or scan your T.V. listings. You won't regret it. There were 32 fifty-minute episodes and each was a little gem. There were also two cinematic feature films!

Thunderbirds Are Go!

Thunderbirds was a top Gerry Anderson show right up there with Captain Scarlet and Stingray.

Thunderbirds is one of those shows which is enjoyable for so many reasons-the storylines, the action, the characters, the adventures.

Thunderbirds was longer than most other Gerry Anderson shows which allowed for better stories and better character development. The show was set around the Tracy Brothers who were behind International Rescue. They had 5 vehicles. Thunderbird 1 was a reconnaissance craft. Thunderbird 2 was a huge plane which could carry all types of equipment. Thunderbird 3 was a space rocket. Thunderbird 4 was a submarine and Thunderbird 5 was a space station. The head of International Rescue was Jeff Tracey. Throughout the series the Tracy boys were aided by Brains who always came up with a solution to problems they encountered. And they also received help from Lady Penelope and Parker as well. The Hood was the evil villain who attempted to steal their secrets but always failed.

The puppetry was amazing in this series and the adventures were great. International rescue got involved in all types of situations. My favourite episodes were Cry Wolf where a young lad makes a hoax call to International Rescue and Attack of the Alligators where International Rescue have to rescue some people from giant alligators.

This is a timeless classic and if there are any youngsters out there who have not watched it then I urge you to-it really is that good!

This is perfect entertainment.

Everyone can appreciate a good puppet show, and everyone can appreciate a good model; but this show took puppet shows and models to a bold new level of detailing and production complexity. I imagine that on paper it might have looked crazy to some, but believe me, it works. It is indeed, as mentioned in another viewer's comment, like a world of toys come to vibrant life.

The making of this show necessitated a fabricated miniature universe. For the premise to work, that world had to be obsessively detailed, with every doorknob, switch, coat button and lock of hair. If the show went to the mountains, they created the mountains. When the ships were in flight, they created the sky. Whatever was needed to pull the story off was built; there was no limit. That these people created a world as believably as they did deserves real praise.

"Thunderbirds" represented a budgetary step up and a refinement of technique for Gerry Anderson, who for years had worked to perfect an all-puppet TV show that could be taken as serious drama. It was always targeted at kids, but the stories seldom featured child characters, and being a "rescue show," the characters were routinely placed in very threatening predicaments. The effects used to depict scenes of destruction (supervised by Derek Meddings) were often frighteningly realistic. When I saw it as a kid, actually, I had no interest in it, because it seemed dry and "too adult." Seeing it many years later, my reaction was "Wow! How adult!"

The show is the source of many amusing chuckles today, mainly because its seriousness is absolutely unflinching, despite the fact that the puppets obviously aren't real people. The action was played straight, with appropriate dramatic music cues, and conventional film camera angles and cutting. This all conspired to create a very convincing puppet universe--one that no one would dare attempt today.

The recent DVD releases (from A&E) have gone through a digital cleanup process, which has brightened the colors and sharpened the images considerably. The original monaural audio has also been incorporated into a new surround-stereo "remix" featuring additional sound effects tracks. The augmented explosions are deafeningly loud at times--which is perhaps as it should be!

In a word: Amazing.

The Thunderbirds used be one of my favorite shows as a child. The other day my son pulled a tape out of our video collection and asked to see it. It warmed my heart to see that he liked it for the same reasons I did. The Thunderbirds is one of several shows done by Gary and Sylvia Anderson. All their shows are the stuff of science fiction legend. These include Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Super car and the Thunderbirds are all puppets shows. The live action shows include the movie "Journey to the Farside of the Sun," the TV shows "UFO" and "Space: 1999" The style of super cool models for cars, planes, ships and spacecraft are common to all the shows. All the shows had a futuristic late 1960's style. Does any one remember the women with the purple hair in mini-skirts from UFO?

Thunderbirds was a major part of my childhood. EVERYTHING stopped for Thunderbirds. It did not matter how many times we watched the episodes they remained as fresh as the first viewing. There is a lot of camp humour about the puppets dangling around on their strings but I never noticed that much due to the brilliant idea of never making the characters actually walk. Seriously you watch the TV episodes again you never see anyone put one foot in front of the other. Even the lithe brave Tracys scoot around on little hoverbikes that defy all the laws of physics.

All this did not matter I simply adored EVERYthing about the Thunderbirds series. If I was not watching it I was building Thunderbird craft out of LEGO or sawing the crude wheels of the few Thunderbird toys that were available. Then Captain Scarlet came along and shot down the Thunderbirds. That was quite a good series but it never gripped me as much. Then the years rolled by with only TV21 to keep my appetite for the show nourished until even that with its full colour photos from the show came to an end. Reluctantly I had to leave the Tracy's world and return to my own. AND THEN! The entire series was released on DVD. I had to own it! With trepidation I inserted the first disk . Would the show seem childish and crude against my current diet of StarTrek, Starwars and all the others. Not a bit, as soon as that countdown began once again and the screen was rocked by those explosions I had seen so many times before I was hooked ! Again I was amazed at how fresh and alive the episodes are even after all these years. Even the special effects hold their own in our CGI world. Thunderbirds is an absolute classic. If you have never watched it then I envy you.