Stingray

With its emphasis on fast-paced, underwater action/adventure, Stingray is an entertaining, half-hour TV program featuring puppet-people, or marionettes, acting out the stories on miniature, elaborately-built sets.

Created by Gerry Anderson, British, producer, writer and director, Stingray is the name given to a fantastically sleek and highly-sophisticated combat sub that has the awesome power to travel at 600 knots per hour and submerge to depths of 36,000 feet.

Set at the fictitious base in Marineville, California (in the year 2065), this mid-1960s TV show is really quite enjoyable to watch and it is often unintentionally hilarious, especially when the puppet people (with their over-sized heads and blank stares) stiffly move around the mini-sets, carrying on as if they were real, human actors, or whatever.

The Stingray sub is commanded by the dashing and brave Captain Troy Tempest who takes his orders from the head of the "World Aquanaut Security Patrol" (WASP), Commander Samuel Shore, who operates from WASP's land-based headquarters in Marineville.

On a regular basis Troy Tempest and his loyal Stingray partner, George "Phones" Sheridan, are having to deal with the destructively diabolical doings initiated by the wicked warlord, Titan, king of the ruthless Aquaphibians from the undersea city of Titanica.

You can be sure that (when it comes to saving the day) Troy Tempest is right on the job, seeing that justice will be served.

Filmed in living color, Stingray was a weekly show that ran for only one season.

Hard to imagine so many childhood memories could be contained in such a small box, but that's certainly the case with the STINGRAY boxed set. Until they turned up on the Sci-Fi Channel a few years back, I had never seen these in color, so the contemporary reality seemed almost as vivid as the memory. (Too bad Sci-Fi is not still running such vintage viewing these days.) Great boxed set, packed with extra goodies for fans, and all on only 5 DVDs. I had a slight problem with DVD #5, when it came time to view the final episode, "Aquanaut of the Year." When selecting that episode from the main menu, the chapter stop menu for the episode came up, then the DVD stopped playing (even though I had not hit the stop key). I tried repeatedly to watch this episode, and finally found that the only way I could get it to play was to go to the episode before it ("The Lighthouse Dwellers"), and select the last chapter of that episode. Once it started playing, I then had to use the Chapter Advance button on my remote to manually skip to the start of "Aquanaut." Other than that, the rest of the set worked perfectly. The last line of the last episode was a great way to end the show: As Troy Tempest is the subject of a new "This is Your Life," an emergency breaks out and the Stingray crew scramble into action. Commander Shore looks into the camera to end the "This is Your Life" broadcast--and the STINGRAY series itself--with these words: "Thanks for a great show, but I'm afraid--whether you like it or not--this has got to be the end." Current shows, for adults and kids, should have such class.

I liked Stingray a lot. It was a great Gerry Anderson show right up there with Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet.

It was quite a depressing show in a way. I don't know what it is but I find anything set underwater depressing. The bottom of the ocean doesn't look like a nice place even in real life. It was quite a gloomy show. I suppose the evil villain called Titan added to the gloom.

However, just when things were getting too gloomy Troy Tempest and Phones (and the beautiful Marina) went into action in Stingray to combat Titan and his evil plans. This show was a 25 minute show which was just the right length to set up a story and action.

I may be crazy saying this but as a child I found Atlanta and Marina extremely beautiful which probably added to my enjoyment of the show.

Stingray is my favorite Supermarionation show by far! The themes are often strangely adult, we're shown Troy Tempest's dreams in some of the episodes, and there's a lot of unrequited desire between the puppets. Not surprisingly, the puppets drink pretty often.

This is not to dismiss the technical aspects of the show usually harped on. The look of the show is amazing, representing a larger, color version of the outlandish production design of the nifty Fireball XL-5. The Stingray itself is as mod-looking as the Batmobile. In fact, I'd say Stingray had to have been a major influence of the TV incarnation of Batman (1966.) (Kids could watch it for the action, adults could watch it for the humor and weird sexual tension.) And the music of Barry Gray is excellent as always.

I'm 35 and never saw Stingray as a child. But, despite the lack of a personal nostalgia factor, I must make room for it among my all-time favorite shows. It's pure escapism, but with a caricatured sense of human nature. For me, Thunderbirds and the other Anderson shows just became increasingly flat, with the puppets looking more and more like mannequins.

When it comes to marionettes, I get my kicks under water!

Stingray ran in syndication about the time that I was in the first grade and I never missed an episode. Troy and Phones were my heroes, and I would identify with Marina as she accompanied them on their adventures. Looking back a little over thirty years later I am pleasantly surprised at how well it holds up today. I was very lucky to be able to acquire several of the (out of print) Channel 5 Video releases. I showed them to a younger friend of mine and she was literally blown away by how lifelike the marionettes were.

The voice acting, while always good in Supermarionation, was best in Stingray IMO, from Ray Barrett's gruff Commander Shore to Robert Easton's perfect South Carolina accent for Phones. Lois Maxwell (James Bond's Miss Moneypenney) was absolutely wonderful as Lt. Atlanta Shore. Don Mason as the authoritative voice Captain Troy Tempest rounded out the crew.

As with all of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's productions, super-cool hardware was everywhere. Troy, Phones, and Marina would enter Stingray via "injector tubes", special seats that would drop through the floor and lower them into Stingray via the roof hatch. In an emergency, the entire city would descend below ground into a vast fortified bunker. The villian, Titan, had a fleet of "terrorfish" submarines, and one would often see Stingray "dolphin hopping" with the terrorfish in pursuit (but not for long, as Stingray always got the last laugh). All of this, of course, was underscored by the incomparable music of Barry Gray.

There's plenty more that I could say about this show, but there's just not enough space here for it all. If you get a chance to see it, be sure that you do. You're in for a treat!