Stingray

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!

I did enjoy Stingray when I was younger, and still do, but not as much as some of the other Supermarionation shows. The show was simply about a submarine, and the stories weren't as varied. However, it did have its good points.

The stories were entertaining, and divided into three sections; an investigation into a situation, a plan to kill Troy Tempest or to destroy Marineville. The best episodes were in the category of the latter two, the investigation episodes weren't as exciting. There were a few 'it was all a dream' episodes which did nothing for me.

The series ended with a flashback episode based on 'This is Your Life' which worked really well, and had the best ending of all the Stingray episodes; after being called out on a mission near the end of the episode Commander Shore remarks to the presenter, 'Thanks for a great show, but I'm afraid, whether you like it or not, this has got to be the end'. You couldn't have asked for a better closure.

Not my favourite of the Supermarionation puppet shows, but the entertaining scripts made up for it.

The four Supermarionation shows, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds, were strange but cool. And often they showed some real creativity. One of my favorite bits was the alarm system in Stingray. As their base went on alert, they didn't use horns or sirens, but drum beats over the PA. As they went to higher stages of alert different rhythms would superimpose themselves over the previous rhythms. It sounded neat and was a really effective way to build up the tension. Someday I'm going to find an excuse to steal the idea.

Well, it was set 100 years in the future, to those of us who were kids growing up in the sixties. We had no internet, no digital technology, no VCR's or DVD's. Man hadn't even been to the moon. We had something much better. We had imaginations! Instead of playing games where the intention is to destroy the opposition, we watched shows about heroes and rescues. This was one such show, as were Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Joe 90. Watch them with the innocence of 60's youth and you will understand why they are so timeless. Ignore (and enjoy) the mistakes made obvious by passage of time into the real 21st Century. For this step you will need to tap the imagination I mentioned before. As a kid living in Slough, Bucks. (as it was then) I would go to APF studios with my friends. We would watch through door cracks, when we could, and we would hunt through their dumpsters. This was NOT garbage. It was a treasure trove, and we were on a treasure hunt! How I could kick myself in the ass for giving away a script, that I had once found, for the Thunderbirds episode "Give Or Take A Million" when I grew up! Besides anything else, these shows had the best explosions and the bad guys never won, even if they went on to fight another day! Damn you X2-0, the War Lord Titan, The Hood and, of course, the dreaded Mysterons! Thank you Gerry Anderson et al, your imagination fuelled my childhood dreams, and continues to entertain me today.

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!