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.

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 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.

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.