Les sentinelles de l'air!

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.

When I was a kid I used to get up at 5am to watch this show (pre-video recorder days) with with the volume turned down low so I wouldn't wake my family. Recently, I came across one of the videos in the library and have been slowly rewatching them since. It ain't just nostalgia for my youth motivating me - I still love the models of the planes, spaceships, satelittes, sea ships, nuclear power stations, etc, which are brillantly done. The convincing explosions are still so exciting. The colours are phenomenal - you know that 60's TV colour - pastels and grey and stuff. Plus the jet engine soundtrack and the crazy fashions (those Tracy boys wearing their button down shirts and jackets even though they live on a private island and they complain about it being a warm day). Those jaunty little (impractical) caps. So cool (well the 60s have come back in fashion several times since).

Hell, the characters took second fiddle to the machines and the accidents, but there was just enough given away so the audience could extrapolate whatever they liked (like Garbo's face). If you actually watch them all, you're never actually told, say, that John is frustrated that he doesn't go on enough missions, but it is stated as fact in all the books and the websites. Or that Scott is a light sleeper. And sure it is riddled with errors as well - like that they must protect their identities and keep the island base top secret, but Jeff Tracy gives out his name in one episode to the US navy. Well, d'oh! And there is some really stupid technical stuff (same episode where the Empire State building collapses - but it topples over rather than collapses down on itself as we now know skyscrapers do). But aren't all TV shows stupid and simplitic (think Buffy, think Star Trek, think Soapies!).

It is so quaint - hey, these days the idea of five men in the early 20s sharing an island with one young woman (Tin Tin), and constantly being involved in dangerous rescues - well, there would be fighting and drugs, nervous breakdowns, sex and rebellion.

There is a movie slated for 2004. Hopefully it will update this little pearler of a show, and avoid being the next Lost in Space debacle.

5......4.......3.........2.........1......

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!!!!!

And what youngster who didn't recognized the start of the show's theme during the 1960's where the era of James Bond, mini-skirts, and just about every spy show there is to boot?

First off,I am a HUGE fan of this show. My parents didn't understand it. My brother didn't care about it. As for me and my cousin who would thumb through the TV section in the local newspaper to see what time it came on....DEFINITELY YES!!!! WE WOULD NEVER MISS IT!!!!

During my childhood in the late-1960's and early 1970's,this show would come on every weekday afternoon and mostly Saturday mornings and afternoons as well as me and my cousin would be hooked to the TV set to catch what the Thunderbirds would get into next cause with this show you can expect the unexpected. For some,they may say that this show consisted of models and puppets and geared toward children as it target audience.....and in my book.....THEY WERE WRONG! THIS SHOW ROCKS!!!!

For the 32 episodes that ran during its two seasons(which was showed first in Britain and then on American television on NBC-TV which after it went off the air in 1966,its repeats continue way into 1970 and from there into syndication until for the remainder of the decade until it disappear in oblivion during the 1980's and 1990's)this show was not just your typical kiddie fare material but it was so more much. Where else can you see gorgeous ladies in distress,spectacular machinary that was out of this world and was the best part of the show,amazing spy gadgets and outlandish sets of wonder and magical beyond belief,and not to even mention evil villains set out to take over the world and also spellbinding cliffhanging excitement that left you in total amazement.

All presented in brilliant color and Supermarionation!!!!

It was no wonder that when the show went off the air in 1966,the crew made their first ever feature length motion picture of the same title which was an international hit. However,the Thunderbird producers Garry and Sylvia Anderson went on to create not just other animated shows,but produced the live-action feature length film "Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun"(ITC/Universal,1969)and the series "Space:1999"(Syndication, 1975-1978)with former Mission:Impossible stars Barbara Bain and Martin Landau.

However after a lengthly absence,The Technology Channel or Tech-TV has brought back all those wonderful memories from the essence of my childhood which are showed Thursday nights. Great series. Don't miss one breathtaking episode!

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!

You know what I like about this show: it takes me back in time to the days when I loved to play with toys, the days when I used to spend the whole afternoon in the bedroom of a friend of mine playing on the floor with our toys, late into the night, imitating the sound of jet engines with our mouths, crashing our plastic planes into one another, mimicking gunfights, battles, explosions. A few weeks ago I was surprised to find that Chilean TV is replaying the show on Sundays. Last time I had seen one episode must have been fifteen years ago or more, I don't know. I watched and I found myself transported through time back to those days. I can't play with toys anymore, I have lost that childhood thing for toys. But watching the show I re-live the magic of toys, I feel again the beauty and the spell of toy trains, toy cars, toy trucks, toy soldiers, toy planes, etc. And I didn't remember the show looking so gorgeously great on TV (perhaps the reason for that is that back then I watched the show in black and white). Big fun from past!