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DVD: Fireball XL5
A&E Home Video (5-disc box set)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
Fans of Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson have been well served by A&E Home Video over the past few years. Just about all of his TV shows featuring puppets are now available on DVD in box sets. And not just samplings, either. Each series is complete, and those are four words that make a collector ever so happy. Thunderbirds was the best series of the lot, though several Anderphiles will argue in favor of Stingray and the hardcore sci-fi'ers in the group will demand recognition of Captain Scarlett. All three have plenty to recommend them.
Some of Anderson's earlier series are a bit dicier. Want proof? Check out this 5-DVD box set of Fireball XL5, a black & white series filmed in 1962-63, a few years BT (Before Thunderbirds). The show had some serious problems, such as a terribly annoying and over-used monkey puppet that should have been named "Fingernail Blackboard," thin plot lines and marionette control lines that should have been as thin, or at least painted a color that wouldn't have been so obvious. The original audience for this show consisted mostly of 7 to 10 year olds, and they probably found the monkey hilarious and weren't nearly as hypercritical as I'm being about everything else. I wonder how today's jaded 10 year olds would see it.
The show takes place in 2063. Colonel Steve Zodiac flies the ultra-wowwie-awesome spaceship, Fireball XL5, on missions to check out strange goings on in his sector of the universe, as directed by The World Space Fleet. Meanwhile, his shipmates keep him company in their own unique ways. Robert the Robot (not to be confused with Robbie the Robot by lawyers looking to sue on behalf of Forbidden Planet's film studio) chatters like crazy (a trait he finds distasteful in da monkey for some reason), The Professor handles all the professorly duties like a good professor and goes the extra mile by acting mightly professor-like in the process, and Venus - whom we must assume is pretty - provides cultural references and odd moments, like the Awkwardly Leaning Puppet Dance (my name for it, not theirs), done to 60s dance music no one ever intended to inspire such movement. Do they get things done? Sure they do. One thing about the heroes in Gerry Anderson's Puppetworlds: they're always good at whatever the hell it is they're supposed to be doing, whether it's fighting back potential invaders or riding floating cycles through the air.
Lest you think this is worthless stuff, let me remind you this is television from the house of Anderson (Gerry AND Sylvia). The worst of their work has charm and is pretty fascinating to watch today; small doses for adults, open bar for the kids. It ain't Thunderbirds, but it's a piece of the history of Thunderbirds, and at very least it's good for a giggle when wires collide.
© 2004 - DJ Johnson