Some blithering idiot's gotten himself stuck in some sort of jam somewhere in the
world and the call has gone out for help. Up in a space station, John Tracy picks
up the call from among the thousands of voices he's simultaneously monitoring (huh?)
and he springs into action. Down on Tracy Island, an uncharted little slice of paradise
in the Pacific, family matriarch Jeff Tracy hears the beep-beep-beep and looks up at the
photograph of John, eyes blinking in time with the sounds. Pushing a button he says
"Go ahead, John." John fills him in on the certain death awaiting the blithering idiot
halfway around the globe from Tracy Island, and then Dad calls a family meeting. Scott
is dispatched in Thunderbird 1, an aircraft that blasts off like a rocket, travels at
15,000 miles per hour yet hovers like a hummingbird when the situation calls for it.
Virgil takes off in Thunderbird 2, but not before leaving the family living room in
a fancy manner that makes Batman's Bat-poles look like kiddie-toys. Leaning against a
wall panel, he is tilted backward, dumped upside down onto a long slide and eventually
deposited into the pilot's seat of the gigantic green craft. He taxis it out from under
the family home - the palm trees fall away to the sides to make room, springing back up
later - and stops on a launching pad. A hydraulic lift angles the craft upward, a few more
little details take place and then the craft is launched. It, too, seems to have a rocket
engine and it, too, hovers.
I can't help but laugh at all the technology and precision required for the launches of
these vehicles from Tracy Island when contrasted to the immediate launches from any surface,
any angle, any circumstance for the return trip home.
That's nothing, though. If you're going to laugh at Thunderbirds, there's plenty of things
to choose from. It's a puppet show, for starters. The show was first aired in 1965 and
had a run of only 32 episodes, all of them starring a cast of marionettes and filmed with
very little effort to hide the strings, if any. Some of the characters' voices were just a
little too similar, and in the case of Gordon Tracy and Brains, the genius scientist who lived
on Tracy Island and created everything that made what they did possible, the voices were
identical with the exception of Brains' slight stutter. And that's just the beginning of
it, if you want to laugh. The thing is... there's something about Thunderbirds that makes
many people look past all that, or more likely embrace all that as part of its charm. 36 years
after the demise of Thunderbirds, it's still popular, with children and adults, who have
taped the occasional episodes on various networks over the years or, better yet, collected
A&E Home Video's 6 part DVD set that brings together all 32 episodes plus a few specials.
When I told people I was preparing to write this piece, I got three distinct reactions: 1)
"Oh, I loved that show!" 2) "Why would you write about a stupid puppet show?" and 3) "Wasn't
that that James Bond puppet spy thingy?" I was amazed and saddened by how many fell into
category 3. The Tracy family weren't spies. They were rescue artists. The operation was
called International Rescue, and they were the ones everybody, including the military, turned
to for help when all seemed lost. The likely reason people remember it as a spy show is
because many of the plots involved a villain named The Hood who was after all their secrets,
which they guarded jealously.
That's right, just like Batman, Spiderman, Superman and all the other super heroes, International
Rescue demanded privacy. There actually was one spy - Lady Penelope - who worked out of London
and was brought in when security had been breached and something (usually film) had to be
retrieved. But unlike those other super heroes, neither Penelope nor the Tracy's wore masks.
"Don't try to follow us or learn our identities, that's all we ask," Scott Tracy would say
to the grateful throng after a rescue. Of course, this is also a source of amusement for
owners of the DVD series who have read the text biographies of each character and learned that
each brother has been in the public eye in some way. One's an Olympic champion swimmer, one's
a former astronaut like his dad, one's a former world champion race car driver... yeah, none
of these guys are gonna be recognized.
What is the charm of this show? Why is it popular with adults? Children, sure, that's
understandable. Cute little puppets, right? Well, they're not cute in the traditional puppet
sense, actually. Program creator Gerry Anderson and his then-wife, Sylvia, did a fantastic
job of coming up with interesting characters and making them look like people. In fact, Lady
Penelope was modeled to look like Mrs. Anderson, and they came very close indeed. They created
an entire genre of puppetry filming called Supermarionation that involved several things
designed to make the puppets look and act more like real people. The key innovation was giving
them mouths that could be moved remotely with the flick of a switch, making it possible to
match mouth movement to the soundtrack, something that had never been done before. The special
effects, though sometimes less than perfect, were pretty damned good considering they were
working at puppet-size scale (they put the Japanese monster movie special effects of the same
era to shame), and at times the effects could take you completely by surprise. Explosions
occurred in nearly every episode, too, so they had a lot of chances to work on it.
All of that added to the charm, for sure, but the top attraction was the stories. Nearly
every episode had adventure, drama, a bit of humor, and a lot of suspense. The A&E DVD sets,
which come in boxes of 2 discs with 3 shows on each disc, are a Thunderbirds addict's dream.
The final two boxes, volumes 5 & 6, close out the series with 5 episodes on volume 5
(The Cham Cham, Security Hazard, Atlantic Inferno, Path of Destruction and Alias Dr.
Hackenbacker) and three on volume 6 (Lord Parker's 'Oliday, Ricochet, and Give or Take a
Million). Volume 6's second disc contains two specials. The first, The Brains Behind
Thunderbirds, is a clip-show hosted by Brains, who shows an appropriate level of excitement
while describing the technical equipment which, of course, he designed, and more than a little
respect for the blood and g... the plasticine and string pilots who fly the aircraft he builds.
The second special is a real, honest to goodness, no strings attached Making Of Thunderbirds
in which we see the creator and crew (and dangling cast) in action. A real blast for the
true Thunderbirds fans, and a chance to see them all when they were one big happy family.
Which is not how they stayed.
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson continued working together - death on most marriages and theirs was
no exception. While filming their TV series, Space 1999, they lost the cuddly factor and were
soon involved in an ugly divorce. Sylvia got all the puppets, for whatever reason, and... again,
for whatever reason, she has seen fit to auction them off. Gone. Forever captured on film,
however, are Scott, Virgil, Gordon, John and Alan heading off on impossible rescue missions
whenever you click the remote. There were Thunderbirds movies, so perhaps more volumes
will appear, but for now this mission is completed and all aircraft are returning to Tracy Island,
no one following them, no one having recognized their famous faces, no radar screens going ping...
ping... ping...
And hey, why is it that when Scott brings Thunderbird One in for a landing through the open center
of the family home those rocket engines don't incinerate every single... Aw, never mind. It's
more fun if you don't ask too many questions.
