Summer Schedule: Stingray

Often to be found in the TV schedules for midsummer mornings, Gerry Anderson's Stingray is, for many of us, indelibly associated with broadcasts during the school holidays. This overview looks back at the programme's history on British terrestrial television, from 1964-1995...

ITV were a year behind BBC1 in bringing children’s programming to summer holiday mornings, and the various regions did it at their own pace: in the Granada area, for example, episodes of Stingray had been airing for weeks before the school summer holiday of 1973. Here in the Midlands, ATV’s summer morning children’s schedule got started on Monday 23 July with episodes of The Forest Rangers and Captain Scarlet. The following day brought Stingray at 9.55am, but it was academic as far as I was concerned – our school hadn’t yet broken up for the holidays. My brother, away from school with German Measles on Thursday 26 July, was able to tape the next episode, Ghost Ship, on a cassette. From that same summer season, another off-air recording survives in the form of Deep Heat (30 August). ‘Nothing to do with rheumatism, just water’ gagged continuity announcer Kevin Morrison. Having initiated this repeat run during the summer, ATV picked it up again at Christmas, and continued the following summer. Episodes were shown in the same eccentric order that ATV had used since its original broadcasts.

Stingray had debuted on ATV Midlands in October 1964 in the unusual timeslot of 7.00pm – and although I can recall seeing at least one episode of Fireballl XL5 in this same slot a year earlier, I have no memory of these 7pm Stingrays. From 3 February 1965, the programme was moved to the more child-friendly time of 5.25pm, where it would remain until 1970. Through 1965, 66 and 67, Stingray was seldom off air, and even at the age of six, I was soon bored with the endless repetition and didn’t always bother to tune in. If Stingray itself wasn’t being shown, then you could always bank on seeing a commercial for the ‘Seajet’ ice lolly tied in to the series.

The ubiquity of Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation series in ATV’s children’s schedules had not gone unnoticed at the Independent Television Authority, and the Midland operator was warned that it had been giving undue prominence to these programmes (produced by its parent company) at the expense of more diverse childrens’ programming from other regions. This ‘warning off’ seems to have happened around the end of 1967, when there was yet another Gerry Anderson production to add to the mix in the form of Captain Scarlet. 

During 1968, the repeats were curtailed, taking both Thunderbirds and Stingray off the air for at least twelve months. Thunderbirds returned in early 1969, with a repeat run that was replaced in December by another round of Stingray. By this time, some episodes were onto their fifth broadcast, but after nearly two years off air, I was happy to sit down and watch the series again, with the run extending all the way to 10 September 1970.

The next time Troy Tempest and co saw action was in the summer holiday repeat run of 1973… officially, at any rate. However, a number of episodes had been shown unscheduled on Saturday mornings during 1972, seemingly as a trial run by ATV. Discovering these repeats by accident, I saw at least two episodes, without realising that I was missing similarly unscheduled episodes of Fireball XL5. What were ATV playing at? The first episode I caught in these ‘secret’ screenings was Subterranean Sea, (01.04.72) usually shown as the fourth in the series, suggesting that the broadcasts had been going on for several weeks. It was followed by Loch Ness Monster (08.04.72), but thereafter the broadcasts seem to have stopped.

By 1975, Stingray had been added to ATV’s stash of film filler material, and was being stripped into the Saturday morning madness of Tiswas. I was unaware of this until a friend tipped me off, and quite annoyed at missing out, as I was now able to watch in colour. I finally got to see an episode on Saturday 12 July, only for it to be the last in the series…

1975’s summer morning schedule was a Supermarionation-free zone, but Stingray would be back in what had now come to feel like its natural home in the summer of 1976. As usual, the broadcasts commenced a week or so before we broke up for the holiday, and the first episode I was able to catch was Loch Ness Monster on Thursday 29 July. By this time, we were taping the episode soundtracks off air, and the half dozen we saw that summer went on to become very familiar from the many times those tapes got replayed. I can remember listening to Raptures of the Deep around this time and thinking how cool it would be if the tape recorder could play back images as well as sound. I scarcely realised that home video taping was just around the corner...

Back on ATV, another episode, Tune of Danger, made it to air on New Year’s Day 1977. The 1976 screening was far from complete, but there would be no more summer holiday episodes for the time being. Another ‘filler’ episode, Stand by For Action, escaped into the wild on the morning of Saturday 15 November 1980, shown as an unscheduled replacement: luckily, I was able to track down a video recording through a friend. The broadcast was unique in that it contained a commercial break – there had been no ad breaks during Stingray since 1967 – and the adcap on this recording is now the sole surviving example of the series’ colour end of part caption (it was recreated in high definition as part of the Network DVD blu-ray release in 2022).

TV Times listings for Stingray episodes, 1973-76

ATV never showed Stingray again. By the time the series came up for another repeat run, in 1982, the regional operator had been re-christened Central. This time, brand new 35mm prints had been struck and I had a VHS machine with which to preserve them. The prints were excellent quality, some of the best that have ever been broadcast, and superior to the masters that were used for subsequent DVD releases. Unfortunately, the scheduling was haphazard. Six episodes were shown on Saturday mornings commencing 8 April, before a layoff until Monday 5 July, which saw the series return to its by now traditional summer morning slot. Subterranean Sea went out at 11.15am, followed by another nine episodes over the coming weeks, ending with Man From the Navy on Monday 13 September. Further episodes trickled out over the next twelve months, but the series was still far from complete when broadcasts fizzled out during the summer of 1983. The pristine 35mm prints were never seen again.

For its very last airing on ITV, Stingray was back in a summer morning slot, and back on 16mm film – very likely the same copies that had been used for the 1969-70 run, as the prints were in dire condition. Here in the Midlands, the super-sub’s ITV swansong was launched on Monday 20 July 1987 at 9.30am, but the episodes shown were frequently not those that had been advertised in the TV Times, so anyone who has compiled titles from that source should beware. This time, rather than one a week, episodes were shown every weekday morning. I taped them all and finally managed to assemble a complete set. It had only taken five years – thanks, ITV!

In 1992, Stingray did the unthinkable and defected to BBC2, following the success of Thunderbirds on the network the previous year. To young viewers it was effectively a brand new series, and the BBC had high quality masters available for transmission. Beginning on Friday 11 September, 29 episodes were shown at 6pm before the series took a break, returning in a Sunday lunchtime slot from 3 October 1993. From here onwards, the series resumed its summer filler status, with episodes stripped across weekday lunchtimes beginning in August 1995. The show reached its earliest ever slot on Monday 9 October 1995, when it went out at 7.35am… all of which has taken us a long way from those summer holiday broadcasts of the 1970s.

Stingray’s over-exposure on ITV in the 1960s had dampened my enthusiasm for the series, and by the time of the 1973 repeats, it was far from being my favourite of the Gerry Anderson canon. Still, any Supermarionation series was better than nothing, and repeat runs over the coming years served to rekindle my interest in the show, especially when I was finally able to watch them in colour. By 1980, I was also watching the handful of episodes that had been made available on 8mm film, but I was more impressed when my friend Tim Beddows lucked upon a solitary colour 16mm print… so much so that I even noted down the date and time when we watched it, 3.40pm on Friday 16 May 1980. The episode, Rescue From the Skies was one I hadn’t seen since the 1970 repeat run, and was in excellent condition with no visible scratches or colour degradation. When Tim’s personal film archive was summarily disposed of, I made quite sure to rescue this one print. I don’t have the means to project it, but it’s a nice thing to own...