Thunderbird Sixty – part 3

 

3: End of the Road

By Christmas of 1967, Thunderbirds was last year’s news. The strip in TV21, now given an insane slant by writer Scott Goodall, would endure even beyond the comic’s demise in 1969, but on television it had, for the moment, run its course. For young viewers like me, it was Captain Scarlet all the way, and the new series meant a new range of toys in the shops. The first of these had appeared by Christmas, in the form of a nicely realised friction-drive model of the Angel Interceptor aircraft. TV21 promoted the new toys in a series of half page black and white ads, and it’s interesting to note how ‘The Angels’ were marketed as a separate entity from Captain Scarlet, with their own logo. Even so, the marketing campaign was small beer compared with the full colour advertisements that had helped to sell the range of Thunderbirds toys.

But we weren’t done with Thunderbirds just yet. The Andersons still had one more shot left in their locker. Stung by the disappointing response to the first feature film, they somehow convinced United Artists to do it all over again, and thus it was that, in July 1968, Thunderbird Six limped its way into the cinemas. The phenomenon of the ‘summer blockbuster’ was unknown in the late 60s, so the July release date was clearly timed to coincide with the long school summer holiday (although the film had received its BBFC classification back in January). In fact, it was released as a 'Sunday double bill', with Thunderbird Six playing in the afternoon while a brace of Bonds took over in the evening.

In the pages of TV21, the new film got scarcely a mention. There would be no photo-strip this time around, and aside from a couple of modest black and white quarter page blocks, there was no other publicity for the new venture. Away from the comic, a life-sized FAB1 toured the country accompanied by a real life Lady Penelope: in a nice bit of unpaid publicity from the rival TV network, the vehicle even made an appearance on BBC1’s Blue Peter.

For me, the film was a bit of a disappointment. Any chance to see Thunderbirds in colour in the cinema couldn’t be missed, of course, and the finale was as explosive as anything else in the Anderson canon. The featured vehicle, Skyship One, was a nice design, but we’d come to the cinema to see a brand new Thunderbird in action, and the final revelation of the Tiger Moth came as a giant let-down, clearly intended to amuse adult viewers. The rest of the film was little more than an innocuous travelogue showcasing some typically gimmicky Anderson ideas, with an unimaginative hijack plot bolted on. Thunderbird 6 was another box office failure. As a movie, it was sheer self indulgence. Thunderbirds deserved better.

By this time, the TV21 Thunderbirds strip was still in the very capable hands of Frank Bellamy, who managed to combine a bravura style with faithful depictions of the characters and hardware. The scripts, originally from Alan Fennell, and latterly from Scott Goodall, began to bear less and less resemblance to the series, with bizarre super-villains who seemed drafted in from the Marvel universe. The strip reached a nadir in the spring of 1968 with a storyline that began with the apparent murder of Brains, went on to depict the destruction of Thunderbirds 2 and 3, and culminated with the Hood attempting to saw the top off Tracy Island!

Despite this farrago of nonsense, the strip remained one of TV21’s most popular features. Equally insane, if not more so, was the Zero-X strip, which saw its characters subjected to endless ‘bodyshock’ storylines: one saw them turned into bald-headed, white skinned, red-veined mutants, whilst another had them taken over by malevolent cylopean leaves that attached themselves to their victims’ faces. Yet another adventure saw them melted into puddles of blue liquid. TV21 was beginning to look not unlike a horror comic… When the ailing title was combined with its sibling paper Joe 90, Thunderbirds was one of only two Anderson strips to survive the makeover. It would later resurface in Countdown, competently illustrated by Don Harley, who had covered during Frank Bellamy's brief absence from the TV21 strip in the autumn of 1966.

Thunderbirds as it appeared in the first issue of Countdown, February 20, 1971

In the ATV Midlands region, the series was still on air, and had more or less taken up residence in a Friday teatime slot, where it was to be found throughout the whole of 1969 and 1970. It was back again in 1971 for what must have been its fourth or fifth run. 18 episodes were shown before Land of the Giants took over the slot in June. TV now became a Thunderbirds-free zone until a handful of episodes turned up on Saturday mornings in early 1973. 

All this time, I'd been watching in black and white, so it was a revelation finally to see episodes in colour. For me, this didn't happen until 1975, when Lord Parker’s ‘Oliday was shown at Easter, and Richochet at Christmas. The series would not return to TV until 1981 – at least not here in the Midlands. Yorkshire Television, however, showed a batch of episodes in 1979, VHS dupes of which found their way to me the following year: they were low resolution and the colours were smeary, but it was better than nothing.

Also better than nothing were the few Thunderbirds episodes that had found their way onto the 8mm home movie format, albeit in heavily truncated form, and with captions instead of soundtracks. It's unclear when these films were originally released: the box artwork has the series copyright date of 1965, which fans (and the internet) have assumed to be the release date of the films themselves. This is highly unlikely, especially in light of the fact that at least one episode (Attack of the Alligators!) wasn't even broadcast until 1966. Either way, the films were still being sold in the mid 70s, making them some of the last items of original Thunderbirds merchandise to be available in the shops. I acquired an 8mm projector in 1977 and soon got hold of the 8-minute black and white versions of Day of Disaster and Thirty Minutes After Noon. The absolute last fling for Thunderbirds merchandising was Dinky's venerable Thunderbird 2 which finally dropped out of the catalogue in 1979.

Three of the Arrow Thunderbirds home movies, in 1-reel and 50ft editions

By 1980, I felt like nobody else still cared about Thunderbirds. I’d had one friend at school who wasn’t ashamed to admit he still liked the series, but I’d lost contact with him, and Thunderbirds fandom at this point in time seemed to consist of myself and Tim Beddows. We soon made contact with others, though, and spring of 1980 saw a kind of ad hoc international convention take place in our living room, attended by Starlog’s David Hirsch, Theo De Klerk and a couple of other ‘uber fans’ (there was no other kind at that time).

1981 saw the series return to British television with what appeared to be brand-new 35mm prints. Here in the Midlands, the repeats began on Sunday 30 August, at 1.00pm, and I was now able to record episodes on VHS tape.  The series continued until Christmas, in its 'official' broadcast order, with Thunderbird Six making an unwelcome intrusion into the run on Sunday 20 September. The repeats resumed on Sunday 12 September 1982, beginning with Desperate Intruder, and running all the way through to Christmas, with Give or Take a Million appearing on Sunday 12 December. My diary records that it snowed all day – thanks, Brains!

By early 1983, when the oprhaned episode Path of Destruction finally made it onto air, I now had a complete set of Thunderbirds on VHS tape, so it no longer mattered whether ITV chose to repeat it again or not. In the event, they didn’t, and while the 1980s would see the gradual emergence of an organised fan network devoted to the work of Gerry Anderson, there were no further sightings of Thunderbirds on the small screen as the ITV regions ploughed through the other Supermarionation series, covering everything bar Supercar and The Secret Service.

I could hardly have anticipated what came next. In September 1991 a repeat run began on BBC2 of all places. For viewers like me, Thunderbirds had been inextricably linked with ITV for the past twenty five years and to see it on BBC was almost a form of culture shock. It also meant that the series was shown without advert breaks for the first time in its history* and, more importantly, was being nationally networked. With an average of over six million viewers tuning in every week, there was clear potential for a new range of toys and other licenced products, and when the Matchbox Tracy Island appeared on the market, it became the season’s must-have toy. As a fan, I welcomed this new range of merchandise, but couldn’t keep up with the releases as every week seemed to bring rafts of new toys to the shelves of our local Woolworth’s. Many years later, during a house move, I sold on all of my remaining 1990s Thunderbirds toys – somehow, they lacked the charm of the 1960s originals, and the packaging was unappealing.

The idea of a full-scale revival of the series began to gain ground, and, inevitably, a movie resulted. I’ve never bothered with this worthless endeavour that saw the asethetically pleasing vehicles of the 1960s given a ‘twenty first century’ makeover (the new FAB1 must qualify as one of the most hideous reimaginings of a hero vehicle in the entire genre of sci-fi/fantasy). Later still came a TV revival, Thunderbirds Are Go, of which I watched a solitary episode out of curiosity. I was puzzled by the ‘plastic-haired’ appearance of the CGI characters and disappointed by the theme tune which reiterated the first phrase of Barry Gray’s original like a stuck record.

Over the years, Thunderbirds became a lightning rod for misguided creativity. Gerry Anderson had sold all his interests in the series back in the 1970s and since then had been forced to sit back and spectate as other hands made a travesty of his original concept. Thunderbirds 2068 was a pointless manga revamp of the format, but the wooden spoon for the worst production ever to sully the brand goes to 1994’s Turbocharged Thunderbirds, which mashed up the original footage into a gimmicky teenage format that saw the characters presented as ‘virtual lifeforms’ on another planet. Garbage doesn’t even begin to describe it.

There can surely be no point or merit in further attempting to revive Thunderbirds. The original can and should be left to stand alone for what it was – an artefact of its era and the apotheosis of the Andersons' unique film production technique. There have, of course, been more recent and accurate revivals of Supermarionation, but nothing will ever be equal to the original.

Thunderbirds is readily available to watch in HD on ITVX and on ITV’s YouTube channel. Though dated in many respects, the series stands alone, even amongst Gerry Anderson's repertoire. Thunderbirds was where it all came together: the perfect format, with a cast of warm, believable characters and imaginatively conceived hardware.

Watching Thunderbirds back in the 1960s and 70s, I'd hardly have imagined it would still be remembered so many years later. Being made in colour certainly helped to 'future proof' the series, and whilst its aesthetics are very much those of the 1960s, the fact of its being made with puppets and models makes it look a lot less dated than live action productions of the same era, while its real world physical effects really set it apart in an era of ubiquitous CGI.

I've no doubt that Thunderbirds will continue to be celebrated even when it reaches its centenary, in the TV21 year of 2065... and beyond?

[* To be pedantic, some of the ITV morning repeats in the 1970s were broadcast advert-free, including the YTV batch from 1979. The original commercial break captions subsequently became extremely rare]