Thunderbirds are Go
Thunderbirds, the TV classic from 1965, could return to TV screens with a new series planned by ITV for 2015, some fifty years after the original pilot. The same team that resurrected Captain Scarlet will be rescuing Thunderbirds, only this time you will not be able to see the strings.
Thunderbirds, created by Gerry and Syliva Anderson, was a British TV success story, a weekly TV series of sci-fi plots and action adventures. The technology used to create the Anderson worlds was primitive by today's standards but it really engaged the younger viewer and put "Supermarionation" into the dictionary. The new series, which thankfully has nothing to do with the 2004 Hollywood movie, will be using CGI Animation and is being created by the same team who did this great job of reviving Captain Scarlet for the 21st century.
Thunderbirds is a delight for trivia lovers. For instance, each of the five Tracy brothers who pilot the craft are named after American astronauts of the 1960s: Scott Carpenter, Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Alan Shepard, (Leroy) Gordon Cooper, and John Glenn. The puppets were modelled on real-life characters. Jeff Tracy was modelled on Lorne Greene, (then a star of Bonanza, later in Battlestar Galactica), Scott Tracy was modelled on a photo of the young Sean Connery, whilst John Tracy was based on a composite of Charlton Heston and Adam Faith.
The strangest trivia of all though concerns the fifth episode of that first series in 1965 entitled "The Edge of Impact", (you can find it on YouTube if you need a nostalgia fix) which centres around an impending disaster at a communications relay tower. This was especially topical because the Post Office Tower in central London had opened with great fanfare just four weeks earlier. At 15 minutes into the Thunderbirds episode, you can clearly see a blue sign on a gate which says the tower is owned by British Telecommunications Ltd. But this was 1965 and telephones were still operated by the General Post Office (GPO). British Telecommunications Ltd (BT) was not created until 1980, some fifteen years later.
25th February 2013
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.