OK - here's the deal with the Thunderbirds phenomenon: Gerry Anderson & his then wife Sylvia had been producing puppet shows since the late 1950s for the British ITC worldwide distribution company. Progressing from Supercar, thru Fireball XL5 & Stingray (the 1st British TV show filmed in colour), they hit pay-dirt with Thunderbirds. The formula was simple - a worldwide organisation, with good looking heroes (made of plastic of course!), some pretty women for glamour, and lots of hi-tech craft, gadgets and gizmo's. To appeal to the important US market, the characters were often American, although this changed with Captain Scarlet when the cast was made up of a variety of international personnel. The shows were set in near future (about 100 years hence), and were designed to excite kids. And thats just what they did. But as a by-product, they excited adults as well! Thunnderbirds Are Go! gave Anderson and his huge team based in Slough (on the same industrial estate that David Brent occupied 40 odd years later to be exact!) a chance to deliver a colour show to the UK market. Unlike the US (with their inferior NSTC TV system), European TV wasn't available in colour, so all the UK kiddies watching TV only saw B&W. So, the big attraction in the UK for this film was the fact that you could see Thunderbirds in full colour and in cinema sound.
So the biggest adventure was launched, with the awesome Zero-X craft crashing not once, but twice, on its way to Mars. A huge opening scene, new characters, a dream sequence, alien encounters, a space battle. Having said all that, the basic plot is a rewrite of 'trapped in the sky', the Thunderbirds pilot episode, with extra padding. The Cliff Richard sequence is very surreal, but I am surprised that none of the Brits have picked up on Bob Monkhouse being the night club compere! The sets were fantastic and were in fact redesigned from those used on the TV programme, so that they looked better on the big screen. Also they looked a lot more hi-tech, with lots of stainless steel and primary colours - very James Bond in fact. Not surprising when you consider that the man doing the special effects was none other than Derek Meddings himself. And it was this attention to detail, the bangs, the noise, the jets, the rockets, the explosions, the splashes, the gadgets (the video telephone and electronic conference voting systems to name but two that have now come to frutition!) Thats what we watched Gerry Anderson for, and why we still love his programmes.
In all of Gerry productions, the values have been very much on hardware, although he has employed some of the best scriptwriters. I don't think anyone could claim that his stories have pushed the frontiers of sci-fi, but I don't think he ever meant to. He just meant to entertain, and this film should certainly do that!
So the biggest adventure was launched, with the awesome Zero-X craft crashing not once, but twice, on its way to Mars. A huge opening scene, new characters, a dream sequence, alien encounters, a space battle. Having said all that, the basic plot is a rewrite of 'trapped in the sky', the Thunderbirds pilot episode, with extra padding. The Cliff Richard sequence is very surreal, but I am surprised that none of the Brits have picked up on Bob Monkhouse being the night club compere! The sets were fantastic and were in fact redesigned from those used on the TV programme, so that they looked better on the big screen. Also they looked a lot more hi-tech, with lots of stainless steel and primary colours - very James Bond in fact. Not surprising when you consider that the man doing the special effects was none other than Derek Meddings himself. And it was this attention to detail, the bangs, the noise, the jets, the rockets, the explosions, the splashes, the gadgets (the video telephone and electronic conference voting systems to name but two that have now come to frutition!) Thats what we watched Gerry Anderson for, and why we still love his programmes.
In all of Gerry productions, the values have been very much on hardware, although he has employed some of the best scriptwriters. I don't think anyone could claim that his stories have pushed the frontiers of sci-fi, but I don't think he ever meant to. He just meant to entertain, and this film should certainly do that!