Attention all nostalgia buffs infatuated with 1960s kids’ TV: get ready for a serious wallow. This package offers a reissue of two episodes, about 50 minutes each, from the first 1965 season of Thunderbirds, the sci-fi/adventure series performed entirely with puppets and scale-model sets, a format that creators Gerry and Sylvia Anderson called “Supermarionation”. Most readers will probably already be familiar with the basic premise, but for gen Z and Alpha types out there, the idea is that the all-male Tracy family, led by former astronaut paterfamilias Jeff (voiced by Peter Dyneley), operate a private international rescue business with mysteriously unclear sources of funding that sends various super hi-tech vehicles (the titular Thunderbirds) to bail out people in jeopardy. Indeed kids, this is what inspired Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s spoof movie Team America: World Police.
In Trapped in the Sky, an evil Asian supervillain called the Hood plants a bomb on a Concorde-like supersonic plane making its maiden voyage so that he can lure out the Thunderbirds and thereby study their mechanics in order to sell them on. It’s a delightful hark back to an era when industrial espionage just involved covert photography rather than hardcore hacking and intellectual property law. Also, this episode contains posh spy totty extraordinaire Lady Penelope (voiced by Sylvia Anderson herself), and her trusty manservant Parker (David Graham) with his almost prehensile bushy eyebrows. (Parker has to stand up coachloads of guests to Penelope’s stately home in order to help out with the rescue, a shocking violation of etiquette, but needs must.)
In the second, even better, episode, Terror in New York City, the Tracys must help rescue some pesky but hapless journalists who fall into a fissure in the ground when – get this – the authorities decide to move the Empire State Building 200 yards to the side in order that redevelopment of the area can go ahead. It’s a mad scheme that only legendary NYC city planner Robert Moses could love, but not a single character questions the initial idea for a moment, even when it all goes disastrously wrong.
These crisp remastered versions allow us to really appreciate the quality of the effects, which are so persuasive and intricately detailed you soon almost forget that you are watching models. But those sneaky little black strings always give it away, little reminders of the means of production that in fact makes it all the more endearing. Moreover, the costume and set design is especially swoon-worthy for fans of retro fashion (in those days, just fashion), especially the nifty lapel-less, cropped, double-breasted sports jackets the men wear and the orientalist loungewear favoured by the ladies. Aspiring designers are advised to take notes and execute a little industrial espionage of their own.