Thunderbirds are go again... not that they ever really went away for the show's long-standing fans
As the jewel in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's crown celebrates its 60th birthday, Mark Braxton examines the programme's lasting impact.
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's imperishable TV creation Thunderbirds is 60 today, and how apt that it should be celebrating its diamond anniversary. Because, rather like the hardest known naturally occurring material, the concept is such an ingenious one that time cannot wear it away.
Based on a rock-solid foundation of square-jawed heroics and humanitarian principle, the show could hardly go wrong, you would think. But it has exceeded expectations, not just being reinvented for the modern age, but still dazzling new generations with its old-school blend of marionettes and models.
I will happily serve as "Exhibit A" with regard to the show's ability to capture the imagination of successive generations. As follows...
Although Thunderbirds launched on 30 September 1965, my first contact would have come during repeat screenings in the 1970s. From this distance, exactitude is impossible, but two moments do snap into sharp focus.
The first is watching The Uninvited on London Weekend Television on a Sunday morning. That's the episode where Scott in Thunderbird 1 is shot down over the Sahara, and he and two archaeologists find a lost civilisation based in a pyramid. It was a 100-per-cent thrill ride, and it ensured I was a fan for life.
Edge-of seat perils, Bond-style gadgetry, a dash of espionage, a villain both hissable and hilarious, and Tracy Island: the coolest playground in the world with its movable swimming pool and lift-and-slide rocket entries. What kid didn't love all that?
The second memory is my grandmother taking me to a puppet show in a village hall in Cookham, Berkshire, when I was a toddler. Of the show itself, I recall very little, but the thing that really captured my attention was a puppet-scale pink Rolls-Royce outside.
That sleek six-wheeler leads me neatly on to the world of merchandise that surrounded the programme. Because Fab 1, as it was called – Lady Penelope's specially adapted, machine-gun-toting Rolls-Royce – was just one of a squadron of toys, models, books, comics and games that young fans would save up their pocket money for, or more likely add to their Christmas wish lists.
When Thunderbirds was off the air, one of the main ways kids could "keep the magic going" was in the glossy, precision-tooled comic TV Century 21.
Here the adventures of the Tracy boys and their extended family, Lady Penelope and Parker, were brought to vivid and colourful life by a number of skilled illustrators. Among them was Frank Bellamy, whose beautiful work for Radio Times, especially in connection with Doctor Who, remains a highpoint in the magazine's history.
But souvenirs came in many forms, and from what would now be considered unexpected sources. Breakfast cereals, for instance. And I remember being overjoyed to do "swapsies" with a schoolfriend which meant that I left his house with a vivid green plastic model of chief Thunderbirds villain The Hood. It was one of six characters given away with Kellogg's Sugar Smacks.
My quest for completion was such that, once I'd seen all 32 episodes of the TV series, and even the first feature film Thunderbirds Are Go, I made a special effort for the sequel Thunderbird 6. Learning from my local paper that there was to be a special screening in a distant village hall, I managed to get a lift there, but cycled all the way home. The excitement from seeing that movie gave me wings for the journey back.
At the time it would have been inconceivable that I'd one day get to meet one of the show's creators, and to add my applause to the standing ovation given for the other, but that's what happened.
The first time I met Gerry was at a "Mini-Con" on 16 August 1981 at a community centre in Lane End, Bucks. I'd worked my way through the Anderson series that followed Thunderbirds, and in those days I was a huge fan of Space: 1999.
With high hopes, I took along a poster I had designed for that particular series, and plucked up the courage to show it to him. He wrote the word "Approved" and autographed it, making not only my day but probably my year.
Many years later, at a Fanderson convention in 2015, Sylvia gave a candid and highly entertaining talk about her career. I didn't get to talk to her directly – she was quite frail then – but her speech drew the entire hall to their feet in recognition of her contribution to television.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. As full-time education receded and the world of work beckoned, you might think that my videos of Thunderbirds (yes, this pre-dates DVDs and Blu-rays) might start to gather dust on the shelves. But children came along, and of course, one of the many joys of parenthood is getting to treat them to some of your old TV favourites!
So perhaps I started them off with some Bod, Mr Benn and Bagpuss, but soon of course, I introduced them to the adventures of the Tracy brothers. And it was a good time to do it because there was a huge International Rescue renaissance going on in the 90s and noughties. The first run of BBC screenings averaged six million viewers a week, and Radio Times recorded the comeback in 2000 with four collectors' covers.
And that's to say nothing of the whole Tracy Island phenomenon. When the Thunderbird HQ became the most coveted Christmas toy of 1992, leading to a stock shortage, Blue Peter came to the rescue with an astonishingly popular "make it yourself", plus accompanying factsheet.
Later on, my wife and I even took our children to a glitzy London premiere of the 2004 film Thunderbirds. They weren't too concerned about the director Jonathan Frakes – Star Trek: TNG's Riker – milling about, but they did have their caricatures drawn, and were given Thunderbirds made from balloons.
A decade later, the story came full circle for Thunderbirds' 50th anniversary. A new TV series combining CGI and model sets, Thunderbirds Are Go, premiered in 2015, and three "Anniversary Episodes" were made in Slough, the home of the originals. So I got my fanboy moment by seeing how they came together.
The same end of Stirling Road was occupied by a new generation of film-makers who adopted the puppets-and-models approach of their forebears. "The chance to make Thunderbirds is one of my dreams come true," producer and director Stephen La Rivière told me. "But this for me is also a way of paying tribute to people whose work I’ve really admired."
It was a joy to see puppeteers bringing life to Scott Tracy and Lady Penelope, to chat with modellers in the workshop and to get a sense of what it must have been like back in the days of AP Films and then Century 21. From 1957 to 1969 they operated a conveyor belt of TV classics, from Stingray to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, plus of course the jewel in the Anderson crown.
And it's a tribute to those craftsmen and women that two classic episodes of Thunderbirds were spruced up for special screenings in UK cinemas... not in 1965, but in 2025! No wonder it's the Andersons' biggest show.
The story has come full circle on a personal note, too, with me writing this. My friends and I were so inspired by Thunderbirds, back in the day, that we would reenact moments from it in our games, and later try to emulate their craftsmanship in the Super-8 films that we made.
In a speech I gave at the wedding of one of those friends, I said: "We learnt everything we know today from watching Thunderbirds when we were kids." Not literally true of course. But in spirit, it was bang on the money.
Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go, The Anniversary Episodes and the documentary Fab at 60 are all available on ITVX
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