Presented In Supermarionation!

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:30:18 -0800

From The Adventures of Twizzle to the reboot of Captain Scarlet - for nearly fifty years - Gerry Anderson made television shows, but is still best remembered for the classic 'Supermarionation' period were, as this documentary shows (1, 2, 3, 4) he really was making the 21st century. The main programs from that period were: Stingray (intro theme tune, outro theme tune 'Aqua Marina', Troy Tempest in action) Thunderbirds (intro theme tune, Thunderbirds in action, reshown often, the program was loved to many generations - an early 90s repeat led to a toy Tracy Island selling out. The show Blue Peter had a feature on how to make your own, the Fact Sheet (PDF) for which subsequently ran out as well. Try to forget the recent film version or, even worse, the Busted song... think of the Rezillos instead) Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (intro, theme, The death of Captain Scarlet) Joe 90 (Intro and theme tune) But it wasn't all puppets, Anderson actually made some programs with real people them like UFO (theme) - though it must be said the people in this one at least still looked very much like puppets and Space 1999 (theme), a program that whilst having lots of silly monsters and alien babes still managed to scare me stupid with one particular sequence as a nipper. A rather poignant final message has recently been received from Star Base Alpha... Anderson carried into the 80s with Terrahawks when he was perhaps past his best, but it well remembered by some. (Intro theme tune, Outro 'Noughts and Crosses' theme, Terrahawks in 'action') then into the 90s for, dear oh dear, Space Precinct ( titles). Then the 21st Century proper with the new CGI Captain Scarlet - which was actually pretty good. Perhaps it's better to just remember the classic years: And here's another shorter and rather spiffing contemporary 'making of' documentary. One extra point of interest were the many comics spin-offs. You could see the strings on the puppets, the plots were written to a strict formula, but the groovy theme tunes from Barry Gray seem to age like fine wine...

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Presented In Supermarionation!