By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Science fiction is a way for creative people to envision how the problems of today will look through the lens of the future. Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek: The Original Series in 1966 to be a Western in space where humanity was united in an utopian view of the future, but a few years earlier, across the Atlantic in England, the married couple Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were working a futuristic series all about making Earth a better place. Though the resulting series, Thunderbirds, was about a family leading rescue missions around the globe using advanced technology, it’s best remembered because every single character was a puppet.
Thunderbirds Are Go
That’s right, Thunderbirds had no on-screen human performers, with everyone from the heroic Tracy family to the villainous Hood, played by skilled puppeteers and voice actors. Each puppet had multiple heads to convey different facial expressions, multiple interchangeable parts, and could weigh up to 300 pounds when fully costumed and assembled. The most impressive feat was how the puppets were synched to the voice actors through the use of magnetic tape and an electromagnetic switch within the head that converted the sound waves into electrical impulses, which would then move a lever in the lower jaw to simulate speech.
As impressive as the puppetry was, and still is in fact, the other part of Thunderbirds that lingered with a generation was the impressive Thunderbirds themselves: five advanced vehicles referred to by number, piloted by one of the sons of inventor Jeff Tracy, that include a submarine (4), a space station monitoring system (5), a hypersonic plane (1), a massive aircraft carrier (20), and a spaceship (3). Long, lingering shots over the impressively detailed vehicles took up a good chunk of each episode’s run-time, but not only did no one complain, it helped establish a tradition of reusing impressive launch sequences used in later shows, including Voltron, Power Rangers, and Paw Patrol.
A Sci-Fi Show About Saving Lives
Thunderbirds isn’t only a technical marvel, the plots pushed the envelope by allowing International Rescue, the Tracy’s organization, to live up to its name, and every episode was focused on a rescue mission. Granted, a lot of those rescues were the result of the machinations of the evil Hood as he attempted to manipulate markets and make himself filthy rich, and the Tracy family’s ally, Lady Penelope, was a rich super-spy solving mysteries alongside her butler Aloysius, but the spotlight always ended up on one of the Tracy’s with their Thunderbird rescue vehicle. The only modern equivalent is, of all things, Paw Patrol, which also leaves out violence and most of the crime (though you know that chicken is up to no good), to focus on the use of advanced technology to save lives, not take them.
Almost every sci-fi series of the last 30 years includes violence and conflict, which is what makes the Thunderbirds’ success, as a mostly nonviolent show, even more impressive. Defying expectations, the series went on to become a hit in its native England and the rest of the Commonwealth, but also in the United States and amazingly, Japan, where the International Rescue organization would influence the Science Patrol of Ultraman and the vehicles themselves helped plant the seeds of the later Mecha anime boom, including Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gundam. In fact, the show is so beloved that even the modern remake became a success.
The Remake Was A Hit
Thunderbirds Are Go, the 2015 CGI/live-action hybrid remake, updated the series for the modern era, lasting three seasons and 78 episodes it managed to relate to modern kids and kept the spirit of the original series alive. Before he passed away in 2012, Gerry Anderson gave the remake his blessing, and again, the focus was on using the Thunderbirds to perform daring, high-tech rescues, including, in the final season, an elaborate deep-space rescue that pushed the machines and the Tracy boys higher, further, and faster than ever before.
Between the original and the modern remake, Thunderbirds was kept alive as a pop culture reference thanks to Matt Parker and Trey Stone’s Team America: World Police, which parodied the puppetry on the big screen, but the series was released on VHS, DVD, and alter, Blu-Ray, keeping it accessible for every generation. Well, that, and the forgettable live-action remake in 2004, directed by Jonathan Frakes and starring Bill Paxton as Jeff Tracy, Ben Kingsley as the Hood, and Vanessa Hudgens as Tin-tin, the team’s mechanic. In an interview with The Guardian, Gerry Anderson referred to the film as “In fact, it was the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my life.”
Thunderbirds Is Still Amazing Today
The live-action movie failed, and rightfully so, because it abandoned the ground-breaking puppetry work of the original and was a generic action movie, though again, with more of a focus on non-violence than even other kid-friendly sci-fi films. Even today, Thunderbirds stands out because of how much mileage the production team got out of a cast of puppets and elaborate, real-world models. It’s a testament to creativity and, unlike most modern sci-fi, it also dares to envision a future in which technology is used to save lives, and amazingly, there are people who will do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.
Every episode of Thunderbirds, including the iconic, award-winning theme song, is streaming on Peacock.
