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Gerry Anderson, Co-Creator of Thunderbirds, Dies
jamstar7 writes "According to the BBC, 'Gerry Anderson, the creator of hit TV shows including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Joe 90, has died at the age of 83. He also created Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and his puppet superheroes fired the imaginations of millions of young viewers in the 1960s and '70s. Thunderbirds, a science-fiction fantasy about a daring rescue squad, ran from 1965 and was his most famous show.' In my opinion, his greatest creation was Space: 1999, an ITV production with practically no budget, which had great shows in the first season. Unfortunately, like so many other Gerry & Sylvia Anderson projects, it ran out of gas in the second season. They did some great stuff."
Anderson's son Jamie also has a post in remembrance of his father.
Is GO!!!
It's amazing to read that Space: 1999 had a small budget. The sets, in the first season in particular, were quite amazing, a big step up from Star Trek in my opinion. (Though the writing and acting in Star Trek were far superior.) But there were some very good episodes of Space: 1999, some of them quite dark. I have them all on DVD and I do still enjoy watching them.
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I'll always remember Gerry and Sylvia Anderson creations with huge fondness. The first program I can remember watching is Fireball XL5, and I've always managed to marry blondes all my life in deference to Venus.
Actually my favorite of Gerry Anderson's work was the TV series UFO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)
Space 1999 was good when I was a kid, but when I re-watched it as an adult I found it terrible -- the show needed better writing. [A few of the episodes are still good though.]
It was Freibergered. That's the same idiot who turned TOS Star Trek into "monster of the week" in the 2nd season.
scifi puppetry are you sure your not remembering farscape?
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Wasn't Supercar prior to Fireball et al?
I think it was on in 1961.
Puppets with big heads and a flying car.
No brain, no pain.
During the 1960s and 70s, distribution of the Anderson shows was common throughout the UK and British Commonwealth countries but unfortunately less so in the U.S.A., sad to say. Today American kids of all ages can see for themselves what all the joy was all about back then. I for one used to run home from school to catch the late afternoon showing of the newest Fireball XL-5 episode on one of the local Canadian TV stations. Stingray was mind-blowing (buildings that lowered underground!) and when Thunderbirds came out (in colour!) I was ecstatic. According to various obituaries in today's British newspapers those Anderson shows have been rerun many times on UK TV and continue to pull in large audiences of all ages. To Gerry, where ever you have gone, a hearty "F-A-B!"
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Just as good in many ways as "Space:1999" (which I also loved) was his 1969 series "UFO", which combined live action with some of the sci-fi puppetry from the Thunderbirds. It was dark and foreboding, centered on a secret government agency in an active war against recurring alien incursions, and you had the feeling that "we" were just at the edge of losing. It included an AI satellite which spoke with an English accent and a moonbase "manned" by women in purple hair and short skirts, one of the very few silly parts of an otherwise very serious drama. It seems to have influenced MIB in more ways than one; one of the secret organizations' special tools was a spray that took away ones recent memories, used on witnesses after debriefing, a tool re-incarnated as the "flashy-thing".
Gerry was quite the visionary, and certainly influenced this old slashdotter.
I can only hope that at his funeral, the coffin is transported by some absurdly elaborate system of conveyor belts, slides, elevators, and so forth.
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had it not been for Gerry and Sylvia's work. They inspired the imagination!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
All I can remember from Space: 1999 was all the psychedelic colors. The crew would inevitably land on some kind of orange/green/yellow planet with some tall flowers, some kerfuffle would ensue, and guns would make people vanish, problem solved and end of the episode. Fun stuff.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
I have many of the Gerry Anderson DVD box sets and I think the best two series he did were Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (easily the best puppet show he did - way better than Thunderbirds) and Space: 1999 (OK, you have to ignore most of Season 2 of that, but it did have Catherine Schell as eye candy to compensate).
He didn't do too well with Space Precinct (Gary Ewing as a non-drunk cop? :-) ) and the CGI version of Captain Scarlet was awful (and even stole a whole episode from another sci-fi series!), but at least he tried to keep the UK sci-fi light alive when we've all had in recent years is the truly cringeful Primeval, a less than stellar return of Red Dwarf and the highly variable Doctor Who reboot.
Many of Gerry Anderson's TV shows were about the ascendency of the well prepared geek over the muscle bound jock. Joe 90, Captain Scarlett, Thunderbirds, Stingray and Fireball XL5 were hard favorites through most of my childhood. (Doctor Who of course being the other show that celebrated the thinking hero). While geek culture has become much more mainstream, I think that the Gerry Anderson brand of action never found a serious parallel after his shows went off the air. Ryker's (sic) version of Thunderbirds was sad - it was great to see the ships come to life with CGI; but none of the old "feel" of the shows carried over.
aka. Doppelgänger
Since no one has mentioned it yet. An interesting movie, with an EPIC crash scene!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger_(1969_film)
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
re-watching Gerry Anderson shows proves to me that actual explosions and fire are a LOT more entertaining than computer graphics.
Theres a feeling of realism in watching it; your brain KNOWS that this is a real object and this is real smoke etc. Modern CG just isn't the same.
Also imagine how much more fun it was to work on! Actually building models and then blowing them up.
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The acting in Stingray was way less wooden than that in Farscrape...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Spill any of his 'creative' juices on long suffering audiences again.
The best series of its kind IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)
It was awesome, particularly the Moon girls in their miniskirts (I was a young teen after all)
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I remember I was at my Officer Basic Course at Fort Sill in 1991. I was in my room one night watching cable tv and one of his shows came on, Captain Scarlet, maybe.
My first reaction was that it was incredibly juvenile and poor quality with the obvious puppet strings, etc. Of course, I had no idea who Anderson was and assumed that what I was watching was a current production. I did a little research and realized who he was and what I was seeing.
I realized just how amazing it is that so much creativity can be wrung out of a medium which has fairly severe inherent limitations, at least when compared to live actors or animation.
Thunderbirds parodies by Pete & Dud and D-Generation.
Hardly the only one. I watched as much as I could when it was on in my city, which was not very often. The local station tended to sell that slot to anyone who wanted to run a 30-min ad for something and only ran Terrahawks when they hadn't otherwise sold the time to someone.
To this day, the name Zelda brings to mind nothing to do with Nintendo but instead the scary homicidal alien puppet. It was at least a unique concept for a villain not to mention Ninestein's clones. Not many shows get away with killing off the hero.
Anyway, I suspect the show is not mentioned more because GA is supposed to have said he'd wished it had never been made and at least wanted to forget it existed. It was not one of his favorites for some reason.
For fun, wander around Youtube and check out the Terrahawks Kate Kestrel live action music videos and also the Terrahawks Japanese theme songs. The Japanese open song is rather nice in my opinion. Hated by Fandersons for not being canon but honestly I don't need my fun stamped and approved.
Sig for hire.
If only TVs had a way to change what you see, or be turned off.
Sad to hear Gerry. Anderson died.
Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet were my favourite shows as a young child. (Although I would say only "The Thunderbirds" had any kind of staying power now that I look back at them as an "adult").
When they came out, I never missed an episode of UFO and Space 1999 (although Space 1999 started out strong but didn't really have the chops to go the distance). If you get the chance, watch a few episodes of "UFO" - many of them are quite good and have aged reasonably well (despite being stuck in 1970).
My favourite quote about him came from Matt Stone and Trey Parker, after "Team America" said that Gerry Anderson must be insane, because of all the problems they had with the puppets in the movie.
A great legacy and I know many people who remember fondly growing up with his creations.
Thank you,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I've seen things on the interwebitudes that I wish I could burn from my memory, yet I would live with those memories longer than the ones I have of watching even the few moments of 'Thunderbirds' I have been tragically exposed to.
Wikipedia has a decent tribute page... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrahawks
I was only 12, that's almost fifty years. I remember the show, but not its name.
Free Martian Whores!
I saw it on the Sci-Fi channel when I was younger. The brain still occasionally gets "Livin' in the 21st Century" stuck on loop.
Or alternately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaIm3dcD4
(Human as Terrahawks character singing about Thunderbirds characters. Ow my head.)
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Sputnik, Tor, & Viktor did a very nice episode (#128) on Gerry Anderson. Gerry Anderson!
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