E.C. Tubb’s Space: 1999 Rogue Planet (TV tie-in novel)

E.C. Tubb’s Rogue Planet, published in 1977, was the ninth of the Space: 1999 TV tie-in novels. It is an original novel, not a novelisation of episodes from the TV series. It’s based on Year One of the TV series.

E.C. Tubb was a prolific British science fiction writer. He wrote several Space: 1999 novels.

It’s relaxation time for the crew of Moonbase Alpha. They’re enjoying an amateur performance of Hamlet, but when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears they see and hear something strange, something Shakespeare certainly did not write. It’s a warning that Moonbase Alpha is heading for danger. But every member of the audience saw and heard something different. And every member of the audience agrees that what they saw and heard was terrifying.

Was it some kind of mass delusion? Was it some mysterious message beamed from somewhere in space? Not long afterwards some kind of temporary collective madness afflicts the Alphans. It passes, but again it was terrifying and inexplicable.

Moonbase Alpha’s commander, John Koenig, wants answers. The base’s chief scientist Victor Bergman and chief medical officer Dr Helena Russell cannot provide answers, only speculation. Alpha’s instruments can detect nothing threatening.

Then the brain appears. It can’t be a brain of course, but it looks like one. An enormous brain the size of a planet. And Moonbase Alpha is trapped in a separate miniature universe. There appears to be no escape but some means of escape must be found. One crew member has already died of old age and he was only thirty-two. The same fate may await all of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha.

Space: 1999 was a great series (or at least Year One was great) but you do have to accept the outrageous premise of the series - the Moon being thrown out of orbit and hurtling through space at an absurd speed like a gigantic spaceship. You also have to accept the idea that in the almost unimaginable vastness and emptiness of space they keep encountering countless planets and alien spacecraft. But then the science fiction genre as a whole requires a huge suspension of disbelief. If you love science fiction you learn to accept some wacky science.

The novel captures the feel of the series extremely well. The principal characters - Commander Koenig, Dr Russell, Professor Bergman, chief Eagle pilot Alan Carter etc - behave the way they behave in the TV series. There’s the same mix of space adventure and reasonably cool science fiction concepts.

There’s a reasonable amount of emphasis on Koenig’s responsibilities as commander and the need to be strong and decisive while always bearing in mind that he’s dealing with people not machines. Similarly with Dr Russell there’s emphasis on the awesome responsibilities she has to shoulder alone.

Tubb’s prose is straightforward but pleasing enough.

It’s a very entertaining story with a few serious touches. The crew of Moonbase Alpha have to confront the imminent threats of death (death from accelerated ageing which is certainly a very frightening prospect) and madness. Death is ever-present in this story, in varying forms.

Space: 1999 was not a series that offered spectacular space battles. It offered action, but the action was more likely to be battles against strange unseen alien forces rather than hostile star fleets. This novel follows the same sort of formula. There are narrow escapes from mortal danger but the dangers in this case come from strange force fields and from being trapped in caverns and suchlike things.

This novel also offers us an alien life form that is genuinely alien.

Rogue Planet is a very decent science fiction novel. If you’re a fan of the TV series you’ll enjoy and even if you’ve never seen the series you’ll probably find it entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed one of Tubb’s other Space: 1999 novels, Alien Seed (which is excellent). I’ve also reviewed another Space: 1999 novel, John Rankine’s Android Planet (which is quite good).

Robert Miall's UFO-1 Flesh Hunters

UFO-1 Flesh Hunters was the first of two novelisations of Gerry Anderson’s 1970 sci-fi TV series UFO. Both were written by John Burke under the name Robert Miall. UFO-1 Flesh Hunters was published in 1970. This was a novelisation rather than an original novel and was based on the episodes Identified, Exposed, Close Up and Court Martial.

John Burke (1922-2011) wrote countless novelisations of movies and TV series in the 60s and 70s, including Moon Zero Two, based on Hammer’s extremely interesting movie of the same name. The Moon Zero Two novelisation is actually pretty good.

UFO was not just a fun alien invasion science fiction series - it also had a bit more psychological complexity than you might expect. A lot of the focus was on the personal price that had to be paid by people working for a top-secret organisation (called SHADO) set up to defend Earth from murderous attacks by UFOs. In particular there was a focus on the loneliness of command. The head of this organisation, Commander Straker, has to make frighteningly difficult decisions and he has to make those decisions alone. Even some of his subordinate commanders, such as Lieutenant Ellis (in charge of Moonbase), have to be prepared to sacrifice their personal lives if necessary. It was a surprisingly character-driven series.

The author spends the first third of the book giving us the setup - governments have known for years that alien invaders have reached Earth but they have to make sure that the public knows nothing about this, in order to prevent panic. Test pilot Paul Foster blunders across the truth, and he will face consequences.

While this part of the book necessarily involves a lot of info-dumps it’s hard to see how that cold have been avoided. Anybody who had seem the first few episodes of the series would have known all this stuff, but anybody who had started watching the series several episodes in, or anybody who hadn’t yet watched the series, was going to need to have the show’s fairly complicated premise explained.

Fans of the series would not have minded since one of the things they liked about UFO is that it wasn’t totally action-oriented.

The book also gives us an introduction to the most important characters from the series. Straker, the most interesting character of all, remains a bit of an enigma but that’s the type of man he is. He does not reveal his emotions. Not ever.

SHADO’s biggest frustration is that they have no idea why the aliens are attacking Earth. Then they get a lucky break. They recover an alien from a wrecked UFO. This answers some of their questions, and the answers are terrifying. And what they’ve learned just serves to raise more questions.

There’s a major security leak in SHADO, and there’s an ambitious plan by SHADO to discover the home planet of the aliens.

Burke shuffles the sequence of events around a little, with events from the second episode taking place before events from the opening episode. He has legitimate dramatic reasons for doing this however.

I generally enjoy TV tie-in novels but I have a strong preference for original novels based on a series rather than novelisations and this book is a good example of the potential problems with novelisations. It’s based on four episodes of the series and the novel is therefore very episodic with no strong narrative thread tying things together. Originally novels are often interesting because they offer a writer a chance to explore characters and situation in more depth and from slightly different perspectives. This book does not do this. We learn no more about the characters than we learn from watching the series. In fact, give the high standard of acting in the series and in particular given Ed Bishop’s subtle performance as Straker we actually learn a good deal less about the characters from the novel. The novel also feels incredibly rushed with no real dramatic tension or suspense.

While my experiences with original novels based on TV series has generally been quite positive I was rather disappointed by this book. The events described in the book seemed so much more interesting when watching them on the screen.

Unless you’re totally obsessive about collecting UFO memorabilia you’d be well advised to skip this book.

John Theydon’s Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (TV tie-in novel)

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons was the first of three TV tie-novels accompanying Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s TV series of the same name. Written by John William Jennison (1911-1980) under the name John Theydon the novel appeared in 1967.

If you’re thinking of reading this book I’m assuming you’re a fan of the TV series (which I reviewed here a few years ago).

Earth attacked and destroyed a Martian city after a series of misunderstandings (and driven to a large extent by panic). The Mysterons, the masters of the city, recreated it and are now undertaking a program of vengeance against the Earth. Earth’s only effective defence is an international security organisation known as Spectrum. The Mysterons have the power to destroy things (and people) and then recreate them. People recreated in this way are effectively slaves of the Mysterons. Spectrum does however have one ace up its sleeve. One of their operatives, Captain Scarlet, was Mysteronised but is no longer a slave of the Mysterons, and he is indestructible.

The novel concerns an attempt by the Mysterons to disrupt the world’s weather (a popular science fictional idea in the 60s that was also utilised in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).

The Mysterons make use of a bitter scientific rivalry between Professor Deitz (who believes the world’s weather can be controlled by satellites) and Professor Stahndahl (who believes he can control the planet’s weather by bouncing a beam off a newly discovered electro-magnetic layer surrounding the Earth).

The first target of the Mysterons is London which gets hit with a tropical storm of extraordinary severity. Captain Scarlet and Rhapsody Angel (one of Spectrum’s five beautiful girl fighter pilots known as the Angels) are on leave in London at the time and are lucky to survive.

The next target is Florida. The most savage hurricane in history is just three hours from the coast. The only thing that Colonel White commander of Spectrum) can think of to do is to order three of the Angels to nuke the hurricane!

Colonel White suspects that one of Professor Deitz’s for weather-control satellites has been destroyed and recreated by the Mysterons and is responsible for the weather chaos. That satellite has to be intercepted and destroyed but destroying something that has been Mysteronised is no easy task. There is a way the satellite could be destroyed but it will be risky.

Unfortunately for Spectrum the Mysterons’ plan is actually much more devious than just hijacking a satellite. Somehow Captain Scarlet will have to find the secret laboratory from which all the damage is being done. Captain Scarlet’s indestructibility will be put to the test during this adventure.

Theydon was obviously aiming to include as much as possible of the high-tech Spectrum equipment featured in the series. The Angel Interceptors, the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (kind of like high-speed wheeled super-tanks) and the Spectrum Passenger Jets all feature in this tale. He also clearly wanted to find ways to work into the story as many as possible of the show’s main characters - Captain Scarlet and his buddy Captain Blue, Colonel White, all five Angels and of course the sinister Mysteron agent (and former Spectrum officer) Captain Black. Captain Scarlet’s indestructibility naturally has to play an important part. Theydon wants to throw everything into the mix and he does so pretty successfully.

There’s non-stop action, plenty of narrow escapes and lots of things get blown up. And some of them get blown up by nuclear weapons! Rhapsody Angel is captured by the Mysterons and has to be saved.

The plotting is frenetic and reasonably effective.

This is a book aimed at younger readers so there’s no sex and the violence is not too graphic. There is (as in the TV series) some mild flirtation between Captain Scarlet and one of the Angels but it’s all very wholesome. The tone is very close to that of the series.

Overall it’s a surprisingly entertaining little adventure. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re a fan of the TV series. Recommended.

Space 1999: Android Planet (tie-in novel)

Gerry Anderson’s 1970s science fiction TV series Space: 1999 spawned quite a bit of merchandising. This included a whole series of novelisations, but more interestingly it also included five original novels. One of these original novels was John Rankine’s Android Planet which appeared in 1976.

The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, hurtling through the galaxy after a catastrophic nuclear explosion threw the Moon out of Earth orbit, need to find a new home. They cannot survive indefinitely on the Moon. They must find a planet on which they can settle. And now they think they may have found a suitable planet. It’s the kind of story that the series dealt with on numerous occasions.

The plan is to send one of their Eagle spacecraft on a reconnaissance mission to the planet’s surface. If everything checks out satisfactorily they will begin transferring all three hundred Moonbase Alpha personnel to their new permanent planetary home.

The problem is that this planet might be inhabited already. In fact it seems very likely that this is the case. It seems even more likely that the present inhabitants are not at all inclined to welcome new settlers. Their lack of good neighbourliness is demonstrated by two fairly serious attempts to wipe out Moonbase Alpha  and all its crew. Nonetheless Commander John Koenig decides to go ahead with the recon mission.

Given the book’s title you won’t be surprised to find that the planet is inhabited by androids. The androids are not the only inhabitants. The idea of robots becoming so intelligent that they no longer have any need for their creators is a well-worn science fiction trope but Rankine does add one twist. The robots and their creators (the Copreons) are both still around, they’re on hostile terms but neither seems able to destroy the other. The question for Commander Koenig is whether the Alphans can trust either the androids or their humanoid creators, and whether a planet that is in a permanent state of semi-warfare is really likely to be a suitable home.

The story combines several popular science fiction tropes. The most interesting aspect of the tale is that the people of Moonbase Alpha certainly did not intend to do any harm to the planet’s inhabitants, either the humans or the androids, but their arrival (and the temporary presence of the Moon’s gravitational field) has created chaos. It also sets up a fascinating dynamic with three civilisations - the Alphans, the Copreons and the androids - all of whom want something out of the others, all of whom feel threatened and all of whom have been perhaps not entirely honest.

It also makes use of one of the clever features of the Space: 1999 format - when Moonbase Alpha encounters a planet that might be a suitable permanent home they have only a few days to make a final decision, before the Moon goes hurtling past the planet. So there’s always a race against time element, and that time element plays an important part in this story.

The most important thing about any TV tie-in novel is that it has to be consistent with the feel of the original TV series and the main characters have to be recognisably the characters from the TV series. In this respect Rankine succeeds extremely well. Space: 1999 Year One was a successful mix of action/adventure elements and reasonably intelligent science fiction concepts (reasonably intelligent by television standards that is). And that’s the feel that Android Planet achieves fairly successfully.

As for the characters, John Koenig has the right mix of charisma, arrogance and serious-mindedness. He’s a man more respected than loved. That’s pretty much exactly the way the character comes across in the TV version as well. His relationship with Dr Helena is more overtly sexual than in the TV series. Rankine seems most interested in the relationship between Koenig and Dr Victor Bergstrom, the base’s resident expert in all matters scientific. Koenig is the man with the leadership ability; Bergstrom provides the brains.

Personally I think E. C. Tubb’s Alien Seed is a better Space: 1999 original novel, being both better written and a better story. Android Planet though is certainly not a complete washout. It’s entertaining enough. It’s perhaps a bit too obsessed with sex for my liking but this was the 70s and every single book published in that decade had to have gratuitous sexual content. At least there’s no actual graphic sex in Android Planet, just a slightly annoying and intrusive sexual subtext. Apart from that Rankine’s prose style is serviceable enough.

Android Planet should certainly be enjoyed by fans of the TV series. It’s a decent enough science fiction story. Recommended.

Space 1999: Alien Seed (novel)

Space: 1999 spawned a very extensive series of spin-off novels which, remarkably, have continued to appear well into the 21st century. Most of the 1970s novels were novelisations, usually combining three or four episodes of the TV series into a single narrative. There were however several original novels published in the 70s, including E.C. Tubb’s Alien Seed which came out in 1976.

Given that the two seasons of Space: 1999 were rather different in format and tone (with Year Two being almost universally regarded as very much inferior to the first season) it’s important to note that this is a Year One story.

The author assumes, doubtless correctly, that if you’re reading a Space: 1999 novel then it’s virtually a certainty that you’re familiar with the TV series and that you know the basic setup - a gigantic nuclear explosion has knocked the Moon out of Earth’s orbit and turned it into a huge spaceship hurtling uncontrolled through the galaxy. The crew of Moonbase Alpha, several hundred people, survived the blast and now they’re hoping to find a planet they can colonise.

It starts as a fairly typical Space: 1999 story. An unidentified object is heading towards the Moon. It’s on a collision course and the impact could destroy Moonbase Alpha. Commander John Koenig has to take prompt action to save Moonbase Alpha, and his scientific adviser Victor Bergman tries to persuade him to find a way to save the base without destroying the object. The object is rather curious. There are no signs of life and it seems to be basically just a very large rock but it looks odd enough to raise doubts as to whether it is a natural formation, and then there are the membranous wings.

Perhaps it would have been better to have destroyed the object. As the title of the book suggests the object is a seed pod but it contains more than seeds. What it contains is very frightening indeed.

This is a story of an encounter with something very alien indeed but there’s more to it than that. There’s also the telepathy angle. At the time that the object was first sighted Dr Helena Russell just happened to be carrying out an experiment on extra-sensory perception on a very promising young female subject. This turns out to have very significant ramifications.

The ESP angle might raise eyebrows but back in 1976 the idea of ESP as a reality did not seem as crazy as it doers today and fairly respectable scientists were still inclined to keep an open mind on the subject. ESP apparently is a subject in which the author of this novel has a certain interest and he manages to introduce it into his story without too much silliness.

In fact there’s really not a great deal of silliness at all in this novel. I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to describe it as hard science fiction but it’s certainly closer to hard SF than you expect from a TV tie-in novel. There’s at least some effort to keep things vaguely convincing. Of course it’s worth remarking that the reputation of the Space: 1999 TV series for silliness is largely due to the lamentable second season while the first season was reasonably serious, quite ambitious and often surprisingly intelligent.

The characters generally behave in ways that are consistent with the characterisations in the TV series. This is crucially important in a TV tie-in novel - if you fail to achieve this consistency then you end up with just a generic science fiction novel.

The setting is used skilfully, with constant reminders that the crew of Moonbase Alpha have no-one but themselves to rely upon and have to deal constantly with the psychological dangers of loneliness and despair. John Koenig is a man who can never forget even for a moment that he bears a heavy burden of responsibility - one mistake could mean the end of the line for Moonbase Alpha and everyone in it.

The relationship between Koenig and Victor Bergman is handled well also. Bergman is brilliant but he is sometimes blinded by his scientific ardour. Koenig clearly is the man who has what it takes to be a leader, even when that means taking difficult or unpopular decisions. He feels the burden of leadership but he accepts it. That burden is something that the other characters don’t always understand and than sometimes leads to tensions.

Tubb is not a dazzling literary stylist but he’s a competent writer and he knows how to structure a story and how to keep the pacing nicely taut.

Alien Seed is one of the more successful TV tie-in novels that I’ve read. It has a slightly more serious tone than the TV series but it still feels like a Space: 1999 story. If you’re a fan of the series you’ll enjoy this book. Even if you’re not a particular fan of Space: 1999 this is still a decent science fiction novel. Highly recommended.

Thunderbirds (1965-66)

It’s a bit of a challenge trying to find anything new to say about Thunderbirds. It’s one of the truly iconic 60s TV shows, has maintained a loyal cult following for half a century and has been endlessly written about. All I can do is offer a few personal impressions, plus I’m going to talk about a few episodes that I’ve watched recently that have some interesting aspects to them.

One of the secrets to the success of the Gerry Anderson series of the 60s was that both Gerry and Sylvia Anderson had major input into the formats. Gerry knew all the stuff that boys were going to like (gadgets and action) and Sylvia knew what girls would like (a beautiful glamorous female secret agent). They had all bases covered.

And with Thunderbirds they really went all out to make sure they had all those bases thoroughly covered. It truly was a remarkably clever idea. The exploits of a rescue organisation had obvious potential for proving action and suspense. But this was to be an ultra-secret rescue organisation, so immediately you have the potential for some spy series-type intrigue. Add the aforementioned lady secret agent and you have even more excitement plus some glamour. To make this ingenious formula work they needed scripts that would provide the right mix of science fiction, spy thriller and crime thriller elements (with occasional dashes of humour and romance) and that’s what the writers came up with.

There was also Gerry Anderson’s determination to make each new series look more impressive than the preceding one. Thunderbirds is definitely a major step forward from Stingray. It’s visually more ambitious and it has a much more lavish and at the same time more realistic look. The action sequences are bigger and better. The miniatures are better. The puppets have been improved.

Compared to Stingray Thunderbirds definitely has more of an epic big-budget feel, it’s more cinematic. The hour-long format also of course lends itself to a more expansive and complex approach to plotting.

Stingray could be very exciting but there were many episodes that had a very whimsical feel. Which is fine, since it was essentially a kids’ show. Thunderbirds still has moments of whimsicality but overall it has a more sophisticated more grown-up tone. The whimsicality is kept strictly within limits.

While it was the spectacular rescues that were the series’ main selling point the spy/crime/ international intrigue angles actually dominate quite a few of the stories. In Brink of Disaster Lady Penelope, while out driving in her Rolls-Royce (unusually she is driving herself and is alone) is menaced by a couple of hoods. They take a few shots at her car with a submachine gun. At this point she decides the two men are a problem that needs to be disposed. So she kills them, ruthlessly and efficiently and without fuss. There’s no moral problem here. She is clearly acting in self-defence. It is however quite clear that Lady Penelope accepts that her job as a secret agent will sometimes require her to kill people, and it is clear that she has absolutely no problem with this. It’s a slightly surprising attitude to find in a kids’ show. What’s even more noteworthy is that in this case the violence is fairly realistic and not cartoonish.

There’s a definite attempt to avoid giving Jeff Tracy and his sons too much of a bleeding heart vibe. Obviously they are dedicated to saving lives and to doing good but they’re hard-headed and realistic about it. It’s also interesting that a rescue organisation employs a secret agent (Lady Penelope) and that it’s taken for granted that her duties will from time to time involve killing people. Jeff Tracy clearly understands how the real world works and that an overly sentimental or naïve approach won’t get you very far. It’s a remarkably clear-sighted and realistic view to come across in a children’s television program.

Brink of Disaster is an interesting episode not just for its insights into Lady Penelope’s ruthlessness. A major challenge for the writers was that Thunderbirds has a large cast of regular characters. There are ten major characters and a couple of other recurring characters. They all need to be given something useful to do. So in this episode there are two interconnected plot strands, one of which gives Jeff Tracy, Brains and Tin-Tin the rare opportunity to be personally involved in a rescue while the other puts Lady Penelope and Parker at centre stage.

Attack of the Alligators! is another interesting one. While Thunderbirds is science fiction the science fictional elements are generally quite restrained. Most of the technology consists of what would have seemed like fairly conservative extrapolations on the technology of the mid-60s. Space stations, hypersonic aircraft like Thunderbird 1, high-speed monorails, supersonic airliners, advanced cargo ships requiring only a skeleton crew, all these things would have seemed very plausible indeed. Attack of the Alligators! is a rare example of a Thunderbirds episode that involves rather fanciful science fiction elements (alligators grown to several times their normal size by a new miracle drug). In fact this story has the feel of a 1950s monster movie.

We also make a surprising discovery in this episode. International Rescue’s hoverbikes are missile-armed! And Thunderbird 4 carries missiles as well.

Martian Invasion involves not an alien invasion but a movie about an alien invasion. An accident on the set leaves two actors trapped in a cave that is rapidly filling with water. But that’s only part of the story, the real story being that it is all part of a plan by the nefarious super-spy The Hood to steal International Rescue’s secrets. And International Rescue does not take kindly to any threats to its security. It turns out that Thunderbird 1 and Thunderbird 2 are also very well-armed and Scott and Virgil are quite willing to resort to extreme measures to keep the organisation’s secrets. The combination of a race against time to rescue the trapped actors with some remarkably well-filmed action scenes (the chase scene involving Thunderbird 1 is particularly impressive) makes this a very entertaining episode.

The Duchess Assignment is a crime thriller episode with a rescue thrown in at the end. This one could easily have been an episode of The Saint, with Lady Penelope trying to extricate an old friend from the clutches of crooked gamblers and trying to foil art thieves.

The Cham-Cham is a spy thriller, with Lady Penelope and Tin-Tin going undercover to investigate a possible link between a pop group and the mysterious loss of several military transport aircraft. This episode demonstrates the growing confidence of Anderson’s team of puppeteers - we see puppets playing musical instruments, skiing and dancing and doing so fairly convincingly. They even do stunts! So far as puppeteering is concerned this may be the most ambitious episode yet. And with a bit of a Bond movie feel to it (not surprising in 1966) it’s also great fun.

Operation Crash-Dive is a more conventional rescue-oriented episode. The loss of one of the highly advanced Fireflash supersonic jetliners was bad enough but now a second Fireflash has crashed, in almost the same location. International Rescue are on the scene but there seems that there is little they can do until Brains comes to a startling conclusion. The Fireflash may have crashed into the sea and it’s possible that the flight crew could be still alive, trapped deep beneath the sea.

International Rescue do a bit more than just carry out a rescue though. For the next Fireflash test flight they take over the whole process of investigating the cause of the air disasters. There's plenty of excitement to come in this story.

In Edge of Impact that villainous super-spy The Hood is sabotaging the test flights of the advanced new fighter the Red Arrow. There’s also the matter of two men trapped atop a television transmitting tower, and that’s due to The Hood as well. The rescue method is certainly different and it involves a bizarre gadget, so all in all a good episode.

Cry Wolf is an episode that threatens to get a bit too warm-hearted. A couple of boys in the Australian Outback are playing at being International Rescue but their radio message is treated as genuine by the real International Rescue and Scott sets off in Thunderbird 1 to rescue them. When he discovers it was all a game Scott decides to take them back to the secret base on Tracy Island, hoping that this will persuade them not to send out any more fake distress calls. But what happens when soon afterwards the boys really need rescuing?

Dennis Spooner throws in some spy thriller elements, with the boys’ father being involved in an ultra-secret government satellite tracking project and masterspy The Hood determined to steal the project’s secrets. After a slow start things pick up and there’s a double race against time as the climax. It gets a bit whimsical at times and it’s not a classic but it’s an OK episode.

Thunderbirds really is great entertainment. There’s the occasional dud episode but the good episodes (and there are plenty of good ones) are significantly better than anything Anderson had done before. Highly recommended.

Space: 1999, Year 2

Space: 1999 was both the most ambitious and most expensive of all Gerry Anderson’s science fiction TV series. The first season did pretty well and in normal circumstances a second season would have followed automatically. Unfortunately there were dark clouds on the horizon for the series. Lew Grade was losing interest in television and was all set to embark on his disastrous foray into feature films, a misadventure that would quickly swallow up all of ITC’s money and resources. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s marriage was falling apart. Barry Morse refused point-blank to even consider returning for a second season. And the first season had run into major budgetary problems.

The second season finally got the green light but there would be noticeable changes, and it’s those changes that tend to divide fans.

American Fred Freiberger was brought in as producer to replace Sylvia Anderson (her marriage to Gerry Anderson having come to an end by this point). Freiberger wanted a more action-oriented feel with more emphasis on humour and on the emotions of the character in place of what he felt was the excessively cosmic and philosophical preoccupations of the first season. His new approach was not welcomed by either the cast or the crew. Martin Landau was particularly unhappy with the scripts for Year 2.

The second season definitely saw a move towards more melodramatic plots. While some episodes are very entertaining in general the second season seems to have fewer genuinely interesting science fictional ideas than the first. 

To replace Barry Morse as the show’s resident science expert a new character was introduced, Maya, played by Catherine Schell. Maya is a shape-shifting alien, and her presence in the series pushed the series into fantasy territory and away from the at least vaguely plausible science fiction that had characterised all of Anderson’s earlier series. The necessity to make use of Maya’s shape-shifting abilities also weakens some of the stories. An alien with the ability to take the form of any living creature provided a temptation to writers to use her as a magical means of getting out of plot difficulties (a bit like the over-use of the dreaded sonic screwdriver in some season of Doctor Who).

It’s not that there’s anything actually wrong with Catherine Schell’s performance but her character just seems out of place. Barbara Bain was apparently not very pleased by the inclusion of another major female character, especially one played by an actress as glamorous as Catherine Schell. It has to be said that the episode which introduces Maya, The Metamorph, is pretty good (and it does feature a wonderful guest starring performance by the great Brian Blessed).

The departure of Sylvia Anderson also caused difficulties. Her contribution towards the success of the couple’s earlier series has often been underestimated and after the divorce Gerry Anderson seemed to lose some of his creative spark. He was great with ideas and he was very good on the business and organisational side but not so comfortable with people. Sylvia was great with people and could be counted on to smooth over any personnel problems that arose. That’s why they were a great team. They were equally essential to the success of their programs.

The absence of Sylvia Anderson in Year 2 may also have explained why some opportunities were missed. Maya was potentially a fascinating character - the last survivor of her race now living among beings who were friendly and welcoming but who were, to her, aliens. Star Trek had made the most of Spock’s alienness but at least Spock’s species still existed. Maya had nobody left. This could have led to all sorts of emotional dramas and turmoils and misunderstandings. Instead of which Maya is treated as just another member of the crew, who just happens to have super-powers. One can’t help suspecting that Sylvia Anderson would have seen the potential there and pushed the writers to exploit it.

There were changes in the look of the series in Year 2 as well. The huge and very impressive Command Centre set was replaced by a much smaller and much more claustrophobic set; in fact the sets in general were smaller and more cramped. Budgetary constraints were partly to blame as the first season had proved to be very expensive indeed. More claustrophobic sets are not necessarily a problem but in this case they were since so much of the appeal of the show derived from its lavish visuals and extremely high production values. Year 2 unfortunately does look rather cheaper.

The first episode, The Metamorph, introduces Maya and it features Brian Blessed and it’s actually a pretty strong start for the season. After that there are episodes with interesting ideas, like The Seance Spectre. And a few very entertaining episodes, like The Devil's Planet which is yet another variation on Richard Connell’s classic story The Most Dangerous Game but Michael Winder’s script adds some genuinely new and effective twists. 

The Immunity Syndrome is an episode that sums up the problems that afflict this second season. It starts with a very good idea. The crew of Moonbase Alpha find a planet that seems absolutely perfect as a new and permanent home for them. It seems to have everything they could possibly need. And then, for no apparent reason, the planet itself suddenly turns on them. This episode offers a reasonably effective blend of excitement and suspense. It’s all going so well and then we get to the ending which is uninspired and sentimental and generally disappointing.

The Dorcons also has potential. Aliens wanting to steal Maya’s brain is a silly idea but writer Johnny Byrne does add some more substantial stuff. There’s an ethical dilemma - one person’s life to be measured against the possibility of great harm coming to millions. And the sub-plot of the depraved Caligula-like heir to the throne plotting against the wise old emperor is handled with a certain amount of nuance - the kindly wise old emperor (a very restrained and dignified performance by Patrick Troughton) isn’t really either very wise or very kindly, at best he’s the lesser of two evils. Gerry Sundquist gives a deliciously over-ripe performance as the depraved heir. Ann Firbank is also good as the imperial functionary Varda trying to do her best in difficult circumstances. Varda is another complex character, ruthless but honourable.

There’s almost enough good in this episode to compensate for the silly central idea but as so often in season two the script, potentially very good, doesn’t quite come together and the ending is a bit contrived.

When you get stories like this, that could have been excellent television but don’t quite make it because the script needed a bit more work, you start to suspect that maybe the producer isn’t getting the best out of his writers. Given that not everyone was happy with the job Fred Freiberger was doing as producer it’s tempting to conclude that he really wasn’t the right man for the job.

With all its faults the second season of Space: 1999 is not a complete loss. It has impressive visuals and it has plenty of action. Unfortunately it’s nowhere near up to the standards of the first season and it has much more of a conventional Monster of the Week kind of feel. Lew Grade’s fatal obsession with making movies doomed the show and the second season would be the last.

Fireball XL5 (1962-3)

Gerry Anderson had made several puppet series in the late 1950s but it was his Supermarionation series, starting with Supercar in 1961, which brought him fame and success. Supercar was followed by Fireball XL5 which ran for 39 half-hour episodes from 1962 to 1963.

While the most notable thing about Gerry Anderson’s 1960s Supermarionation series was the extraordinarily rapid technical progress made in short a short period. Supercar back in 1961 was great fun but fairly crude. By 1967, with Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Anderson’s series had become technically rather sophisticated and the special effects were often quite impressive.

There was another feature of these series that is worth noting. It’s almost as if Anderson was following the same cohort of kids as they gradually grew a bit older. Supercar and Fireball XL5 which followed a year later were very much children’s series. Stingray in 1964 gave the impression of being aimed at slightly older kids. By the time we reach Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in 1967 we’re dealing with more what could be described as a young adult series rather a children’s series. The kids who watched Supercar six years earlier would now be a least approaching the young adult bracket. The much darker themes, the more realistic feel, the more life-like puppets, all these things make sense if we assume that all these series were watched by essentially the same group of kids.

The puppets in Fireball XL5 still have the exaggerated overtly puppet-like facial features that they had in Supercar. This would be toned down somewhat in Stingray and Thunderbirds. Opinions vary on the merits of the “big-headed” puppets used in all the series up to Thunderbirds compared to the naturally-proportioned puppets of the later Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. The earlier puppets do have a bit more personality.

Every Gerry Anderson series had to have a gimmick associated with the headquarters of whichever organisation was featured in the series. In Stingray Marineville can be made to disappear beneath the ground in the event of an attack, International Rescue’s headquarters in Thunderbirds is hidden on a remote island. In Fireball XL5 the main building of Space City rotates. I have no idea why it rotates but it adds the right futuristic touch.

Of course a space adventure series could have had used just an ordinary rocket ship of the type so familiar in 50s sci-fi movie. That would never satisfied Gerry Anderson - he insisted that the models used had to be clever and imaginative. The take-off of Fireball XL5 from its inclined launching track with a rocket sled to provide extra power still looks pretty cool. The little rocket scooters ridden by Steve and Venus are a fun touch as well and they were a neat way to solve one of the big problems with puppets - the difficulty of making them seem to walk convincingly.

Colonel Steve Zodiac is a typical Gerry Anderson square-jawed hero with an American accent (he was voiced by a Canadian actor). The crew of Fireball XL5 also includes the glamorous Frenchwoman Dr Venus (a doctor of space medicine, and voiced by Sylvia Anderson), Professor Matthew Matic (your basic absent-minded genius professor type) and Robert the Robot (voiced by Gerry Anderson, his only acting credit). 

One of the fun things about shows like this is spotting the outlandish scientific errors. In Fireball XL5’s case the most obvious is that the characters can leave their spaceships and zip around in the vacuum of space without space-suits (although they do take oxygen tablets). Equally amusing is the idea (illustrated in Spy in Space) that during weightlessness you rise straight up to the roof of the spaceship cabin and you can’t get down again. Of course no-one would think of putting hand-holds inside a spaceship for such eventualities.

On the other hand the idea that the nose-cone of Fireball XL5 (Fireball Junior) can be detached to make landings on other planets while the rest of the ship remains in orbit is an interesting anticipation of the Apollo program.

The tone of the series varies from moderately serious to totally light-hearted. The lighter episodes are generally OK if you keep in mind that this is after all a kids’ show. Steve Zodiac has to deal with everything from spies to pirates to gangsters to killer plants to beautiful but deadly princesses. 

In Spy in Space a bungling master spy is trying to steal FireballXL5. 

Space Pirates is an enjoyable little romp, with a couple of pirates straight out of Treasure Island, complete with eye-patches, cutlasses and classic pirate talk.

In Space Pen daring thieves make their escape from Space City with top-secret material and they have even burgled Steve Zodiac’s own quarters. Fireball XL5’s pursuit of the thieves leads them to a prison planet where Steve, Venus and Professor Matic pose as gangsters. This is a fine episode.

In Plant Man From Space the Earth is menaced by monstrous plants from another planet. Steve and his crew will have to go to that planet to find a hormone that will prevent these plants from strangling the Earth. In this episode we see Fireball XL5’s predecessor, the Fireball XL1.

In Prisoner on the Lost Planet Fireball responds to a distress signal from uncharted space. It seems that a beautiful Amazon princess, marooned alone on a distant planet, needs to be rescued. Venus soon starts to suspect that Steve Zodiac will have to be rescued from the clutches of the Amazon princess! A fun episode.

1875 is an amusing little time travel story, with Steve Zodiac finding himself sheriff of a one-horse town in the Wild West, while Venus and Commander Zero are daring bank robbers.

These are all mainly comic episodes but there are some slightly more serious stories. 

The Doomed Planet concerns a planet that is about to be destroyed by impact with another planet. Luckily both planets are uninhabited. Or are they? There’s also a hint of romance in this story. There are some interesting camera angles too, not easy to achieve in a puppet series. And the planet surface is rather atmospheric. There’s an audio commentary to this episode, by voice actor David Graham who worked on quite a few of the Gerry Anderson series.

XL5 to H20 is a particularly good episode. It has a well thought-out and fairly exciting storyline, there’s a hint of real danger and we learn something new about Fireball Junior’s capabilities - it can act as a submarine. Steve Zodiac and his crew are on a mission of mercy to rescue the last two survivors of an entire civilisation but they find themselves in danger from a rather nasty alien.

The Last of the Zanadus tells the story of the sole survivor of a civilisation, and his plans for revenge on those who destroyed his people.

In The Sun Temple a missile from Earth aimed at an asteroid belt is mistaken by two crazed priests on the planet Rejusca for an insult to their sun god. Only a human sacrifice can atone for this insult! A reasonably entertaining episode.

In Mystery of the TA2 the crew of Fireball XL5 find the wreckage of a Space Patrol ship that disappeared forty-eight years earlier. The pilot apparently tried to reach a nearby ice planet - could he have survived in such an inhospitable world? Could he have survived there for half a century?

The Triads is a promising story in which Steve Zodiac and his crew are marooned on a planet where everything is three times bigger than on Earth. Unfortunately there’s just not quite enough plot to take advantage of the setup.

Special mention should be made of the delightfully sappy but oddly charming closing theme song, sung by Don Spencer.

Gerry Anderson wanted very much for each of his series to be superior to the one that preceded it and he communicated that determination to the entire production team. The most dramatic leap forward was probably that between Fireball XL5 and Stingray. Stingray wasn’t just technically more polished it was also slightly more sophisticated in its storytelling techniques. Everyone involved intended that Stingray would be a better series than Fireball XL5 and it is. But Fireball XL5 still has a certain charm. Recommended, and if you're a serious fan of Gerry Anderson's TV work you'll certainly want to see it.

Joe 90 (1968)

Joe 90 was the last of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s science fiction TV series to be filmed entirely using puppets. His next series, The Secret Service, used a mix of puppets and live action. Joe 90 originally aired in Britain in late 1968 and early 1969 and was syndicated in the US in 1969.

Joe 90 represented something of a departure from the earlier Anderson Supermarionation series, being a blend of science fiction and spy thriller concepts.

The series did not do quite as well as earlier series. There are several possible reasons for this. Ironically the sheer technical sophistication of the series may have counted against it. The previous Anderson series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, had introduced the new-style puppets with realistic human proportions. The puppets were now extraordinarily life-like but they lacked the character and the charm of the older-style puppets used in series like Thunderbirds. This had not been a huge problem in Captain Scarlet with its very dark and brooding tone but it does take some of the fun away in Joe 90.

Joe 90 also suffers from having one of the worst introductory episodes in history. While it does the job of introducing the characters and explaining the background it makes use of a certain plot technique that is just about certain to have most viewers looking for a housebrick to hurl through the TV screen. It’s also the kind of thing that is likely to make viewers suspect that it might turn up again in later episodes. And, unfortunately, it does turn up again, in the very poor episode Three’s a Crowd.

This is a pity because in fact the series as a whole is not all that bad, although it is very uneven.

The central premise is clever, although it has to be said that it's also slightly disturbing. Professor Ian McClaine has invented a machine called BIGRAT which can record a person’s brain patterns and then implant those brain patterns into someone else’s brain. BIGRAT can give any person all the skills and knowledge of any other person. Not surprisingly the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is very interested in this invention. Professor Ian McClaine demonstrates the technique on his nine-year-old son Joe.

WIN super spymaster Sam Loover then comes up with a daring plan. Young Joe can be turned into a truly formidable secret agent. He can be given the skills and knowledge most suited for any mission and he will have the perfect cover - no-one is going to suspect a nine-year-old boy of being a secret agent!

Of course you’d have to wonder whether anyone would agree to have his nine-year-old son sent on incredibly dangerous undercover spy missions but Professor MacClaine rather surprisingly thinks it’s all a splendid idea. Joe McClaine becomes Joe 90, WIN’s Most Special Agent.

Another problem with this series is Professor MacClaine’s jet car. The futuristic aircraft and vehicles in the earlier Gerry Anderson series had always managed to look not just futuristic but sleek, sexy and at least vaguely plausible. And never silly. The jet car in Joe 90 by contrast does look a bit silly and a bit dorky. Gerry Anderson was very unhappy with the design, and rightly so.

By the time Joe 90 entered production Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s team had become extraordinarily technically proficient. The puppets really do look quite life-like. The models of aircraft and vehicles had always looked good but the production team were now able to make them move in a fairly convincing manner. Aircraft really do look like they’re flying. And of course the explosions, which had always been impressive, were now very impressive indeed.

Being essentially a spy thriller series with some science fiction trappings Joe 90 obviously has a different feel compared to Anderson’s earlier series. That’s a good thing in some ways although I do get the impression the writers were less comfortable in the spy genre. Finding story-lines in which a nine-year-old boy (even with expert knowledge) could plausibly play the leading role was a challenge and some of the stories have an edge of silliness. This silliness had been an occasional feature of the very early Anderson series that had largely disappeared by the time he did Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet (in which the standard of writing was generally quite high). To my way of thinking the Joe 90 episodes penned by Shane Rimmer (such as Splashdown, Relative Danger and Big Fish) are more action-oriented and closer in feel to the great Anderson series of the past.

Tony Barwick contributed the dreadful Three’s a Crowd but he also wrote Hi-Jacked (which  is a fun gangster tale) and International Concerto (which includes a clever use of Joe’s abilities). The Unorthodox Shepherd (another Barwick episode) experiments with the use of actual location shooting mixed with the miniatures work, a feature that would be taken much further in the next Anderson series, The Secret Service.

The idea of doing something a bit lighter after the very dark Captain Scarlet was not altogether bad but on the whole Joe 90 was a backward step. Each previous Gerry Anderson series had been just a touch more grown-up than the previous one, which made sense since the kids who’d started out watching Supercar back in 1961 were now that much older. Having a nine-year-old boy as the central character made Joe 90 seem more kiddie-oriented, perhaps just a little too much so. The idea of doing a spy series rather than a straightforward sci-fi series was also by no means bad but it doesn’t quite come off. 

Joe 90 has its moments but after Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet it’s just a little disappointing. If you’re a Gerry Anderson completist you’ll want it, otherwise rent a few episodes before risking a purchase.

UFO (1969)

All of Gerry Anderson’s 1960s puppet science fiction series were great fun and were notable for a level of style and visual sophistication that was quite unexpected in what were after all puppet series aimed mainly at children. The odd man out among these shows was Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. For a puppet series it was extraordinarily bleak and downbeat. It was a superb series that still holds up incredibly well today. In fact it was so bleak and downbeat that in retrospect it should have been done as a live action series aimed at an adult audience, which was of course exactly what Gerry Anderson had wanted to do right from the beginning. In 1969 Anderson finally got to do UFO, a science fiction series with live actors aimed at an adult audience, and it’s perhaps not surprising that UFO is very similar thematically to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

In both cases Earth faces a menace that threatens its very survival and the menace is all the more terrifying in that the danger comes from an unknown enemy whose motivations are obscure. And in both cases there is no way of striking back at the enemy. All humanity can do is try to defend itself and success seems very uncertain indeed.

Stylistically UFO owes a lot to Gerry Anderson’s excellent and very underrated 1969 science fiction feature film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (also known as Doppelgänger).

UFO kicks off with the episode Identified which gives us the backstory we need to understand the series. The episode begins with a kind of prologue set in 1969. There’s been a series of incidents involving UFOs going back for quite a few years and various governments, particularly the US and British governments, have now decided that action needs to be taken. It is no longer possible to ignore the evidence. A high-level meeting is to take place between the British Prime Minister and a senior American general. The evidence is contained in a file in the keeping of an American officer, Colonel Straker (Ed Bishop). There is another UFO attack which Straker narrowly survives. 

We then jump forward to 1980. Straker is now in command of an international military organisation, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation). And SHADO may be on the verge of achieving one of its chief goals - the capture of an alien, still alive. The episode fills in the backstory neatly and economically, it includes some action, gives us a glimpse of some of SHADO’s high-tech weaponry, and most importantly it establishes the tone of the series - dark and brooding, intelligent and complex, with an emphasis on the human cost of the struggle. Anderson insisted, in the face of considerable misgivings on the part of ITC, on ending the first episode on a very downbeat note. It was a courageous move but it works. 

It also had the advantage of making it clear that UFO was not going to be a kids’ adventure series. It was going to be grown-up science fiction dealing with serious and sometimes tragic themes and it was going to be an intriguing mix of glamour and grittiness. In fact the mood of the series is almost identical to that of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons but with the advantages of an hour-long format allowing greater story complexity and character development.

UFO would turn out to be bleak and uncompromising at times but it never succumbs to the temptation of fashionable cynicism or nihilism. SHADO’s struggle is a difficult one, there will be defeats and even when victories are won the price is sometimes high but it is an absolutely necessary war and SHADO’s personnel are motivated and determined. 

Straker himself is very much aware of the costs but he is unshakeable in his resolve. In fact at times he becomes (despite being an American) a rather Churchillian figure. 

If there’s one theme that dominates this series it’s the responsibility, and the loneliness, of command. There are times when Straker has to make decisions that are necessary but that can cost people their lives. He has to balance individual lives against the greater good. He is also keenly aware that an incorrect decision can cause valuable opportunities to go to waste and these opportunities may not recur. He has to make the right decision. Straker is not the sort of man to shirk his responsibilities. He enjoys the challenge of command but there is a personal cost, sometimes a very high one. A private life is a luxury he cannot afford. Throughout the series the issue of command is stressed and it’s dealt with in an intelligent and complex manner.

Computer Affair is an episode that is very typical of this series’ approach. Gerry Anderson was always keen to have female characters in responsible positions and one of the most important commands in SHADO is held by a woman, Lt. Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), commander of Moonbase. At the same time this episode is prepared to deal directly with the potential problems of having men and women fighting side by side - emotional entanglements are inevitable and can cause serious difficulties and can cost lives. The episode deals with these issues intelligently and unflinchingly. 

Flight Path is another fine episode focusing on the human costs of the struggle against the alien invaders and on the conflicts between duty, loyalty and emotion.

The Square Triangle demonstrates the moral difficulties that can confront a secret organisation. A crime may have been committed but any investigation of the crime could threaten SHADO’s security.

The emphasis is always on the human dimension. The action scenes are well-executed but they’re used to advance the story and to make a point. If a particular story doesn’t require action scenes then they’re kept to a minimum. The production team was confident enough in the ability of the writers (and the actors) to engage the viewer’s attention without non-stop action. Despite its very strong character-driven focus the series is never in danger of becoming dull. The characters are sufficiently real to make us care about them and the situations they find themselves in are sufficiently interesting to keep us involved.

There’s also a heavy reliance on suspense rather than continual action.

Ed Bishop’s performance as Straker is extraordinary. Straker is not an obviously sympathetic character but we grow to respect him and Bishop is able to give just a touch of wry humour to humanise him. The acting in general is exceptionally good, with the actors appreciating the opportunity to do a science fiction series and still be able to do some real acting.

Other major characters, such as Straker’s second-in-command Colonel Alec Freeman (George Sewell), Colonel Paul Foster (Michael Billington) and Moonbase commander Lt Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), are also more complex than was usual in sci-fi series. The relationship Straker and Colonel Freeman is particularly interesting - they’re friends and they have great respect for each other’s abilities but their approaches and their philosophies are very different, leading to a certain amount of tension. Straker is able to subordinate everything to the number one priority, combating the aliens. Freeman struggles with this concept. He knows Straker is right but he still has difficulty reconciling some of the decisions that have to be taken with his own moral code.

Unfortunately (according to Sylvia Anderson) George Sewell was deemed to be not sexy enough for US audiences and was replaced by Wanda Ventham, playing Colonel Virginia Lake. Ventham is quite a good actress but this was definitely a bad move, removing one of the series’ more interesting characters.

UFO is about a war and victory involves paying a price. It involves moral compromises. Very few science fiction TV series, before or since, have been prepared to confront such subject matter as boldly and as uncompromisingly as UFO. It’s not only by far the best of all Anderson’s series, it’s one of the very best science fiction series ever made. Superb television.

Stingray (1964)

The last thing Gerry Anderson wanted to do was to work with puppets. However, having set up his own production company (AP Films), he was facing financial ruin. His company had no work at all until a woman approached him and commissioned him to make a series called The Adventures of Twizzle. To Anderson’s shock and dismay this series was to a children’s puppet series. He was in no position to refuse the offer but the experience confirmed his intense dislike of puppet series. His misery was complete when his company was commissioned to make another series - yet another puppet series.

Anderson’s distaste for puppets was in fact to be the driving force behind the immense success of his puppet series. He hated puppet series because they were crude and looked absurdly and embarrassingly unrealistic. His solution was to make a puppet series that would not suffer from these egregious faults. Puppet series made up to that time had been so awful that he was sure he could do better. The first puppet series originated by APF would be a western adventure called Four Feather Falls. It was a success but the experience convinced Anderson that he could do even better. Since the biggest problem was in trying to get the puppets to walk he would create a series in which the puppets would not have to walk - they would go everywhere in a high-tech futuristic super car. Thus was Supercar born. And Gerry Anderson, who had had as little interest in science fiction as in puppets, found himself a very successful maker of science fiction puppet TV shows.

The enormous potential of science fiction and its obvious advantages for a puppet series soon kindled his enthusiasm. Supercar was a hit but it was still a little crude. Fireball XL-5 would be much more ambitious and much more polished technically.

By 1964 Anderson could rely on the enthusiastic backing of ITC chief Lew Grade and he was able to be even more ambitious. Colour television in Britain was still some years off but it was obviously the future in the US. If you wanted to sell a series to the US it was obvious to Anderson that it would have to be in colour. This would be much more expensive but Lew Grade could see Anderson’s point and this next series would be in colour. The series was Stingray and it would turn Gerry Anderson into a pop culture phenomenon.

If there was one thing Gerry Anderson hated it was the idea of repeating himself. He’d already done flying cars and spaceships so he needed to do something different. The adventures of the crew of a high-tech submarine seemed like the perfect solution.

Stingray would also introduce a recurring motif in Anderson’s TV series - the headquarters that was either ingeniously hidden or that could be made to vanish. Marineville was a city that could disappear beneath the Earth when under attack. A major innovation with this series was the use of multiple heads for each puppet, each head having a slightly different expression.

The Anderson hero was already well-established - handsome, square-jawed but sensitive and with a sense of humour. Stingray’s Troy Tempest was a logical development of Supercar’s Mike Mercury and Fireball XL-5’s Steve Zodiac. With Fireball XL-5 Anderson, no doubt at the prompting of his wife and collaborator Sylvia, had introduced another innovation, giving his spaceship a beautiful female crew member. Stingray would go one better, with not just one but two leading female characters. This would allow for the introduction of more dramatic tension and even the possibility of a romantic triangle. Sylvia’s instinct proved to be correct - not only did leading female characters give the series more appeal to female viewers it also made the characters far more human and realistic, with genuine human emotions. For a children’s TV adventure series this was a fairly revolutionary idea, and a very successful one.

In the 1960s British television makers became obsessed with the idea of making programs with a transatlantic feel. With the United States being the world’s largest television market it seemed like a sensible strategy. So second-string American stars, or American stars whose careers were fading, were imported to play leading roles in British TV series. Gerry Anderson felt that this was rather silly - why would you for instance have an American cop in a British TV series? Anderson accepted the need to appeal to the US market but his strategy was to go all the way - to make the whole series seem American. Whether this really had the desired effect or not is an open question - to many people Thunderbirds seems like the quintessence of British pop culture. But there’s no questioning Anderson’s ability to capture the imagination of American audiences (as well as audiences everywhere else). 

If Gerry Anderson had a genius, it was a genius for never being satisfied. He always felt that things could be done better, that the look of his programs could be improved. And he communicated this sense of dissatisfaction to the people who worked for him so that they were always trying to find ways to make the shows look more realistic and more exciting.

A good example of the imaginative and innovative approach taken by Anderson’s team was their solution to the problem of filming the submarine underwater. Anderson was initially intending to film the sub in a tank of water but a better way was found. A very thin tank filmed with small fish was placed in the foreground with Stingray suspended on wires behind, rather than in, the tank.

The episodes vary quite widely, with some being very whimsical and clearly aimed at the children’s audience while others deal with more serious science fictional themes and even with interesting interpersonal conflicts (the episode The Man from the Navy being a good example with inter-service jealousies and rivalries and with Troy Tempest having to make a very tough decision).

The gradual move towards more grown-up themes in Anderson’s series would culminate in the astonishingly dark Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in 1967.

Stingray stands up pretty well. The miniatures work is excellent and the series is consistently entertaining.