Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed Previously unseen footage from the classic British TV show Thunderbirds has been found in a garden shed and restored – where possible – for viewing next year. The family of a recently deceased former editor of the show found a collection of 22 rusty and cracked film cans in their Buckinghamshire shed. The film inside is …
I'd say The Flintstones was a direct copy of The Honeymooners1 and apparently, at least according to an episode of the American TV show Pawn Stars2, so did Gleason. He wanted to sue for copyright infringement but was dissuaded because he didn't want to to be the guy who killed Fred Flintstone.
Fred sounds quite a bit like Gleason's Raph Kramden and Barney sounds a lot like Ed Norton (played by the talented Art Carney).
____________________
1 Without the implied domestic violence of a clenched fist and the catchphrase "To the moon, Alice. To the moon" which has lost a bit of its "comedic" value over the years.
2 "Basic cable" guilty pleasure.
This post has been deleted by its author
Captain Scarlett and Thunderbirds are connected. I believe the original Thunderbirds movie was meant to serve as a bridge (both it and the CS pilot featuring a Zero-X mission to Mars). And it was of course made after Thunderbirds ended. There's a connection to Stingray as well - Gordon Tracy trained at WASP (the same group in Stingray).
Yes, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett, and StingRay are all set in the same "Andersonverse", before "-verse" was a thing.
I was an avid reader of the "official" annuals, and some of the stories featured cross-overs, or back-stories that involved charcaters in one series having a history in the other.
In the timeline, Capt Scarlett occurs after Thunderbirds; Scarlett and Black were on a Zero-X Mars mission following the one featured in Thunderbirds, which led to Black's death and subsequent reanimation as a Martian "puppet".
Ah awesome nostaligic childhood memories of Saturday morninsg StingRay, and having to go to Italian lessons and missing it!. I was serving in Brompton Bararcks when Thunderbirds was re-run in 1992 or 93, and the excitement of *everyone* over the age of 25! That Friday afternoon the entire RSME had an unofficial early knock-off so the instructors could get home, get comfy... and relive their childhood!
WHo else recalls the Blue Peter Tracy Island, made from "a squeezy bottle and some paper mashey[sic]'
"before "-verse" was a thing."
Hardly. The ancient Greek Atomists explored the concept. More recently, see The International Journal of Ethics, October 1895, page 10: ""Truly all we know of good and beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less so all we know of evil. Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a multiverse, as one might call it, and not a universe." —William James, 1895 (You can thank my Big Dic[0] for offering up this avenue to explore ... )
[0] OED, second dead tree edition.
Radio Free Skaro has an interview with Tim Burrows (Missing Episodes Podcast) on the subject. Not just about Doctor Who episodes but covering the efforts of Film is Fabulous https://filmisfabulous.org.uk/ which include cataloguing the estates of deceased collectors.
https://radiofreeskaro.com/2024/07/07/radio-free-skaro-968-we-are-going-to-be-too-late-again/
Having discovered some interesting bits and bobs while clearing out elderly relatives' houses after their deaths, I would broaden that. Everyone's a collector, to a greater or lesser extent, and sometimes the things they have nestled away in the back of their sock drawers are very interesting indeed (and sometimes of interest to many others)
If you wanted to know where a LOT of 'missing' or 'lost' DR Who episodes were... Bob Monkhouse was the person who likely had them. He had a massive collection of them on their original media, and a chip on his shoulder when it came to the BBC's habit of reusing that media (the reason for a lot of lost episodes was the BBC reused the magnetic media they were stored on, wiping the episodes in the process - hence they became 'lost').
Had a lovely chat with him during a chance encounter: He'd refused to 'lend' (give) the BBC the missing episodes back due to their 'criminal vandalism' of destroying their copies (he bought those he had off the BBC - having some connections within the corporation). However, if you had some that he was missing... (unfortunately I didn't. Strange that, I know but...)
Not sure if his estate allowed the BBC access to those copies after Mr Monkhouse died, but it was around then that a lot of previously missing episodes became available on DVD...
And yes: That Bob Monkhouse (if you know the name). Was a really nice guy.
I think that at the time, archiving video tape (it would likely have been 2" Quad) simply didn't happen due to the amazing cost of video tape. It got shown then bulk erased for the next programme recording.
Equally, I might expect that black and white film (either original film, or film of a live show, taken from a monitor) could well have been scrapped for the silver recovery.
But there is absolutely no reason for not keeping colour film - it's just dyes, no silver - except for the cost of storage. And at the time, the BBC didn't really have an archiving mentality.
IIRC a lot of the black and white footage was wiped as part of union/contract negotiation
The broadcasters paid more for colour and the actors/creators/etc wanted to be paid the same increased rates for their old B&W stuff.
The Beeb argued that B&W was now worthless and so there should be little or no fee for rebroadcast - to demonstrate their point they wiped/destroyed a lot of old content.
There was also an increasing fee with each subsequent re-broadcast, so showing older content was increasingly expensive. And all this was before any idea you could sell content directly to consumers
I was told by someone in the know that the erased tapes weren't re-used for broadcast material. The finicky producers weren't happy with the quality of the result, as the erasure process left the tape in a visibly poorer state than a virgin out-of-the-wrapper reel. So all those DrWho episodes were erased for nothing.
I think the totally malicious prosecution of Bob Monkhouse in 1978 for "conspiracy to defraud film companies of royalties" because he once lent Terry Wogans son a movie did not help. The police seized a large chunk of his archive and never gave it all back. Even though the case was quickly dismissed and Monkhouse got costs.
Monkhouse did present several TV series based on his personal archives. But this was before the prosecution from what I remember.
If you ever have a chance to see An Audience With Bob Monkhouse it is a master class in how to do standup. As was his very last broadcast - The Last Stand. He and Ken Dodd were in a league of their own.
The story with the BBC tape wipes was pretty simple. Either it was in the contact with the actors / directors etc. Fixed broadcast conditions then wiped. Which is why there was never a DVD release of series like the 1970 dramatization of JP Satre's "The Roads to Freedom" novels. The tapes were never wiped but it cannot be sold to the public for legal reasons. i.p ownership rights and the totally dysfunctional Satre estate. There are copies kicking around. It really is as good as people remembered.
As for the reuse of the 2 inch tapes at least in the 1960's and 1970's those two inch tapes were really really expensive. In the early 1970's one 2 inch reel cost about as much as a brand new Austin Mini. The cheap 850 cc engine one not the 1275cc fancy one. But one tape was the price of a new small car. And VT at the time had racks of those tapes. The mass wiping in the mid to late 1980's, especially of children's programmes, was just the usual total idiot BBC middle management story. The same thing also happened in some of the ITV franchises at the time.
(the reason for a lot of lost episodes was the BBC reused the magnetic media they were stored on, wiping the episodes in the process - hence they became 'lost').
As I recall, the BBC had to acquire footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing from NASA because they had reused the tape with their original footage and commentary in order to record a Milk Cup semi final replay.
I came to appreciate Bob Monkhouse a lot more when I saw some documentaries about his life and more recordings of his work. Fascinating chap. I think he might have been the first scientific comedian who really tried to analyse and pin down what 'funny' was. Down to word use. joke structure and timings etc.
I think Jimmy Carr has done something similar and you can seen a lot of influence from Monkhouse in Jimmy Carr's style.
I'm not sure if they ever broadcast the 25 minute versions. By my understanding they'd filmed or partially filmed around 9 episodes in "25 minute" format towards the end of 1964 before Lew Grade saw a screening of the pilot and demanded they extend them to 50 minutes. Given that it wasn't originally broadcast until September 1965, so I expect they extended the originally filmed episodes prior to broadcast, meaning the original 25 minute versions never saw the light of day.
I totally agree that the short versions were never broadcast. But extending the episodes ended up with a lot of repeated footage, especially the launch sequences.
I remember almost looking forward to seeing the minor faux pas that there were whoch proved that they reused the same footage, like the slight wobble as Thunderbird 1 was launched, the way that the trees bounced when Thunderbird 2 taxied out and the slight drop as it left the launch ramp, and the way Thunderbird 3 twisted a little when it went through the round house. I especially watched for when the Mole left the pod, and the back end hit the top of the pod door.
I was not so keen when they tried to show Thunderbird 3 landing, and they just reversed the footage. Smoke just shouldn't return to the engines!
Although it was done to a degree in Stingray, the extended preview of the action sequences in the show was also added to help pad them out 50 minutes, but they became a feature that added to the whole show in a pleasing way.
But if you want to see the extent of 'time wasting' that they did, binge watch several episodes of Fireball XL5, and just see the launch sequence at the start of every episode that must have filled 3-4 minutes of every 24 minute episode. It begins to get very tedious after a few episodes. But they were never intended to be binge-watched in the way they can be now.
The technical expertise and skill of the model making and the puppetry was well ahead of it's time, and I think a lot of other programme makers should have learned more about how to do special effects from the small team that created such vibrant stories that still stand up as watchable today.
And if anyone is interested in new nostalgia, Big Finish don't just do Dr Who audio plays. They also have Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray, Space 1999, UFO, Star Cops and Blakes 7 amongst many other old favourites. It can get quite expensive though :-)
Yes, the story I heard was that it was Sylvia's hand.
"Laughed so hard". You would have been laughing even more if it had been a puppet hand doing the reaching: it was unable to grasp an object.
It worked for me as a nipper. It was "slow", but better than all the ADHD-inducing animation we get nowadays.YMMV.
That comment was about the American live action Thunderbirds film, where in a complete reverse of the TV series, they showed a puppet hand moving a control lever of (was it) Thunderbird 1(?)
I watched it with my kids, who got into the series in a big way in the 1990's re-runs (yes, the Blue Peter Tracy Island and all), and we went to see this film in the cinema when it came out, and I laughed out loud actually in the cinema at this, and I wasn't the only one.
As I understand it, Gerry was absolutely horrified about the film, but had signed his creative rights to Thunderbirds to Lew Grade and ITC in order to fund the higher costs of production of the shows in colour, so he could do nothing about it, but did not fall into the same situation for Captain Scarlet or later.
The CG Captain Scarlet, which he maintained the rights to, was originally branded as "Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet", and because of the quality of that, in his last years, he did have some input to the CG Thunderbirds series, so that was not a total disaster, but did introduce some things that I didn't personally like.
It failed because of a common mistake made when creating a series reboot, where the producers simultaneously alienate the original audience who form a polite agreement to never ever mention the new film while also failing to accept a newer audience in any great numbers.
Both of the new people liking the new film them express this to fans of the original, who are outraged at the temerity of violating the polite agreement to never mention it, and have the newcomers ritually hung drawn and quartered to stand as an example, which tends to cripple any marketing via social media or word of mouth.
They tried to make it a kids film as well with the focus on Alan, Tin-Tin and Brains's son who was a new character, to the exclusion of the other 4 brothers and the real stars, the vehicles.
Have to say though that IMO Sophia Myles (Lady Penelope) and Ron Cook (Parker) did a decent job of capturing the spirit of the originals, maybe that was just because the rest was so bad in comparison.
As I think Lady Penelope might have said.
I suspect Sylvia Anderson's hand could be seen in the fashions of her Ladyship's wardrobe and the other marionettes as well as in UFO (and Space: 1999?) Curious how the actual fashions of the future* were somewhat bland in comparision with those envisaged in these productions.
* as indeed was the future itself.
Wigs made from the 1960s idea of futuristic plastics probably generated *way* more static than anyone could manage with real hair.
They were probably required to wear them as an emergency backup in case the moonbase had a power cut. (Most likely as a result of early-seventies industrial action.)
For a series made in 1970, I always thought that the purple "bob" wigs and that general vibe seemed a bit anachronistically "sixties"-looking.
Yes, I suppose you could argue that 1970 was a bit of a crossover with one foot still in the late sixties, but I suppose that styles were changing so fast then that even the mid-sixties look would have seemed a bit dated by then.
Forget the purple wigs...
How about the scientist demonstrating the 'Hubble effect' after they had launched their space telescope without calibrating it properly... by taking an extreme close up of Gabrielle Drake's leg while she was adjusting her bacofoil skirt (to prove the 'perfect' images returned from to spacecraft were useless if you didn't know the scale)
"Just an experiment, Lt Ellis... honest!"
(geez, just looked up her age... she's 80!)
"International Rescue, a clandestine group set up by an American financier and his five sons to save human lives ... doing the right thing – mostly"
I think not instantiated in this world. Doing the thing of the Right might be as close as our world might get.
I wonder when Space Karen turned up in Thailand with his little submarine whether he was channelling Jeff Tracy?
He has the rocket and his cybertruck wouldn't look out of place in Thunderbirds etc, although subsequent events suggest he was was more likely possessed by The Hood.
If his eyes do light up like red leds (or a Cylon's) he can always blame his "special" K intake.
In case you didn't get it, he's making an comparison to Elon Musk, and his misguided idea to use a submersible vehicle to try to rescue the kids football team that was trapped in a flooded cave earlier this century, and his then tantrum when he was told it couldn't work.
There are some similarities between Jeff Tracy and Elon Musk. Both amassed large fortunes from engineering companies, and both were involved in creating space vehicles ahead of anything already seen.
But it breaks down when you consider that Jeff Tracy retired to remain out of the limelight, using his fortune to help other people, whereas Elon Musk basks in the publicity, and although he thinks he's saving the world with electric cars, others are a bit sceptical about his motives.
I still think that the first time I saw a dual falcon booster landing, I was struck by just how much like a Thunderbirds special effect it looked!
I remember my Dad taking me to see Thunderbirds Are Go! at the local cinema - thePalace, in Wellingborough. Those rock snakes scared the sh*t out of little me, but the film left a lasting impression. Dad bought me the amazing Zero-X spacecraft from the film, which I treasured. Eventually my mum gave it away, a crime I never forgave her for.
>I might not have painted them, they were covered in blobs of glue, and the engines on the Lancaster were skew-whiff, but all the same....
At one point in the 80s, the box of the Airfix Lancaster had a photo of my grandfathers plane taking off. He had a copy of the photo in his archives. I had to build it for him, but like you I was dexterally challenged when it came to assembly...
Glad to know that I wasn't the worlds worst model maker* as a kid then.
I feel so much better thinking of all my attempts now after reading the above.
I moved to 1:1 scale*, so much easier & much more forgiving.
Owner of a Dalek, soon to acquire a R2-D2 & would like to do a TARDIS.
Seem to recall that I eventually ended up assembling an Airfix plane around a firework banger, it only had the one flight into the garden of course. That was after we got bored with setting fire to paper darts and throwing them into the fireplace, but before a schoolfriend and I built a mill out of a motor, Andrews tin, marbles and Meccano. What were we milling? Gunpowder of course! Kids today don't know what they're missing.
Was nuts on Zero-X. The logic of the design is actually quite brilliant: tandem wings to reduce span at the airport and make the centre of gravity less critical. At separation, one goes up and the other down to avoid collision. I could never understand why Apollo and Shuttle went for brute vastness.
But I always wondered how Society could so totally ignore the erect phallus sticking out in front of the lower wing. Not even matched by one on the upper, how blatant can you get. If a dog on a hearth rug went like that, it was ushered out very smartly!
The updated CGI-animated series was nice. It did up the pacing as it was common for me to take a nap during the originals in my pre-teen days. I liked the re-imagining and the kids liked it too. The originals will always be special to me though.
I did laugh that the new series removed the guns from the uniforms and the vehicles.
I grew up on the originals, and watched them again with my children when they were about 6 or 7 just before the new CGI animated series came out - which I was fully prepared to hate. Particularly as a couple of years earlier they had said they preferred the new CGI Thomas the Tank Engine, as the original physical models just didn't look real - I mean really?! But The new Thunderbirds was actually quite good, very exciting and fitted even more action in to the programmes. It made me realise how much the original relied on the lengthy launch sequences of the rescue craft to pad the time out, although I never personally got board of watching those.
Could be worth seeking them out. I remember being in our Congleton house when I saw them so it would be prior to 1973 and I'd be less than six years old. Some other stuff I remember from back then:
They must be some of my earliest memories which might explain a lot :)
There were all shown last year on what was then Horror Xtra channel. It was interesting watching them as I remembered a couple of them I'd seen as a boy. Even more interesting was how much of the dark context (Divorce, drug taking, murder) I had failed to notice. The last few episodes quite frankly seemed to have been written by someone under the influence of drugs.
I enjoyed watching them but now that I have adult memories of them I don't particularly want to watch them again.
I viewed some of the early test footage (prior to full production). In Supermarionation, there was only 1 axis of onboard electronic control: an electromagnet in the chest that pulled on the jaw. For Team America, the marionettes had seven/nine (conflicting sources but it was significantly more, possibly seven in females, nine in males) servos in the head alone.
Initially, they put a lot of work into working them naturally but the result looked like a person wearing a rubber mask. For the production, they deliberately operated them in a janky fashion, limiting the number that could be controlled simultaneously to get that classic look.
Check out the size of the puppets' heads. The early ones had clunky electronics, with heads way oversize to get it all in. But it was a kids' puppet show, so you could get away with it. As the electronics shrank year on year, each new series had smaller heads until the last one (Captain Scarlet?) had fairly lifelike proportions.
There is also the long lost sex tape, we only have the transcript.
"Parker"
"Yus, my lady?"
"Will you take off my coat?"
"Yus, my lady."
"Now take of my dress."
"Yus, my lady."
"Now take of my tights."
"Yus, my lady."
"Now take off my bra"
"Yus, my lady."
"Now take off my knickers."
"Yus, my lady."
"Now Parker....."
"Yus, my lady?"
"Don't ever let me catch you wearing them again!!"
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
