Goodbye, Scott Tracy

I've just heard that Shane Rimmer, the voice of Scott Tracy, has died.
Shane Rimmer was a Canadian actor, who also appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me, with smaller parts in other James Bond films - he's believed to have appeared in more Bond films than any other actor apart from those in recurring roles.
He appeared in many films, including Star Wars, as a Rebel Fighter Technician!
In his long association with Supermarionation, not only did he provide the voice of Scott Tracy, but he also wrote scripts for Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and Secret Service, as well as providing some of the uncredited voices. He also appeared in UFO and Space:1999.
He also appeared in Doctor Who's brush with the Wild West, The Gunfighters, and appeared in The Persuaders.
He was 89.

Festive Greetings

Goodbye, Lady Penelope

Sad news today that Sylvia Anderson, best known as the voice of Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds, has died, aged 88. She did a lot more behind the scenes than just the voice, of course.
As a lifetime fan of Thunderbirds (I remember watching it in the 1960s), I was really pleased that the new Thunderbirds series had found a place for Sylvia Anderson in the production. She plays the voice of the new Lady Penelope's aunt (or possibly great aunt) and gets that iconic line:
"'Ome, milady?"
"Home, Parker."

[Edited to add: I've just seen Designated Driver, the episode in which Lady Sylvia appears, and she never gets to say that line, though I'm sure I remember it being said in the interview I heard with Sylvia Anderson a while ago. The episode is great fun, though, and Lady Sylvia is awesome in her Mary Quant style mini dress. There's also a special appearance of FAB 0 - the original 1960s style FAB 1 Rolls Royce.]

Thunderbirds and Archaeology

I got the box set of the new Thunderbirds series for Christmas, and I've been loving it. I grew up with the original - and the remake has got it right, everywhere that counts! The launch sequences are superb, and true to the original - the palm trees still lean back for Thunderbird 2, and the swimming pool still slides back. The attention to detail makes me very happy when I'm watching it. (Brains' accent is a bit wierd, though....)
The scripts have been good, too - right up until they got to Tunnels in Time, the South American archaeology episode.
I could have accepted this one if it had been made in 1966 - just about. This view of archaeology was out-dated even then.

No archaeologist is like the one in the episode. I'm sure there could have been a good story about getting trapped in an ancient tomb which had a more realistic depiction of an archaeologist, but this looks as if it was written by somebody who knows nothing about real archaeology, but who has seen the Indiana Jones films. He came across as more of a treasure hunter than an archaeologist. A more realistic archaeologist would have been far more interested in how the traps worked and what that told us about whatever South American society it was supposed to be than in plundering the gold and silver.
And, of course, there's the little matter of the 1,000 year old traps in the pyramid/mountain/cave system that still work perfectly.

It's a pity really, because all the other episodes have been so much fun.

Thunderbirds Are Go!

The first, double length, episode of Thunderbirds was shown over the Easter weekend, and I'm sure we weren't the only Convention goers who retired to their hotel room at 5pm to watch. With our hearts in our mouths - had they got it right?
We'd seen the documentary a couple of days before, and it looked as if the show might be in safe hands, with the chap from Weta obviously a big fan of the original series, and taking great pains with the Thunderbirds ships.
And there was a huge sigh of relief as we realised that they had been faithful to the original while updating it with a light touch. They even have the palm trees bending back for the launch of Thunderbird 2.
No sign of the Thunderbirds hats - or even Parker's chauffeur's hat -but that's fair enough. Who wears a hat while piloting an aircraft anyway? And Lady Penelope has lost her cigarette holder and gained a pug dog. There's also a new female member of the team, who gets a cool new ship (and has a guilty secret....).
The only thing that isn't quite right, and it's a pity to say this because the voice actor was so clearly enthusiastic in the documentary, is Brains. He just sounds weird.
I suppose that doesn't matter so much to the actual target audience, which is not a fifty-something person who remembers it when it first came out, but today's young TV watching generation.
I really hope the series succeeds, because it's good to have a family of characters whose main aim in life is to rescue people, rather than blowing stuff up and shooting people.

What I did on my Holidays

I spent the Easter weekend at Dysprosium, the 66th EasterCon, which this year was held at the Park Inn, Heathrow.

I went down the day before the Con, to stay with my Young Man, who lives in the Great Metropolis. I was very lucky - the train ticket cost £10.50 when I booked it, including a reserved seat from Birmingham New Street to London Euston. And everything went smoothly.
The railway line passes lots of canals, and a lovely little motte and bailey castle at Berkhampstead.

This is more or less the view from the train, taken from English Heritage.

Euston was a lot more packed than I remembered it - I used to go through there about twenty years ago - but when we got outside the sun was shining, and it was a short bus ride to Forbidden Planet. I was very pleased to get the next installment of the Green Arrow story I first read in the 1980s, and the new Ms Marvel - but no Captain Marvel figure, which was disappointing.
The Young Man took me to a Craft Beer pub nearby - on the way we passed the oldest pub in London, the White Hart, and a little later we met another friend at the Angel, a wonderful Victorian pub covered in green tiles, with an open fire. The beer was Samuel Smiths. She was on her way to an evening Vampire Group meeting, and had come into the centre of the city early to meet us.
So then it was round the corner to Patisserie Valerie. They have a very nice savoury menu - the Young Man had eggs Benedict and Becky had Croque Monsieur - but I was there for cake! Which made me very happy. The Peter Grant table (as mentioned in Ben Aaronovitch's novel Moon Over Soho) was taken, so we sat upstairs.
And then it was back to the Young Man's flat for the most gorgeous venison, which had been slowly cooking all day, and a documentary about the making of the new Thunderbirds series. Weta, in New Zealand, are doing the model work, and the head of Weta is a big Thunderbirds fan, so it was looking pretty good - and they have the original Parker back! I watched all the Gerry Anderson puppet shows back in the 60s, just at the right age for them to imprint themselves on my brain, and I was so hoping that the reboot would be done right. The first episode was broadcast on Saturday at 5pm, when we were at the Con....

Childhood Heroes

The writer of The Age of Uncertainty blog was talking about his childhood heroes a little while ago, though I only caught up with reading the blog today. We had one or two in common: Virgil Tracy and Mr Spock, and I suspect (though I haven't checked) that I'm around the same age as he is.
Virgil Tracy, of course, was the second of the Tracy brothers, the one who flew Thunderbird 2 - and Thunderbird 2 was my favourite of all the aircraft and rockets by a long way. It wasn't only the lift off sequence with the palm trees bending back - it was the idea of having all those smaller craft and vehicles, like Thunderbird 4 and the Mole, in those interchangeable pods. And there was a moment in one episode, where Virgil saves Lady Penelope from being run over by a train in a tunnel. He's lying on the track, inches from speeding death as the train passes over him, and he's looking at Penelope. I know these were puppets and they didn't have facial expressions really, but at that moment I was certain that Virgil was in love with Lady Penelope but he would never tell her!
Mr Spock is an obvious hero to have - for me, anyway. I never did go for the gung-ho Captain Kirk types. It was nearly always the sidekick, the quiet one who was brave without being flashy about it, and Spock was intelligent, calm, logical - and not as emotionless as he liked to pretend.
One hero who was definitely not a sidekick was Robin Hood! For me, it had to be the Errol Flynn version, or Richard Greene from the 1950s, standing up against official injustice with a sword, a bow, and a quick wit. Actually, Errol Flynn was one of my heroes in just about any film he appeared in - as Queen Elizabeth's favourite Sea Hawk in court or rowing a Spanish galley, or as Captain Blood, or Don Juan, as long as he was in period costume and handling a rapier, I was there. (In those innocent days, I knew nothing of his activities in the bedroom - it was his skill with a sword I admired).
Also skilled in handling a sword, and using his quick wits to get across enemy territory to save the besieged city of Casale, (in a war I otherwise knew absolutely nothing about) was the Chevalier de Recci, the Flashing Blade himself. Looking back, they had every single swashbuckling cliche thrown into the mix, but it was all such fun!
Ilya Kuriakin was another sidekick who I liked much better than the over-suave Napoleon Solo. I spent ages, around the age of seven, practising how to say his name, and also practising the Vulcan salute.
And in those days when all nice little boys and girls watched Blue Peter, and made their own models with stickyback plastic and washing up bottles, John Noakes was a definite hero - always the one to do the dangerous stunts, and also the one with the friendly but naughty dog ("Get down, Shep!").

Now, I'm a girl, so I knew I couldn't really grow up to be Robin Hood or Ilya Kuriakin. Fortunately, in the 1960s and early 70s there were some pretty good role models for girls. So I wanted to be Emma Peel of the Avengers, and Sharon McCready from the Champions - with the ability to speak telepathically to the other Champions and throw bad guys across the room. I wanted to be George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five, looking like a boy and exploring secret passages with my faithful dog, and I wanted to be Sarah Jane Smith, exploring time and space with the Doctor.

Actually, I still want to be Sarah Jane Smith, and if I ever hear that wheezy old Tardis engine - well, when I disappear, that's where I'll have gone.

Thunderbirds Are Go

This comes under the general heading of "Things that make me happy".
I grew up watching just about everything that Gerry Anderson produced - it didn't bother me then that just about the only women around were Venus and Lady Penelope; it was all about the hardware and, as Neil Gaiman said just before he performed the Fireball XL5 Theme song on stage with Amanda Palmer, the space scooters!
When I lived in Norwich, I once went to the local theatre to see a show where mime artists pretended to be Thunderbirds puppets (and Captain Scarlet). They wore the uniforms, and there was a sort of plot to follow - but the best thing was the Thunderbird models they wore as hats, and the best thing about the models was the sequence where Thunderbird 2 took off. Complete with palm trees.
And here it is!