Gerry Anderson

There's another chunk of my childhood gone.
Gerry Anderson has died, aged 83, the man whose various puppet series spanned the 1960s.

I was too young to remember Four Feather Falls or Torchy the Battery Boy - my first clear memory of Gerry Anderson's work was Supercar flying through the clouds. Which is all I can remember, and probably only because it was the title sequence, so I saw it every week.
Then came Fireball XL5, and I have some very clear memories of Fireball XL5 taking off along the long ramp, and Steve Zodiac and Venus riding on their floating mopeds, and Robert the Robot. I'm not sure why, but I loved Robert the Robot - I think partly because he was transparent, and he was always reliable.
Stingray was even better, with the Aquaphibians under the sea, and "Anything could happen in the next half hour!". It even had a couple of decent female characters, Marina and Atlanta. Though Marina wasn't able to speak, she was very brave.
And then there was Thunderbirds. I went to see Gerry Anderson speak at WorldCon 87, which was held in Brighton (Doris Lessing was in the same audience!) and once he started talking about Thunderbirds he could have talked all day! I liked Virgil and Thunderbird 2 best - and Thunderbird 2 had the best take off sequence, with the palm trees folding back and the ramp going up.
When I lived in Norwich, around 1990, I went to see two mime artists doing a show based on Gerry Anderson's shows. They wore the uniforms, with the Thunderbird rockets as their hats, and when Thunderbird 2 came on stage for the first time, the actor was holding two tiny palm trees in his hands (and had a big grin on his face as he bent them back during the take-off sequence!). They mixed Captain Scarlet into it, too, and their encore was Stingray chasing a Terror Fish.
I think I started growing out of Supermarionation after that, though I watched Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 and even Secret Service with Stanley Unwin. At the time, we spent our school holidays in Blackpool, and on the way in we used to pass a large building in Lytham St Anne's which had a porch that was exactly the same shape as the building in Joe 90. I think it was really something to do with Premium Bonds, but we imagined the Big Rat being in there. It was almost as exciting as being the first one to see Blackpool Tower!
We used to make Mysterons with our torches (while checking the back of Mum's wardrobe for the way through to Narnia), too.
When John Sims as the Master in Doctor Who took them to his floating aircraft carrier - and when the SHIELD aircraft carrier took off in Avengers Assemble - like many others of a certain age my first thought was "Cloudbase!"
And then Gerry Anderson started to produce live action shows, which were also more grown up - UFO and Space:1999, though Space:1999 got a bit silly. The moon managed to travel awfully fast, and though I liked Maya, the shape-changing alien, at the time, some of the plots started getting maybe a touch too fantastic towards the end. I'm afraid I wasn't too keen on the lead actor, either. Martin Landau never looked as if he was enjoying himself! Commander Straker was much more my cup of tea, especially as Ed Bishop had also done the voice for Captain Blue!
(The less said about Terrahawks, the better, I think!)

I have gone back to re-watch some episodes of all of these as an adult - and I kind of wish I hadn't. I can see huge plot holes that I didn't notice as a child - and the sexism is appalling! There's one episode of Fireball XL5 where lava is lapping round the legs of the space ship, and Venus is unable to take off because she forgot to flick one of the switches (Steve Zodiac was busy being heroic somewhere else). In Thunderbirds, International Rescue tackle a terrible fire, and they all have a little chuckle, back at Tracy Island at the end of the episode, when they discover it was caused by a woman driver!
I don't think Gerry Anderson ever lost that view of women, either - I remember an interview he gave when he was trying to bring Thunderbirds back. He said he wanted to include a woman pilot, but then described her as being pushy and annoying and wouldn't it be funny if one of the Tracy boys pushed her in the swimming pool? Back in the 60s, that sort of attitude was unexceptional, but it would be nice to think we've moved on since then.
It's the space ships and aircraft and submarines that remain in the memory, though. There's never been anything else quite like them - and nothing done today could beat Thunderbird 2 taking off, with the little palm trees bending back as the ramp goes up, could it?
And isn't it nice to think of an entire series in which being heroic isn't taking up a gun and shooting at people, but going out to rescue people trapped during disasters, using sophisticated hi-tech equipment?

FAB, Gerry Anderson. Spectrum is Green.