Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Supermarionation


The shows are all great, but while watching Captain Scarlet the people look more like dolls, because they look too good.  I never saw any of these shows growing up, but I did see the movie Thunderbirds are Go! in the theater.  I never knew they were puppets!

1 comment:

TC said...

What I remember about Captain Scarlet was that it was more violent and grim than the previous puppet shows (Super Car, Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Stingray).

Fireball XL5 was broadcast on a national American TV network ca. 1964. The other Gerry Anderson shows were syndicated, so distribution was spotty. You might hear people from New York say, "I remember Thunderbirds, but I never heard of Supercar." Meanwhile, someone from Atlanta might say, "I remember Stingray and Captain Scarlet, but none of our local TV stations in the 1960s carried Thunderbirds."

So, you would think Fireball would be the best known Anderson show in the US. Somehow, though, Thunderbirds seems to be the most familiar to American viewers. And that was the case even before it was rerun on a network in the 1990s. Maybe because it was broadcast in the really big markets, like New York and Los Angeles.