Thunderbirds - To The Rescue

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Psychic Powers: The Hood has these. Among other things, he can telepatically hypnotize Kyrano, and instantly put people to sleep. Meaningful Name: The sons of Jeff Tracy are all named after famous astronauts of the 1960s, specifically, the Mercury Seven: Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, and Scott Carpenter.

Machine Monotone: The robot Braman constructed by Brains as well as the vocal interface of an elevator. Note that in-series it was very surprising to hear these voices respond with pleasantries like saying 'thank you' and 'you're welcome.'Hover Bike: International Rescue has several of these at its disposal for navigating around a danger zone. note In reality, they were introduced to reduce the amount of walking the puppets would otherwise have to do on screen. Faux Action Girl: Tin-Tin actually does have an IR uniform and occasionally joins the boys on a rescue mission... but stands as the person who ended up in need of rescue the most. Averting this trope is one of the few positive things fans can point to about the 2004 film.

By the time of its cancellation, Thunderbirds had become widely popular in the UK and was being distributed extensively overseas. [80] [81] Grade, however, believed that without the financial boost of an American network sale, a full second series would fail to recover its production costs. He therefore asked Anderson to devise a new concept that he hoped would stand a greater chance of winning over the profitable US market. [70] [77] This became Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. [76] Casting and characters [ edit ] Regular Puppet Cast [33] Name Also the Mole, used for underground rescues, and a host of souped-up construction gear hauled in TB2's pods. NOTE: The film is a compilation of the season 1 episodes Trapped in the Sky and Operation Crash-Dive . For an in-depth synopsis, please read their respective articles. Transcript [ ] Main article: To The Rescue/Transcript Credits [ ]Awesome, but Impractical: Pretty much every vehicle in the series is a victim of this. See the individual episodes in the Recap section for specific examples. Gordon's insignificance is also notable in that we never see him using his portrait in the lounge to talk to Jeff. Blasting It Out of Their Hands: This is how gunfights are usually ended in this series. It's an odd example: while the showrunners had no problem with the heroes shooting the villains to death in their vehicles, they would rarely let anyone take a bullet in face-to-face combat. A race of highly evolved beings have been watching countless civilizations across millions of years. Humanity have become their latest test subjects, and they must decide whether the species pose a threat to the universe. It's up to the Thunderbirds to convince the beings that Earth has evolved beyond its savage past. Against that, at the start of "Trapped in the Sky", the flight time of Fireflash's maiden commercial flight (between London and Tokyo) is given as 2 hours. That actually works out to be pretty close for a cruise altitude of 250,000 feet as given in the episode.

Chekhov's Gun: Is there a cool, unique vehicle in the first few minutes of the episode? Is everyone taking about what an amazing work of engineering it is? It's going wrong within a few minutes, and everyone is going to need rescuing from it. Cry Wolf": When the boys call for help about being trapped down a mine, and are not believed, they then despair that they will never get out. The action then cuts to Gordon relaxing on Tracy Island, saying "this is the life". Scott informs the others of what Jeff wants them to do, although he also tells them that he's found out that someone's been taking pictures of TB1. Brains says he gets it now - one of their enemies has set a trap, and has Oh, and all the characters were puppets. The show was filmed in Supermarionation, which was a process using souped-up marionettes with moving lips electronically synchronized with pre-recorded dialogue. Made of Explodium: In the Thunderbirds universe, everything can explode or burn with really cool flames if the plot commands it. Or even if it would just be really cool if something exploded. If something is introduced that might conceivably blow up, rest assured that it will have done so by the end of the episode.

Casual Danger Dialogue: But of course. Charging into danger is part of the day job of International Rescue. You can't expect them to go all to pieces every time their lives are at risk. In the DVD documentary The Thunderbirds Companion, Anderson explained how a rise in filming costs had made overseas distribution revenue even more important and essentially caused Thunderbirds to be made "as an American show". [37] During the character development and voice casting process, the Andersons' main priority was to ensure that the series had transatlantic appeal, thus increasing the chances of winning an American network deal and the higher audience figures that this market had to offer. [28] [38] Filming [ edit ] Thunderbird 1, piloted by Scott, is a hypersonic aircraft powered by a nuclear thermal engine, designed for getting to the crisis scene as fast as possible to gather intel. It often happens that rescuees and officials call them by their surname, so they're not secret about that, either; The production, which had been shooting two 25-minute episodes every two weeks, [20] faced great challenges transitioning to the new format: nine episodes had already been fully or partly filmed, scripts for ten more had been written, and major rewrites would be needed to satisfy the longer running time. [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] Anderson lamented: "Our time-scale was far too drawn out. ITC's New York office insisted that they should have one show a fortnight... Everything had to move at twice the speed." [60] APF spent over seven months extending the existing episodes and filmed the new 50-minute format at a rate of two episodes every four weeks. [20] [61]

The puzzled Brains asks who he is, but no answer comes. Instead, the stranger's eyes begin to glow...and Brains sinks, unconscious, to the floor. A face-mask is pulled off - revealing the Hood! - Thunderbird 1: silver and blue, symbolising its bleeding-edge speed technology and airborne nature. Animal Theme Naming: International Rescue like to alternate between this and Exactly What It Says on the Tin. As a general rule, the machines we see in more than one episode get this treatment. Apart from the Thunderbirds themselves ( not all of which can fly), there is also the Mole, their drilling machine, and Firefly, their firefighting bulldozer.Entering the lake, Brains and Tin-Tin start swimming to the bottom. Although they soon find the temple, it appears to have been heavily-damaged and, Brains thinks, doesn't look all that stable. Carefully, they enter it Thunderbird 4, piloted by Gordon, is a submarine for underwater rescues. Often transported in Thunderbird 2's pod 4. Virgil, Gordon, Alan and Parker take the roles of Ace Pilot / Submariner / Astronaut / Driver respectively. Unaware of this, Tin-Tin Kyrano and Brains - the only IR members going on the expedition - are the center of attention in the lounge, as everyone's talking about their adventure. Tin-Tin even asks Scott and John, who's home on leave, what kind of gems they would like! (John opines that he'd rather have "a dirty old bar of gold"!) Jeff wonders if they believe they really will find such treasure there, and Brains thinks they will. In any event, Jeff says, it will at least be a vacation for them, as they both could do with a break. A little later on, Virgil, Tin-Tin and Brains blast off in Thunderbird 2.