Gerry Anderson has died at the age of 83. He will be sadly missed, but his wonderful creations will live on forever in the minds and hearts of us Children of the '60's.
Gerry, along with his wife Sylvia, was the creator of numerous television series in the 1960's and 1970's that filled our fertile minds with the wonder of the possibilities that the 21st Century held for future generations and, if we somehow were lucky to live long enough, us, too!
Television series such as Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Joe 90, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, UFO and Space 1999, along with others I cannot remember, were mandatory watching for us, and, despite most of them being populated by clunky marionettes, were totally believable when we combined them with the ongoing news from the Space Race and the technological developments going on all around us. Combine these with other wonderful science-fiction shows such as Doctor Who - which I will be writing a lot more about in other posts - and Star Trek, and we all knew the future was going to be full of challenges, but also full of heroes and fun.
How we thrilled at the adventures of the five Tracy brothers, along with Brains, Lady Penelope and Parker, saving unfortunate victims in their marvellous Thunderbird machines, and Troy Tempest and Phones battling the fish-shaped submarines of King Titan in Stingray, or Steve Zodiac in Fireball XL5 as he rocketed across the galaxy. Then there was the superspy who was only a child - Joe 90 - who, through the power of the BIG RAT, could learn the skills of any craftsman in the world and use them to combat evil forces. Go on - ask me what the acronym BIG RAT stands for - you know I`m gonna say "Brain Impulse Galvanoscope - Record And Transfer", don't you!
And then there was the wonderful Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Due to an encounter with the combative inhabitants of Mars, two captains of Spectrum are made indestructible. One of them - Captain Black - becomes the tool of the Mysterons, and the other, Captain Scarlet, remains true to his race and becomes the unkillable protector of Earth.
Of course, many of the artefacts developed for these series actually became real during our lifetime. Cell phones, snorkel fire engines, super mini-subs, and so on, all became real as the century wore on. But that mattered little to us back in the '60's - we just enjoyed the thrill of the shows and never even considered that those marionettes were not real at all.
Thank you, Gerry Anderson, for filling my childhood with the wonder of all those shows you created.
Gerry Anderson TV series:
- Twizzle (1957-59)
- Torchy the Battery Boy (1960)
- Four Feather Falls (1960)
- Supercar (1961-62)
- Fireball XL5 (1962-63)
- Stingray (1964-65)
- Thunderbirds (1965-66, 1968)
- Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68)
- Joe 90 (1968-69)
- The Secret Service (1969)
- UFO (1970-71)
- The Protectors (1972-74)
- Space 1999 (1975-77)
- Terrahawks (1983-84, 1986)
- Dick Spanner, P.I. (1987)
- Space Precinct (1994-95)
- Lavender Castle (1999-2000)
- Firestorm (2003)
- The New Captain Scarlet (2005)
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