Back in the 1960s, British television producer Gerry Anderson wanted to make ambitious, impressive TV shows mixing action, technology and stunts. Unfortunately, 1960s British TV was not swimming in cash and could not realise his vision. Anderson hit on a solution to save money by building very small sets, model vehicles and using puppets and a tiny number of voice actors to stand in for a much larger cast. This format proved successful through a number of projects: The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-58), Torchy the Battery Boy (1960), Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-62), Fireball XL5 (1962-63) and, marking his move into colour, Stingray (1964-65).
Lew Grade, the head of ITC, was incredibly impressed by what Anderson was able to achieve on a limited budget, so for Anderson's next show, they went bigger, with more money and a more ambitious premise. Inspired by real-life disaster stories and his brother's experiences as a pilot in World War II, Gerry and his wife Sylvia created Thunderbirds. Whilst their previous shows had usually focused on two to four protagonists and a single notable vehicle, Thunderbirds had nine regular characters (not including recurring characters like Grandma Tracy and arch-villain "the Hood") and five main Thunderbird vehicles, augmented by a large number of different "pod" vehicles that Thunderbird 2 could carry into action, as well as recurring vehicles like Lady Penelope's FAB-1 and the Fireflash hypersonic aircraft. Filmed in colour at a time when most British homes still only had black-and-white, Thunderbirds was a visually sumptuous, astonishingly ambitious project.
Anderson would go on to make many shows after Thunderbirds, including additional puppet projects Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68), Joe 90 (1968-69) and The Secret Service (1969), followed by live-action projects UFO (1970-71, infamously the inspiration for the XCOM video game franchise) and Space: 1999 (1975-76). Anderson's later career was spottier, with throwback project Terrahawks (1983-86) being well-regarded, the live-action Space Precinct (1994-95) less so.
But of all his works, many of them very good, it's arguably Thunderbirds which has withstood the test of time the best, and has spawned the most successors. As well as two contemporary movies, an unauthorised Japanese anime quasi-sequel series (released in Europe and America as Thunderbirds 2086) was made in 1983, followed by a live-action movie directed by Jonathan Frakes in 2004 (reviled on release, though at least moderately more fondly remembered these days) and then a full-blown successor show, Thunderbirds Are Go, in 2015, which mixed model work and live sets with CGI. Thunderbirds was hugely influential in Japan (hence the unofficial sequel anime), but the show has ultimately sold to over 50 countries around the world.
The core appeal of Thunderbirds is that it's about an organisation that helps people in trouble. Some episodes have identifiable bad guys, but in many cases our heroes are up against the forces of nature or technology gone awry. Sometimes the Tracy boys have to engage in gunfights with villains, but this is rare. Thunderbirds has a very positive message about helping people and how to use technology responsibly to save lives, even as warning about how overreliance on or reckless use of new, untested technology can be very dangerous. It's a simple theme, as befits the intended audience of young children, but a powerful one through its repetition.
Watching the show in 2026, several things stand out. The first is the absence of much kind of serialisation. Occasionally our characters may recall a prior episode if its events are germane to the present one (such as after they save the Fireflash airliner in the pilot, it enters regular service and appears in several subsequent episodes, with even the same pilot and captain) but otherwise there are no long-running story arcs here. This is particularly notable with the appearance of the Hood. Given the rest of the show is realistic-ish-if-you-squint science fiction, the Hood's psychic powers and glowing eyes feel a bit out of place. The Hood's desperation to learn the secrets of International Rescue is never adequately explained, and the potentially explosive revelation that he is the brother of IR butler Kyrano and uncle of their ally Tin-Tin simply never comes up. IR in fact never really connects that their several confrontations with the Hood (usually in disguise) were encounters with the same guy. By modern standards this is all very odd - and successor show Thunderbirds Are Go enthusiastically embraces longer-form storytelling with gusto - but it does mean that each episode stands completely alone from the rest.
The main thing is the sheer artistry involved here. The miniature sets are a work of beauty, and the numerous vehicles are phenomenal pieces of visual design. Each Thunderbird vehicle has a readily-identifiable silhouette and function. The modelwork is impressive by modern standards, let alone 1965's. It also has to be said that no human being before or since has taken as much absolute pleasure in blowing the absolute ever-loving hell out of miniatures than Derek Meddings. This guy is an artist at blowing things up and watching how he manages to blow something up in each episode, even when it's not evident how, is a genuine joy. If explosions are your bag, Thunderbirds has you covered (there is even a series of massive explosions in the title sequence for no reason; Art). The puppets are also extremely impressive and charm, conveying a reasonable level of emotion when coupled with the accomplished voice cast.
The soundtrack is also exceptional: Barry Gray's music for the show is big, broad, bombastic and impressive. The "Thunderbird March" itself is arguably the single best-known British musical theme of the 1960s, only exceeded by the Doctor Who and James Bond themes. The only problem is that whilst Gray composed some amazing music for the show, he didn't compose a lot of it. Within a few episodes you'll have heard everything he made for the show and there's then a lot of re-use of the themes, which can get a little repetitive during a thorough binge of the show.
The episodes themselves, as with any show, can be a bit of a mixed bag. The show is at its best when there's a huge disaster unfolding and the IR team have to deploy the Thunderbirds and come up with a clever solution. The show blasts out of the gate with a bunch of episodes strongly exemplifying this, between Trapped in the Sky (IR has to rescue a hypersonic aircraft that can't land because of sabotaged landing gear), Pit of Peril (the team have to rescue a massive walker-mech that's fallen into a giant pit), City of Fire (the world's tallest skyscraper catches fire) and Sun Probe (a manned mission to collect material from the Sun gets into trouble). Unfortunately, these sort of episodes are also clearly very expensive, and by mid-season the show is starting to see less of these kind of epics and more character-focused and smaller-scale stories, such as Lady Penelope and her driver/bodyguard/manservant Parker having to take out some criminals. These episodes can be fun, but the need to save money is sometimes painfully obvious.
The show also suffers from a pacing problem. As is well-known now, Thunderbirds was originally a 25-minute show extended to 45 minutes by Lew Grade, resulting in last-minute rewrites and the addition of new scenes to already-filmed episodes. In fact, we're more than halfway through the show's 32-episode run before we start seeing episodes made end-to-end with the longer running time in mind. The retroactive expansion of the earlier episodes can result in a lot of filler, repetitive dialogue exchanges and the full, mildly impractical, launch sequence for each Thunderbirds vehicle in full. These launch sequences are awesome, but they do get a bit wearying the third time you see them, let alone the tenth. Some of the later episodes in the season do overcome the issue by having more substantive A and B (and sometimes C) plots, and cutting the launch sequences down considerably. The show can also be a little bit more po-faced at the start, but in its latter half it relaxes considerably and there's some more relaxed joking and more naturalistic dialogue (reaching its apex in the very funny Attack of the Alligators!).
These negatives are not overwhelming, but they make it hard to recommend bingeing the show straight-through, where the repetition and limitations become much more obvious. Watching an episode or two a week to savour the impressive production values and fun scripts may be the best way to experience Thunderbirds today.
For the show's 60th anniversary last year, the entire show was re-scanned in high definition and additional clean-up work was done to remove film blemishes and enhance the colour (a prior HD remaster in the early 2010s had been somewhat less accomplished in this regard). However, fans may be rest assured that no wire removal work was done here: all of the wires for the puppets and vehicles have been left intact. A formidable package of extras was also added, including several new documentaries and features, and a multitude of older interviews and documentaries dating back to the 1990s, and several behind-the-scenes features recorded during the making of the show itself. The package is extraordinarily generous, spreading across 11 Blu-Ray discs. The only niggle is the absence of the theatrically-released movies, Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968), due to rights issues. There is also an ongoing 4K release of individual episodes, no doubt to be followed in time by a 4K box set of the whole show, but that will no doubt be much more expensive. The 4K image also arguably makes the wires and some of the compromises in making the miniatures and sets a bit too obvious, but views may vary on that.
More intriguing is that the set includes three new adventures of the show! Shot with painstakingly recreated-from-the-original sets, puppets and vehicles, the three new episodes use a series of audio dramas made in the 1960s for their soundtracks, meaning the original voice actors from the show return, sounding pretty exactly the same as they did back in the day, in scripts written by the original writers. Whilst the quality of the three episodes is variable, it's a great treat to see some new Thunderbirds material shot in the exact same way as the original show was. These new episodes are also only 25 minutes long, and benefit a great deal from the tighter running time.
The Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Edition boxed set (****½) is a terrific way of experiencing one of British television's all-time classics. Yes, the show has aged somewhat, and its slow pacing and lack of continuity may occasionally be distracting. But the artistry is phenomenal, especially given the superb high-definition remaster present here, and the archive and new documentary material is exhaustive and informative. The boxed set is available worldwide and from the Anderson Store.
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