Thunderbird 6
Thunderbird 6 is a 1968 British science fiction puppet film based on Thunderbirds, a Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Written by the Andersons and directed by David Lane, it is the sequel to Thunderbirds Are Go.
The main setting is Skyship Onea futuristic airship conceived by Brains, creator of the Thunderbird machines. Alan Tracy, Tin-Tin Kyrano, Lady Penelope and Parker represent International Rescue as the guests of honour on the airship's maiden flight, unaware that the Hood is once again plotting to steal the secrets of International Rescue's technology. Agents of the Hood murder Skyship Ones crew and assume their identities to lure the organisation into a trap. Brains' efforts to design a sixth Thunderbird are accelerated when Skyship One is damaged and only Alan's restored Tiger Moth biplane can save everyone on board.
The film was shot between May and December 1967. Production company Century 21 redesigned the puppets to compromise between the caricatures that it used before and the realistically proportioned characters that it introduced in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Some of the footage of the Tiger Moth in flight was filmed on location using a full-sized plane, but a legal dispute with the Ministry of Transport over alleged dangerous flying forced the crew to film the remaining shots with miniature models. Guest characters were voiced by John Carson and Geoffrey Keen, while Keith Alexander and Gary Files replaced Ray Barrett as the voices of John Tracy and the Hood.
Thunderbird 6 was released in July 1968 to a poor box office response that ruled out the production of further sequels. Critical response was mixed: commentators praised the special effects but were polarised by the story.
Plot
In 2068, the New World Aircraft Corporation in England gives Brains an open brief to design a revolutionary aircraft. Brains suggests an airship, prompting howls of laughter from the executives. Nevertheless, his proposal is accepted and the corporation builds Skyship One, a fully automated craft powered by an anti-gravity field. Representing International Rescue for the maiden flight – a round-the-world trip with computer-programmed stops – are Alan Tracy, Tin-Tin Kyrano, Lady Penelope and Parker. Brains is forced to stay on Tracy Island after Jeff asks him to design a sixth Thunderbird machine. Working without a specification, Brains produces a range of concepts but Jeff rejects them all.Alan and Tin-Tin fly to England in Alan's restored Tiger Moth biplane. They meet up with Penelope and Parker and the four of them board Skyship One. As the airship departs on its voyage, the group are unaware that Captain Foster and the stewards have been murdered and replaced by agents of the Hood, now operating as "Black Phantom" from an abandoned airfield near Casablanca. As the ship is automated, the impostors do not need to demonstrate any technical knowledge and are able to avoid raising their guests' suspicions.
After Skyship One leaves the Egyptian pyramids, Penelope finds a bugging device in her bedroom. Foster and his men have been recording and editing her voice to assemble a fake radio message asking Jeff to send Thunderbirds 1 and 2 to the airfield, where the Hood and his men plan to capture the two craft. Parker uncovers the editing equipment, but before the group can act, the impostors complete the message and transmit it to Tracy Island via Thunderbird 5. Jeff immediately dispatches Scott and Virgil in Thunderbirds 1 and 2, but Alan realises that his brothers are flying into a trap and Penelope manages to relay the warning just in time. Landing at the airfield, Scott and Virgil use the Thunderbirds rocket launchers to destroy the Hood's base. They then take off to rendezvous with Skyship One.
Aboard the airship, the guests engage the impostors in a shootout. Tin-Tin is taken hostage, forcing their surrender. During the fighting, the anti-gravity system is damaged, causing the ship to lose altitude and crash into a radio mast at a missile base near Dover. With Skyship One balanced precariously on top of the mast and its anti-gravity field weakening, it is up to Scott, Virgil and Brains to rescue everyone on board before the ship collapses onto the base below. Scott and Virgil are unable to approach the airship without tipping it over with their thrusters and there are no Thunderbird 2s pod vehicles light enough to deploy onto it. At Gordon's suggestion, Brains flies the Tiger Moth up to the top deck to airlift the passengers and crew to safety, only to be held at gunpoint by Foster and his surviving henchmen. With Penelope a hostage in the plane's cockpit, Foster tries to take off but is shot dead by Alan. The Tiger Moth launches with the guests and impostors clinging on to the wings and landing gear. Shortly after, Skyship One finally crashes to the ground, starting a chain reaction that obliterates the missile base.
The remaining impostors are killed in a gunfight aboard the Tiger Moth. Stray bullets puncture the fuel tank, forcing Penelope to make an emergency landing. After near misses with a factory chimney, a bridge on the M104 motorway and a tree, Penelope ditches the plane into a field. Parker is thrown out when the plane clips the tree top and ends up dangling in its branches before falling to the ground.
Back on Tracy Island, Brains unveils the new Thunderbird 6 as none other than the repaired Tiger Moth, which all agree has proven its worth in the field.
Production
Despite the critical and commercial failure of Thunderbirds Are Go, distributors United Artists ordered a sequel. Filmed on a budget of £300,000, Thunderbird 6 had largely the same production credits as the first film; Gerry and Sylvia Anderson returned as writers and producers, while David Lane reprised the role of director.The Andersons wrote the script in three months, originally intending the film to be about a "Russo-American space project". The focus was changed to an airship when their associate Desmond Saunders suggested basing the film on the destruction of the R101. In preparation, Gerry read books on the R101 and other airships, including the R100 and the Graf Zeppelin. The plot was intended to be more light-hearted than that of Thunderbirds Are Go. Presenting a de Havilland Tiger Moth as the eponymous Thunderbird 6, the script included a reference to Esso advertising: during the Dover rescue, a line of dialogue adapts the company's slogan "Put a Tiger in Your Tank" to refer to the "Tiger" in Thunderbird 2s pod. The full model name is not spoken.
Principal photography began on 1 May 1967 and was completed in four months.
Voice cast
The film's dialogue was recorded in six days at the Anvil Films Recording Studio. Except for John Tracy and Black Phantom/the Hood, all the returning characters were voiced by the actors who had played them in the first film. The new additions to the voice cast were:- Keith Alexander as John Tracy and the Narrator. Ray Barrett, the original voice of John, had returned to his native Australia. Alexander also provides a brief opening narration explaining the secrecy of International Rescue. He later voiced Sam Loover in Joe 90 and Agent Blake in The Secret Service before starring as Lieutenant Ford in UFO.
- Gary Files as Black Phantom. According to Files, his voice roles in Thunderbird 6 were a trial run for Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, to which he supplied numerous guest character voices. More roles followed, including the regular voice of Matthew Harding in The Secret Service.
- John Carson as the impostor Captain Foster. Carson's guest roles in The Troubleshooters brought him to the attention of the Andersons. His delivery of Foster's dialogue has led to a mistaken belief that the character was voiced by James Mason.
- Geoffrey Keen as James Glenn, the president of the New World Aircraft Corporation. Keen was known to the Andersons for playing the lead role of Brian Stead in The Troubleshooters.
Design
By the time Thunderbird 6 entered production, Century 21 had started filming its next TV series, Captain Scarlet. This series introduced a new puppet design that abandoned the caricatured look of the Thunderbirds marionettes in favour of realistic body proportions. The puppets of Thunderbird 6 were modelled to compromise between the old and the new designs: the heads and hands remained disproportionately large but the overall caricature was toned down. Most of the guest character puppets were recycled from Thunderbirds Are Go, although the Captain Foster puppet was a new creation. Puppeteer Wanda Webb remembered that Thunderbird 6 maintained high standards of puppet workmanship, commenting on a scene that shows Penelope asleep: "I had placed the sleeping eyelids in Plasticine and made the eye shadow a little too blue. We ended up re-shooting the whole sequence."File:Thunderbird6DesignWork.jpg|thumb|upright=1.81|left|alt=Two images are presented: on the left, two airship crewmembers wearing blue uniforms, one holding a handgun, are either standing or sitting in a high-ceilinged room in front of dynamo-shaped metal frames; on the right, a man and two women are either standing or seated in a room containing chairs, walls and furniture designed to themes of dice, chess pieces and playing cards. All figures in the two screenshots are marionette puppets.|Examples of the Skyship One set design: the Gravity Compensation Room and the Games Room. On the left, Foster holds the International Rescue agents at gunpoint; on the right, Parker, Lady Penelope and Tin-Tin contact Tracy Island. The puppets of were more realistically proportioned than those of Thunderbirds Are Go and the TV series.
A number of one-off puppets with gaping mouths were made for the opening sequence in which Brains' proposal to build airship sends the NWAC executives into fits of laughter. Stephen La Rivière describes this as "a contender for the most horrific scene ever produced by Century 21". The decision to place the title sequence after a cold open was part of an effort to distinguish Thunderbird 6 from the previous film.
The Skyship One filming model was built by effects director Derek Meddings, who also oversaw the construction of scale replicas of the various locations seen in the film, such as the Great Sphinx of Giza and the Grand Canyon. A Swiss Alps sequence called for FAB 1, Penelope's Rolls-Royce, to skate across the ice with miniatures of Alan and Tin-Tin following on skis. To accommodate the amount of movement this entailed, the effects crew built a set wide. It was the largest set used on the film and was filled with salt to simulate snow.
Bob Bell's art department designed each of the rooms on Skyship One in a unique style. For example, the Ball Room contained spherical decor while the Games Room had a die and chessboards theme. Penelope's quarters, designed by Keith Wilson, were made pink to match the colour of FAB 1. Archer and Hearn comment that they resemble a "Barbara Cartland nightmare". During filming, the heat of the studio lights caused the floor of the Bottle Room set to catch fire, forcing the crew to rebuild it from scratch. The scene set inside the fictional Whistle Stop Inn – a railway-themed Swiss pub where customers are served meals on model trains – required careful planning and coordination.