Relive the happy days of your youth by watching the
introduction to the very first episode of THUNDER-
BIRDS. Go on, you'll feel better for it. F.A.B.
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Wednesday, 10 September 2014
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It may have been in your youth ,Kid, but I don't think I saw any episodes of Thunderbirds until the 1990's. If I remember correctly they were about 50 minutes duration which seemed a bit too long for a kids' puppet show. One thing I always thought looked a bit daft was the way they'd show a close-up of a real hand whenever somebody was pressing a button or something.
ReplyDeleteI'm right in the middle of watching the Thunderbirds now. I've watched a dozen or so and have taken a break, but they are more sophisticated stories than I expected. The intro is a humdinger for certain.
ReplyDeleteRip Off
Originally, CJ, the first handful of episodes were only about 25 mins to half an hour long, but Lew Grade wanted them longer for the U.S. market, so new scenes were shot and added, making them about 45 or 50 mins long (which, when the TV ads were inserted, would fill out an hour). They didn't always use human hand, if I recall correctly - sometimes puppet ones were used - or human ones with flesh coloured rubber gloves.
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Rip, there never seems to be enough time. I bought the boxed set years ago and still haven't watched any more than the first episode.
Nothing's more exciting than the introduction to a Gerry Anderson show. This one and Stingray used to have us jumping around the room, whilst Captain Scarlet's opening was TENSE.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a similar situation with the box set - got it three Decembers ago, and haven't even put the first disc in yet. However, I still have the VHS that we recorded as much of BBC2's 1990s repeats on as possible, and have watched that thing through twice within the last year.
The last time I saw an episode on TV (back in the '90s), I got a little restless through it, THB. Do you think half an hour would've worked better?
ReplyDeleteThink it depends on how much love you have for the show. I've also got the double-feature tape containing Thunderbirds Are Go followed immediately by Thunderbird 6 - watching that seems no different to watching two episodes in succession.
ReplyDeleteFifty minutes is fine, same length as most TV shows these days. I can understand the discomfort in watching an episode that long as it's being broadcast though - at least with videos and DVDs you can pause it if you get restless.
When the episodes were on TV in the Nineties, they seemed just the right length for us to eat our tea whilst watching them.
I've got the DVD boxed sets from Supercar right up to Joe 90, and I even found some of the half hour shows slow moving, to be honest. (I actually watched the first episodes of most of them on a sampler DVD I bought.) I sometimes think a compilation DVD of the opening and closing credits, the take-offs, etc., might be enough to satiate my nostalgic cravings, THB. (I have watched the whole of the Fireball XL5 boxed set 'though.)
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