Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Limited Collector’s Edition (blu-ray TV series review)
From the looks of things, the problems with the special disk ‘Thunderbirds Trapped in the Sky/Terror in New York City 4K Collectors Edition Steelbook (UHD Blu-ray)’ don’t appear to be here. However, I shall watch all the episodes to ensure the disks are safe and focus on the extras. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. I should point out there’s been some work in putting the episodes in a better order. ‘Terror In New York’ is much further in for instance. So, lets focus on the extras.
There is an audio commentary by Jamie Anderson, Chris Drake and Richard James with ‘Trapped In The Sky’. All three do reveal they didn’t see the 1965-66 originals, understandable because of their age. A lot of the times, I do wonder if any of them have seen any of the literature around the show. They note that this story has a slightly different soundtrack to the rest of the series but if they thought of it as a pilot episode then it was used to iron out any problems, like Scott’s seat tipping as he descended in TB1. I found I was commenting on what they said as well. I do think they misinterpreted Scott Tracy’s role in the control tower of London Airport. It wasn’t to take all the compliments given but to placate the authorities and keep them on board with what they were doing. In the series, he was more involved when that wasn’t needed. Jeff Tracy talking with Kyrano centred on his daughter, so hardly surprising his sons weren’t there. It isn’t like he didn’t pop up from time to time. I doubt if the blue sky was tinted from ‘Supercar’ when ‘Stingray’ was a more likely choice as it was already in colour. They barely covered that this was the episode that they showed Lew Grade who insisted it gets expanded to 50 minutes. When you consider they had another 7 episodes in production at the time, they had to go back and add an additional 20 minutes, the joins aren’t all that noticeable.
With ‘The Uninvited’ there is an audio commentary with former Doctor Who companions actresses Sophie Aldred and Nicola Bryant on how they grew up on ‘Thunderbirds’. It was a bit difficult telling them apart some of the time but one of them, I think Aldred, did an assertion of ‘Thunderbirds’ for their degree work without the benefit of being able to see it again. It must have pre-dated 1981 because that’s when it came out on video. Neither of them appear to have read literature on the subject or they would have know Arthur Cripps made all the scaled props for the series. I think I can answer one of their questions. The last explosion shown in the opening credits looks like it was made for ‘The Mighty Atom’. They both thought the incidental music used was a lot better then than what we have today, getting in the way of the dialogue.
They’re back for another audio commentary with ‘The End Of The Road’ and so I was totting up things they didn’t know. Better than any drinking game. They thought the models were made of plastic when they were mostly wood or, as with FAB1, fibreglass. They weren’t aware the heads were switched for various emotions or that Barry Gray had his own orchestra. Their clothes were made from very fine fabric and the scale was quarter life-size. They didn’t know Christine Finn was the other voice actress. Rather interestingly, about a third from the ending, there was a third woman’s voice barely heard in the background giving them some information.
The next audio commentary is with ‘The Dutchess Assignment’. I didn’t know them from Adam until they introduced themselves. Chris Dale is a special effects director at Anderson Entertainment and saw ‘Thunderbirds’ in the 1970s. Wayne Forester and Genevieve Gaunt do some of the voices for the ‘Thunderbirds’ audio dramas. From the examples here, Gaunt does Lady Penelope and Grandma Tracy and did the Dutchess here. She has also seen the entire series. Wayne Forester voices Brains and Parker and probably other voices associated with David Graham. They asked each other the odd question but were guessing. I counted 16 puppets in the opening casino scene. As far as I know they were wrong about the eyes being radio-controlled simply because they weren’t that advanced in those days. They weren’t sure how many voices David Graham performed and missed out Brains and Gordon. The jet that brought the bigger plane down at the airshow might have looked like the Harrier aircraft but it wouldn’t have been seen until after production had ended. When it comes to real hands, they didn’t think any were used in ‘Stingray’ but, if memory serves, they were. Sylvia Anderson gets mentioned for her other parts but not Penelope herself. About the only thing they or rather Ms. Gaunt knew more about was the period costumes Penelope wore. They didn’t know about the Fairylites Penelope doll, let alone various puppets, including Penny, for children over the years.
With the episode ‘Security Hazard’, it just says ‘cast and crew’. What this really means is snippets from that time period. We have in this order and a mix within of Gerry Anderson, Derek Meddings, Alan Fennell, Alan Pattillo, Sylvia Anderson, Bob Bell, David Lane, Mary Turner and voice artists Shane Rimmer and David Graham. A lot of information is given and I was in three minds to put some of it here. I do think the most interesting thing for someone like me, who never went to the conventions, is finally hearing some of their voices. Probably the most important thing was the place was a training ground and production crew could be given different jobs with film editor David Lane’s progression to director and the go-to guy when it came to doing difficult episodes.
With the episode ‘Atlantic Inferno’, we have another audio commentary. I recognised Sophia Myles name as she played Lady Penelope in the 2004 ‘Thunderbirds’ film. Listening to them speak, the other two come from the same film. Dominic Colenso played Virgil and Lex Shrapnel played John, both had seen the series in the 1980s. Phobe is her dog. Myles says she and Ron Cook only saw snippets relating to their own characters for the film and this was her first episode to watch. Myles dominated the commentary but in a good way. I could write a book about why her film wasn’t any good although Myles says it does have its own fans. I was surprised that she found it camp and ‘Thunderbirds’ was iconic gay. No one pointed out to her that Jeff Tracy is his 60s and Lady Penelope is probably in her early 30s. She was interested that there never was an origin story for Penelope. Guess she’ll have to look for the TV21 reprints to see how she recruited Parker. I suspect there will be a reaction to her saying FAB stands for Five Adorable Boys. What is interesting is Sophia Myles has become hooked by the episode and planning to watch the rest now. Hope someone can check on that.
Watching ‘The Perils Of Penelope’ again, the face of Sir Jeremy Hodge looks awfully like his voice artist Peter Dynley at that time. One thing that can be said about watching the series in its original box shape is your attention is on the picture, not the two black bookends which you don’t really pay attention to. As to the picture being cleaned up, I might have a little niggle because the Thunderbirds vehicles look a little too clean, as if someone has taken the dirt Derek Meddings special effects team so lovingly rubbed into them to make look less like models.
Now for the extras spread over 3 disks, starting in disk # 9. ‘Introducing Thunderbirds’ was my first Century 21 EP I had when young and played it many times so quite familiar with its 21 minutes. This puppet version is the first time I’ve seen it. Stretched to 25 minutes so a little action was added. The new material was principally around the puppets than the Thunderbirds themselves. In the original, it was only the voices of Peter Dynley, Sylvia Anderson and David Graham. The boys’ ‘FAB’s were added here. There were a few lines subtracted and I did check on-line was Penelope calling the anchor ‘a thing’. Jeff Tracy that there was radiation risk outside of Thunderbird One’s nosecone and told Penelope about the Hood. I did think Jeff Tracy’s radio transmitter was awfully big. It could have been smaller and still be heavy. Considering all the brothers have watch-sized video transmitters, you would have thought Tracy would have had something as small. Logistically, his transmitter was there to impress Penelope and Parker and make it easier to penetrate the rock around the Thunderbird bays.
The audio commentary is with its director Justin T. Lee and his wife, Lindsay, who is also a puppeteer. They explain that these three stories were made with ITV’s permission to celebrate ‘Thunderbirds’ 50th anniversary. They also credit all the new people who made it happen. They also felt the Jeff and Penelope were cruel to Parker in the EP and sought to make him more clownish here. Where possible they tried to get equipment that had been used in the past. Brian Johnson supplied them with the dolly camera (named after its ability to rotate not marionettes) that he bought off Gerry Anderson when the studio was sold off. Jeff Tracy’s eyes were bought off the original company, William Shakespeare, that made the originals. There’s lots more.
‘The Abominable Snowman’ was another EP I got back in the 1960s. In this 30 minute version, there was some significant changes. Having Thunderbirds One and Two doing a rescue at the Meddings Uranium Plant was new. Only Thunderbird One came to the rescue in the original. The same with the explosion at the end. Nothing is said as to whether the captured people were saved.
Now the ‘Stately Homes’ story is one I never had back in the 1960s and the EP rarely appears for sale, so I’m watching this one blind. Running at 27½ minutes, it is pretty obvious that adding Thunderbirds is most of the extras, especially as Gordon’s hair isn’t a match. Considering Penelope and Parker are supposed to be resourceful, why are they always calling to be rescued? It also doesn’t make much sense that the two felons blow up some of the stately homes when all they want is family heirlooms.
‘Fabblebox’ runs at 23 minutes and is a promo for the boxset you own using ‘Perils Of Penelope’. David Graham is obviously voicing Parker but whoever selected Jeff and Scott Tracy’s voices chose badly. If Jon Culshaw, as listed in the credits, was Jeff it wasn’t his finest voice. I hate being so critical of all this extra work but I suspect I’m spotting something others have with Penelope’s head with all its reflections. In the original, the way they got around this was largely done by sanding the heads down to dilate the angles and stop this happening.
The ‘Thunderbirds Rebooted’, running at 17 minutes, goes through all nine versions since the 1966 original, showing examples from each. I did have a ponder on any missed. I did think they missed one. Back in the mid-1970s, the original ‘Thunderbirds’ was split into two-part episodes and shown in the UK. Not quite the way the 1994 ‘Fox Kids Version’ was done.
The 11 minutes Australian spoof ‘Nosey Parker Is Go’ by Jeff Smart, made in 1995 is an odd one. The audio commentary by Smart shows how he got around some of the problems, although you would have thought he might have had access to some of the literature regarding how to build some of it. Interestingly, he actually got Parker right, then again with David Graham and Charles Tingwell doing the voices, he had the added authenticity.
The 12 minutes ‘Textless Materials’ is going to require some of your patience because the opening stills are very dark but then it turns into film ends of various special effects shots and even the opening and ending credits sans text. Essentially, film ends.
For disk 10, we start with the opening 105 minutes ‘Thunderbirds – FAB At 60’ which I covered with the ‘Thunderbirds Trapped in the Sky/Terror in New York City 4K Collectors Edition Steelbook (UHD Blu-ray)’ special.
‘Great Disasters’ runs at 57 minutes. With some introductions from Gerry Anderson, it features bits from Terror In New York City’, ‘Path Of Destruction’, The Might Atom’, ‘Ricochet’, ‘Atlantic Inferno’, ‘City Of Fire’, ‘Day Of Disaster’, ‘Brink Of Disaster’ and a snippet from ‘Cry Wolf’. It’s only with ‘Brink Of Disaster’ that we see a complete rescue. The way the presentation is done looks more like a podcast composition.
‘Great Rescues’ runs at 66 minutes. This time the samples are from ‘Trapped In The Sky’ (Gerry’s favourite), ‘Edge Of Impact’, ‘Pit Of Peril’, ‘Terror In New York’, ‘End Of The Road’, ‘Sun Probe’ (Gerry makes two mistakes. The Sun Probe is getting a sample from the sun not just observing it and Thunderbird Two was not at the North Pole but in the Himalayas), ‘Atlantic Inferno’. ‘Perils Of Penelope’, ‘The Imposters’ and ‘The Cham Cham’.
‘Talking Thunderbirds’ runs at 42 minutes. The lengths vary but you have interviews with Bob Bell, Alan Pattillo, Richard Conway, Judith Shutt, David Graham, John Brown and Wanda (Webb) Brown. They explain their jobs and how flexible they became. With the Browns, this feels like a version of something I saw a couple years back on Channel 82 a couple years back. There’s also a lot of photographs behind the scenes I haven’t seen before so long overdue for another book to collect them in.
Catch your breath for disk 11 as there’s a lot of extras.
‘All About Thunderbirds’ is a BBC release from 2007, running at 59 minutes. It looks at all of the Andersons’ productions with an emphasis on International Rescue. Picking out something significant, we do have the voice artists Sylvia Anderson, David Graham, Shane Rimmer and Matt Zimmerman. A host of production crew and a reminder that all the special effects crews went into film as they were the experts at the time. About the only thing I might contradict is the rocket engineer says Thunderbird Three should have four nacelles for stability only because I work out from how would it work with three. Although its not really shown much in the TV series, it does allow TB3 to rotate when docking with TB5.
The concert, Tunes Of Danger 2’ is 18 minutes from the concert centring on ‘Thunderbirds’ with Jon Culshaw as host. George Marston is the conductor and stayed true to Barry Gray’s orchestration, although I suspect his orchestra was a little smaller. Pay attention to this orchestra as they are dressed in costumes based on the Anderson shows. I think the biggest smile was one of the violinists dressed as Zelda from ‘Terrahawks’.
‘Thunderbirds Century 21 Tech Talking’ has 7-8 minutes each focusing each of the Thunderbird machines, FAB 1 and the Mole. Most of these are voiced by David Graham as Brains and Parker for a certain pink Rolls Royce. Jon Curshaw does a good Parker in the concert above, but he hasn’t got Jeff Tracy’s voice. The histories of the brothers looks like they stayed with the ‘Thunderbirds Annual 1965’, but the rest are considered as modified prototypes from Tracy Aerospace. As far as its goes, everything is fine but what is really worrying is that none of the end credits include Derek Meddings who did actually designed them all.
‘The Thunderbirds Companion’ was recorded around 1999 with footage from 1965 to make the 54 minutes up, with interruptions by Alan Pattillo, Bob Bell and John Blundall as Brains (voiced by David Graham) looks over International Rescue’s vehicles and people. Oddly, it misses out on Gordon, John and Tin-Tin, although her father and the Hood get some detail. I would correct something about Scott Tracy because in ‘Cry Wolf’, it wasn’t a practical joke against him, just simply he was too heavy for the Australian kids Thunderbird Two launch.
Now, in case you only wanted to show certain aspects of the ‘Companion’, they are here under categories: ‘The Making Of Thunderbirds’ at 10 minutes; ‘The Characters’ at 15 minutes; ‘Lady Penelope And Parker’ at 14 minutes and running at a shorter 3 minutes the 1965 ‘The Making Of Thunderbirds’.
‘Thunderbirds Vintage Adverts And Promos’ runs at 6 minutes but packs in a lot of adverts from the 1960s and more up-to-date. Those latter ones, without access to the original puppets and voices aren’t particularly brilliant. The early ones are. The Zoom lollipop has been discontinued but the FAB lollipop is still going strong 59 years later.
‘Brains Is Dead’ is an audio story from 2022 and, frankly, even with adding current day mentality to it is really terrible. Without going too spoiler, the Hood has a plan to convince the Tracys that Brains is dead. Quite how they can ‘bury’ anyone in space beats me. Equally, the Hood’s plan would have failed had Brains wanted a cremation. I’m still wondering how Grandma Tracy got up to Thunderbird 5 because only John is there when they deposit Brains’ body in space. Considering Lady Penelope takes her Rolls Royce to the island, why wasn’t it deployed. The errors keep adding up. Assuming you’ve watched all the episodes again by now, do you realise the Hood’s name isn’t actually mentioned at all, even by himself?
The rest are minor extras although interesting that the Japanese added lyrics to the opening theme tune.
The odd careless spots tend to kick in. The double spread of all the Thunderbirds has TB1 with thrusters coming out of its wings which is just plain careless and should have been spotted.
The thing with a series like ‘Thunderbirds’ is that it’s been widely watched and this limited edition boxset is really targeted at people like…well, like me and probably you, if you’ve read this extended review so far. If mistakes are made, they stand out like sore thumbs and if I hadn’t pointed out most of them here, then you’d wonder what I’m doing in this job. A few errors are bound to creep in but this many does become painful. No doubt the key interest is seeing the series as it originally came out, even if in the UK this was in black and white.
GF Willmetts
March 2026
(pub: Anderson Entertainment, 2026. 11 blu-ray disks 1700 minutes 32 * 50 minute episodes with 3 of them being extras. Price: £89.99 (UK). ASIN: B0FMFF3DPK)
