Thunderbird 6 (International Rescue Edition)

As a massive fan of the TV series, and having missed this film version over the last 40 years I watched this tonight with considerable expectation. Sadly I was mostly disappointed.

The film is too long with an over reliance on film of a Tiger Moth, which whilst its is cleverly done, with real footage and radio controlled models is not in keeping with the TV series. The long Skyship flight was over extended and the traditional main characters were largely under-used.

That said some of the TV series strong points wrere still evident: Good music, occasional humerous moments and clever models with a particularly impressive explosion at one point.

Its also interesting to note that when the film was made in 1968, the vision of 21st England was that Dover would have a very large missile base. Ah the joys of the cold war - halycon days!

This is the best, but also the last one, as far as I know.
More detail as in the series, better movements and sounds.
It shows what was possible in the age computers were indicated with blinking lamps.
I played it 3 times since purchase.

Like most of Gerry Anderson's puppet series, the Thunderbirds makes for great viewing for all ages; I like it and I'm 45! But Thunderbird 6 is clearly one of the lesser works; the short episodes are better, and the full-length Thunderbirds Are Go movie is far better than this. I've not yet seen Thunderbird 6 on DVD. The brand new VHS tape I saw was not a good transfer; it was grainy and poorly shot, the complete opposite of Thunderbirds Are Go! on DVD, which looks beautiful.

Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's grand finale for their wonderful series of supermarionated shows & films about a family that has dedicated itself to rescuing/assisting others who are in trouble, the Tracy's, who are better known as the Thunderbirds, was a bit of a disappointment. Filmed in 1968, the final installment of the Thunderbirds entitled "Thunderbird 6" gave the impression that a new and wonderful craft was going to be unveiled and put to use in a horrific rescue attempt. All of the previous Thunderbird shows & films had a total of five ships that the Tracy family members used: Thunderbird 1 (essentially a rocket), Thunderbird 2 (a lifting body aircraft), Thunderbird 3 (a space-going rocket), Thunderbird 4 (a submarine) and Thunderbird 5 (an orbiting satellite). At the beginning of "Thunderbird 6", Brains (voice of David Graham), the man who designed all of the Thunderbird ships, presents an idea to a private aircraft corporation to build an airship. After being laughed at by the company's board of directors, they build the airship anyway because it is powered not by bags of hot air or lighter-than-air gas, but by a highly sophisticated anti-gravity device. Shortly thereafter, the Tracy family patriarch, John Tracy (voice of Keith Alexander), asks Brains to design a new Thunderbird ship to be called Thunderbird 6. Unfortunately, Brains' initial design is rejected and spends much of the rest of the film being upset as he tries to design something better. In the meantime, Alan Tracy (voice Mark Zimmerman), Tin Tin (voice of Christine Finn), Lady Penelope (voice of Sylvia Anderson) and her chauffer named Parker (voice of David Graham again), take an extended first "cruise" aboard the airship that Brains designed for the private aircraft corporation. However, unknown to them, spies have replaced the airship's crew.

The reason, then, why "Thunderbird 6" was rather disappointing is that most of the film (at least 2/3 of it) focuses upon the lengthy cruise across the globe that the airship takes. It is only in the last third of the film that any exciting action emerges with the Thunderbirds, but there were a few unusual camera angles used towards the beginning of the film that had not been used in previous Thunderbirds episodes. Sadly, due to the film's lack of audience engagement through most of the film and less realistic rescue during the final third of the film, I can only rate "Thunderbird 6" with 3 out of 5 stars. One interesting aspect to "Thunderbird 6" that is worth noting was that it used more live action footage than any previous Thunderbird installment (most of the biplane scenes were an actual biplane in flight). For it was only one year later (1969) that Gerry & Sylvia Anderson embarked on their first live-action sci-fi TV series, which was entitled "UFO". A few years later, this show was re-imagined into the better-known sci-fi TV series entitled "Space: 1999". It is possible, then, that Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's interest in supermarionation as a means of conveying their sci-fi story ideas was already beginning to fade in favor of live-action when they were developing the story for "Thunderbird 6" because its similarity to a soap-opera was very much part of the character development used in the live-action "UFO" TV series that aired only one year later.

In this DVD adaption of the movie, the makers of the film comment on how 'Thunderbird 6' was supposed to be more on the 'chit chat' and character development side and less action. Let's face it, it's kind of hard to have character development with virtually expressionless marionettes that don't smile, frown, or walk. On 'Thunderbirds Are Go', the 60s style dialogue with the limited capabilities on the marionettes was easy to endure because there was plenty of action, explosions, and other SFX. Not the case on Thunderbird 6; what we get here is a long, around the world flight of Skyship 1 and a dull script. It does get a little interesting with the action towards the end, but not enough to pull the weight of the rest of the movie.