Category Archives: Reviews

Thunderbirds – 21. Cry Wolf

On the surface, Cry Wolf doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s fundamentally a lighter story about teaching a couple of children a lesson which ends up going a bit wrong. There’s not much impressive machinery or seriously large scale disasters going on. The premise is a little more warm and fluffy in comparison to other episodes, at least to start with anyway. But is there more to this episode than just being ‘that one with the kids’?

Thunderbirds – 20. The Man From MI.5

The Man From MI.5 attempts to break the usual Thunderbirds mold by providing us with a story of spies and subterfuge rather than flat out rescuing. Comparing this episode to a James Bond movie is nothing new, but while there are obvious links in the form of the Bondson character, he’s very much pushed off to the side and Penelope is at the centre of this story. This week, she’s the bold, cool, and slightly eccentric version of the character that we all prefer to remember rather than the whiny and a bit useless Penelope we saw last week. So is this her greatest adventure yet?

Thunderbirds – 19. The Impostors

The fundamental premise of The Impostors is a work of sheer original brilliance. It takes the world of Thunderbirds and turns it upside down in a way that remains true to the original formula of the show. The episode is packed full of action, intrigue, and memorable guest characters to tell the story of International Rescue’s fall from grace as their global reputation is called into question. The Impostors turns away from the optimistic and heroic attitude of the series which simply marvels at incredible engineering and bravery, instead showing us the skeptics and the criminals who try to turn any situation to their advantage.

Thunderbirds – 18. 30 Minutes After Noon

30 Minutes After Noon is quite an oddity. It distinctly features two very different rescue missions, an awful lot of live action hand inserts and unusual camera angles, and some robots which… well we’ll come to those later. It couldn’t be clearer that this script originally started life as a half hour story but needed to be extended before production started. Yet despite being linked by the bracelet plot, the two halves of the episode feel like two completely separate stories that have been glued together afterwards. David Elliott directs the episode (or at least the second half of it) with flare and quirkiness, inspired as he was by the film The Ipcress File.

Thunderbirds – 17. Desperate Intruder

Brains is placed firmly in the centre of the action in this week’s episode as he becomes the only member of International Rescue to meet The Hood one on one. When an attempt was made to give him a prominent role in Day of Disaster he ended up being sidelined as the comic relief. Here the focus is only deadly danger and some of the most disturbing moments ever seen in Thunderbirds. There’s no question that The Hood is back to the level of nasty last seen way back in Trapped In The Sky.

Thunderbirds – 15. Day Of Disaster

Day Of Disaster demonstrates that when the ambitious Americans of the Thunderbirds world are daring enough to try and send a rocket to Mars, one pompous Brit in love with his rusty old suspension bridge is enough to bring the project to a grinding halt. Yes, the British don’t always come out on top in Thunderbirds and appear to fundamentally lack common sense a lot of the time – such as Lord Silton being driven all the way to the bank in Vault of Death only to have forgotten his key, or Sir Jeremy Hodge in The Perils of Penelope standing at a locked door yelling about how British he is but not actually trying to fix the problem. Day Of Disaster is the next in a line of episodes which shows us how ineffective, yet loveable, us Brits are in Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s vision of the future… to say nothing of the amazing sequence when the rocket falls off the bridge.

Thunderbirds – 14. End Of The Road

The construction world of the future is a theme focussed on time and again in Thunderbirds. It often comes back to the idea that despite all the highly advanced and automated technology, it still takes hard work and human sacrifice to make things really happen. Despite all these tech-based endeavours, human characters are still the central focus of such stories, End of the Road being a standout example. It’s an episode full of spectacular special effects and some lovely looking guest vehicles – but also in the middle of it all is Eddie Houseman, a guest character whom we grow to like as we learn about his determination and his loose ties with the International Rescue organisation.

Thunderbirds – 13. Terror In New York City

There’s no doubt that for most Thunderbirds fans, Terror In New York City is a classic. I first saw it as part of the Countdown to Disaster VHS compilation feature alongside Atlantic Inferno. Needless to say it was a tape that I watched as often as I could. The episode delivers not just one, but two standout moments which push the format of the series to the limit, giving us two of the most catastrophic and dramatic disasters ever seen in Thunderbirds.