The double bill of Attack of the Alligators! and Atlantic Inferno from the classic series received their big-screen world premiere at Picturehouse Central in London recently, but on 28 November (plus a few in early December) they can be seen everywhere from Edinburgh to Exeter.
Among the guests at the premiere were Mark Meddings, son of Derek, the supervising special effects director on the original ITV programme who later worked on James Bond films and won an Oscar for his work on Superman.
Asked about his reaction to the feedback from attendees, Jamie told Radio Times, “I was absolutely thrilled! To see audiences applauding episodes of a television series that first aired 61 years ago is pretty extraordinary.
"On a cinema screen, in 4K, you’re suddenly able to appreciate details that have been there all along, but that even the most devoted fans might never have noticed. It’s a wonderful reminder of just how much imagination, ingenuity and care went into every frame.”
Attack of the Alligators!, the only original episode with an exclamation mark, is a justly lauded adventure – part haunted house, part creature feature – in which a chemical intended to alleviate world food shortage leaks into a rainforest’s watercourse and results in giant reptiles attacking a house and the scientists inside.
Derek Meddings once wrote that when he was in the water with a croc that slipped its leash, “My crew never saw me move as fast as I did to get out of the tank.”
It features a nicely observed father/son dynamic, giving the lie to the criticism that Thunderbirds was a hardware show.
When I was a boy, my friends and I made films on Super-8, inspired by the likes of Thunderbirds. A friend had the first episode, Trapped in the Sky, on a ten-minute Super-8 reel, which we would project as big as it would possibly go, onto walls or a bedsheet. And it looked amazing, even then. Now just imagine the difference in quality between tiny Super-8 and sparkly 4K!
Similarly with Thunderbirds (a favourite of Aardman’s Nick Park, incidentally), the hand-made aesthetic is a joyously trumpeted USP. In any case, the voice artists imbue the marionettes with such character (Shane Rimmer as Scott Tracy, Sylvia Anderson as Lady Penelope and Peter Dyneley as Jeff Tracy) that you soon forget they’re not real.
People want “hand-made” more than ever. For evidence, consider Wildwood. The recent stop-motion feature-film from Laika Studios was, for a time, top of America’s box-office and has drawn unstinting praise from the critics.
"Put down the phones and iPads, gather your friends and family, and lose yourselves in some wonderfully imaginative storytelling.”
"I hope a whole new generation will discover just how captivating Thunderbirds can be.”
Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
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