from the CAPRONA message board, on the topic of Gerry Anderson.
FIREBALL XL5 was my introduction to science-fiction. REALLY. The show ran here in America Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM (apparently the "prime time" slot of those mornings) for 2 years from 1963-65. I watched it every week. Steve Zodiac was my hero-- a combo astronaut-explorer-policeman. And I fell in love with Venus. YEAH, a string puppet. A year into the show's run here, I started kindergarden, and I met a girl who was a dead ringer for her. NO kidding. I got a "Golden Book" adventure, the board game, and, in August '65 (only a month before it vanished off the air), the deluxe "Space City" playset. It was devastating when the show disappeared. As far as I know, in my area, it was NEVER seen again.
Somewhere during that time, I caught syndicated reruns of SUPERCAR, but it always seemed too juvenile and trivial by comparison (and that was me as a KID thinking that!).
September '66 we got STINGRAY. Philly's UFH station 48 (always the tackiest of the 3, between them, 17 & 29), ran it on Wednsedays at 6 PM. Yeah, just Wednesdays. Mondays & Fridays they ran GIGANTOR, Tuedays & Thursdays they ran KIMBA THE WHITE LION. I think more UHF stations should have done that sort of thing, with short-run shows. However, I recall missing STINGRAY quite a few times during that initial run. STINGRAY was like a lesser, underwater version of XL5. Sort of the reverse of STAR TREK, which was a space version of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (if you see what I mean). The actor who did the voice of "Phones" had actually been "Sparks" in the 1961 VOYAGE movie! My late friend Robin insisted there was no romance between Steve & Dr. Venus, but I always thought there was. Here, Troy Tempest was a bit of a cad-- stringing along TWO girls at the same time! Later, 48 ran STINGRAY 5 times a week, but, there really wasn't enough episodes to do that without it getting repetitive real fast. Maddeningly, this was a problem with MOST Gerry Anderson shows!
THUNDERBIRDS first turned up Saturday afternoons at 6 PM, right after ABC's WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS. Probably the only reason I got to see it right from the 1st episode ("Trapped in the Sky"). Loved it, though at an hour long, it took more effort on my part to stick with the stories. Later, it turned up Saturday mornings at 11:30 AM, and later still, with each story broken into the 2-PART format, Monday-Fridays at 7 AM! I really feel that DIDN'T WORK, watching them like that. Had to get up early before school to see it then. (And then it just disappeared forever after that.)
CAPTAIN SCARLET was on Philly's channel 17 at 5 PM. Annoyingly, they started out of sequence, and the 3 connected episodes at the start were run on the 3rd week (following 10 other episodes). Also, like every other show 17 ran at that slot, they'd CUT 5 minutes from the middle of each episode, where the commercial break was. (Apparently, they let the film keep running during the commercials-- THOSE STUPID BASTARDS.) The Sci-Fi Channel, in the 90s, were notorious for cutting shows to ribbons, yet, their run of CS was LESS butchered. In the pilot, for example, on 17, we saw smoke coming from the President's desk. Following the break, CS is zooming along the highway, with the President his prisoner! I didn't get to see what happened in between until the 90s. And every episode was like that.
UFO turned up here (that I know of) in the early 70s, but I got to see most of it when Channel 29 ran it Sunday afternoons at 2 PM (followed by reruns of LAND OF THE GIANTS at 3 PM and THE TIME TUNNEL at 4 PM). It always struck me as a less-advance, more "adult", more serious and DEPRESSING version of CS. In the 90s, it became the 1st Anderson show I managed to tape EVERY single episode of, off the Sci-Fi Channel. Little did I know, every episode had 6 MINUTES cut from it on that channel.
SPACE: 1999 was on Channel 17, Saturdays at 7 PM. I found out decades later they ran the show completely out of sequence. Not sure that matters, though. Whike some shows I'd laugh with, 1999 I'd laugh AT. My GOD, it was so STUPID and contrived and EXCESSIVELY-intense. Each week I swore Martin Landau got closer to a nervous breakdown. The best acting was from Barry Morse. It blows my mind that at the time, I had NO IDEA he was born in London-- not the US! 17 took the show off after 13 weeks. But the following September, they ran ALL of season 2. GO FIGURE. I taped about half of them off Sci-Fi in the 90s, but I swear, I never enjoyed a single one of them. When you have GREAT writers, designers, music, actors, directors, everything, and a show still SUCKS beyond all belief-- there's a problem. I've since seen several documentaries explaining the history of how the show came to be, and it's one gigantic CLUSTER-****. In my view, it never should have been made in the first place.
TERRAHAWKS was run here Saturday mornings at 7:30 AM. I hated having to get up that early on my days off!!! But I did... this became my FAVORITE Anderson show since XL5. My late friend Robin & I discussed Anderson shows at such length. We agreed that from THUNDERBIRDS to 1999, the writing kept getting WORSE AND WORSE. TERRAHAWKS had GREAT writing, and likable characters. I put two and two together when I found out Gerry & Sylvia's marriage had been on the rocks since the mid-60s, and they had a nasty divorce. I saw that as a wake-up call, that he realized people had to mean more than machines. Turns out, "Mary Falconer" was named after Gerry's 2nd wife, Mary.
SPACE PRECINCT -- oh my God! This became my FAVORITE Anderson show, EVER. Great idea, great use of old-fashioned miniatures, WONDERFUL characters (including the goofy-looking aliens, al lof whom were more "human" than the humans on any of the late-model STAR TREK spin-offs), and great writing & directing (several episodes helmed by John Glen, who did 5 BOND films in a row). 17 ran this Saturday nights at 11:30 PM. Boy, way to kill a show, hmm? They took it off after 13 weeks-- just as they had 1999 years earlier. Luckily, a NYC station was running it Saturday nights at 12:30 AM. But then they moved it to Sunday nights at 12:30 AM. And then they moved it to Sunday nights at 1:30 AM. SOMEHOW, just barely, I managed to tape the entire season. I'd heard there was a 2nd season, but it never turned up. YEARS later, I found out they had done a short 2nd season-- just like THUNDERBIRDS-- which was only about 5 or 6 episodes. Still haven't seen those yet.
I deeply regret never having written Anderson a fan letter when he was around.
