I got interested in Gerrymation at a young age because of my uncle’s infectious enthusiasm for it. He was fascinated with science fiction, many things British, and special effects into the bargain, all of which came together in Gerrymation. Apparently, even by the early 80’s the techniques pioneered in these shows were still regarded as innovative, and I heard many explanations about how they were achieved.
Years later, I was hanging out with some friends when Thunderbirds are Go came on cable. It starts with a segment of perhaps fifteen minutes showing nothing but spaceships taxiing on runways. I was in a position to explain to them that this unnecessarily long sequence where all that was really needed was a few quick establishing shots was basically F/X porn showing off what was for its time exemplary model work. Cinephile nerds that they were, they could appreciate the scene for what it was.
(I also explained to them that the Cliff Richards cameo was a British thing that I don’t quite understand myself. Indeed, many of my friends have spotted these strange Cliff Richards allusions in British programs before. A few years ago I actually met an Indian (Asian) woman with a British accent who said she used to swoon over Cliff Richards.)
In Chicago for a while they played Terrahawks for a while, and I was thrilled to get up at 6 in the morning to see it every Sunday. This was in SuperMacromation ™. When it was under threat of cancellation, I actually printed up flyers to try to draw attention to the show. I think I only confused people passing these out.
Once upon a time, it was hard to get ahold of episodes of any of these shows when they were being used as filler early on some UHF channel. Now, of course, they’re available for sale, rent, streaming, etc. I have now seen the shows that I had only heard of before – Joe 90, Fireball XL-5, Supercar.
Once upon a time, the only place I knew of where anybody else had heard of this stuff was Larry’s Comics in Chicago, where they sold annuals – this was another British thing, according to my uncle. In England, if you knew a kid who was into a show, a copy of the show’s annual made an easy gift. In these days, when I often hear suburban housewives talk about their favorite Doctor (since 2005, naturally), even though much of geekery has gone mainstream, the more obscure stuff is also much more readily available. Yet, oddly I was long ago given a random set of vehicles one Christmas that turned out to be identical to the Thunderbirds, though not labeled as such. Just found in some toy bin. My uncle, who was well familiar with the design of the vehicles opened one of them up, to see if it had a submarine inside. And lo, it did. I remember that the package had some Japanese writing on it, and I now know that the design of the vehicles was actually Japanese. I suppose I could probably dig that article up, if anyone is interested.
I’m still fond of this stuff, though now with a lot more irony than I knew as a child. The plots and dialogue of these shows was really goofy. Captain Scarlett was more serious, and the dolls looked less cartoonish. But one day I realized that the plots were often more-or-less like this: The Mysterons announced their evil plot in foilable detail ("…we’re going to kill the world president as he visits the sausage factory.") Captain Scarlett foils the plot in some way that takes advantage of his indestructability (throws himself into the industrial sausage press, for example). And then they don’t show the Mysterons snickering to themselves and pitching other ideas for evil plots that will involve horribly mangling Captain Scarlet.