2026 marks 60 years since mankind first journeyed to Mars - at least, in the world of Thunderbirds! Thunderbirds Are Go debuted in cinemas in December 1966, the first of two cinematic outings for International Rescue in the late 1960s. What was touted as the crowning achievement for the newly christened Century 21 Productions (shedding the name A.P. Films), after years of hard work producing increasingly successful sci-fi puppet TV series, failed to ignite excitement from much of the world.

While the movie didn't take off as many had expected, it did gift us with a bounty of advancements for Century 21 Productions, including the debut of the colossal multi-component spacecraft Zero X. With the craft's 60th anniversary debut this year, let's celebrate the genesis and lasting legacy of Zero X!

The First Men to Land on Mars

One undeniable complaint about Thunderbirds Are Go is its heavy reliance on space-age spectacle that has little to do with International Rescue itself. However, if you actually prefer witnessing the reliably catastrophic 'guest mecha' in action that inevitably requires rescuing, then the film is a veritable gift of Century 21 Productions delivering its most intensely cinematic space adventure. So much focus is given to the missions and subsequent disasters of Zero X that it's a wonder this film didn't act as a backdoor pilot for a conceivable Zero X television spin-off. 

Zero X itself commands the screen whenever it appears. The solar system exploration spacecraft itself is a genius realisation of Gerry's conceptual imagination and Derek Meddings' design. The craft's impressively multi-component status commanded a razor-sharp focus in levelling up the special effects. Zero X running into trouble in outer space, in the sky and into the ocean reflects the heightened special effects ambitions that enabled by such a gargantuan spacecraft.

Zero X's visual status remains the most ambitious of all the classic Anderson mechs. Blending the realistic space race design philosophy with aeronautical flourishes, Zero X's ability to launch and land like a conventional aircraft foreshadows NASA's own Space Shuttle system. Its function as neither a rescue vessel nor a security craft also makes it oddly unique against other Anderson vehicles, purely designed for non-combative deep-space exploration. Zero X's detachable lifting bodies enable its aerodynamic take-off abilities, while the uncoupling capabilities of the Martian Exploration Vehicle allow for shuttle-like functionality to explore otherworldly terrain. 

Indeed, Zero X's design feels explicitly tailored to the company's merchandise operation - i.e., a design as toy-friendly as possible. While a motorised, multi-piece Zero X toy was indeed widely available in the late 1960s, Century 21's head of Merchandising Keith Shackleton recalls that the toy, rather surprisingly, wasn't a high seller for the company. However, Zero X's afterlife would be filtered through to fans in surprising ways...

Cosmic Headlines

The New World Aircraft Corporation would reappear in Thunderbird 6, but Zero X came and went with this first film. The Martian Exploration Vehicle would be recycled into a brief but memorable role in the opening events of Captain Scarlet. An explicit confirmation that viewers were meant to accept that Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet shared the same universe? Or a canny upcycling of pre-existing models and props which removed the need for fresh models to be produced for brief screentime? 

In the pages of TV Century 21, the spacecraft would become a new centrepiece for the newspaper of the future. From January 1967, Zero X took up residence in TV Century 21 as its latest inclusion from the worlds of Anderson. Fresh from its crash-landed fate from Thunderbirds Are Go, the Zero X Mk. III blasted Captain Paul Travers and the rest of the ZX crew into the Solar System for a bracing string of cosmic terrors. 

Brilliantly illustrated by Mike Noble and written with hyperactive menace by Angus Allan, for the first year of the strip's run, Zero X journeyed to other planets throughout the Solar System. While Thunderbirds Are Go had stated that Zero X's debut assignment would be the first manned mission to Mars, this rather conflicts how Mars is portrayed as a bustling hub of colonised humanity in TV21. Indeed, the whole pomp and ceremony of Zero X is rather punctured by the fact that, by TV21 standards, space travel is already commonplace.

Still, some darkly thrilling comic adventures are composed for the spacecraft. The strip's first year's worth of eight storylines between issues #105 and #154 are a spectacularly splendid run of full-throttle galactic adventure that balance techno-pulp with star-speckled horrors. The intergalactic conspiracy thriller Prisoner of the Stars, the hauntingly surreal Mission to Saturn and the space poiosn outbreak-turned-mob vigilantism terror of Horror of Asteroid Belt 19 are particularly worth seeking out.

As if in subtle response to these nagging continuity headaches, the second year of the strip sees Zero X upgraded from a spaceship to a starship and given free reign to explore genuinely unchartered territory of the cosmos. New proto-Star Trek type terrors await Zero X, illustrated by the strip's second primary artist, Jim Watson, including marauding apes, renegades Zero X's, sentient dust storms of death, and more.

Zero X Moving into the 21st Century

Outside of its premier run in TV21, Zero X continued to hang onto a modest yet notable afterlife in spin-off media. Ongoing adventures continued in the pages of various TV Century 21 annuals and later in Countdown in the early 1970s. The most interesting narrative expansion for the craft occurred when Zero X was integrated into the post-apocalyptic world of Project SWORD, reimagined as an intergalactic space taxi in assisting with ferrying the remnants of humanity of a dying Earth. This was perhaps done in response to the lacklustre performance of Thunderbirds Are Go, demanding inventive ways to shift Zero X merchandise. 

Zero X continued to prove a popular Anderson craft to merchandise, particularly in Japan, where Gerry Anderson's creations had a sizeable influence on the development of tokusatsu and science fiction anime works. Imai produced a Zero X model in the early 1970s, amusingly titled Thunderbird Zero X! In the mid-2000s, Aoshima produced a pair of Zero X die-cast model sets. The premium collectable model boasted all of the detachable features that Zero X displays in Thunderbirds Are Go. Aoshima produced two separate editions of the craft; one for Captain Scarlet and one for Thunderbirds. 

Anderson's worlds have long been held as a staple of Japanese pop culture. Special effects maestro and Godzilla/Ultraman co-creator Eiji Tsuburaya and Neon Genesis Evangelion's Hideaki Anno have acknowledged how Anderson's explosive sci-fi worlds influenced their own globally beloved creations. But how precisely might Zero X, with its multi-component abilities, have influenced such mecha animes as Gundam or Macross, or the transforming vehicle blitzkriegs of Super Sentai or Diaclone (both of which later adapted into Power Rangers and The Transformers, respectively)? 

Into the 21st century, Zero X remains one of the most dizzyingly impressive centrepieces of Thunderbirds, one that succeeded in outstripping its disaster-prone introductory big screen saga and became a critical component of Century 21's spin-off worlds that enabled the starship to forge its own powerhouse identity of retrofuture cosmic adventure.

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