Thunderbirds' long-lasting popularity over the last 60 years is at odds with how brief its original lifespan was. Only broadcasting for 32 episodes across two series, Thunderbirds' short run on television failed to prevent the series from being regarded as Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's most technically advanced and creatively accomplished effort.

Now, for its 60th anniversary, fans can now experience a thrilling expansion of Thunderbirds' onscreen canon with a trilogy of three newly produced episodes of classic Thunderbirds, soon to be available as part of our upcoming Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Collectors Edition Blu-ray. Oddly enough, these episodes were produced a decade ago! Let's explore the history of Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes.

Introducing the Anniversary Episodes

Produced to mark the series' 50th anniversary in 2015, Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes (born as Thunderbirds 1965) is a trio of Thunderbirds episodes produced using authentic Supermarionation puppetry and explosive practical effects. The episodes are adaptions of a series of original 1960s Thunderbirds audio plays, featuring much of the series' original cast, and transforming them into authentic Thunderbirds adventures. 

Introducing Thunderbirds, The Abominable Snowman, and The Stately Home Robberies were crowdfunded and produced by Pod 4 Films, who would later become Century 21 Films. The three episodes blend newly produced sequences with all new puppets, sets and models with pre-existing series footage cleverly cherrypicked and edited to enliven narrative gaps in the original audio dramas. The audio plays themselves  naturally lean into quite descriptive dialogue, rendering some strands of dialogue and action redundant in adapting them for the small screen. 

Pod 4 Films consisted of a dedicated yet scaled down team in pursuing a seamlessly authentic Thunderbirds' viewing experience, led by the core team of producer/director Stephen La Riviere, associate producer Andrew T. Smith, and special effects director Justin Lee. Everything from puppetry performances to costume and set design, model construction of the Thunderbird machines and plenty of explosions were perfected to the finest details to ensure these episodes were made to look as if they could have been produced in 1965. The episodes saw several AP Films alumni return to making Thunderbirds, including puppeteer Mary Turner, sculptor Judith Shutt, and director David Elliot, and were filmed in Slough. 

Several strands of dialogue from the original audio plays were removed, while entirely new sequences were added to punch up the admittedly light-hearted story material, understandably never intended to match the visual intensity of Trapped in the Sky or Terror in New York City. Most notably, these comprised of several exciting rescue operations unique to these adaptations, which certainly add a heavy duty visual flavour to the adventures. These three adventures also clock in at a concise 25-minute length each, resulting in a tangible offering of how Thunderbirds may have operated in its original 25-minute format. 

Thunderbirds Are Definitely Go!

Introducing Thunderbirds may be regarded as the definitive onscreen Thunderbirds prequel. Written as a companion piece to introduce listeners to the world of International Rescue, Lady Penelope and Parker visit Tracy Island for the first time and are given a guided tour of the International Rescue set-up by Jeff Tracy, which includes witnessing most of the core Thunderbird craft in action.

Written by series scriptwriter and TV Century 21 editor Alan Fennell, Penelope and Parker are the natural focus of the episode and are quite evidently written in the context of their prequel comic strip, which is surely how listeners at the time would have been most aware of these characters. Penelope's rather snide treatment of Parker in Introducing Thunderbirds therefore makes a lot more sense when placed in the context of how they met in TV Century 21. Amusingly, this then creates a canon error in that Penelope and Parker would visit Tracy Island for the first time again in Frank Bellamy's TV Century 21 strip - also written by Fennell!

Introducing Thunderbirds features newly made puppets of Penelope, Parker, Jeff Tracy, plus entirely new model sets of Tracy Island and Tracy Villa. The spellbinding production values effortlessly match those from 1965. The economic usage of stock footage of Jeff showcasing the launch of the Thunderbirds for Penelope and Parker to witness has the oddly ceremonious effect of Introducing Thunderbirds joining the pantheon of episodes to feature all five Thunderbirds in action.

The Abominable Snowman blends high-octane rescue adventure with monstrous myths. Penelope and Parker are dispatched to the Himalayas to solve the growing mysteries of people vanishing. In doing so, they stumble upon the Hood's villainous scheme involving extracting uranium from the mountains. The episode features a rare and memorable onscreen confrontation between Penelope and the Hood. Its brilliantly ambitious practical effects, with its snow-scorched landscape, provide an atmospheric backdrop for spy-fi adventure and thrilling rescue action to play out against.

The Abominable Snowman is the most classically flavoured Thunderbirds episode of the trio, featuring varied set design, vehicles, props, glamorous wardrobe for Lady Penelope (a constant throughout these episodes) and a notable usage of real-life close-ups of human hands, much like in the original series. The seamless blending of the newly created footage of the uranium plant disaster that opens the episode and integrated mixture of classic series footage and dialogue during Scott, Penelope and Parker's escape from the Hood's lair is particularly effective, even if such a method struggles to communicate the subsequent dramatic implications: were the Hood's other prisoners really left to their fate when he detonated his lair?

The Stately Home Robberies feels very much carved from the same lighter tone of Vault of Death or The Perils of Penelope. The original audio play is credited to Alan Fennell, but based on a story by Jim Watson. Could this be the same Jim Watson who illustrated Captain Scarlet and Zero X in TV Century 21? Quite possibly, given the TV21 connection. This adaptation incorporates a rescue operation that once again smartly blends footage and dialogue from several Thunderbirds episodes. In this final adventure, Lady Penelope finds herself at the centre of a deadly act of vengeance of a jewel thief to avenge his family's honour. 

The Stately Home Robberies saw original Thunderbirds director David Elliot return to directing Supermarionation. The episode also features perhaps the most extreme example of extra material being integrated into the episode to enliven its story. Penelope and Parker's apprehension of the crooks is relatively straightforward in the original audio drama, but in this adaptation, the crooks take to destroying the mansions they rob, leaving auto-bombs timed to detonate once they make their escape with their ill-gotten riches. They do so in the Tower of London, leaving Penelope and Parker to a grizzly fate - unless International Rescue can save them! A mixture of classic footage of the Thunderbird craft arriving on the scene gives way to uniquely filmed sequences of Thunderbird 4 and Gordon saving the pair from certain destruction.

Anniversary celebrations

Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes marked an unforeseen method of celebrating Thunderbirds' longevity. Actual new episodes produced to match the aesthetic of the series' retrofuture world was something surely nobody was expecting and the end results are a wondrously evocative uplifting of practical production methods utilised by Century 21 Productions all those decades ago. 

Following the universal positivity of these episodes, much clamouring from the fandom for more adaptations of Century 21's audio plays prompted speculation that Captain Scarlet would surely follow, but Pod 4 Films instead pursued other ambitions. Eventually rebranding as Century 21 Films, the company's most noteworthy efforts to date include Nebula-75, produced under the lockdown conditions imposed during the outbreak of COVID-19 throughout 2020.

As per Kickstarter's rules for works funded through its crowdfunding platform, The Anniversary Episodes were initially only available to those who backed the project. Wider releases have emerged over the last few years. The episodes became available digitally on BritBox in 2020, and the episodes formed part of Japan's Thunderbirds GoGo celebrations for the series' 55th anniversary. The Anniversary Episodes received a Japan-exclusive theatrical release and fresh release on a more generally released DVD and Blu-ray set.

The Anniversary Episodes now form part of our upcoming Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Collectors Edition Blu-ray. If you missed out on the chance to experience these wonderfully realised additions to Thunderbirds' canon, our upcoming Blu-ray is the perfect chance to enjoy three 'lost' episodes of classic Thunderbirds!

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