Welcome to our Thunderbirds Deep Dives! As we surge towards International Rescue's 60th anniversary, we asked you to pick your favourite episodes of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's classic 1965 sci-fi adventure series that should receive in-depth, analytical retrospectives. Based on your picks, we've collated a top 10 selection of Thunderbirds greatest episodes to receive a review - as voted for by you!

We're continuing our Thunderbirds Deep Dives with an episode that opens with dramatic attack on a Thunderbird craft - and it's not Thunderbird 2! A deadly encounter in the vast Sahara Desert leads to a long lost Egyptian monument revealing its explosive secrets.

Classic crash-landings

Thunderbird 2's attack and ensuing crash-landing on Tracy Island in the early moments of Terror in New York City is held in such high regard that it's easy to overlook how so many of the other International Rescue machines take a severe battering over the course of the series. In that same episode, Thunderbird 4 is seemingly consumed by rubble, while in the earlier Sun Probe, Thunderbird 3 very nearly becomes ensnared by the sun.

In The Uninvited, Thunderbird 1's unexpected attack at the hands of the violent Zombites gives way to an episode brimming with scorching locations and mysterious enemy hideouts. The Uninvited is also an intriguing snapshot of Thunderbirds' metamorphic production during the early episodes' shift from half-hours to 50-minutes in length. 

Retrofuture pyramids & juxtaposing character personalities

The Uninvited is that remarkably rare beasts in Thunderbirds - a Thunderbird 1 centric episode. Thunderbirds quickly settles into a comfortable routine of mostly Earth-based scenarios that demand Thunderbirds 1 and 2, but in this early instalment, much of the action and drama is centred around Scott's relationship with archaeologists Wilson and Lindsey, desperately searching in vain for the lost pyramid of Khamandidies. The rapid-response functionality of Thunderbird 1 is neatly emphasised in the episode, too, in both Scott's eventual rescuing of Wilson and Lindsey and in the episode's swiftly dramatic opening moments of Scott's attack.

Perhaps the reason we don't regard Thunderbird 1's attack at the hands of the Zombites as fondly as Thunderbird 2 is that there's no anticipatory excitement to the aerial dogfight action and there's little substantial impact on the narrative. Thunderbird 1 makes a swift recovery, but that doesn't detract from the electrifying drama of the out-of-nowhere Zombite fighter jets attacking Thunderbird 1 on its return from a fire disaster that ultimately doesn't require I.R.'s intervention. While International Rescue's heroics can always be relied upon to save the day, scenes such as these in which we witness that I.R. themselves aren't infallible allow a grounded sense of drama and empathy for the jeopardy International Rescue throws itself into.

Still, that abruptness is what makes Thunderbird 1's attack all the more enthralling to watch unfold. With its sharply rapid cuts between the invading Zombite fighter jets, Thunderbird 1's ensuing nosedive, Scott's inability to control his craft, and TB1's thundering impact, the whole sequence is a sublime example of Thunderbirds' attention to detail in the editorial side of its engrossing, filmic qualities.

Wilson and Lindsey's discover of Scott is a rare example of I.R. having to be rescued by civilians. The archaeologists are a brilliant example of how Thunderbirds' guest characters had room for expansive and well-crafted personalities within the episode's 50-minute format. Lindsey's innocent enthusiasm for locating the pyramid is countered by Wilson's incurable grouchiness, but these naturally twist when the pair's eventual discovery of the pyramid comes with being captured by the Zombites. Lindsey's heat-induced, maniacal deterioration and Wilson's determination to escape come off as pleasingly natural characterisations.

Following Scott's violent crash-land and subsequent recovery thanks to the archaeologists, The Uninvited is quite languid in its pacing. The Zombites vanish as abruptly as they arrive, while the curiously ominous sequence of shots of the International Rescue crew fast asleep when coming to Scott's aid all add up to  the inescapable feeling that the episode needed to be stretched out to meet the required running time. The Zombites spend most of the episode unseen, a further hint at the bolted-on approach of the episode's first half. 

It's easy to envision a preliminary half-hour version of The Uninvited opening with Lindsey and Wilson loosing their trailer of supplies requiring external help, followed by their heat-induced discovery of the pyramid, and the rest of the episode flowing as normal from there. This half-hour format offers an intriguing insight into the fact that this speculative version would only ever have allowed room for Thunderbird 1's inclusion in the rescue operation.

From these moments following on from the neatly contained nature of Scott's attack, it's unsurprising that The Uninvited renews its sense of urgency. The episode balances mystery and menace with plenty of back-and-forth between the archaeologists' deteriorating state, the scenes on Tracy Island of International Rescue deciding to respond to their struggling distress call, and the Zombites making their moves against the archaeologists and Scott. Even without the episode's first half, Lindsey and Wilson's personalities would have remained intact but now opening by communicating the severity of their situation as early as possible.

It's worth considering then how much more striking the juxtaposition of the portrayal of the Zombites would have been between the possible half-hour and finalised 50-minute versions of the episode. The sudden reveal of the Zombites just as the maniacal Lindsey prepares to kill Scott in the false belief of stealing his newfound treasure is admittedly robbed of its dramatic thrust when we're already clued into the Zombites' existence. How much more different would the intended impact have played out in an earlier incarnation of the episode?

Bob Bell's set design of Khamandadies' interiors, from treasure-filled tombs to sprawling power plants equipped with fighter jets, is lush in exquisite detail, while the Zombites themselves are brilliantly memorable. Not speaking a word of English doesn't detract from their memorably outlandish villainy set-up. Their origins and motives may remain a mystery, but much like in Edge of Impact, we see thinly-veiled allegories of Cold War-styled villains operating in the world of Thunderbirds. The Zombites themselves operating out of a pyramid is a delightfully absurd notion to contemplate that has rippling implications: how many more ancient monuments across the world are home to war-mongering marauders?

The Uninvited was the last episode of this initial early batch of Thunderbirds episodes to have been written by Alan Fennell, following on from his efforts on Pit of Peril, City of Fire, and Sun Probe, although varying viewing/broadcast orders tend to place The Uninvited slightly later. In typically explosive Fennell fashion, the climactic action of the pyramid's destruction overrides any lingering feelings of uncomfortableness with the realisation that Scott, Lindsey and Wilson's escape from their captors causes the accidental death of the entire Zombite organisation.  

Evidently, Fennell felt a twinge of remorse for the violent implications of this otherwise triumphant parting shot of Thunderbirds 1 and 2 with the rescued Lindsey and Wilson evacuating the danger zone in time. When The Uninvited was adapted into comic strip form for Fleetway's Thunderbirds the Comic in the early 1990s, slight dialogue additions were made to alert readers that the Zombites evacuated to the pyramid's underground bunkers, safe from the explosion. This in turn allowed for the later, original story Return of the Zombites, in which the Egyptian warmongers team up with the Hood! For viewers in the 1960s at least, The Uninvited concludes with a furious burst of pyrotechnics marking the end of the threat presented by the Zombites, their gargantuan base reduced to rubble to be consumed by the grim Sahara terrain.

Memorable villains & terrible terrains 

The Uninvited blends eerie atmospherics in its oppressively sparse desert locations with memorably camp menace from its single-use villains. Enough onscreen clues are evident to speculate over the episode's transformation, but The Uninvited avoids any awkward buckling under the weight of those reinventions. This rare Thunderbird 1-focused adventure portrays the desert as a harshly unforgiving environment, its sprawling expanse filled with menacing mystery when it doubles as concealing such outlandish enemies as the Zombites.

The Uninvited's intriguing acknowledgement of how huge monuments are treated in Thunderbirds' retrofuturistic world make for oddly compelling viewing. Whether it's a storm battered suspension bridge, telecommunications relay tower, or long-lost pyramid, no building is safe from Thunderbirds' technologically enhanced anxieties.

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