International Rescue’s purpose is to save lives where all other means of rescue have failed. The organisation’s incredible array of rescue technology often leaves more traditional rescue options in the shade, from the main fleet of five Thunderbird machines to the army of pod vehicles. But what other types of rescue technology do we actually see in action throughout Thunderbirds? This Thunderbirds Thursday, we’re celebrating the non-IR rescue vehicles and technology from the world of 2065!
“Stand By, Crash-tenders”
When formulating the premise of Thunderbirds, Gerry Anderson took inspiration from the German mining disaster ‘Wunder von Lengede’ (Miracle of Legende), in which 21 miners became trapped underground after an iron mine became flooded from the collapse of a nearby dam. The difficult and prolonged nature of the rescue operation, which required a heavy-duty bore to be dispatched from the city of Bremen, meant that 11 of the 21 trapped miners were saved. A further 29 were killed during the actual collapse and subsequent flooding. In response to the disaster, Gerry saw the huge advantages of there being some form of international rescue organisation that could transport equipment efficiently and quickly to anywhere in the world.
In the world of Thunderbirds, this race-against-time motif is a defining aspect of the series. Normal means of rescue remain available, but so often, they’re shown to be antiquated, slow, or generally just not suitable for the kinds of intense, complicated disasters that frequently occur. In situations such as these, the call is put out on any radio wavelength, Thunderbird 5 receives the transmission, and the Thunderbirds swing into action to save the day.
Throughout Thunderbirds, we regularly see the more traditional rescue technology utilised by emergency services, military forces and space agencies. Their inevitable failure is a common plot device used to highlight the necessity for International Rescue’s existence. However, we shouldn’t totally write off these feats of life-saving engineering, as they often serve as a vital life-preserving link between the beginning of the disaster scenario and the eventual arrival of International Rescue.
Helijets and fire engines are common sights whenever a disaster erupts in Thunderbirds. Before International Rescue can arrive on the scene, these basic yet still useful emergency vehicles can be relied upon to provide immediate resistance against most emergency scenarios while the authorities await the far more specialised technologies of the Thunderbird machines to arrive. In the case of firefighting vehicles, a wide variety of fire tenders appear throughout the series in different shapes and sizes, all carrying the instantly recognisable retrofuture visual stamp that 20th century sci-fi media like Thunderbirds have come to embody. Evidently, some of this technology catches the attention of International Rescue themselves, as some of the organisation’s own firefighting vehicles are adapted from pre-existing machines used by regular emergency services.
Various military instillations and space agencies carry their own specialised rescue response systems. A series of Air Sea Rescue units are in regular operation on various military bases, including Glenn Field (the home of Zero X) and Matthews Field. These hypersonic jet craft are situated within their own uniquely produced bunkers, which can sink into the ground to sit in a raised position so that the jets benefit from immediate take-off when required. The Air Sea Rescue jets themselves provide rapid response reconnaissance of danger zones, effectively serving as more traditional, mass-produced equivalents of Thunderbird 1.
“Fantastic! That’s Just About the Most Fantastic Scheme I’ve Heard to Date”
Other types of vehicles in the world of Thunderbirds are used to perform jeopardous rescue operations in bizarrely creative ways. In Trapped in the Sky, the TX-204 military target practice aircraft is determined to be the best possible option to dislodge an atomic bomb placed in the landing gear of the in-flight atomic passenger jet Fireflash. This daredevil operation demands all the unshakable confidence that Lieutenant Bob Meddings can muster. The plan is to use the TX-204’s target capabilities to cast a secure line with Bob attached into the air beneath the Fireflash so that he may enter the craft’s undercarriage. It’s a death-defying procedure that ultimately fails, but nonetheless displays an ingenuity at work in finding unusual means of performing a rescue.
More industrial vehicles are used to perform similar out-of-the-box emergency procedures. A fleet of mobile floating cranes is used in the events of Day of Disaster in an attempt to recover the fallen Martian Space Probe rocket, which has fallen to the bottom of a river bed off of the collapsed Allington Suspension Bridge. The rocket’s two-man crew remain trapped inside. The colossal space vessel proves far too gargantuan for the antiquated cranes to successfully manoeuvre, however. Their diesel-spluttering inability to serve their purpose is one of Thunderbirds‘ more transparent examples of why International Rescue is far more suited to rescue situations such as these.
Surely the strangest example of non-IR rescuing in action comes not from the TV series, but from the front cover of a certain issue of TV Century 21. Issue #48 from December 1965 (just as Thunderbirds was blasting off on televisions across various regional ITV networks, features a striking image of the Sun Probe rocket blasting off. Rather than undertaking a new mission to capture a fresh portion of the sun, the issue’s front page explains that the Sun Probe is being used as a last desperate attempt by Space City to track down the missing Fireball XL5. This front page feature was produced to tie into the then current Fireball XL5 storyline running in TV Century 21 – Time Slip! – in which Fireball XL5’s testing of a new and powerful booster engine propels the craft back in time by 100 years.
Precisely how the Sun Probe would have been used to rescue Fireball XL5 isn’t made entirely clear, and the craft sadly doesn’t appear in the storyline’s actual comic pages itself. However, this seemingly random appearance of a Thunderbird craft in a Fireball XL5 story might have been more canny than on first appearances. Sun Probe was the 11th episode of Thunderbirds to be broadcast on ATV Midlands on December 9th, 1965 – remarkably close to the publication of TV Century 21 issue #48. Was Sun Probe’s appearance on the comic’s front cover designed to tie into this particular episode of Thunderbirds, thereby generating further publicity for the series? Quite possibly!
International Rescue may ultimately prove to be the most capable, well-equipped and skilled in tackling the unthinkable disasters that so often trouble the world of 2065, but peppered throughout the series are hugely creative instances of civilians, emergency services and other parties valiantly attempting their own rescue efforts – with varying degrees of success!
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