Thunderbirds are Go - the rest of Season 1

The Thunderbird Shadow has a motorbike that drops out of the bottom. No
doubt the toy comes with a Captain America figure.

So, just to wrap up this one, since episode-by-episode reviews were becoming a little samey:

The second half of the series upped the stakes with the Hood making repeated attacks on International Rescue - including engineering a change of leadership in the Global Defence Force in order to force IR to stand down and hand over their tech - and Kayo under increasing threat of being revealed as his niece. In the season finale he makes his big push, but is thwarted ultimately by Kayo and Lady Penelope.

It took a while to get Kayo her Thunderbird, but it's a nifty little number and she's been no slouch without it, which has been good to see. The vast preponderance of Theresa Gallaghers in the world notwithstanding, this has been a decent little series and a worthy successor to a well-loved but decidedly flawed original.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Falling Skies', 'Relic'; and 'Breakdown'

Spidertank, Spidertank...

The Hood tries to destroy an orbital hotel built using Brains' new nanoconstruction methods. The boys go on a personal mission to extract their father's bestie from a defunct moonbase. And Virgil swings into action to rescue a driven researcher from a collapsing glacial cave.

Thunderbirds are Go continues to build on its world after the mid-season break, introducing the concepts of an ongoing search for new - or rather ancient - biopharma resources in a dwindling environment, and a labour market sufficiently slack that self-building space hotels aren't being occupied by angry shop stewards. There's not much more character work - the other brothers tease Gordon mercilessly about Lady P; Kayo's relation to the Hood is still a secret; we've yet to see the alleged Thunderbird Shadow in use - and no-one gets to flirt with Theresa Gallagher in these three episodes. I'm disappointed by the lack of Eos; it felt like she could have been a much-wanted extra female voice, if only technically. Still, Thunderbirds are Go continues to be a decent little action series.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Under Pressure' and 'Heavy Metal'

It's that man again!

When a heavy metal extractor - part of an effort to clean up the seas after that global conflict/looming ecodisaster - loses control, Thunderbird 4 is sent in to prevent the solution becoming part of the problem. Meanwhile, Lady Penelope seeks out the company who own the extractor to find out why they are fielding a defective rig.

'Heavy Metal' is a fairly routine rescue of the week episode, but featuring the return of Ned Tedford and Gladys, the engineer and his plant from Slingshot, who is apparently pretty unlucky when it comes to job placement. His misfortune may stretch credulity, but gives a nice sense of continuity. There is also another bit of world building, highlighting the global environmental efforts of 2060 and the attempts to profit from them.

Brains gets to flirt with a sexy science lady, voiced by - you guessed it -
Theresa Gallagher.

Closing out the first half of the season, 'Heavy Metal' sees Brains and Alan visiting the Supreme Hadron Collider - and its director, Brains' old college crush, Professor Moffat - which must be better than the Large Hadron Collider, since it is capable of actually generating a black hole instead of just a panic that it might.

This half hour episode puts more meat on the character of Brains than pretty much everything that has come before, not just the ex, but the confirmation that he is - or has been since college - called Hiram, and that it isn't just an alias. Not sure about the Hackenbacker yet. As first a jet and then a space station are drawn down towards disaster, the mid-season closer gives us a barnstorming finale, as Thunderbird 4 is lowered into the event horizon to deactivate the Collider, being the only craft able to operate at the necessary pressure, thus allowing Gordon a non-aquatic rescue to his credit.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Skyhook'

TB2 vs giant, flying pond skater

After an almost unprecedented fifty hours without disasters, the whole family are forced to turn out when a wealthy stormchaser's bid for a Darwin Award threatens to take two employees with him.

It's rare that you wonder why International Rescue bother, but this week it gets close, as the various flaws in the stormchaser's weather station threaten not only him and his team, but also the Tracy boys, delivering a static shock that knocks out TB2 and forcing John to subject himself to crushing G-forces, and all the while this genius criticises the perceived failings of others. I know he's a caricature, but if John doesn't space him, I wouldn't be surprised if Eos did, given her form as a maniacal supercomputer.

Oh yeah! Eos is back - we have actual continuity - and apparently making bets with TB5's life support system on how long he'll stick Earth gravity.

My questions about 'Slingshot' are not answered here. It is revealed that John travels to and from Tracy Island by space elevator (actually a pod on a winch with no ground station,) but unless Tracy mansion is much bigger than it looks, it's not quicker than Alan walking t his room.

Thunderbirds - 'Slingshot' and 'Tunnels of Time'

Hot enough for ya?

An asteroid mine is drifting close to the sun. The pressure is on for Thunderbird 3 to reach the asteroid and evacuate the one-man crew, in time and with fuel left for the journey home.

'Slingshot' is Alan Tracy's episode, with Kayo in support, and makes me wonder when Kayo is going to get another episode of her own. As it is, this is about the Tracy family's boy wonder. Alan is a prodigy who leaves his older brothers for dust (presumably as a result of growing up surrounded by super-talented brothers,) but tends to take things lightly. This makes the very serious Kayo an excellent foil, and they play well on each other's strengths.

The thing that really throws me in this episode is that John leaves the lounge to go to TB5 at the same time that Alan leaves to go to his room. Alan drops onto the floor to sleep and is immediately called by John from TB5. Apparently John's transfer pod is faster than TB3's countdown.

Parker: Chauffeur, valet and gooseberry.

In 'The Tunnels of Time', Lady Penelope is called on in her capacity as a trustee of some antiquities group to survey a dig at a temple in South America. Parker, hoping to get out of accompanying her, summons one of the boys from IR and gets Gordon, because he's not had an episode yet.

This is an impressively layered episode, with the tomb raiding shenanigans interspersed with Scott and Virgil dealing with a shifty professor (voiced by original Alan Matt Zimmerman). Gordon and Lady Penelope spark nicely over methodology, with Parker along as the grumbling comic relief, although the hints of attraction (between Lady P and Gordon, that is) are less successful, although maybe I just find it weird because Jeff Tracy and Lady P seemed to have an 'understanding' in the original.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Runaway' and 'Eos'

It's Brains!

When a computer fault plays havoc with a high-speed train, Scott drags Brains into the danger zone for some breakneck engineering in 'Runaway'. While one resident genius is working on the hardware, John Tracy has at the software, revealing a hidden knack for the fundamentals of algorithms and code (although the episode also shows Alan, the youngest Tracy, being pushed through a pretty demanding home school curriculum.) Naturally, disaster is averted, but the fault is traced to the actions of a rogue AI based on code which John wrote himself.

"Rotate the pod bay doors please, Eos."

In 'Eos' the AI reacts to John's attempts to find it. Designating him a threat based on his intelligence and familiarity, the AI - adopting a feminine voice (and yes, it's Theresa Gallagher again) and the name Eos - hacks aboard TB5 and goes all HAL 9000 on him. After a scramble to disable Eos before she can get back to Earth and spread unrestricted, John gets into a position to destroy her, but instead opts for a more touchy-feely approach, essentially adopting her as a partner and companion to help him run TB5.

These two episodes cause me serious concern for the emotional well-being of the Tracy brothers. They appear to have spent most of their lives on an island, being rigorously home-schooled by their father and grandmother (and possibly Brains, and Kirano senior for a time,) with only one peer outside their immediate family. Kayo is the only female company most of them ever have (I'm assuming here that they are all straight, largely because it's a mainstream animated series, but honestly it would be even worse if they weren't; can you imagine being gay on an island with no guys your age and only your brothers to come out to?) and she certainly seems to view them all as brothers. Possibly Lady P, although she seemed to have a thing with Jeff in the original, for all she's been youthed here, so that just feels weird. Small wonder they all seem to go a little glassy eyed when faced with sexy female disaster victims, stranded crane drivers, slightly murderous mercenary mine owners and artificial intelligences.

Thunderbirds are Go - Unplugged

"When I was a lass we didn't have any Thunderbirds; had to
save the day with string and good manners."

In Unplugged, Virgil finds himself in a powerless London, forced to work without his high-tech gear to prevent a group of anti-technology fanatics bent on bringing down modern society. Luckily, he has his grandmother along for support.

Grandma Tracy was a very minor figure in the original series, but has cropped up several times in the new version and now gets a chance to shine, displaying courage and ingenuity as well as Girl Scout preparedness and an unshakable faith in her boys. Her belief in Virgil even without any gear to back him up is touching, and the moment when she gives him her late husband's compass, that she had originally intended for her also deceased - apparently - son, was genuinely moving.

There's also plenty of action and snappy dialogue, with Lady P and Parker running the B-plot and tracking the Luddites to their goal, and the Hood's sudden yet inevitable betrayal. The crux of International Rescue's mission is also spelled out, when Virgil opts to save a trapped crane operator rather than stop the Hood escaping with the means to blackmail the world. IR saves lives; it's what they do.

I do love the Luddites' logo.

I note that the series keeps throwing sassy ladies into danger - the crane operator in this episode is a young woman with an accent from the Jane Leeves school of British sass - to be rescued by our manly heroes. I'm not sure if this is so much a deliberate choice, however, or a cost saving exercise allowing all the secondary characters to be played by Theresa Gallagher. Secondary male characters tend to be douchebags for Kayo to roll her eyes at, so there's definitely a double standard at play.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Fireflash'

"Well, I'm sure this can't go wrong."

In a bold move, the fifth episode of Thunderbirds are Go basically just rips its plot from the first ever Thunderbirds episode, 'Trapped in the Sky'. With Thunderbird S in the shop (not that we've yet seen it in use,) Kayo is obliged to travel first class on the massive hypersonic airliner Fireflash (poor thing,) only for the flight to be hijacked by the Hood. Whereas the original episode saw Tin-Tin a passive observer, Kayo quickly takes charge, engaging in another hand-to-hand struggle with her uncle before attempting to land the plain with the assistance of her adoptive family.

I really liked parts of this episode, and in particular Kayo's dramatic 'in case I don't make it' was well done and it was good to see the brothers showing a familial concern for Kayo instead of the chest-puffing romantic competition that occasionally crept in to the older series. The use of the elevator cars was a nice nod to the original, but the need for a different solution felt like an important step.

The necessary comparison to the Gerry Anderson series did, however, throw up one of the main problems with Thunderbirds are Go, specifically that with the exception of the two-part opener, the shorter format can not build up the tension that good episodes of Thunderbirds did so well. Of course, it also avoids the dragging sections which dogged not-so-good episodes.

Anyway, if they're going to knock-off old episodes, I vote for The Uninvited, the weird one with the lost pyramid full of fighter jets and the secret civilisation of 'Zombites'.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Crosscut'

"Help! My face is stretched across the inside of my visor!"

I joke about the uncanny valley a lot in regard to CGI productions, but it's especially apparent in this week's Thunderbirds are Go, as the visors on the radiation proof masks worn by Scott and guest character Marian van Arkel (voiced by Theresa Gallagher of Alphablocks fame) eerily distort their features across the available surface.

In the absence of the other brothers, Scott and Virgil set out to reseal an old Uranium mine in South Africa, before a storm front blows radioactive dust across Pretoria. The unsealing turns out to be the work of Marian, daughter of the mine's former owners, who were ruined by the death of the nuclear industry in and around the same conflict of 2040 that created last week's stealth satellite. She plans to restore her family's wealth by selling refined Uranium to the Hood, but comes good in the end during a daring escape from the mine in Scott's company.

She also tries to kill him with an aliens-style power loader, which is close enough to a forklift for my money.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Ring of Fire' and 'Space Race'

Tracy Island, located squarely in the flooded basin of the uncanny valley.

When it was announced that a rebooted CGI Thunderbirds series was to be made, the response from fans was predictably restrained.

This is going to be shit, they said, because they always do. Now, I enjoyed the Captain Reboot, so here I am to check out Thunderbirds are Go, ITV's shiny new Anderson-derived property, in particular the opening two parter 'Ring of Fire' and the third episode, 'Space Race'.

There's no build up in the opener, as Virgil Tracy rescues a man and his son from a lost balloon in storm force winds. It's clear that International Rescue are an established presence in the world, even as they set out to rescue the crew of an underwater research station, and become embroiled in a plot by their megalomaniac foe, the Hood, to blackmail the world with satellite controlled earthquake machines.

Line of the week goes to the Hood: "I don't want to rule the world; I just want to own it. Someone else can run the place."

In 'Space Race', astronaut Alan shares centre stage with London operatives Lady Penelope and Parker, as they race to deactivate an old stealth satellite left over from a less enlightened age.

Line of the week is probably Parker dubbing himself 'the Grey Ninja', although there is also a pricelessly awkward exchange between Alan and Kayo:

"Sorry for last time. The babysitter crack."
"It's okay; most men would kill to have you as a babysitter. I mean... because you're so... responsible."

Our new series then is set in a world where International Rescue has been operating for some time, but the organisation is missing a head; Jeff Tracy is gone, lost in a crash thought to have been engineered by the Hood. Also gone is faithful butler Kirano (presumably lost in the same crash,) leaving IR in the hands of the younger generation.

The Tracy brothers are all pretty much as they were before. Scott and Virgil are the serious, dark-haired ones; Gordon and Alan are the junior members of the team; and John sits in a tin can in space and watches everything, making him a little bit creepy. Thus far, the balance between the five has been better than in the original, and in particular space monitor John has been a far more active member of the team, running a lot of their data analysis like a human version of Person of Interest's Machine. Also present and correct are Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and Parker; the latter is most directly influenced by the original series in performance, almost to the point of parody.

Rounding out the team's gender dynamics a little bit (it's still a 3:1 ratio, but better than the old 6:1) is Kayo, IR's covert ops specialist. In full Tanusha 'Kayo' Kyrano, this is the cloyingly proper Tin-Tin revised for the modern age, nicknamed for her knockout punch rather than her maidenly sweetness (and to avoid IP conflict with the big screen version of Herge's boy reporter.) She even gets her own ship, the Thunderbird Shadow, courtesy of Brains, who is apparently now an Anglo-Iranian (or possibly Indian, but voiced by Anglo-Iranian Kayvan Novak*.)

The cast is mostly unremarkable, but it is noticeable that they are primarily English actors affecting variable American accents. Rosamund Pike gets a pass on this as Lady P, of course, as does Angel Coulby, playing Kayo strictly RP.

All in all, this is a pretty good adventure show. There are doubtless fans of the old series shaking their heads in despair, but a show running on CITV is for the new generation, and I am keen to know what my nephew makes of it, having been introduced to Thunderbirds by his dad.

* Just to mess with my head, original Brains actor David Graham now voices Parker, while original Lady Penelope Sylvia Anderson is set to guest voice.