More Rose-Tinted Puppetry

As I keep saying, all the linked material is not mine and some of the links may not work. Although the links are to open and accessible sites, sometimes the material is copyrighted and the owners pull it or have it pulled. You can, of course, go looking on YouTube, or similar sites, for copies. I am sure you know how.

Reminder : I am a Scot and lived there most of my life, so these comments and history is from that lovely country's viewpoint.

We are still in the early 1960s with this bit of blog. 1964-ish to be vague.

Standby For Action!

I am sure for many of us those three words take us back to our childhood. To the bygone days when we were innocent, to the days of Goodies and Baddies. To the days when we knew that there were no Aquaphibians, no King Titan ruling them in Titanica. No Surface Agent X-2-Zero helping them out. Not like today when the internet quite possibly has a conspiracy group set up around the Government's policy of hiding the truth from us.

39 episodes were made and back then that meant 39 weeks to watch. The TV rule makers would not allow for may repeats whilst a show was still live, so that show ran for pretty much the whole year.

The show was, of course, Stingray - a puppet show with some exciting special effects for the time. This show was the 7th in AP Films' repertoire. I did  not catch any of the earlier ones bar Fireball XL5 as we did not have a TV back then.

The show was set in the 2060s and was about a small submarine craft that was part of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol headquartered in the USA. This might mean that in the coming days the WASP acronym will stand for something else. You never know it might actually be based in the Gulf of America.

The last World War was over but somehow the adults in charge still thought that the selling point to us children should be all about the good guys fighting the bad guys so our hero was the pilot of a combat submarine. WASP was just an good sounding acronym but this was not about security or defense, it was all about torpedoing the ships of those who were there before us. Yeah, right, typical good guy "We know better than you" mentality. The theory that the WASP was there for exploration is shot out of the water early on. It's was a pissing contest before children knew the meaning.

But I liked it, I did not pay a lot of attention, back then, to the guns. By the time of Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons came around I was more aware of them and not in a "I like guns" sort of way. Maybe because I was not part of the American market that these series were targeted at.

But who was this Goodie? I hear you ask?

This was Troy Tempest before he made it big as a Private Eye in the 70s' TV series, The Rockford Files.

And for balance the Baddies:

Surface Agent X-2-0 and King Titan of Titanica, neither of which went on to fame and fortune elsewhere.

After the TV show, Troy went on to star in Singray's further adventures in TV21 magazine.

A rather short one this time but as usual, feel free to add your thoughts, whether you agree with me or not. It would be helpful to know what you think and if you want this to take any particular direction.

TVJunkie 1962 - Fireball XL5

As I keep saying, some of this stuff is not mine and may very well be pulled for breach of copyright. You can, of course, go looking on YouTube, or its foreign variants, for copies. I am sure you know how.

Fireball XL5, a Supermarionation forerunner of TV21 productions: one of the first tv series I watched because of an interest, unlike Watch With Mother which was aimed at toddlers and kept me quiet at dinner time.

This was on TV for a single year in the early 60s but I did not see it originally. We probably did not have a TV back then. 

This SF TV series was from the pens of that husband and wife team, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It wasn't the first and they went on to give us many years of great adventures for children and young teenagers - Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, Space 1999, UFO.....10 years of memorable TV before cartoons took over.

Set in the mid 21st century (not that far away now, is it?), Colonel Steve Zodiac commanded the space ship XL5. Ably assisted by Dr Venus, Professor Matthew Matic, and an on-board Robot, Robert. There was also Zoonie the Lazoon but the less said about that the better.

Good old science fiction featuring many themes of the golden age - if you watch or read any SF, you will come across many of these.

The series wears well for what it is but I am sure the modern child would be less than impressed - oxygen pills that allow you to breathe in a vacuum, no space suits required, traversing inter-stellar space in 6 weeks, instantaneous radio transmissions, all aliens speak perfect English! Yes, back in the day we weren't all critics and for me, that was a good thing. Also, back in the day the production seemed to be a lot better - lighting, sound, staging, sound, effects - in general far, far better than much of what came later. Even when you consider that it was a "mere" children's puppet show!

But the Andersons did get something right  - the newer generation of rockets - Falcon series - do, indeed re-land in one piece for subsequent re-launch. So it wasn't all wrong. 

If you own a pair of rose-tints, there is a Facebook page...

But, if you want to really, really, really want to know about Zoonie:

 Not sure what the next blog will be about but stay tuned for an update in a couple of days.