From Wikipedia
Gerry Anderson,
MBE (born
Gerald Alexander Abrahams;
14 April 1929 – 26 December 2012) was an English publisher, producer,
director, and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes,
particularly those involving
supermarionation, working with modified
marionettes.
Anderson's first television production was the 1957
Roberta Leigh children's series
The Adventures of Twizzle. Supercar (1961 – 62) and
Fireball XL5
(1962) followed later, both series breaking into the large U. S.
television market in the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s Anderson produced
his most famous and successful series,
Thunderbirds. Other television productions of the 1960s include
Stingray and
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. His production company, originally known as
AP Films and later renamed
Century 21 Productions, was originally formed with partners Arthur Provis,
Reg Hill and
John Read.
Anderson also wrote and produced several feature films, although
these did not perform as well as expected at the box office. Following a
successful shift towards live action productions in the 1970s, his long
and highly successful association with
Lew Grade's
ITC (Incorporated Television Company) ended with the second series of
Space: 1999.
After a career lull when a number of new series concepts failed to get
off the ground, his career began a new phase in the early 1980s when
audience nostalgia for his earlier Supermarionation series (prompted by
Saturday morning re-runs in Britain) led to new Anderson productions
being commissioned. Later projects include a 2005
CGI remake of
Captain Scarlet entitled
Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet.
Anderson had no involvement in the film
Thunderbirds (2004), a live-action adaptation of his TV series. His ex-wife
Sylvia Anderson served as a consultant on the project. Over the years, various British
comics have featured strips based on Anderson's creations. These started with
TV Comic during the early 1960s, followed by
TV Century 21 and its various sister publications:
Lady Penelope,
TV Tornado,
Solo and
Joe 90. In the 1970s there was
Countdown (later renamed
TV Action). There were also tie-in annuals that were produced each year featuring Anderson's TV productions.
Life and work
Early life
Gerald Alexander Abrahams was born in the
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital in
Bloomsbury,
London, and spent the early years of his life in
Kilburn,
[1] and
Neasden,
[2] London. He was educated at Kingsgate infants school in Kilburn and Braintcroft junior and senior schools in Neasden.
Anderson won a scholarship to
Willesden County Grammar School.
[3] His parents were Deborah (née Leonoff) and Joseph Abrahams.
Anderson's
Jewish paternal grandfather had the surname of Bieloglovski. He fled from an area near the Russian-Polish border and then settled in
London, England.
His name was changed by a British immigration official to "Abrahams"
when he arrived in 1895. Anderson's mother Deborah changed their name to
"Anderson" in
1939 because she liked the sound of this name.
When
World War II broke out, Gerry Anderson's older brother Lionel volunteered for service in the
Royal Air Force, and he was stationed in the
United States of America for advanced training. Lionel often wrote letters to his family, and in one letter he described a
U.S. Army Air Forces air base called
Thunderbird Field, the name of which stuck in his younger brother's memory.
Gerry Anderson began his career in photography, and after the war he
earned a traineeship with the British Colonial Film Unit. He developed
an interest in film editing and moved on to
Gainsborough Pictures, where he gained further experience.
In 1947, he was conscripted for
national service
with the RAF. After completing his military service, he returned to
Gainsborough, where he worked until the studio folded in 1950. He worked
freelance on a succession of
feature films.
[4]
Marriage and family
During this period he married Betty Wrightman, and they had two children, Joy and Linda.
[4]
During the production of
Twizzle, Anderson began an affair with the secretary
Sylvia Thamm
and eventually left his wife and children. Following their divorce,
Anderson married Thamm in November 1960, while he was working on
Four Feather Falls.
Start of television career
In the mid-1950s, Anderson joined the independent television production company
Polytechnic Studios, as a director, where he met cameraman
Arthur Provis. After Polytechnic collapsed, Anderson, Provis,
Reg Hill and
John Read formed
Pentagon Films in 1957. Pentagon was wound up soon after and Anderson and Provis formed a new company,
AP Films,
for Anderson-Provis Films, with Hill and Read as their partners.
Anderson continued his freelance directing work to obtain funds to
maintain the fledgling company.
AP Films' first television venture was produced for
Granada Television. Created by
Roberta Leigh,
The Adventures of Twizzle
(1957–1958) was a series for young children about a doll with the
ability to 'twizzle' his arms and legs to greater lengths. It was
Anderson's first work with puppets, and the start of his long and
successful collaborations with puppeteer
Christine Glanville, special effects technician
Derek Meddings and composer/arranger
Barry Gray. It was Anderson's desire to move into
live-action television.
[5]
The Adventures of Twizzle was followed by another low budget puppet series with Leigh,
Torchy the Battery Boy
(1958–1959). Although the APF puppet productions made the Andersons
world famous, Gerry Anderson was always unhappy about working with
puppets. He used them primarily to get "a foot in the door" with TV
networks, hoping to have them serve as a stepping stone to his goal of
making live action film and TV drama.
AP Films' third series was the children's western fantasy-adventure series
Four Feather Falls (1959 – 60). Provis left the partnership, working once again with
Roberta Leigh on
Space Patrol, but the company retained the name "AP Films" for several more years.
Four Feather Falls was the first Anderson series to use an early version of the so-called
Supermarionation process, though this term had yet to be used.
Despite APF's success with
Four Feather Falls, Granada did not commission another series from them, so Anderson took up the offer to direct a film for
Anglo-Amalgamated Studios.
Crossroads to Crime
was a low-budget B-grade crime thriller and although Anderson hoped
that its success might enable him to move into mainstream film-making,
it failed at the box office.
By this time, APF was in financial trouble and the company was
struggling to find a buyer for their new puppet series. They were
rescued by a fortuitous meeting with
Lew Grade, the
ATV
boss who offered to buy the show. This began a long friendship and a
very successful professional association between the two men.
Sylvia Anderson's increased role
The new series,
Supercar, (1960 – 61) was created by Anderson and Reg Hill and marked several important advances for APF.
Sylvia Anderson
took on a larger role and became a partner in the company. The series
was also the official debut of Supermarionation, the electronic system
that made the marionettes more lifelike and convincing on screen. The
system used the audio signal from the pre-recorded tapes of the actors'
voices to trigger
solenoids
installed in the heads of the puppets, making their lips to move in
synchronization with the voices of the actors and actresses.
One of Anderson's most successful ventures was inaugurated during the production of
Supercar—the
establishment of AP Films (Merchandising) Ltd, a separate company set
up to handle the licensing of merchandising rights for APF properties;
it was headed by Keith Shackleton (not the wildlife artist and TV
presenter of the same name), a long time friend of Anderson's from their
National Service days.
APF's innovative merchandising made them a world leader in the field,
and they licensed a huge range of toys, books, magazines and related
items. The worldwide popularity of their TV shows was coupled with
astute marketing, and the combination made APF one of the most
successful merchandising ventures of the decade. The die-cast metal toys
from series such as
Thunderbirds were very popular at the time,
and they now number among the most collectible toys of their kind.
Models from almost all their series have been produced ever since by
companies throughout the world, notably in Japan, where the TV series by
Anderson have a dedicated following.
The next series by APF was the futuristic space adventure
Fireball XL5 (1962) and it was the company's biggest success yet, becoming the first Anderson series sold to an American
TV network,
NBC-TV. Around this time Anderson also saw his Supermarionation style attract imitators, most notably
Space Patrol
which used similar techniques. It was made by several former employees
of Anderson. Produced in 1962, the 39-episode series debuted on British
television in April 1963, and it was later broadcast in America and
Canada.
After the completion of
Fireball XL5, Lew Grade offered to buy
AP Films. Although Anderson was initially reluctant, the deal
eventually went ahead, with Grade becoming the managing director, and
the Andersons, Hill, and Read becoming directors of the company.
Shortly after the buy-out, APF began production on a new puppet series,
Stingray (1964), the first British children's
TV series to be filmed in colour. For the new production APF moved to new studios in
Slough,
Berkshire.
The new and bigger facilities allowed them to make major improvements
in special effects, notably in the underwater sequences, as well as
advances in puppetry, with the use of a variety of interchangeable heads
for each character to convey different expressions.
Thunderbirds
APF's next project for ATV was inspired by a
mining disaster
that occurred in West Germany in October 1963. This real-life drama
inspired Anderson to create a new programme format about a rescue
organisation, which eventually became his most famous and popular
series,
Thunderbirds
(1964–1966). The dramatic title was inspired by the letter Anderson's
older brother Lionel had written to his family during World War II.
Grade was very enthusiastic about the concept and agreed to back a series of 25-minute episodes (the same length as
Stingray), so the Andersons scripted a pilot episode, "
Trapped in the Sky," and began production. Gerry initially wanted actress
Fenella Fielding to perform the voice of
Lady Penelope, but Sylvia convinced her husband to let her play the role.
Thunderbirds also marked the start of a long professional association with actor
Shane Rimmer, who voiced
Scott Tracy.
Production on
Thunderbirds had been underway for several
months when Grade saw the completed 25-minute version of "Trapped in the
Sky." He was so excited by the result that he insisted that the
episodes be extended to fifty minutes. With a substantial increase in
budget, the production was restructured to expand episodes already
filmed or in pre-production, and create new 50-minute scripts for the
remainder. Grade and others were so convinced that
Thunderbirds
would be a success that a feature-film version of the series was
proposed even before the pilot episode went to air. At this approximate
time, APF was renamed Century 21 Productions.
After APF was renamed Century 21 Productions, it enjoyed its greatest success with
Thunderbirds,
and the series made the Andersons world-famous. The 32-episode series
was not initially successful in the United States because it was only
given a limited release, although it later became hugely successful in
syndication.
But it was a major hit with young audiences in the UK, Australia and
other countries and retains a huge and dedicated international following
that spans several generations.
Unfortunately, during the production of
Thunderbirds, the Andersons' marriage began to come under increasing strain, and the company also had a setback when the
Thunderbirds Are GO
feature film flopped. According to interviews published since, Anderson
has said that he considered divorce, but this was halted when Sylvia
announced that she was pregnant. Their son, Gerry Anderson Jr., was born
in July 1967.
By that time, production had started on a new series,
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
(1967), which saw the advent of more realistic puppet characters which,
thanks to improvements in electronics which allowed miniaturisation of
the lip-sync mechanisms, could now be built closer to normal human
proportions.
Century 21's second feature film,
Thunderbird 6,
was an even bigger failure than the first, and the problems were
compounded by their next (and penultimate) Supermarionation series,
Joe 90
(1968). This series returned to more 'kid-friendly' territory,
depicting the adventures of a young boy who is also a secret agent and
whose scientist father uses a supercomputer called 'BIG RAT' which can
'program' Joe with special knowledge and abilities for his missions. Its
relatively poor reception made it the last of the classic Anderson
marionette shows.
On 29 August 2008, it was announced by UK Newspaper
The Sun that plans had been formed to make a new computer generated series of
Thunderbirds. Gerry Anderson started talks with ITV for the rights to the original series.
[6]
Live action
Anderson's next project took the special effects expertise built up
over previous TV projects and combined it with live action. Century 21's
third feature film,
Doppelgänger (1969) (aka
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) was a dark,
Twilight Zone
style sci-fi project about an astronaut who travels to a newly
discovered planet on the opposite side of the sun, which proves to be an
exact mirror-image of Earth. It starred American actor
Roy Thinnes, famed at the time for his role as the protagonist in the American television series
The Invaders. Although it was not a major commercial success,
Doppelganger was nominated for an
Academy Award for its superb special effects.
Century 21's return to television was the abortive series
The Secret Service, which this time mixed live action with Supermarionation. The series was inspired by Anderson's love of British comedian
Stanley Unwin,
who was known for his nonsense language, 'Unwinese', which he created
and used on radio, in film and most famously on the 1968
Small Faces LP
Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake.
Despite Anderson's track record and Unwin's popularity, the series was
cancelled before its first screening; Lew Grade considered that it would
be incomprehensible to American audiences, and thus unsellable.
In 1969 the Andersons began production of a new TV series,
UFO, Century 21's first full live-action television series. This sci-fi action-adventure series starred American-born actor
George Victor "Edward" Bishop, who had also provided the voice of Captain Blue in
Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons, as Commander Edward Straker, head of a secret defence organisation set up to counter an alien invasion.
UFO
was decidedly more adult in tone than any of the previous puppet
series, and it mixed the classic Century 21 futuristic action-adventure
and special effects with some very serious dramatic elements.
UFO was the last series made under the Century 21 Productions banner.
Unfilmed James Bond script
During production of
UFO, Gerry Anderson was approached directly by
Harry Saltzman (at the time co-producer of the
James Bond film series with
Albert "Cubby" Broccoli), and was invited to write and produce the next film in the series, which was to be
Moonraker.[7]
Collaborating with Tony Barwick to provide the characterisation, whilst
he himself focused on the action sequences, Anderson wrote and
delivered a treatment to Saltzman. Nothing ultimately came of it, and
Broccoli and Saltzman proceeded to make
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and
Live and Let Die (1973) and, after co-producing 1974's Bond film,
The Man with the Golden Gun,
the Saltzman-Broccoli partnership dissolved. Offered £20,000 for the
treatment, Anderson refused, fearing that if he accepted he would not be
at the helm when it was made; the next Bond film to be made was 1977's
The Spy Who Loved Me. (This film used only the title of the actual
Ian Fleming
novel.) Anderson started legal proceedings against Broccoli for
plagiarism of story elements but withdrew the action shortly after,
nervous of the legal might lined up against him.
[citation needed] He relinquished the treatment, and received £3,000 in compensation.
[citation needed] A film version of
Moonraker
was eventually produced in 1979, but did not involve any of Anderson's
material, although the special effects were supervised by
Derek Meddings, who had spent his early years working for Anderson's Supermarionation programmes.
After Century 21
By the time
UFO concluded, the relationship between the
Andersons had deteriorated. Although produced under the aegis of a new
company, Group Three Productions (the three being both of the Andersons
and Reg Hill), Gerry decided not to work with his wife on his next
project, the
ITC action series
The Protectors.
It was one of Anderson's few non-original projects. Lew Grade himself
was heavily involved in the programme, and cast both the lead actors,
Robert Vaughn and
Nyree Dawn Porter. The production was difficult for Anderson, who clashed with the famously difficult Vaughn.
[8]
There were also many logistical problems arising from the Europe-wide
filming of the show, but it was very successful in both the UK and
America and its theme song "Avenues and Alleyways" became a hit record
in the UK for singer
Tony Christie. It was also the first live-action series produced by Anderson to survive to a second season.
Space: 1999
Main article:
Space: 1999
Following
The Protectors, Anderson worked on several new projects, none of which he was able to take into production. A proposed second series of
UFO was not undertaken, and a return to puppetry in the
television pilot for a series called
The Investigator, failed to find a buyer. Elements of the abandoned second series of
UFO were eventually turned into what became the most expensive television series ever made in that era of entertainment,
Space: 1999.
Another futuristic science-fiction adventure, it was based on the
premise that a huge thermonuclear explosion on the Moon's surface
(caused by the storage of nuclear waste there) projected the Moon out of
orbit and into interplanetary space. This
TV series starred the
American husband-and-wife duo of actors
Martin Landau and
Barbara Bain. These two had gained international fame in the TV series
Mission: Impossible. They were cast at the insistence of Grade, and against Sylvia Anderson's strenuous objections.
[citation needed]
Separation from Sylvia Anderson
The Andersons' marriage broke down irrevocably during the first series of
Space: 1999 in 1975; Gerry announced his intention to separate on the evening of the wrap party.
[9][10] Sylvia severed her ties with
Group Three,
and to alleviate his financial plight, Gerry Anderson sold his share of
the profits from the APF/Century 21 shows and their holiday home in
Portugal to Lew Grade in return for a one-off payment. It was a decision
he later bitterly regretted because he could not have then foreseen the
huge value the shows would have when eventually released on home video.
Between making the two series of
Space: 1999, Anderson produced a one-off television special,
The Day After Tomorrow (also known as
Into Infinity), about two spacefaring families en route to
Alpha Centauri, for an
NBC
series of programmes illustrating current scientific theory for popular
consumption. While making this project Anderson met Mary Robins, a
secretary working at the studios; they began a relationship and were
married in April 1981.
Space: 1999 was successful enough that a second series went into production in 1976 with American producer
Fred Freiberger brought in to replace Sylvia Anderson. Freiberger was known for producing the final season of the original
Star Trek.
Under Freiberger the series underwent a number of cast and cosmetic
changes which to this day inspire debate as to their merits or lack
thereof. According to
The Space: 1999 Documentary, produced by
Kindred Productions for
Fanderson,
the second series was successful enough that a third almost happened;
however, the documentary features Martin Landau stating that the idea
was killed because Lew Grade needed money to help finance and promote
his pet feature film project
Raise The Titanic. Consequently, the
budget that would have paid for the third series was redirected into
that movie project (which subsequently flopped at the box office).
However, given that
Raise The Titanic did not enter production
until 1979 (and was not promoted and released until the following year),
it is more likely that the money that would otherwise have financed a
third season of
Space: 1999 instead financed the production of ITC's
Return of the Saint series.
Space: 1999 marked the end of Anderson's association with ATV.
By the late 1970s, Anderson's life and career was at a low point—he
was in financial difficulty, found it hard to get work, and perhaps most
devastatingly, became estranged from his young son after receiving a
note written by him stating that he did not want to see Gerry any more.
Anderson suspected that Sylvia was behind this, but there was little he
could do, and he would have no contact with his son for over twenty
years.
1980s
In 1981, episodes of many of Anderson's Supermarionation series were
combined and edited together as films. These aired under the title
Super Space Theatre.
In the early 1980s, Anderson formed a new partnership, Anderson Burr Pictures Ltd, with businessman
Christopher Burr.
The new company's first production was based on an unrealised concept
devised by Anderson in the late seventies for a Japanese cartoon series.
Terrahawks
marked Anderson's return to working with puppets, but rather than
marionettes this series used a new system dubbed 'Supermacromation'
which used highly sophisticated glove puppets—an approach undoubtedly
inspired by the great advances in this form of puppetry made by
Jim Henson and his colleagues.
It featured another reuse of the
Captain Scarlet/
UFO formula of a secret organisation defending against aliens.
Terrahawks
ran successfully from 1983 to 1986 in the UK and only fell short of a
four year American syndication deal by one season when the show was
cancelled, scrapping attempts at making it more well known.
Terrahawks
retains a cult following to this day, regarded by some as being at
times a "black comedy" version of many of Anderson's older series in
addition to being a straight science fiction series. In equal contrast,
however, it is regarded by some fans as an unwise rehash of many of the
visual concepts of
Thunderbirds, and on only a fraction of the
Thunderbirds budget. Anderson has claimed on record that he would rather forget the show.
Anderson hoped to continue his renewed success with a series called
Space Police a new show mixing live-action and puppets. The
Space Police name had already been registered by another company, so Anderson's programme eventually emerged in 1995 as
Space Precinct. A pilot film had previously been made with
Shane Rimmer,
but it took almost ten years to get the concept to the screen. In the
meantime, Anderson and Burr produced the cult stop-motion animated
series
Dick Spanner, which enjoyed many showings on the British
Channel 4
in the late eighties and early nineties. It was the final project
completed by Anderson Burr. Anderson then joined the Moving Picture
Company as a commercials director, and provided special effects
direction for the hit musical comedy
Return to the Forbidden Planet.
1990s
The cult appeal of
Thunderbirds and the other Supermarionation
series grew steadily over the years and was celebrated by comedy and
stage productions such as the hit two-man stage revue
Thunderbirds FAB.
In the early nineties, ITC began releasing home video versions of the
Supermarionation shows, and the profile of the shows was further
enhanced by productions such as the
Dire Straits music video for their single
Calling Elvis, which was made as an affectionate
Thunderbirds pastiche (with Anderson co-producing), and by
Lady Penelope and Parker appearing in a successful series of UK advertisements for an insurance company.
In 1991 Gerry asked journalist and author
Simon Archer to write his biography, following an interview by the latter for a series of articles for
Century 21 magazine. In September that year in the UK,
BBC2 began a repeat showing of
Thunderbirds,
which rivalled the success of its original run a generation before.
This was also surprisingly the series' network television premiere,
having never been shown nationally by
ITV. It became so popular in Britain that toy manufacturers
Matchbox were unable to keep up with the demand for the
Tracy Island playset, leading children's show
Blue Peter
to broadcast a segment showing children how to construct their own. The
fan base for the Anderson shows was now worldwide and growing steadily,
and Anderson found himself in demand for personal and media
appearances.
In response to this greater demand Anderson performed a successful
one-man show in 1992, which Archer had written and constructed. Entitled
An Evening with Gerry Anderson, it took the form of an
illustrated lecture in which he talked about his career, and his most
popular shows. He also made numerous media and personal appearances to
tie in with revivals and video cassette releases of
Stingray,
Thunderbirds,
Captain Scarlet and
Joe 90.
Anderson was interviewed for the BBC's 1993
Doctor Who
documentary, "Thirty Years in the TARDIS". He joked that, despite his
career of making children's programming, the "real tragedy of my life"
was that his own son Jamie (appearing with him) was a
Doctor Who fanatic.
By 1993 Archer published the trivia book
"Gerry Anderson's FAB Facts".
[11] Archer was killed in a car crash on London's orbital
M25
motorway on his way to the publishers to collect one of the first print
run to present to Anderson, and the book later had to be withdrawn from
sale and thousands of copies destroyed as a result of a copyright
dispute with ITC America.
[12]
The renewed interest enabled Anderson to return to television production, but several projects including
GFI (an animated update of
Thunderbirds) did not make it into production. Finally, in 1994, Anderson was able to get the long-shelved
Space Police project into production as
Space Precinct. It was followed by
Lavender Castle, a children's sci-fi fantasy series combining
stop-motion animation and
computer-generated imagery.
In the meantime, the biography, which had been set aside since Archer's death, had been picked up again and was completed by
Stan Nicholls from Archer's original notes and manuscript, finally being published in 1996 shortly before
Lavender Castle went into production.
Around this time Anderson was reunited with his elder son, Gerry Jr., at which time it was suggested
[by whom?]
that Sylvia had been responsible for the enforced estrangement. This
reinforced Anderson's already powerful feelings of animosity toward his
ex-wife.
[13]
2000s
By December 1999, Anderson was working on plans for a
computer animated sequel to
Captain Scarlet, and test reels were displayed by Gerry at a few
fan conventions.
Some of the test sequences from these reels were later available for a
period as elements in publicity reels available on the website of the
production company engaged to make them (the Moving Picture Company or
MPC in
Soho, London,
[14]
where Gerry had previously worked). These early test reels had the
visual design and characters looking very much as they had in the
original show, although the vehicle designs had been somewhat
modernised. Several years after the initial tests the project evolved
into the remake
Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, by which time the entire appearance had been very much updated. Gerry Anderson was made a
Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2001.
Along with his then business partner John Needham, Anderson created another new series entitled
Firestorm which was financed by Japanese investors and featured
anime style animation. The project was not a happy one for Gerry and other planned shows with other Japanese backers, including
Eternity failed to come to fruition.
Firestorm
sold throughout S.E.Asia but because of its anime style is unlikely to
be shown on UK television. Anderson and Needham parted company in 2003.
Anderson was originally approached to be involved in a live-action feature film adaptation of
Thunderbirds as far back as 1996,
[15] but he was actually turned away by the producers of the 2004 film
Thunderbirds, which was directed by
Jonathan Frakes, after first being invited to meet with them.
[16]
He distanced himself overtly from the project, later turning down an
offer of $750,000 simply to write an endorsement of the film shortly
before its release;
Sylvia Anderson,
however, did become involved, and she received a "special thanks"
credit in the film. Unfortunately, the film itself received poor
critical reviews, and it was a box-office failure in America.
Anderson later
[where?] praised the execution of the puppet-based
political satire Team America: World Police, produced by
Matt Stone and
Trey Parker, which was produced using supermarionation-style effects.
Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet
finally premiered in the UK in February 2005. The show cost £23,000,000
to produce, and was the most expensive children's programme ever to be
made in the UK.
[citation needed]
Although many companies invested in producing toys and merchandise, the
lack of exposure given to the series by ITV (episodes were incorporated
into an existing children's show and shown in two halves, separated by
games and adverts) inevitably failed to produce the excitement that
accompanied the original series and disappointing sales followed. The
accompanying comic lasted only six editions before being scrapped by its
publishers. Anderson's displeasure at ITV's handling of the show was
widely reported.
[citation needed].
The series was subsequently released on DVD, where it found a new
audience who were unlikely to have seen it on first screening and is
generally regarded as a very worthy re-imagining of the original
concept.
[original research?]
The year 2005 also saw the 40th Anniversary of
Thunderbirds,
and a wide range of merchandise was produced to celebrate the event. In
2006, ITV announced it would re-run the entire series on its fledgling
CITV Channel, a digital service available on cable, satellite and the
Freeview service.
ITV4, another digital channel, also ran repeats of
UFO and
Space: 1999 up until the end of 2009.
At the end of 2007, Anderson was believed to be working on a new project entitled
Lightspeed, about which very little had become publicly known by that time, and on a possible new edition of the
UFO series.
[citation needed]
2010–2012
In March 2011, Anderson was working with
Annix
Studios, Pinewood on a new project named "Christmas Miracle" a
children's CGI animated feature. It was revealed in June 2012 that he
had been diagnosed with
Alzheimer's disease.
[17]
Death
Gerry Anderson died on 26 December 2012 at the age of 83 after his diagnosis of
dementia.
[18]
The news was announced on his son Jamie's website, he wrote "I'm very
sad to announce the death of my father, Thunderbirds creator, Gerry
Anderson. He died peacefully in his sleep at midday today (26th December
2012), having suffered with mixed dementia for the past few years. He
was 83."
[19]
Voice actor
Matt Zimmerman who voiced
Alan Tracy and supporting characters in
Thunderbirds spoke to
BBC News
about Anderson's death praising his work saying "it's a big part of
peoples lives" saying also that "people speak of the shows with such
affection, and I held Gerry with that kind of affection as well, I am
very pleased to have known him and I feel very sorry for Jamie and his
wife Mary".
[20] David Graham who voiced both
Parker and
Brains said it was "a very sad day".
[21]
Tributes from across the world of television and radio poured in, among them tv presenter
Jonathan Ross, DJ
Chris Evans, comedian
Eddie Izzard and actors
Brian Blessed and
John Barrowman. Ross
tweeted "For men of my age his work made childhood an incredible place to be.". Blessed who worked with Anderson in
Space 1999 and
The Day After Tomorrow
said "I think a light has gone out in the universe, He had a great
sense of humour. He wasn’t childish but child-like and he had a
tremendous love of the universe and astronomy and scientists."
[22]
Fanderson
chairman Nick Williams paid tribute to Anderson by saying “To those who
met him Gerry was a quiet, unassuming but determined man. His desire to
make the best films he could drove him and his talented teams to
innovate, take risks, and do everything necessary to produce quite
inspirational works. Gerry’s legacy is that he inspired so many people
and continues to bring so much joy to so many millions of people around
the world.
listed over there on the right. For as little as $10 "Hailing Frequencies Open!" as we blast your name (if provided) across our websites, on live radio, and partnering podcasts. For gaming fans, team up with your favorite crew members of STOked Radio and Priority One podcasts to go “On Screen!”
for an Elite Special Task Force run through the popular game Star Trek
Online. For convention attendees, there’s even a chance to play from the
bridge itself. The real meets the surreal for some Trek on Trek action…
only in Las Vegas!
