My last post on the movie Thunderbirds Are Go generated two great clues from Yorkie and Kevin about more stuff possibly used in the film: the Johnny Seven One Man Army and Dr. Who's Sonic Screwdriver. Armed with a strong cup of coffee and the two clues I searched the movie on You Tube for evidence.
It turns out that Yorkie's Johnny Seven sighting was bang on as you'll hopefully see from the two screengrabs on the left below. The Johnny Seven has indeed been modified into the cable-shooting gun Alan fires from Thunderbird 2 to attach a line to the stricken Zero-X. Besides the overall shape of the toy, the main giveaways are the classic Topper riveting and the circular embossing on the 'rear' side of the toy, the side with the maker's mark and name.
The lower of the two comparisons of the two guns from the front clearly shows the dark aperture on the Thunderbirds device, the which formed one end of the slot for the spring-loaded grenade launcher on the toy. Although morphed and painted grey, there was definitely a Johnny Seven on board Thunderbird 2 in Thunderbirds Are Go! Result!
This leads onto Kevin's suggestion that Alan Tracy's tool used to repair the Zero-X was in fact the sonic screwdriver used by Jon Pertwee's Doctor Who. Looking into this I was able to get a good screengrab of the Zero-X repair tool from Thunderbirds Are Go, which you can see above left. The Pertwee screwdriver proved more elusive and the best shot I could grab was one from the Doctor Who story The Green Death, where the good Doctor is brandishing it in his hand in a landscape of mining of spoil. Even though the sonic screwdriver is partly obscured you can still make out enough detail to see that Kevin is indeed right. They appear to be the same.
As you can imagine, anything to do with Doctor Who has been poured over by countless fans and the origin of the sonic screwdriver is no exception. The story has been brilliantly researched by purpleblancmange, which is a truly fascinating read on the subject, involving Century 21 no less and corroborates Kevin's observation that the Zero-X repair tool did in fact become the Sonic Screwdriver. Thunderbirds Are Time Lords! Excellent!
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