A few photos from the latest Fanderson convention titled
‘Special Assignment’, which kicked off at the Holiday Inn, at Maidenhead on
Friday, 29th September 2017 to coincide with the first U.K. showing
in the Midlands TV region, of Captain
Scarlet and The Mysterons.
The pilot episode, ‘The Mysterons’ was shown on the big
screen in the main convention hall (renamed The Cloudbase Theatre for the
event) which set everyone up for the
weekend’s celebration of, not only the indestructible Captain, but all things
Anderson.
Following the opening ceremony, the event began with Guest
interviews; three APF and Century 21 voice artists, Liz Morgan, David Graham
and Shane Rimmer.
Actress and writer, Liz Morgan principally voiced Destiny
Angel in Captain Scarlet, although
did lend her voice talents to other characters in the series, and can also be
heard in Joe 90 .
Prolific voice artist, David Graham is best known to most
people as the voice of Parker in Thunderbirds;
something he’s still ‘making a nice little earner’ from in the current CGI
series.
Shane Rimmer, who has had a long association with Gerry
Anderson. He was the voice of Scott
Tracy, and behind the scenes drafted the
Thunderbird episode, ‘Ricochet’. He
also provided scripts and un-credited voices for Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and
The Secret Service, before appearing in UFO, The Protectors and Space: 1999. He
was later involved in the unaired pilot, Space
Police, and provided the voice for stop-motion animated series ‘Dick Spanner’.
The next guest was Peter Hitchcock who was more or less just
starting out in the film industry when he joined Century 21.
Although his work went un-credited, he was a projectionist
on Stingray, before moving on to become a lip-sync operator and assist on the
special effects during Thunderbirds.
He talked about his time working with special effects crew.
His hand is actually seen on screen having a glass of Pernod shot out of it
during the Thunderbird episode ‘Perils of Penelope’.
Although, Peter didn’t think he’d worked on the Thunderbirds
are Go feature film, a photo showing him and other crew working on the crashed
Zero X appeared to indicate otherwise. But as he says it was a long time ago.
He
also had a vague memory of having the opportunity to work on 2001: A Space
Odyssey, when Stanley Kubrick was looking to use people from Century 21, but
didn’t take it up. After leaving the
Century 21 studio, Peter eventually emigrated to Canada, where he continued to
work in film.
The next guests to appear were Penny Spencer and Georgina
Moon who both appeared in UFO as SHADO Operatives.
They’d never actually
met on set, as Georgina played Lt Sylvia Howell on the Skydiver set, and
Penny played the Harlington- Straker
receptionist, Janis (who apparently calls
Colonel Freeman, Alec!), and in later episodes we see her working as a
Communications operative in SHADO HQ.
As it certainly was a packed programme, the event ran right
through the day without any intervals, and
I needed a break, so, unfortunately , and this is no reflection on the
next guests, I only managed to take a
couple of snaps of puppeteers, Mary
Turner and Judy Preece.
That took me to lunch time. The second part of my photo
review features stunt man Paul Weston, Mike Trim and Alan Shubrook plus a few
others.
That was all before lunch! Wow! Looks like it was a grand weekend Scoop!
ReplyDeleteit certainly moved like a roller coaster for me Woodsy.
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