SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT: PART 1

A few photos from the latest Fanderson convention titled ‘Special Assignment’, which kicked off at the Holiday Inn, at Maidenhead on Friday, 29^th 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.