REMEMBERING ALAN PATTILLO

Another sad passing to report from the worlds of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson:  Alan Pattillo who worked on many of the Anderson series died recently aged 90.

Like most in the industry, Mr Pattillo was fairly prolific, so I thought I'd pick a few of what I would consider highlights or points of interest during his career. 

As a director he worked on episodes of Four Feather Falls, the first of the Anderson series to use an early version of Supermarionation.  He followed on to direct episodes of Supercar, Fireball XL5 and the Anderson’s first colour series, Stingray.

He directed four episodes of Thunderbirds, including the opener, ‘Trapped in the Sky’, featuring the fabulous Fireflash airliner.

He directed the opening two-parter of the Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr production,  Terrahawks, titled ‘Expect the Unexpected’.

As a scriptwriter, he wrote several Thunderbird episodes, including the well- remembered, ‘Attack of the Alligators’, and the Christmas episode, ‘Give or Take a Million’.

He wrote the Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons episode, The Trap, and for the Anderson’s live action series UFO, ‘The Square Triangle’.

Aside from the Anderson series, Alan wrote The Avengers episode, ‘The Bird who knew too much’.

As an editor, his Anderson connection began with Four Feather Falls, and returned for Space: 1999 when he worked on the second season episode, ‘The Mark of Archanon’.

Outside of Anderson, amongst other things he edited several episodes of the 1969 ITC series, Strange Report, and Bruce Lee’s final film attempt, The Game of Death.

He was also an associate editor on the Richard Attenborough epic, Gandi.

Another string to Alan’s prolific bow was as sound effects editor on the 1982 film,’ Pink Floyd: The Wall’.

As a postscript I was recently talking to a friend of mine about Alan Pattillo's contribution to the world of Anderson and felt that something he said pretty much summed it up that Alan was another great unsung hero from the Anderson stable.