MOONBASE CENTRAL

Sunday, 5 April 2015

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO: THE MORNING AFTER

Well its the day after the new Thunderbirds debut on UK TV last night and I'm reading very very mixed reviews online. They range from sheer excited joy from young kids to complete bewilderment from older fans.

With today's 24 hour news and social media anything new in popular culture is immediately scrutinised to the nth degree.

I suppose its only to be expected when someone is brave enough to tinker with one of the most important childrens' television programmes in history.

I suspect that ultimately it won't be fans of the original series at all who make it a success but a new generation of enthusiastic six year olds across the UK getting up at 8am on Saturdays to watch the show. It'll be what they think that counts.

PAUL KAIJU'S TOY APOLLO LEMS

Hi Woodsy,

Hope all is well. Went fishing in my storage and ran across some Apollo bits-n-bobs you might be interested to see.

I found these pieces about 5 or 6 years ago at the Long Beach flea Market. The vendor had a pretty big lot of Cake Decorating supplies and amongst them I found these two Apollo pieces.

One is pretty straight foreword, "Space Man".

The other came in a plain box simply stamped "Made in Hong Kong" the modules can be separated. I found the clear capsule with astronaut seated inside rather interesting! Thought you might too. I love the atrocious glue job!

Cheers!

Saturday, 4 April 2015

GERRY ANDERSON'S ETERNITY, THUNDERBIRD 5 AND THE VASTNESS OF SPACE

Watching the new cool Thunderbird 5 tonight on TV, which may be my favourite vehicle in the show, I couldn't help thinking of the beautiful clip of Gerry's proposed ETERNITY on You Tube. Its the magnificent sweeping abyss of space captured so well by both sets of animators decades apart I reckon. What do you think?

NB: To get rod of the pesky notes which pop-up on this clip,
click the Settings cog icon on You Tube and tick OFF under Annotations.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO - VERDICT

Well, my personal opinion without giving away any spoilers is the model work is very nice, although in places some of the backgrounds looked a bit like they were from Thomas the Tank Engine, but I expect those will improve. I am having trouble taking to the CGI characters which do give it a cartoony look but I suspect youngsters will take to it very easily. I obviously won't go into story and plot points at this time, but overall a thumbs up from me, and I'll certainly be tuning in next Saturday morning.

A NEW THUNDERBIRD

This is the Thunderbird Shadow, the plane piloted by Kayo.

THUNDERBIRDS HAS GONE!

Well. its allover for this week guys! Thunderbirds has gone! So, what's the verdict?

My two penneth, I loved having it back on screen and reliving the halcyon days. Spotting stuff was fun too like the Eagle inspired undersea rig. The black jet towards the end looked like Space Patrol 1!

My only criticism is the music, there's just too much of it. I struggled to follow the dialogue sometimes.

I will be tuning in again at 8am next Saturday!