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Thunderbirds the series

  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: As with a great deal of science fiction franchises of the mid-20th century, the more out-there vehicles in the series are exaggerated versions of actual concepts of the time that have since been developed further into technology that's either in use today or in active development. For example, nuclear-powered planes like the Fireflash from "Trapped in the Sky" really were a serious subject of study in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the jet also serving as an example of a futuristic supersonic airliner, something that later became a reality with the arrival of the Concorde.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Considering how young the family is (Alan, the youngest, is only 21 at the start of the series), you'd think their mother's passing would be recent enough to merit even a little mourning, yet she is not mentioned even once in 32 episodes and 2 movies. Not even a photo of her is seen around the house. You have to wonder what sort of monster she was to have been written out of their lives so completely.
    • Being an episodic show, you can forgive the boys suffering no emotional fallout for barely escaping the most horrific deaths during their rescues. But special mention goes to Scott and Virgil, who have both nearly been killed when their Thunderbirds were shot down and are each raring to get back to rescuing within the same episode.
  • Awesome Art: The show is fueled with this.
  • Awesome Music
    • The theme tune, which has become a favourite for military bands (see the credits for Thunderbirds are GO! for a good example). Works really well when it kicks in during a particularly dangerous scene.
    • There are lots of other music cues which were often recycled for budgetary reasons, the best of the bunch being the triumphal Fireflash theme.
    • Although a lot slower and quieter, "Dangerous Game" from "The Cham-Cham" isn't bad either.
  • Complete Monster ("Operation Crash-Dive"): The Saboteur is a member of a terrorist group that wants to put the Fireflash flight program out of business. Sneaking aboard Fireflash 3, the Saboteur alters the flight computer to throw the plane off-course and cuts the Elevator Power Unit, causing the plane to crash into the Atlantic Ocean and leaving the pilot and 600 passengers onboard to drown because sea rescue units can't find it. The Saboteur then does the same with a test Fireflash flight, whose crew members only survive because of International Rescue's intervention. When confronted while sabotaging a third Fireflash test flight, the Saboteur boasts that the plane is finished and will disappear like its fellows before being killed.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Of all the Thunderbird machines, Thunderbird 2 has the most widespread appeal due to its unusual yet iconic design, versatile functions and bright Green livery. Because of this it's most likely the first thing people think of when you bring up the Thunderbird machines.
  • Friendly Fandoms: David Mitton, a key executive member of TUGS and Thomas & Friends, worked on the series as an intern under Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson. As a result, the fans of all three overlap due to similar production values. Due to director Robert D. Cardona also working on TUGS and Thomas & Friends, Theodore Tugboat fans also enjoy the series. Thanks to the 2015 CGI remake, the ties to the Thomas fandom has strengthened, particularly since the series had already switched to CGI well before that point.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: It was so huge in Japan that it has two Japan-only games (SNES and Game Boy) and its own toyline produced by Bandai. The UglyDolls themed after the series were only available in Japan as well.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The beginning of "The Mighty Atom" becomes this when you think of just which reactor went at Chernobyl.
    • "Terror in New York City" also applies to a certain incident with the US navy.
    • "City of Fire" has the huge Thompson Tower go up in flames due to a simple accident and faulty fire-prevention equipment, which is very reminiscent of The Grenfell Tower fire.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: A lot of the Thomas/Thunderbirds parody clips can be this given that a few voice actors from the CGI era of Thomas have appeared in Thunderbirds Are Go.
  • Memetic Loser: John being stranded in space almost constantly easily lends itself to jokes that the rest of the family keep him out there because they don't particularly like him.
  • Memetic Mutation: The show has become one for ProtonJon's streams, with an edited version of the countdown seen in the opening saying "five" five times over shots of the Thunderbird vehicles with edited "5"s on them playing whenever someone donates $25.
  • Never Live It Down: Fans tend to give Lady Penelope a lot of flack for her bad driving and her fear of mice despite the fact that these "faults" only appeared in one episode each, and in case of the bad driving, a later episode depicted her as an expert driver.
  • Nausea Fuel: The kitchen scene in "Path Of Destruction" will likely put you off Mexican food.
  • Padding: A positive example to a degree. When Lew Grade insisted that the episodes be hour long ones, the producers had to pad out the time of their first stories already scripted and in production. What they did was add in additional plot twists and character scenes which gave the stories a greater sophistication than before.
  • Signature Scene: The Title Sequence itself is arguably not only just most iconic Thunderbirds scene but perhaps the Signature Scene of every single Supermarionation show.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: A whole bunch of them.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: Given this was made in The '60s, this was going to be inevitable. Modern British viewers may be a little miffed at the main airport being called "London Airport", unaware that back in the day, this was actually the name for Heathrow Airport before Stansted and Gatwick acquired "London" status. There are also several references to Cape Kennedy.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • The sexism depicting the major female characters has become glaring. For instance, Tin Tin is rarely much more than a Damsel in Distress. At the same time however, she clearly isn't a full member of International Rescue as we never once see her in uniform; she's a civvy that occasionally helps out. It makes complete sense that she wouldn't have anywhere near as much to do as the Tracy boys. There is the IR uniform she wears in “Sun Probe” and “The Uninvited”, however both come early enough into the series to arguably qualify as Early-Installment Weirdness.
    • Even Lady Penelope gets this. For instance, she is prone to Eek, a Mouse!! panics. It's even worse in "The Imposters" when she goes on a field mission in a rural area and she exudes feminine stereotypes like wearing high heels in a swamp. Would it have been beyond the imagination of the writers to think of have her wearing tailor made combat fatigues and custom machined weapons?
    • Many of the characters including the Tracys and Lady Penelope were shown to be smoking from time to time. This often caused controversy when re-runs were shown since the 80's and beyond.
    • The Hood plays into a lot of Yellow Peril tropes and has an accent that borders on a hate crime; Kyrano comes off as every awful "subservient Asian who verbally fellates the white hero at every given opportunity" stereotype, too. For what it's worth, though, Tin-Tin generally avoids any anti-Asian stereotyping.
    • There are no Black people. At all. Even episodes which take place in Africa feature no black people.
    • Some of the Technology Porn is a little hard to swallow now. Apart from the casual use of nuclear-powered technology, there's this scene of a massive roadbuilder clearing a rainforest by carpet-bombing it with mortars. Take that, you Amazon-loving treehuggers!
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The vehicle effects were among the best of their time, and still hold up well against modern CG animation (also true for other Gerry Anderson projects). Save for anything involving water, where, much like most miniature work done in water, the scale issues were pretty obvious. Fire, on the other hand, was a series specialty.

Thunderbirds the movie

  • Awesome Music: The end credits song by British boyband Busted "Thunderbirds are Go" is one of the few things of the movie that's remembered fondly. Hans Zimmer's score was also excellent, as usual for him- especially his version of the "Thunderbirds March".
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Just before the Russian oil-rig workers are dropped off at a hospital in San Francisco by IR, a random kid is seen arriving (with his annoyed mother) with a pan stuck on his head for some reason. He's even credited as "Panhead". This isn't relevant at all and he isn't seen again.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Sophia Myles's portrayal of Lady Penelope was received well, being recognized as true to the spirit of the original character. To a lesser extent, Ron Cook's Parker was praised too.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Some fans feel that the second draft of the script (where the villain is flooding cities and the Tracys have a strained relationship) would have been better than the infamous final draft that ended up being filmed.
  • Ham and Cheese: Ben Kingsley clearly had fun playing The Hood.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The song "Thunderbirds are Go", which is played during the end credits of the live-action movie, contains the lyrics "don't be mad please, stop the hating". And considering how universally hated the movie is by fans of the TV series...
    • In another sense of irony, you could interpret the line "just be glad that they'll be waiting" to mean that the fans should be grateful that the film even got to the big screen at all, considering the lengthy Development Hell it went through.
  • I Am Not Shazam: Hardly ever is International Rescue ever referred to as "International Rescue" (at least in dialogue, the name is still quite visible on some of the Thunderbird craft and various computer screens). The rest of the time, they're the "Thunderbirds", despite that being the name of the craft, not the organization itself. Could be justified when one considers how a real-life International Rescue actually began operations some time after the original series ended, which might've caused some conflict. Another reason might be that, in-universe, people just called them the Thunderbirds because they didn't know the IR name, and the Tracys and crew then started using it out of habit. (Universal's marketing department didn't seem to get the memo- trailers and TV spots continued to refer to International Rescue.)
  • Magnificent Bastard: "The Hood", real name Trangh Belegant, is a psychic criminal mastermind with a grudge against the Thunderbirds, specifically their father Jeff, for leaving him to die in a mine collapse. Staging a fire on an oil rig, The Hood plants one of his men among the workers to install a tracking device on to one of their planes, allowing the Hood to track the Thunderbirds back to their base before attacking a satellite and trapping the Thunderbirds onboard while he arrives and takes over. Revealing himself to them, The Hood reveals his plan is to cause massive worldwide economic chaos using the Thunderbirds' equipment to destroy the Thunderbirds' reputation. When Jeff's youngest son Alan attempts to intervene, the Hood systematically captures Alan, his friends, and the Thunderbirds' allies before departing for London. After a fight with Alan and his friends in the Bank of London, the Hood finds himself dangling over a drilling machine and accepts his fate before being rescued and arrested.
  • Mis-blamed: It wasn't Jonathan Frakes' fault the movie turned out the way it did- it was Polygram and then Universal screwing things up (see below). He and the cast were merely working with what they were given.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • So Okay, It's Average: Seems to be the reaction from pretty much everyone. It might be good for younger Thunderbirds fans-in-training, though.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The decision to emphasize the Token Trio of children, also making them Younger and Hipper. Likewise the formula appears to be more akin to the Spy Kids movies.
    • The fact that FAB-1 isn't a Rolls-Royce anymore, although in the filmmaker's defense, Rolls-Royce (or more accurately, their owner, BMW) had turned it down, and the customized Ford Thunderbird was pretty cool.
    • In general, Thunderbirds had always been a plot-driven show. Spending so much time on Alan's rather generic Coming of Age Story at the cost of more action set-pieces is ultimately to the film's detriment.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The other four Tracy brothers have barely any lines or screen time, with the focus being on Alan and the other children.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The biggest mark against the film is that it might be a fine early-2000's kid's film in the vein of Spy Kids, but that comes at the expense of a story that sidelines the classic Thunderbirds cast for the entire middle act so it can focus on a mostly original cast of teenagers in a "Die Hard" on an X setting. Had the film taken its excellent production design and put it towards a more straightforward Thunderbirds adaption, the film may have been a lot more fondly remembered.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Bill Paxton played his part quite well when the chips are down, and Ben Kingsley, Sophia Miles and Ron Cook all delivered solid performances.
  • Uncertain Audience: The movie is based on a series made for a full family (both adult and child demographic) from the 1960s. The filmmakers made the odd choice to market it more as a typical 2000s children's adventure film - when that generation of kids probably had no idea what Thunderbirds was. What's more is that the series was British, while the film was American.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Alan wants to take part in dangerous rescue operations despite being fourteen, yet the film ultimately vindicates him.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: While the redesigns themselves are deemed creative, but poor as redesigns, the Thunderbird vehicles were positively badass-looking in CGI; the oil-rig rescue (which used a huge 40 foot scale model of the rig, filmed at 100 frames per second much like the original series) and River Thames scene were also impressive.

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