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Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet creator Gerry Anderson has died.

“I’m very sad to announce the death of my father, Thunderbirds creator, Gerry Anderson. He died peacefully in his sleep at midday today (26th December 2012), having suffered with mixed dementia for the past few years. He was 83,” his son Jamie wrote on his website. Anderson had moved into a care home in October.

Gerry Anderson was responsible for some of the best-loved shows on children’s television, notably his “Supermarionation” puppet series from the 1960s Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, and The Secret Service.

He finally branched into live action, after feeling trapped by his success: “For many years I found that difficult to live with,” he told Sci-Fi Bulletin’s Paul Simpson in 2007. “At the time, I had an ambition to become something like what Steven Spielberg is today, and I found myself making puppet films. I made a tragic error: I thought that if I made the puppet films really good, and shoot them as one would shoot a movie, the broadcasters would show, ‘This guy has got talent, let’s give him a life action show to make.’ Of course the reverse happened: the reaction was, ‘They’re terrific programmes he makes with the puppets. Let’s give him some more.’ I was typecast and I was constantly looking for ways to make the puppets as near as possible to a live action show. It was a case in the one you just referred to: we made glove puppets and managed to get a certain amount of expression onto the faces. It was me trying to break out of my cage!”

His live action shows UFO, The Protectors, and Space: 1999 weren’t as well-received and in the 1980s he returned to puppets with Terrahawks. His live action show Space Precinct in the mid-1990s was followed by the stop motion Lavender Castle, a mode he had experimented with in Dick Spanner P.I.

His most recent credit was on Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet, a CGI series which he felt was appallingly treated by ITV. He had no input into the 2004 film of Thunderbirds, but he was a creative consultant on the new version of UFO. Following the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, he became an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society.

A full version of our interview with Gerry Anderson will be posted shortly