Stephen La Rivière and Andrew T. Smith are the brains behind Century 21 Films, returning Supermarionation to our screens decades after its original appearance. With their official Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes streaming on Britbox this week, it seemed a good time to look back over their work…

How would you describe ‘Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes’?

STEPHEN: This is a series of episodes – “Introducing Thunderbirds”, “The Abominable Snowman”, and “The Stately Homes Robberies” – that have been adapted from audio-only mini-album adventures released on vinyl in the 1960s. Our team has taken those soundtracks and adapted them to suit the visual medium, the result being three new adventures of Lady Penelope, Parker, and the International Rescue team.

And how do these episodes fit alongside the classic series people fondly remember?

STEPHEN: These are three new episodes of Thunderbirds produced using classic Supermarionation techniques – which means marionettes, practical models, and old-school special effects. Our aim was to match those original 1960s episodes as closely as possible.

ANDREW: And the fact that we were working with those 1960s mini-albums means that these new episodes also feature the original character voices with which everybody is familiar – including those provided by people who are no longer with us. In that respect this really does represent the last opportunity to create new adventures in that period-specific world.

How did the project come about?

ANDREW: This was an idea that multiple members of our team seemed to have around the time that we produced our feature documentary ‘Filmed in Supermarionation’. For that film, we had set ourselves the challenge of producing new puppet scenes that featured the Thunderbirds characters telling the story of Supermarionation. During the filming, with the puppets in front of the cameras and with their voices sounding out over the set, I suppose we each thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could do this on a bigger scale and bring those old 1960s records to life.’ But at that point this was very much just a dream.

STEPHEN: Then, after the success of ‘Filmed in Supermarionation’, ITV approached us for any ideas we might have to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Thunderbirds. We thought that if there was ever a time to pitch the idea of producing new-old episodes this was it! And to our delight (and to be honest, amazement) they agreed and gave the go-ahead. The agreement to produce these episodes was put together amazingly quickly and our existing relationship with ITV meant that we were able to work out the logistics over the phone as I lived in Switzerland at the time. This made for a very simple agreement, but also unfortunately meant a very rapid start – from deal to production in six weeks. Still, I think a ticking countdown seemed strangely appropriate for Thunderbirds.

The success of the project also meant that some further rights issues had to be sorted after the fact, leading to the delay in bringing the episodes out to the wider public on a more permanent basis. Following multiple screenings to the wider public at the BFI, nationwide at Vue cinemas, and online etc, Britbox has become the first permanent platform for them. And hopefully there’ll be further releases to come soon.

Recreating a television series from fifty years ago sounds like quite the undertaking. How did you set about doing that?

ANDREW: Creating a match for something filmed fifty years ago was a big challenge and we knew that everything from the puppets to the models and from the sets to the explosions had to feel right. Our core team have studied the original Supermarionation series in great detail over the years and we then surrounded ourselves with people whose opinions we trust and who we know have an eye for this kind of work. And it turns out that finding crew members who would like to work on Thunderbirds was not a challenge – we had people turning down work on Star Wars or travelling halfway across the globe to come and join us in a draughty warehouse in exotic Slough (the site of the original Century 21 studios) because Supermarionation is part of what made them want to get involved in the business.

STEPHEN: David Elliot, one of the original Thunderbirds directors who helmed episodes like “Terror in New York City” and “The Duchess Assignment”, has been a good friend for a long time now, and he came on board not only as a supervising director for the whole project, but also as the principal director of “The Stately Homes Robberies” – which was his first episode of Thunderbirds in almost fifty years!

ANDREW: And for that episode he was joined by puppet operator Mary Turner, the woman who originally sculpted Lady Penelope and who puppeteered for David’s episodes five decades ago! When they got back together on set, it was as though no time at all had passed; they instantly clicked back into their old working relationship and got on with the task in hand.

How important was it for you to have the backing of the original creative team from Thunderbirds?

STEPHEN: Very important. These episodes are very much intended as a tribute to the work that the AP Films team did in the 1960s and obviously they set a very high standard to live up to. In addition to David Elliot being with us on a daily basis, we were also honoured that Sylvia Anderson gave our team her blessing.

ANDREW: And during production we had visits from people like special effects director Brian Johnson. In addition to working on Thunderbirds alongside Derek Meddings, he’s worked on everything from The Empire Strikes Back to The Never Ending Story. To have him offer his advice and to give our effects sequences his seal of approval was a big deal.

You say that these are adaptations of the original mini-albums. What has changed?

STEPHEN: The mini-albums were fine for what they were as novelty records in the ’60s, but not really suitable for putting straight onto film. The main thing was they were a gold mine for the original character voices. So we wanted to take the best of what they had to offer, but make them work as brand new episodes – something not just fans would enjoy, but that a new audience could sit through.

This is why we made edits to the albums – our principal goal was that it worked for television. This involved some careful unpicking of the episodes – trimming exposition that is no longer required when you have visuals to explain what is happening, re-ordering scenes to keep the pace up, and in certain instances adding new scenes that were never part of the original recordings.

ANDREW: Yes, for example, our version of “The Stately Homes Robberies” opens with a rather sinister sequence that shows our villains ransacking and planting a bomb in a country house. This isn’t in the original album, but we wanted to set up the threat they pose from the very beginning of the episode and, equally importantly, allowed us to incorporate one the huge and destructive explosions that Thunderbirds is famous for, but that isn’t part of the mini-albums.

And now the episodes are available on Britbox in the UK. Do you have any hopes for the series’ availability on this new platform?

STEPHEN: In all of our work involving the classic Supermarionation series, our goal has always been to not only celebrate the past, but also to bring a new audience to this unique and wonderful artform. Our ultimate aim is to see it continue, so the more people who are watching the better. Ultimately, the way back to the originals – in the current television climate – is to produce new stuff. And that’s the dream really – produce new Supermarionation adventures whilst bringing a new audience to the original shows.

ANDREW: I think one of the nicest parts of working on the anniversary episodes was to see the generation gap being bridged as people came to visit the set and attend the cinema screenings. Parents have passed down their fondness of the series to their children and now even their grandchildren; who all seem to treat the show as new. It doesn’t matter to them if it was filmed fifty years ago or last week – it’s just fun and thrilling and entertaining. So the idea of an increased number of families being able to enjoy our episodes alongside the classic series is thrilling.

Since Gerry’s death, there’s been a lot of talk about development of new projects using his ideas, many of them by Gerry Anderson’s son, Jamie. This seems to have led to some confusion about who made the Thunderbirds episodes?

ANDREW: I think there has probably some understandable confusion – Gerry Anderson’s name looms large when talking about these shows and obviously there is still an organisation out there with that name on it – but it doesn’t particularly help when claims like ‘We’re bringing Gerry Anderson puppets back!’ in interviews about their productions – when our hard working crew had already been doing just that for several years.

STEPHEN: Essentially, if you see a modern film or television production that employs the classic Supermarionation techniques, our Century 21 Films team is behind it.

And what is next for Century 21 Films and Supermarionation?

STEPHEN: Since ‘Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes’, we’ve continued to work with ITV on a number of projects, including the Thunderbirds ad campaign for Halifax, several ‘Thunderbirds Day’ live streams that called for brand new Supermarionation material to be filmed, and a guest spot on the detective drama Endeavour. We have a number of future projects in mind and have been developing some ideas, but a lot of that work as derailed by this year’s unique lockdown situation.

ANDREW: That brought a lot of film and television production to a halt, but given that we found ourselves surrounded by Supermarionation resources – puppets, props, sets, and models – we knew that making something in the London flat in which many of them are stored was a real possibility. As a result, we created ‘Nebula-75‘, an original Supermarionation series idea that made use of all of those pre-existing elements.

STEPHEN: The idea was that this would be a new show, but one that brought to mind that 1960s aesthetic and oddly generated nostalgia for a series that never actually was. Our intention was to create one short film, but to our surprise the response was so overwhelmingly positive that we have ended up producing several further episodes. It turns out that shooting a television series in a two bedroom flat that is shared by three people is quite stressful, so we’ve taken a little break, but developing Nebula-75’s future is certainly our current focus. We also have a slate of projects that we’re talking to people about. Not that talking about stuff in this business means anything – and we don’t want to venture down the ‘We’ve got something exciting on but we can’t tell you’ route as that’s always a disappointment. But it’s probably reasonable to say that we have lots of plans and hopes for Supermarionation yet…

 

Thunderbirds: The Anniversary Episodes stream on Britbox from 20th August

Read our review of the episodes here