In the final part of our interview with Richard Dinnick, the Doctor Who and Lost in Space comics writer talks about his work on the third season of the reboot of Gerry Anderson’s classic series Thunderbirds…

 

Your episode of Thunderbirds Are Go! has now aired…

It’s called Getaway – it’s Parker and Lady Penelope-heavy, which is great, because it’s got my three favourite characters: Parker, Lady Penelope and Virgil. It’s got a Thunderbird 2 rescue. What I’m pleased about with this one, is it’s exciting with the rescue, but it’s quite funny as well. There are quite a few gags in there.

Thunderbirds is a funny show; there are gags in it. Parker does lend himself to slightly more comedic episodes and this is no different.

David Graham does that deadpan so well…

He does it brilliantly. Also we’ve got [Lady Penelope’s dog] Sherbert, involved quite heavily and there’s quite some good humorous moments in that as well.

So how did you get involved with the series?

I have always loved Thunderbirds. My brother and I would watch it side by side on the sofa as kids. I had the original Thunderbird 2 Dinky toy and the model of FAB1. I missed out on the revival of the originals and all the toys that came with it because I was a bit old by then (although very tempted by Blue Peter to have a crack at Tracy Island)!

So, the moment the new series, Thunderbirds Are Go!, was announced I found the lead writer, Rob Hoegee on LinkedIn and sent him a connection request, explaining what I’d written for TV at that point and asking to be considered. Rob was very friendly and totally got my enthusiasm as he was a big fan of the original, too. It was early days and he said he’d put my name on the list of hopefuls. Alas, I wasn’t selected for the first season and – after a few trips to LA to meet with him – Rob told me I finally had my “slot” in season 3. This would have been Feb 2017.

I actually got the brief for the episode in the autumn of that year and started making notes about my ideas and characters and extra bits we could do. I was very happy with the idea of the London Taxi and calling it “Cab 1” as opposed to “FAB 1”!

We started off with a teleconference that was truly global.

Weta, who are the company behind the amazing animation and sets (the same people behind The Lord of the Rings – and many more besides) are based in New Zealand. Rob is based in Los Angeles and I’m based in the UK. So we had to find a time that suited us all. The only time we could settle on was about 11pm GMT and we finished the call at 2am my time! A real marathon. I was sitting there with a ton of coffee so my brain didn’t fog over as the small hours passed!

I wrote a couple of drafts around Christmas 2017 and after several rounds of notes and a few more rewrites, we had the finished article. Watching the episode, I didn’t spot any changes to my script, so that was very pleasing and usually indicates you’re doing a good job.

In the writing of it, I was thrilled the episode was set in my home town of London. I remember very clearly the original series episode “Vault of Death” which involved Parker and the vault of the Bank of England. As a kid, I was so excited to see the fog-bound streets around the City of London being used as the setting – somewhere I’d been! So I was really channelling this episode when I wrote my own – especially as it involves a vault and Parker’s “h’acquaintance” from his shady past.

When Rob told me who the guest cast were, I was even more amazed. Not only did I have the talents of original Parker, David Graham (iconic, or what?), I also had Rosamund Pike as Lady Penelope… Larry Lamb as Gomez and Alan Ford as Light-Fingered Fred. And it’s always nice to get links to previous work so having Sharon D Clarke in the guest cast, too, was super cool because (as well as being Grace in the most recent series of Doctor Who), she played Treetog in Tree Fu Tom (alongside Sophie Aldred and David Tennant), the show on which I was a staff writer for three years.