Shark Bytes

"The Movie" shouldn't be an option here. It had no relationship to the TV show. No puppets, no Thunderbirds. It's very simple.

Never jumped. Loved the show especially Lady Penelope and her chauffeur Parker. Also loved Brains. Another good one was Stingray another also in "Supermarionation".

Greatest kids show of all time.

Although I agree, the episodes with kids were the weakest by far. I guess kids should not be puppets and puppets should not be kids.

Never came close to jumping.

To this day, I am amazed at the detail in those miniature sets. The thought, time and effort that went into each episode is just amazing.

As far as the guys all living at home, the show supposedly based on Bonanza. You can see it in a couple of the characters. Jeff Tracy was a bit Lorne Greene-like and Alan Tracy was very Michael Landon-like.

The Live Action Movie! Full Stop!
My friend and I still can't believe we sat and watched this!
It had a lot of potential, but they just made 'SpyKids featuring vehicles that look a lot like the Thunderbirds'
How could it have went so wrong?

Whenever this show had a kid in it, it jumped the shark. The kids were so annoying!

Although it never jumped, I could always tell if we were in for a good rescue if the launch sequence was edited. These sequences were often used as "padding" for the show, so if the full launch sequence footage was shown, then the rescue was over very quickly. The exception to this being the pilot show which showed the full launch AND still had heightened drama for the rescue.

The original show is another fine example of lighting in a bottle. All of the right people at the right time pulling together with an eye towards quality. However, the movie is quite another story, the british production company really should have known better. You secure the rights to a evergreen classic and then ignore the key characters, and rewrite the whole premise around a new teenage group. Just plain stupid on so many marketing levels, and the poor director/actor Johnathan Frakes so clueless about the concept of a cult following??. he made a fair kiddie flick here, but really he reversed the silk purse all the way back to the pig. The art direction of the Thunderbirds craft was very well done but thats it, they took a brilliant chance for an action adventure film for both parents and children alike and blew it on every story level possible. Using the key characters of the Tracy brothers as a plot device, what were they thinking..or not in this case. We can only hope they understand and learn from this massive failure that when you buy into a show with forty years worth of brand awareness you may want to use it's key icons in the adaption.

The show never jumped. I agree when they spliced in those POS kids into it around 1992, that was BS. The 2004 movie is a waste. BACK TO THE DAMN KIDS AGAIN. Why ruin what should have been a great movie (nostalgia) to have a bunch of flippin kids flying rocket ships??? It's so totally unbelievable it's a shame. JUMP!!!! CHOMP!!

Never even came close to Jumping the Shark...Who can forget Parker half in the bag drinking with "Steve" in the Lady P's car as the worlds greatest boat is being launched, then he drives Lady Penelope home! So much for drinking and driving awareness...or Parker foiling an assassination attempt on the ski hill, falling down a hill, fighting the gunman...and what about Tin Tin, was she hot or what? I watched this as a kid, had all the models, my pals and saved the world countless times as members of IR...this show was amazing, puppets smoking and drinking, the beads of sweat during "tense moments" was great. I once read that DALLAS had more scenes of people drinking than any other show, I bet Thunderbirds showed more drinking. The creativity and effects were definitely amazing for this show. Looking back, sure it was kinda odd that four guys lived at home and didn't seem to pay much attention to women, but I was 6 when this came out, I lived at home and didn't pay attention to women either!

Two observations: First, look for "The Movie", due August 2004 - live action, directed by Jonathan Frakes, featuring Bill Paxton, Ben Kingsley, and Anthony Edwards. Second, Episode 3: The world's tallest building is reduced to a pile of white-hot ash by a bad driver and a faulty ventilation system. All but one family escapes unscathed. Oh, for a simpler world.

The only negative I can say about "Thunderbirds" was when the original actor who voiced Virgil left. Somehow, when I was a kid watching the show, I could never get used to the other guy's voice in the second season. But that has all changed. PeeWee Herman could voice Virgil and it would still remain as one of my all-time favorite TV shows!

When did this show jump the shark? Be specific: Thunderbirds never jumped. This, probably the ultimate in Gerry Anderson's Marionattion series is a true classic. The only reason it didn't go on longer than it did was because Gerry Anderson was hoping for International support, especially from America to produce the show but it never came. Hopefully this will be the second series to be updated after Captain Scarlett.

5-4-3-2-1 BOOM! Thunderbirds are go! Even if the 'birds didn't go as much in season 2. There were a few ramp approaches. There was an episode where (supposedly) there were oversized reptiles and they used real life alligators. They cut back and forth between the gators and the puppets. Alan was trying to lead them away from the others using some sort of hovercycle. I never saw the eps with the kids. That must have sucked. For the record, T-1 flew up through from under the pool. T-3 flew up through the round "donut" building. I imagine they figured out some sort of shielding for the exhaust blasts. In its original form, Thunderbirds never jumped. Ever.

Well, I enjoyed this series as a kid, and it is possibly the best remembered show AP Films put out, if we don't include the rather awful live action "Space 1999", in which the Moon gets jogged out of orbit to become a considerably faster-than-light Irwin-Allenesque plot vehicle. "Thunderbirds" only lasted a couple of seasons, as I recall, with at least one movie produced, and after watching some reruns on TechTV I remembered why: the stories became very padded with talking puppet heads while the Thunderbirds lay idle. Thunderbirds weren't "Go"-ing much in the second season, or we would be treated to rather brief glimpses of the hardware. Supermarionation was the employing of a solenoid in the head of the puppet (later the body) so that the puppet's mouth would move in synch with pre-recorded speech. Clever. Unfortunately, some of the plots weren't as clever. Let's take the "Sun Probe" episode. When I saw this in rerun I thought it must have been a secret AP Films joke. The premise is that someone in the year 2065 thought it would be a good idea to launch a manned probe to the Sun -- that this would end up requiring International Rescue's attention is hardly a surprise. But Jeff Tracy was surprised when Brains said that he thought "They're not going to make it." AP Films must have figured that IQs would drop precipitously between 1965 and 2065 -- except, of course, for Brains'. Anyway, it looked to me like Jeff Tracy would have to employ a small army of technicians and engineers to keep International Rescue going. Hard to believe the five Tracy brothers could do all the work themselves. And the secret launch silo of Thunderbird 1 is right up through the middle of the donut-shaped island office complex. Considering 1) that the engine exhaust would destroy the building and everyone in it, provided of course that the ship did not blow up on takeoff and 2) the Thunderbirds were powered by "nuclear exhaust", International Rescue would 1) quickly destroy itself or 2) pollute the world with radioactive fallout. Okay, I am poking fun at an old classic, and I'm too old to suspend disbelief any longer, I guess, but weren't these easy errors to avoid? And by the way, why in the world did International Rescue have to be a secret organization, anyway? (It was because of the spy craze of the '60s, of course, or perhaps they wanted to avoid lawsuits for that radioactive exhaust.)