Thunderbirds Are Go

First of all, everyone needs to get over there are no puppets, we all would have loved that but hey this is 2015 not 1965. There are projects (hope all the YOU critics have signed up to the kick starter project) for A possible future puppets series :-)

This Thunderbird series is not bad at all, in fact it's really good. I have given it 10 to readdress the balance, as some people who have given it 1 is absurd. Yes it's a faster pace (but think about the time restriction) the CGI is fantastic, Thunderbird 3's launch is like something out of NASA footage.

There has been some meddling with the characters, not sure why Brains has now an Indian accent, perhaps he has spent some time out in Asia :-) Jeff Tracey is AWOL but there seems to be a story there, and yes to make it more PC we have females taking a bit more of a role. Nothing wrong with that,remember Gerry's new Captain Scarlet had a female LT Green.

I love the Original Thunderbirds (it is the greatest TV show ever made) but this is as close as you can get to it, and to be honest a lot closer than I thought it would be. There are people who will never be satisfied with any remake, and they need to think about the legacy Gerry has left behind, that Thunderbirds are go 50 years later, and I for one, although apprehensive, am thrilled to see the series, after writing to ITV many times telling them they were on a goldmine, has now been made.

Take this in isolation and enjoy it, I did.

Well, I've just seen the new Thunderbirds series with my eight-year old son and here's the verdict.

The Bad:

(i) No strings! The characters in the new series are CG! animation and not puppets. so you can't play "Spot-the-strings"! They also seem to walk quite normally - gone is the charming 'bobbing' gait you see in the original series. To make matters worse, the Tracy brothers can even do the impossible now, like running, jumping and even somersaulting with gay abandon.

(ii) No models! My biggest disappointment, though, were the models - or rather, lack thereof. In the original Thunderbirds, you knew that every Thunderbird you saw was a lovingly crafted and minutely-detailed real- life model - not just pixels on a CGI screen. So it didn't feel 'real' somehow ..... well, as real as plastic models and puppets can get, I suppose.

(iii) No real explosions! The same goes with the effects - somehow a CGI-generated explosion doesn't really have the same impact as a 'real' explosion created in miniature - and original Thunderbirds' bangs were glorious orgies of pyrotechnics.

(iv) Wrong sashes! Canon got thrown to the winds in the costumes - even eight-year old could spot that Virgil Tracy should have been wearing a yellow sash on his uniform, not a green one, and Gordon should be sporting a green sash, not a yellow one. Outrageous!

The Good:

i) Lady Penelope and especially Tin-tin Kyrano are so much hotter now. Tin-Tin is apparently now called Tanusha 'Kayo' Kyrano (due to copyright problems with Hergé's Tintin).

ii) Brains sounds brainier - though, inexplicably, he now has an Indian accent. My eight-year old commented that he now sounds exactly like Raj in The Big Bang Theory.

iii) Despite what I said earlier about the explosions. I liked some of the newer special effects. The vapour plume produced when Thunderbird 1 goes supersonic was a nice touch. And the falling-coconut-trees effect when Thunderbird 2 takes off is actually quite awesome now (as opposed to quite hilarious in the original series)

iv) There seems to be a lot more emphasis on science in this new series and it doesn't appear to take as many liberties with the Laws of Physics as the original series did (though Thunderbird 2 still looks gloriously un-aerodynamic with its grossly obese fuselage and stunted swept-forward wings).

All in all, a lot of the old Thunderbirds charm appears to have been lost in the new series and old fans will miss the wooden performances (literally) of the original crew. However, the new Thunderbirds does introduce the action-packed world of International Rescue to a whole new generation of kids - my eight-year old is now certainly hooked. And if it inspires our kids to be world-class scientists, engineers and pilots, rather than pop-stars, footballers and celebrity chefs, who am I to complain.

I don't have a problem with Brains being Indian, in fact I think its quite funny and about time - it's the fact that it doesn't really redeem the reboot at all.

Charmless is a word I'd use to describe it - the characters are like robots, or dare I say it, "puppets", and the craft are no longer the "characters" they were in the original.

On the point of dramatic tension, if nothing else, Anderson was a great editor - that's how he started out, as an editor - and it's what gives the original series a sense of pace & excitement which is totally absent from the reboot.

I'm such a hard marker I'm annoying and I just gave this a 10. I actually cannot see any valid reason to give it less. Actually, maybe Grandma should bring it down a couple of points, but I'll stick to a 10 even with her. I grew up on the original (yes I'm that old) and was totally hooked as a kid. I'm still hooked (on the original) and force the re-runs on every child in the family as an important part of their basic education. The movie was a nice idea but the less said about that the better. *Because* of the movie, I had low expectations of this latest. Watched the first episode ... after 5 mins I was feeling disappointed. Modern language, no strings attached, blah blah. By 15 mins I was thinking "Damn if I don't think I might like this." By the end of the second episode it's all over ... I'm sold. This series is outstanding and I can't wait for each new ep. Sure the language is 'modernised' .. remember that they have to be all things to all people with this series; children of today won't sit through the dialogue that accompanied the original version, delivered by cgi characters. The balance they've achieved is stunning. The 'remake' eps (e.g. Fireflash) are just as exciting, maybe more so, as the originals. And as much as I might try to get kids to love the originals as much as I do, they .... don't. Times have changed. The kids do love this new series; they love the scripting, they love the action, they love the speed at which it moves, they love the fact that they don't really understand a lot of what just happened. They just love it. And so do I.

The new series looks pretty but the stories aren't anywhere near as interesting or exciting add the original 60's version. Far too many episodes revolve around the Hood and/or the Mechanic who are mere shadows of the old, evil Hood.

The biggest annoyance though is what I call the "K9 effect" because, like Doctor Who's old companion, whenever IR have a problem Brains has "coincidentally" just crafted/ installed/ tested exactly what they need for the mission.

Another problem is the Tracy brothers. Several act like spoilt children most of the time. You wouldn't trust them with the TV remote, let alone a Thunderbird vehicle!

Overall a fun watch for under 10's but if you have the originals, let them watch those instead.