SUPERCAR - individual card from the base set issued by Unstoppable Cards in 2017 as part of The Gerry Anderson Collection.
Supercar was a children's TV show produced by Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis' AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment. Thirty-nine episodes were produced between 1961 and 1962, and it was Anderson's first half-hour series. In the UK it was seen on ITV and in the US in syndication (the first Anderson series to be shown overseas) debuting in January 1962. The series uses Supermarionation, based on the complex and difficult Czech style of marionette puppetry. The creation of the show was credited to Gerry Anderson and Reg Hill, but it incorporates elements of "Beaker's Bureau", a series proposed to the BBC by Hugh Woodhouse that was never produced. Anderson would later claim that the whole point of having a series based on a vehicle was to minimize having to show the marionettes walking, an action which he felt never looked convincing.
The plot of the show consisted of Supercar, a vertical takeoff and landing craft invented by Prof. Rudolph Popkiss and Dr. Horatio Beaker, and piloted by Mike Mercury. On land it rode on a cushion of air rather than wheels. Jets in the rear allowed it to fly like a jet and retractable wings were incorporated in the back of the car. Retrorockets on the side of the car slowed the vehicle. The car used "Clear-Vu", which included an inside television monitor allowing the occupant to see through fog and smoke. The vehicle was housed in a laboratory and living facility at Black Rock, Nevada, U.S.A. In the show's first episode, "Rescue", the Supercar crew's first mission is to save the passengers of a downed private plane. Two of the rescued, young Jimmy Gibson and his pet monkey, Mitch, are invited to live at the facility and share in the adventures.
The series inaugurated what would become an Anderson trademark, the launch sequence. Every one of his series up until Space: 1999 would include these – in Supercar's case, the charging and firing of port and starboard engines, the activation of an interlock, the opening of (overhead) hangar doors, and finally the vertical take-off.
After Granada Television failed to renew Four Feather Falls, Anderson approached Lew Grade of ATV. Grade asked Anderson to reduce the budget by half. After working through the night, Anderson returned the next morning, with the budget reduced only by a third. Grade commissioned the series immediately.
The music for the series was composed and conducted by Barry Gray. The opening and closing theme song vocalist for the first season is Mike Sammes, for the second season Sammes's vocal group The Mike Sammes Singers re-recorded the theme.
There were two working models of Supercar, which was designed by art director Reg Hill. The larger hero model was made of light-weight wood and Plexiglass (Perspex) and measured about five feet (1.5 m) in length. It was built by Laurie Barr of Aeronautical and General Modelmakers Ltd. (now Mastermodels). The smaller model, used in distance shots, was about nine inches (23 cm) in length and was sculpted by Slough craftsman Bill James. Fans such as Austin Tate have speculated that Hill was inspired by the 1954 Ford FX-Atmos concept car.
As photography on the series was getting under way, creator Gerry Anderson wed production assistant and voice actress Sylvia Thamm. After a brief mid-day ceremony the couple returned to the studio to help complete the opening title sequence.
Many of the first 26 scripts for Supercar were written by brothers Hugh and Martin Woodhouse. At the rate of one complete "shooting (camera-ready) script" per week, this was done by the brothers to fit Anderson's/Grade's cost, and production schedule.
Anderson always claimed that he invented a futuristic vehicle as an excuse to reduce the amount of walking the marionette puppets had to do, which could never be made to look realistic. This was taken to its conclusion in Captain Scarlet, in which the marionette puppets are almost never seen walking.
The complete series is available on DVD in the United Kingdom, Australia, and North America, where it has been issued twice.
Michael "Mike" Mercury: - Test pilot of Supercar (voiced by Graydon Gould).
Professor Rudolph Popkiss - Co-Inventor of Supercar with Dr. Beaker (voiced by George Murcell in Season 1 and by Cyril Shaps in Season 2).
Dr. Horatio Beaker: - Co-Inventor of Supercar with Professor Popkiss (voiced by David Graham).
James "Jimmy" Gibson: - A young boy who lives with his brother (voiced by Sylvia Anderson, credited as Sylvia Thamm in Season 2). After Mike and Supercar save his life he joins the Supercar team.
Mitch the Monkey: - Jimmy's Pet Monkey (voiced by David Graham).
Masterspy: - A foreign spy (voiced by George Murcell in Season 1 and by Cyril Shaps in Season 2). He is obsessed with getting his hands on Supercar. By the second episode, he is already an old adversary of Mike Mercury and team.
Zarrin: - Masterspy's henchman (voiced by David Graham).
Mr. Harper: - A posh English criminal (voiced by George Murcell).
Ben Judd: - a not so posh cockney speaking criminal (voiced by David Graham).
William "Bill" Gibson: - Jimmy's older brother (voiced by David Graham). He owns his own shipping business and can pilot a plane.
The cast for Supercar was put together weeks before shooting was to commence. The lines were recorded in the rushes theatre, which was transformed into a recording studio. Lines were recorded on a Sunday (once every month), because the studio was on a trading estate, meaning Sundays were the quietest days of the week. The recording sessions typically took place between 9:30 a.m., and 5:30 p.m., during which time the cast, along with the sound engineers, would try to get through at least three scripts.
Canadian actor Graydon Gould (The Forest Rangers), who voiced Mike Mercury despite never auditioning for the part, was offered it whilst doing a stage production that was shown on television. In an interview Gould recalls that, without owning a car, getting to Slough was difficult because “Sunday transport is about half of what it normally is” but because he had a wife, a two-year-old child and a three-bedroom apartment, he was grateful for the money. Sylvia Anderson directed the sessions and helped Gould with his American accent; he recalls “she would point out when my Canadian accent was slipping through.”
David Graham voiced three characters for the series: Doctor Beaker, Zarin, and Mitch the Monkey. He also voiced the recurring character of Bill Gibson. He had previously worked on the series Four Feather Falls where he had shown his ability to provide a variety of different voices. Graham had based his voice for Dr. Beaker on veteran actor Felix Aylmer, while he also spent a day at London Zoo watching monkeys at the Monkey House, trying get a good interpretation as to how Mitch should sound.
George Murcell voiced Professor Popkiss and Masterspy for the first season. He had previously worked for AP Films when playing the character Diamond in the low budget B-Movie Crossroads to Crime alongside David Graham. Graham believes that because of his voice quality, Gerry thought he would make a good Masterspy, while Gould remembers Murcell doing “all the European voices”. Murcell left the series after 24 episodes, which explains why he, and Popkiss do not appear in the last two episodes of the first series.
Sylvia Anderson, then Sylvia Thamm before her marriage to Anderson, was credited as "voice direction", and voiced Jimmy Gibson and all female characters in the series; however, she was not credited for the first series. Originally Sylvia was not to voice Jimmy, but she was given the opportunity when Gerry was not happy with the original voice of Jimmy that had already been recorded. This marked Sylvia’s first involvement in voice acting.
Cyril Shaps was brought in to voice Professor Popkiss and Masterspy for the second season. David Graham was a friend of Cyril and suggested him for the part when George left. At the time Cyril was performing in the West End play The Tenth Man, which David, Gerry and Sylvia went to see.
Supercar was the first Gerry Anderson series to be adapted as a comic book in America, with the Gold Key company releasing four issues between November 1962, and August 1963.
In 1998 Fanderson issued a limited edition album of Barry Gray's music from the series, paired with Gray's work on Fireball XL5. It was the first soundtrack album produced by the society.
In 2013 the society released a second limited edition disc, this one completely devoted to the series.
Fireball XL5 is a science fiction themed children's television show following the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol. The show aired for a single 1962—63 series, produced by husband and wife team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson through their company APF, in association with ATV for ITC Entertainment, and first transmitted on ATV on Sunday 28 October 1962. While developing his new show, Anderson thought a brand of motor oil – Castrol XL – had an interesting sound. A phonetic change created the name "Fireball XL", with the "5" added as the title seemed a bit flat without the numeral.
The show featured the Andersons' Supermarionation, a form of puppetry first introduced in Four Feather Falls (1960) and Supercar (1961) and used again in their subsequent productions such as Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and The Secret Service. Thirty-nine black and white half-hour episodes of Fireball XL5 were made on 35mm film: all subsequent Anderson series were produced in colour.
Several Anderson series have been shown in syndication in the US, but Fireball XL5 is the only Anderson series to have run on a US network. NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) ran the series in its Saturday morning children's block from 1963 through to September 1965.
A similar programme often confused with Fireball XL5 due to a number of similarities and settings is Space Patrol (known as Planet Patrol in the U.S.), produced by Gerry Anderson's former business partner and co-founder of AP Films, Arthur Provis.
The complete series is available on DVD in the UK, Australia, Canada and the U.S..
Set between the years 2062 and 2063, the series featured the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol. The crew included glamorous Doctor Venus, a doctor of space medicine; middle-aged navigator and engineer Professor Matthew Matic and co-pilot Robert, a transparent, anthropomorphic robot who would most often proclaim ON-OUR-WAY-HOME. Robert was the only character in an Anderson series which was actually voiced by Anderson, himself, albeit with the aid of an artificial larynx. As Anderson describes in a deleted scene of Filmed in Supermarionation:
In the series, the World Space Patrol is based at Space City, located on an unnamed island in the South Pacific, headed by Commander Zero. Zero is assisted by Lieutenant Ninety. For unspecified reasons, the 25-storey, T-shaped Space City control tower rotates; in one episode a character inadvertently makes it rotate fast enough for those inside to suffer from vertigo.
Fireball XL5 patrolled Sector 25 of charted interstellar space (although there only appeared to be three sectors marked on the space chart seen in the Space City control room). The patrols were missions of three months' duration, and the ship was on call at base between missions.
The patrol space ship Fireball XL5 takes off utilising a mile-long launch rail culminating in a 40-degree incline, or sky ramp, which, as Anderson claimed, was inspired by an old Soviet design, a concept also used in the film When Worlds Collide.
The World Space Patrol operates a fleet of at least thirty 'Fireball XL' ships (an XL30 is referred to in the episode The Firefighters), of which XL5 is the most famous. The ship itself is made up of two detachable sections. A winged nose cone, known as Fireball Junior, contains the cockpit and separates from the main body to land on other worlds. The rest of the ship contains a navigation bay, laboratory, a large lounge, workshops and separate crew quarters, together with fuel and the main rocket motors used for interstellar travel. The main ship generally remains stationed in orbit after arriving at an alien planet.
When Fireball XL5 returns to its base on Earth, Space City, the whole ship lands horizontally, without separating, using underside-mounted retro-rockets.
Although the series uses many classic, early 20th-century science fiction themes reminiscent of the space opera of E. E. "Doc" Smith, it was a children's show and not intended to be realistic. Fireball XL5 is portrayed travelling around the galaxy at sub-light speeds (until the episode Faster than Light), and the series observed few of the limitations of known science and rocketry. Viewers were informed that the ship's rocket motors were powered by a 'nutomic reactor' and that XL5 could travel safely at speeds up to 'Space Velocity 7', enabling it to reach the outlying star systems of charted space within a few months. Furthermore, the crew never wore space suits; instead they took "oxygen pills" to survive in the vacuum of space, where they manoeuvred in zero gravity with the aid of thruster packs. 'Neutroni radio' enabled virtually instantaneous communication within the sectors of charted space, and XL5 and her sister ships were fitted with 'gravity activators' that generated artificial gravity fields within them.
Regular characters were voiced by Paul Maxwell, Sylvia Anderson, David Graham and John Bluthal. In common with many of the Anderson puppet shows, most of the important characters have American accents, with some notable exceptions: Dr. Venus is French, Jock the engineer is Scottish and some of the aliens have remarkably sedate British accents (e.g. episode 33, the Day the Earth Froze). Language issues between alien races and Earth were rarely encountered as most races appeared to speak perfect English.
Fireball XL5 had separate opening instrumental theme music and a closing theme song. The closing theme, Fireball, written by Barry Gray and sung by Don Spencer, became a minor hit in Britain. Gray would have a long relationship with the Andersons' productions, writing themes for such series as Thunderbirds and Space: 1999. Don Spencer would become Australia's premier children's entertainer and founder of the Australian Children's Music Foundation. A group, The Flee-Rekkers, produced by Joe Meek, came out with an instrumental version in the style of Telstar.
In addition to the theme song, the series spawned a number of other licensed merchandising spin-offs including toys, an MPC playset with rocket ship and figures, model kits including a plastic kit of Fireball XL5 itself, puppets, ray guns, comic strips and annuals. In Britain, a two-page black-and-white Fireball XL5 comic strip appeared in the weekly TV Comic between 1962 and 1964 before moving to the newly launched weekly TV Century 21 comic in January 1965 for another five years. The strips that appeared between 1965 and 1968 were in colour only reverting to black-and-white in 1969. Four hard cover Annual books were published in Britain by Collins between 1963 and 1966 featuring colour and black and white comic strip and text stories, while in the United States Gold Key Comics printed a single-issue colour comic book in 1963. Little Golden Books published a hard-cover colour illustrated story book in 1964 (later released as 'Fireball XL5 – A Big Television Book' in Britain).
During the mid 1960s there were also three soft cover colouring/puzzle books published in Britain and one soft cover colouring/story book published in the United States.
Like most of Anderson's Supermarionation series, this one was given a "complete series" release in Region 1 by A&E Home Video. A Region 2 version featuring new bonus material was released on DVD in those territories in 2009, superseding a 2004 release with no extras. On 22 October in Region B territories, an individual Blu-ray featuring a colorised version of the episode A Day in the Life of a Space General was released. The disc also includes an episode of Four Feather Falls and an extended version of the Wonderland of Stardust documentary released as a bonus on the Region B box set released earlier in 2009. The series was reissued in North America in a slim DVD set (only about the size of a single DVD case), but aside from a bonus PDF file of a publicity brochure for the show, and different menu design, the set is identical to its predecessor.
Colonel Steve Zodiac: - The Pilot and commanding officer of Fireball XL5 (voiced by Paul Maxwell). Zodiac was awarded Astronaut of the Year in the episode "Space City Special".
Doctor Venus: - A Doctor of Space Medicine, of French origin. Personally chosen to be part of his crew by Steve Zodiac and with 5 years of service on the XL5 according to the episode "The Last of the Zanadus" (voiced by Sylvia Anderson).
Professor Matthew "Matt" Matic: An engineer, navigator and scientist of XL5 (voiced by David Graham, speaking in a voice similar to the actor Walter Brennan).
Robert the Robot - The Co-Pilot of XL5, a transparent robot invented by Professor Matic and Earth's most advanced mechanical man (voiced by an uncredited Gerry Anderson using an artificial larynx and the only main character Gerry Anderson ever voiced in one of his series).
Zoonie the Lazoon: - A lazy, semi-telepathic pet of Dr. Venus from planet Colevio (voiced by David Graham). During his first appearances, he couldn't say anything but "welcome home" but his vocabulary grew as the series progressed, often due to him mimicking other characters.
Commander Wilbur Zero: - The Operational Commander-in-Chief of the World Space Patrol and Space City's Chief Controller (voiced by John Bluthal). Despite his gruff exterior, he cares deeply for his subordinates and respects them, especially Steve.
Lieutenant Ninety: The assistant Space City Controller (voiced by David Graham). Ninety is young, inexperienced and the character most often on the receiving end of Commander Zero's scathing attitude. Despite the seeming high tension between him and Zero, Zero called him "the best lieutenant Space City has." In one episode of the series, Lieutenant Ninety even underwent training as an XL pilot.
Jock Campbell: - The Chief Engineer at Space City (voiced by John Bluthal). He is of Scottish descent and makes it clear he doesn't think too highly of women but when Venus saves his life during an ill-fated mission, he starts to have a change of heart.
Eleanor Zero: - Commander Zero's wife (voiced by Sylvia Anderson)
Jonathan Zero: - Commander Zero's young son (voiced by Sylvia Anderson). According to the Little Golden Book 'Fireball XL5' story book published in the USA in 1964 young Jonathan was lucky enough to be a passenger aboard Fireball XL5's maiden voyage which included an unscheduled stop at the planet Geminy.
Captain Ken Ross: - The Pilot of several XL spaceships (voiced by John Bluthal). He often needs saving by the crew of XL5.
Space Spy Boris: - (voiced by David Graham)
Space Spy Griselda: - (voiced by Sylvia Anderson)
The Subterrains of Planet 46: - (voiced by John Bluthal and David Graham)
Many episodes of Fireball XL5 were set on exotic planets:
Amazonia – a planet mentioned in the episode Prisoner on the Lost Planet as being a member of the United Planets Organization alongside Earth and which had banished its mad queen to an unnamed planet of active volcanoes.
Aridan – the desert planet that once had water but is now an arid wilderness seen in the episode "Space Pirates"
Conva – a regularly featured planet first introduced in the episode "Space Pen" as a planetwide prison for criminals and featured prominently in the episode "Convict in Space", in which one of its convicts escapes.
Granatoid – home of the Granatoid robots who appear in "The Granatoid Tanks" and described (though not seen) as having a completely technocratic society, led by a robot voiced by an uncredited Gerry Anderson.
Granvenia – a planet mentioned as the destination of fuel tankers that are being diverted to the planet Suventa in the episode "Hypnotic Sphere".
Hedera – a planet rich in plant life that was visited in the episode "Plant Man from Space" and home of a rampant strain of Ivy called Hedera helixa.
Herbos – a jungle planet seen briefly in the episode "Last of the Zanadus".
Magneton – a planet visited in the episode "Space Magnet" and inhabited by the invisible Solars.
Membrono – a planet that was nearly destroyed (by another, unnamed planet) in the episode "The Doomed Planet". An advanced alien race lived on Membrono's moon.
Minerra – a planet rich in radioactive minerals needed for earth resources seen in the episode "Space Pirates"
Mirana – a perpetually burning planet seen in the episode "Hypnotic Sphere".
Monotane – a desert planet inhabited by a space monster in "Space Monster".
New Earth – a planet with a thin atmosphere and little gravity that was to be colonised by the crew of the spaceship Mayflower-3 in the episode Space Immigrants until spaceship Fireball XL7, sent out to prepare for the arrival of the Mayflower-3, was captured by megalomaniacal aliens.
Planet 46 – home of the Subterrains and a barren planet with an oxygen atmosphere; introduced in the pilot episode Planet 46 and appearing in numerous other episodes.
Planet 73 – a planet colonised by Earth and attacked by the Granatoids in the episode The Granatoid Tanks.
Planet 82 – a planet renamed Robotvia by Professor Al Himber.
Platonia – a planet featured in the episode Planet of Platonia and revealed to be rich in Platinum and inhabited by silver-skinned aliens who eat 23-course meals. A trade agreement with Earth had created a power-struggle on the planet, which the XL5 crew was sent to calm.
Rajusca – A desert planet featured in the episode Sun Temple, in which the Earth is attacked by sun worshipping Rajuscans living in the desert.
Suventa – an ice-planet that is home to an unnamed brain-creature which hopes to use hypnotic satellites to take control of the universe.
Triad – a planet featured in the episode, The Triads, which is almost identical to earth in every way, except for being three times its size. Consequently, everything on it, plants, people, animals, etc. is three times the size it is on earth, also. The gigantic human inhabitants are friendly, but are at least 100 years behind earth technologically and were just attempting their first space launches when the crew of the XL5 visited.
Zanadu – a planet that featured a mysterious temple in the episode Last of the Zanadus
Zofeit – a planet whose inhabitants, the Zofeits,were almost wiped out (only two males surviving) by a lone alien in the episode XL5 to H20. The crew of XL5 rescued the two survivors, who were evacuated to Earth.