Another 6 episodes of the popular '60s show "Thunderbirds" from A&E Home Video. This review will look quite a bit like the review for set 1 since A&E has kept the quality of the release the same.
Gerry Anderson was known for his shows "Supercar," "Fireball XL5" and "Stingray" featuring "Supermarionation" which used marionettes instead of actors. In 1963 he was coming to the end of production on "Stingray" and needed an idea for a new show. While listening to radio reports about a mine disaster in Germany he got the idea for a show about a group of people working as an international rescue organization. Since villains would be after their amazing equipment, the organization was hidden in a secret location on an island in the Pacific ocean. In 1965 "Thunderbirds" premiered and lasted 32 episodes. The show has aired somewhere in the world since it's first episode.
Sure the show can drag on and the dialog is cheesy, but it comes from the wonderful 60's where a 60 min show was almost that long. It's still enjoyable for adults and kids.
Menu Design
The menus on the disc are quite nice and reflect the feel of the show and the look of the artwork on the cases.
This set features the following episodes:
Vault of Death
A Bank of England employee has become trapped in the world's most secure vault! Time-and the air-is running out! Will the Thunderbird's advanced rescue technology be enough, or will they need to rely on the more traditional skills of ex-safecracker Parker?
Operation: Crash-Dive
A second supersonic Fireflash airliner has mysteriously crashed! Thunderbirds 1, 2 and 4 have been dispatched to rescue the crew and investigate the cause. Will Scott, Virgil and Gordon's courage and wits be enough to save the Fireflash program?
Move and You're Dead
Alan and Grandma Tracy have been stranded on a bridge alongside a sonice wave generator connected to a time bomb! If they move, they die. Can Brains disable the bomb long distance? And can Scott track down Alan's murderous competitor?
Martian Invasion
A pair of actors are trapped under the collapsed set of a Sci-Fi film. Scott and Virgil in Thunderbords 1 and 2 race to the rescue, unaware that the evil Hood has hypnotically forced faithful Kyrano to disable the photodetector on Thunderbird 1!
Brink of Distaster
on Lady Penelope's advice, International Rescue has been investigating a development scam. Now, Jeff Tracy, Brains and Tin-Tin are aboard the crooks' monotrain, which is about to collapse, while the villians break into Lady Penelope's mansion!
The Perils of Penelope
Lady Penelope, investigating the disappearance of an accomplished scientist, has also been kidnapped! How far will the villians go to learn the scientist's secrets? Will Penelope pay the price for his silence? Or will Virgil and Gordon arrive in time?
Video
Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much from a show that's over 35 years old, so what's on this disc blew me away. Many of the elements in the show are meant to be brightly colored, from the character's uniforms to the Thunderbird ships and background sets. I was expecting the picture to be washed out but was surprised by nice, bright colors. It's obvious that A&E Home Video did a lot of work to the print for this DVD release. Sure there are some dust specs, and the "outdoor" shots show some grain and look a little poorer compared to the "inside" shots, but overall this is a nice picture. A few shots suffer from minor shimmering, but nothing that's too distracting. Most of the show features the marionettes, but every once and awhile they'll insert a human hand because they can't do the shot with a marionette.
Audio
While the video quality was a surprise, the audio was even better. The soundtrack has been completely redone in Dolby Digital 5.1 and it sounds great. There's excellent use of panning between the front speakers and from the front to the rears. The rears feature some nice ambient effects while most of the dialog and music comes from the front 3 speakers. Explosions really rocked! I couldn't believe I was watching a show from the 60's that sounded this good. "Operation: Crash-Dive" has the best use of sound effects out of the bunch. There are a number of ships moving back and forth on the screen and the audio pans with each one. As planes fly by they go from the front speakers to the rears. There are also ambient effects coming out of the rears in a few of the scenes. Excellent audio work!
I was a little surprised that the Dolby Digital 5.1 track wasn't the default track used for this release but I guess they wanted to set the original mix as the default.
"Behind the Scenes" (3:25)
A promotional piece filmed for the launch of the show, we see some footage from "Stingray" and they briefly talk about the premise behind "Thunderbirds". The video for this featurette was how I expected the entire show to look; colors washed out and quite a bit of dust and debris. I was also surprised by how large the puppets are. This was the same piece features in Set 1.
Photo Galleries
There are 14 photos for characters on the first disc and 16 photos of the machines on the second.
Production Credits
Not really an extra, but this is a still with the people responsible for the DVD.
Summary
The "Thunderbirds" is one of those shows that you can enjoy no matter what your age. A&E Home Video didn't let anything slide from the first set, and I expect the others to be of the same quality. It's nice to see a company spending the time to restore old shows for DVD release.
I loved seeing Derek Meddings name in the credits as the Special Effects Director. I'm a big fan of the Bond movies and Derek Meddings did special effects work on 5 of them.
