RIP GERRY ANDERSON.

[Unifarva Skrewj]

R.I.P. Gerry Anderson, Creator of Space: 1999 and Thunderbirds


http://io9.com/5971268/rip-gerry-anderson-creator-of-space-1999-and-thunderbirds
R.I.P. Gerry Anderson, Creator of Space: 1999 and Thunderbirds Charlie
Jane Anders
Some of the coolest spaceships ever filmed came from Gerry Anderson, who
died today after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease. Anderson did
more for space opera on television than almost any other single creator,
launching space show after space show from the 1960s to the 1990s. From
Fireball XL5 in 1962 to Space Precinct in 1994, Anderson was devoted to
bringing cool-looking spaceships and stylized, over-the- top action to
television.
But Anderson is probably best known in the United States for creating
Space: 1999, a live-action show about the crew of a Moonbase who must
survive after the Moon is thrown out of Earth's orbit. Space: 1999
featured some pretty creepy storylines and some intense performances by
Martin Landau and others, although it hasn't aged that well. But also,
Space: 1999's designs, especially the Eagle fighters, still look
incredibly cool and rugged, with their square boxy shapes and panels.
Anderson first made his mark with shows featuring puppets, via his
famous Supermarionation process. Fireball XL5 was puppet-tastic, and so
were Thunderbirds and several other shows. The use of stiff, jerky
puppets just allowed Anderson to be more stylized with the shows'
action, so that everything in the show felt like a piece of space
hardware, except with a lot of quirkiness and goofiness. Even when
Anderson started working with humans, in UFO, they still looked a bit
like toys come to life, with their brightly-colored wigs and stiff
performances.
He also wrote a screenplay for an early 1970s James Bond movie that
would have been loosely based on Ian Fleming's Moonraker — which fell
through after Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman ended their long-
running partnership.
Thunderbirds was made into a pretty terrible movie, without Anderson's
involvement, several years ago. Another puppet show, Captain Scarlet,
was brought back in 2005 as Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet.
There's also been some talk about a Space: 1999 revival called Space:
2099.
According to this interview, even at the end of his life, Anderson was
still trying to launch new space opera shows — he was working with
Phil Ford, from the Sarah Jane Adventures and Wizards Vs. Aliens, on
creating a show called Lightspeed.
In a 2009 interview, Anderson explained how he got into making shows
about space:
I've always been interested in the idea of space exploration. When I was
younger it was just a dream, but the theory of rockets being able to
travel through space was very much alive. I found it very exciting.
Not only did Anderson's shows feature some terrific-looking spaceships
(several of which were reused on Doctor Who and other shows) but he also
helped to launch the careers of some top special effects creators.
Notably the Academy Award-winning special effects artist Derek Meddings,
who started on Thunderbirds and then worked on the 1970s James Bond
films, Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton's Batman.
Late in his career, Anderson embraced CG animation, which he saw as
being similar to the puppets that launched his career — only with more
realistic motion. In a lot of ways, Anderson was recognizing that the
signature look he created back in the 1960s has stayed with us today,
except with a lot more technological enhancements. In any case, if you
love television space opera, and the romance of swashbuckling in space,
then you owe a huge debt to Gerry Anderson. [BBC]
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The Eagle remains the most plausible spacecraft design from any scifi
series. Cheers Gerry.

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