The Complete Book Of Thunderbirds 2086

10 - The Other Thunderbirds remakes

Premiering on the Fox Kids network on July 2nd 1994, each episode of this new version of Thunderbirds (often referred to among fans as Thunderbirds Fox Kids or similar) would take episodes of the original show and edit them down to twenty-five minutes in length. Most Thunderbirds fans will be aware that the original 1960s television series had begun life as a twenty-five minute show, before being expanded to fifty-minute episodes on the orders of Lew Grade. Episodes which had already been filmed as twenty-five-minuters were then expanded with newly filmed material, often involving a failed rescue attempt before International Rescue arrived on the scene. As a result, some of the earliest produced Thunderbirds stories lent themselves well to being edited back into a twenty-five minute length and required only minimal additional changes on top of that to fit a reduced running time. Most of the Fox Kids re-edits therefore followed the same plots (and often dialogue) as the original episodes, with the notable exception of The Uninvited, which became The Uninvited: Alien Attack for its redub. This saw the Zombites of the original story rebranded as aliens who had occupied the lost pyramid of Khamandides as the first part of a plot to enslave humanity and take over the world.

To make the original episodes more palatable to American sensibilities, any use of the word 'death' (or sometimes even the possibility of such) were removed or altered. Firearms now became lasers, and anybody who had been killed in the original episode now earned dialogue explaining that they had lived – even if, like Culp in Attack of the Alligators!, that was pushing credibility to breaking point! Attempts were also made to remove Lady Penelope's infamous cigarette holder, either by zooming in on the image or by some less than impressive digital trickery.

The show's famous musical score was also replaced with a new soundtrack composed by Randall Chrissman, which although adequate (if often intrusive) fell far short of the rousing orchestral march of the original. This is absolutely evident in the opening titles of the Fox Kids redub, which sacrificed all the drama and excitement of the original series in favour of this tepid intro:

An interesting inclusion in the show's opening title sequence were the 'top secret' schematic designs of craft from other Anderson shows, including Stingray, a UFO, a SHADO interceptor and an Eagle transporter, although it's doubtful that the Fox Kids redub team had their sights set on adapting any more Anderson shows since their take on Thunderbirds would ultimately prove to be a disaster. Of the thirteen episodes produced, only the following eight are confirmed to have aired thanks to surviving off-air recordings; Trapped in the Sky, Pit of Peril, The Uninvited: Alien Attack, Attack of the Alligators!, Terror in New York, Edge of Impact, Sun Probe, and Brink of Disaster. It is possible that the show's increasingly poor ratings meant it was pulled from broadcast before all thirteen could be shown, and although none of the episodes that had been shown were ever repeated four of them were released on VHS around the same time. Curiously, a trailer for this VHS release survives featuring the original Thunderbirds voice cast; a mistake, or perhaps a clue which suggests that revoicing the show wasn't part of the original plan for the Fox Kids version?

Within less than a year, following the collapse of the film project and the subsequent sale of the ITC media archive to Polygram, yet another attempt was made to repackage Thunderbirds for a mid-1990s American audience – despite the fact that the previous effort had demonstrably failed quite spectacularly. However, it appears that those behind what would ultimately become Turbocharged Thunderbirds realised the major weakness of the Fox Kids version; the general air of 'that'll do' that permeated every aspect of the production. In short, Fox Kids hadn't gone far enough in making enough the oh so necessary changes (nay, improvements) to Thunderbirds that kids of the Nineties were evidently waiting for. It wasn't 'edgy' enough. It wasn't 'rad' enough. It wasn't 'in your face' enough. But all that was about to change...