The first video of Fireball XL5 actually came in the form of an Emotion Japan release on VHS in 1985. Watershed Pictures on their Best Of Children's TV of the Decades '60s included the title sequence in their 1990 VHS, available for £9.99. In 1989, ITC Home Video was formed in the United Kingdom, to make use of the many hours of programmes in the archive, then unseen for years. This short-lived home entertainment division would end in 1991. In the following period, ITC continued to distribute its past library. It would not be until March 1992 that Fireball XL5 finally made it onto a home video format in its home country. The videos contained pictures from the series in the centre of the cover, and costed £8.99 per volume which contained four episodes per tape running in production order, unless otherwise stated. Two volumes of the series, released on ITC Home Video ITC labels 1051 and 1052, appeared in March 1992, followed by Volumes 3 and 4 (1053 and 1054) in June 1992. Labels 1055 and 1056 followed with Volumes 5 and 6 in February 1993.
Unfortunately, the sales of the Fireball XL5, and Supercar, videos were not successful enough to warrant many other videos from the series to have the full series out on VHS. In September 1993, The Firefighters was included at the start of the tape of ITC's A Night In TV Heaven Volume 3 as ITC XXXX for £10.99. A Spy In Space was also included at the end of the tape of a Stingray/Fireball XL5 VHS set from October 1993, which contained "an hour or more of magical fun". This "hour" included ten minutes of trailers, followed by the Stingray episode The Ghost Ship. This PolyGram Video release was released under the Pocket Money Video banner, which was part of a budget set of tapes which released several other programs, including tapes containing various Anderson productions on one tape. This set, released as PolyGram Video 087 570 3, for £4.99 was deleted on 1st February 1995 and re-released with a new cover on 14th August 1995 for the same price and deleted on July 16th 1996.
In an effort to improve sales of Fireball XL5 and Supercar video releases, ITC Home Video released two videos in April 1994 (as ITC Home Video ITC 1075 and 1076 labels), which contained two episodes of Fireball XL5 and Supercar each in Fireball XL5/Supercar. On the first tape, there was The Forbidden Planet, The Granatoid Tanks, (and from Supercar) The Sunken Temple and Trapped In The Depths. The second tape featured Dangerous Cargo, 1875, (and from Supercar) Crash Landing and The Dragon Of Mo Heng. In 1995, PolyGram purchased ITC for $156 million, and the new distributors of the VHS catalogue PolyGram 4 Front Video, reissued the first four volumes of Fireball XL5, as well as much of the SUPERMARIONATION catalogue in September 1996. Each tape was £4.99 and was released on the product codes 043 702 3, 043 704 3, 043706 3, and 043 716 3. An advert was included to contain the other rereleased Anderson shows also under PolyGram's supervision. These tapes were deleted on 6th January 1998. Although not all the episodes of the series were released, an impressive number of tapes followed in the wake of the Gerry Anderson resurgence of interest and allowed new audiences to be entertained at the adventures of Steve Zodiac and the crew of Fireball XL5.
ROBERT TO THE RESCUE;
Written by Dennis Spooner
Directed by Bill Harris
Original UK Airdate: 17th March 1963 (ATV London and Ulster)
Additional Voice Cast:
Magar David Graham Proton John Bluthal
The Domeheads (Magar and Proton) were previously seen as the Lillispatians in Space Immigrants. A sister species to the Lillispatians perhaps? We begin once again with a very interesting premise to open the episode up before we are presented with more shenanigans from Matt and Zonnie. The Professor, having discovered a new planet, wishes to call it after him - Planet Matic! The floor in the lab he watches his telescope on is the floor reused from Supercar's Black Rock laboratory kitchen floor. This is more witty dialogue from Spooner's genius mind. Once in the domain of Magar and Proton, we are in another chilling atmosphere filled with darkness around our heroes. We see the aliens take over the minds of Matic, Venus, and the strong-willed Zodiac, before Robert the Robot comes to their aid. It is nice to see Robert be used as the hero of the day, considering I feel that he isn't used much in the series.
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Fireball XL5: The Vault
Non-FictionFireball XL5 was the second of legendary Gerry Anderson's to go out under the iconic banner "Filmed In SUPERMARIONATION". Set between the years 2062 and 2063, the series told the heroic adventures of Colonel Steve Zodiac and the crew of Fireball XL5...
