TV: Supermarionation

One of the nice things about television is that you can share an experience not merely with people in different places, but with people from different times in history. As a kid, I watched the marionette TV shows of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson on the Sci-Fi Channel. I didn't know it at the time, but I was enjoying shows that were at least thirty years old. It's weird to think that the childhood memories of an aging Baby Boomer and myself might feature the same characters and music.

My favorite, by a country mile, was Stingray. The opening credit sequence features bombastic, brassy '60s orchestral music wedded to some of the sweetest submarine model photography ever committed to film ("STANDY BY FOR ACTION!"):



Of course, most people are familiar with the more popular "Thunderbirds" series, which served as the inspiration for Trey Parker and Matt Stone's parody/homage in "Team America: World Police." I always felt that the avalanche of vehicles in "Thunderbirds," while cool, was a bit unfocused:



Marionette shows started to fall off in popularity, and I think they jumped the shark with "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons." Improved technology allowed the puppets to have electronically motorized mouths but normal proportions, and the whole affair lost a lot of its charm without the bobble headed puppets keeping things lighthearted. Still, "Captain Scarlet" was a fun show, and the ending sequence had not only an incredible theme song, but neat paintings showing the indestructible Captain Scarlet in a variety of perilous situations: