Super-Marionation?

[StatCat]

I'm just curious to know if anyone here on the forum likes any of Gerry Anderson's shows with super marionation (action marionettes)? I'm not too familar with them but recently I saw a captain scarlet box set that was just released on line and it made me remember the show when I use to watch it really early in the morning. I want to buy the set which contains all of the episodes on 4 dvds but I also noticed there are 6 sets of thunderbirds episodes out on dvd. I'm not familar with this show at all really, I've heard of it just never saw it. Captain Scarlet is the darker out of the two with a little more violence,( even some bloodshed) and complex situations. I also know he did another marionette show called stingray which I think was his first with puppets at least.

[Gerry]

I've never seen Anderson's other shows, but I really dig the THUNDERBIRDS.  Fun stuff.

[Cullen]

I watched a little of the "Thunderbirds" and it left me rather cold.  I can't decide if it was the acting or the puppetry.  Maybe if I had caught it as a kid, I could get into it more.  I can still watch the original TV "Land of the Lost," although, I'll admit, not without a little pain.

[Flangepart]

The spaceships and machines in the shows are often more intresting then the people. U.F.O, there for,is prime mst3k material. Why, Ed Bishop alone is worth a riff a minute.

[john]

>I also know he did another marionette show called stingray which I think was his
>first with puppets at least.

 I saw a few episodes of Stingray on the SFC, and it looked VERY cheap. The little I've seen of his other puppet shows, they weren't great, but Stingray was pretty primitive.

>The spaceships and machines in the shows are often more intresting then the
>people. U.F.O, there for,is prime mst3k material. Why, Ed Bishop alone is worth
>a riff a minute.

 I've read that he wanted the actors in U.F.O. to look like puppets.

[Jim]

i purchased Thunderbirds last year out of curiosity and i was suprised to find them so much fun to watch. marionetts smoking cigarettes, fighting spies...giant alligators...rescuing idiots from burning scyscrapers...fashions from the groovy sixties...this stuff is better then the Austin Powers movies.

[StatCat]

Captain Scarlet is actually not primitve at all like stingray and thunderbirds might have been at times. In this series he improved the puppet body proportions to resemble more like people and the show featured a lot of pretty cool effects. It's not the most popular but it's certainly more appealing and interesting to me then thunderbirds, still looking for the set.

[Flangepart]

Capt. Scarlet could be the first (Well, one of them) that implyed "people" dieing during the corse of the show. The Martians were zombiefying the dead, in order to mess with the earth. How strange is that for a Kids show?

[Cullen]

"Capt. Scarlet could be the first (Well, one of them) that implyed "people" dieing during the corse of the show. The Martians were zombiefying the dead, in order to mess with the earth. How strange is that for a Kids show?"

Just as a side note, "Jonny Quest," Greatest Cartoon of All Time, had people dying left or right roughly three years before Captain Scarlet came on the screen.  God, I love that show.

[Flangepart]

Ah ha! Thou art right agine, boy wonder. Oh, yeah. Race Bannon shooting at a bulldozer blade, to richochet the slugs into a thug round the corner of a building, Dr. Zin's henchmen getting blown up, The old guy and his Petradyctal goin' down in the lava pit....ah, what memories.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Hardly pertinent to the original topic, but, I loved "Jonny Quest," too. My favorite act of violence, may have been the same episode in which Race ricochets bullets off of a bulldozer blade--smart move that, was, when he tosses a grenade at four thugs in a jeep, and one of the thugs catches the said grenade. Cut away to Race taking shelter behind a building, sound of explosion, and you see one of the tires from the jeep come rolling around the corner of the building. Just ROTFL.
Even in the more permissive '60's, that was a violent show. Especially, a cartoon show that was made for children. Even between the time of the airing of the original episode, and the episode was repeated on television, they were editing back the violence.
Still, unfortunately, they don't make shows like that anymore. Gotta luv it.