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Thunderbirds Are Go! Tracy Brothers Revealed

C S Hughes
Film & TV

GerryAnderson.com reports the first image of the Tracy Brothers – heroes of Thunderbirds and ITV’s new version Thunderbirds Are Go! have been revealed.

Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon and John while no longer puppeticious, still have a stalwart woodenness about them, not necessarily in the right department. With their utility belt style sashes and tight fitting multi-purpose uniforms, they are looking quite toyicious as well – that’s the propensity to be easily manufactured into a plastic product that will be enthusiastically taken up by kids.

ITV’s problem is that while they are attempting to capture the attention of today’s children, much of the show’s appeal is nostalgia, cheesiness, exploding elaborate model sets and the spellbinding engagement of the imagination that is achieved with puppets. Most of the show’s fans are probably in their 50s.

Will this CGI version appeal to  that audience? Will a concept rooted in Cold War conflicts and corny 007 style action appeal to kids who enjoy the high super hero sci-fi fantasy of The Justice League, the epic SF that is The Clone Wars, the cute fantasy comedy of How To Train Your Dragon, surreal goofiness of Adventure Time and the kooky shenanigans of The Fairly Odd Parents?

And while there’s a small resemblance to some of the originals, another important question is will ITV be paying a royalty to Jeremy Renner or Sean Penn for Alan Tracy’s face?

ITV’s Thunderbirds Are Go! will be showing later in 2015.

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C S Hughes
C S Hughes is a proud member of the TV generation, studied film and communications, collects the paperback books of Philip K Dick, loves science fiction and fantasy books, B grade movies and cult TV, American thrillers and British noir, restoring vintage watches, reading poetry, creating innovative illustrated poetry books which are available in Apple’s iBooks format, and cake. Especially cake. He has also written short stories, and has a collection of horror stories coming out in 2015.

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2 Responses

  1. Any idea who will be voicing the characters, CS? If I remember correctly they used some ex-pat American actors living in the UK for the voices in the original series (yes I am that old!!) – well not for Parker and Lady Penelope, of course. At least that way the American accents were authentic. Back in the day when we used to have a “classic” series or serial on a Sunday in the UK, the Beeb recruited children of American servicemen who were based in the UK at the time for a serialisation of “Tom Sawyer” (the American folk-singer Peggy Seeger who was based in the UK for a time sang the theme song – probably American traditional – something like “Boats are going by – ly-dee-ho-o-o……running in the Mississippi train…”). Of course there tend to be more British actors who seek work in the USA than vice versa. Being British, I can of course spot a dodgy assumed British accent more easily than I can a dodgy American one assumed by a British (or other nationality) person. I always thought that the late Donald Pleasance (who played Dr Loomis in the original “Hallowe’en” film) did a good American accent, but an American said “You’d have thought Dr Loomis would have lost his English accent after the amount of time he’s supposed to have been in the States” (paraphrasing). Getting back to the Traceys…where is Brains?

  2. David Graham from the original series will be voicing Parker, Rosamund Pike will be voicing Lady Penelope. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, (Jojen Reed in Game Of Thrones), will play John Tracy, and Kayvan Novak as Brains. I haven’t heard about the other roles yet.
    Although these are all British actors, I suspect John and Brains will still have American accents – I can hardly imagine they would change that. Fortunately most young actors seem very good good at accents – I suppose because of broader exposure these days, some of the sharp differences in accents are becoming ironed out, as it were. I know the broad Australian drawl is much less prevalent than it used to be. I’m sure RP in the UK is also less common.

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