Review by Cavan Gilbey
Thunderbirds has been a long standing television love of mine, it was something introduced to me in my childhood and ever since and I the artistry of the show has always stuck with me. Great puppet and model work ensured that the show would stick in the mind, plus the Barry Gray music and vocal performances lend a further level of perfection. Last year Big Finish began to produce full cast adaptations of the novels by John Theydon, much in the same style as the excellent Spectrum Files which were done to bring Captain Scarlet to audio life. But Big Finish, in collaboration with Anderson Entertainment, this year started to produce full cast audio drama adaptation of the comic strips that would appear in the likes of TV Century 21. The first set, Thunderbirds vs The Hood came out earlier this year and was such a fun time for me because it took me back to watching episodes like City of Fire and Vault of Death on DVD. Now this new set, Fire and Fury, continues the quality of the previous set and makes me itch to want more stories in this style.
Coming in at a tight and brisk 30 minutes, it is quite difficult to grade The Space Mirror as a conventional story because it is by no means conventional. There is a lot of dashing about between Thunderbird 5 and the planet Earth, but most of the important action essentially takes place over one conversation on the space station. The rest of the run time is occupied showing the action-packed effects of the heat ray, thankfully this never becomes clunky or difficult to follow thanks to the sound design work of Toby Hrycek-Robinson. He captures the grand scale of everything so well, especially the idea of the eponymous vehicles taking off and moving in the air, everything has a good sense of tangibility to it and that really helps sell the peril of the otherwise non-existent plot.
The first story in the set is The Space Mirror adapted by Iain Meadows from a comic strip from Alan Fennell, although it is generally accepted that the comic strip was written by Scott Goodall. Something is boiling the Antarctic Ocean, trapping a pair of scientists in the boiling waters with only Virgil and Gordon there to help them. But as Thunderbird 4 becomes trapped in the ocean, John Tracy is attacked in his space-station home by the villainous Soltan. Planning to use her ‘Space Mirror’ to boil Lake Geneva and claim the wealth of the bank vault on the riverbed.
Joe Jameson’s performance as Alan and Justin T Lee’s John get some well deserved screen-time as they become trapped in space and have to use their pragmatism to subdue Soltan and her heat ray. Their eventual plan to stop her robbing the vault has them realising the morally grey nature of causing a world wide global economic depression, the two actors getting a chance to play the characters with suitably tongue-in-cheek seriousness. Another highlight of the cast comes in Genevieve Gaunt, who usually plays Lady Penelope, gets a great villainous turn as Soltan here. She plays her exactly as you would expect a 60s era Bond villain to sound and act, sinister intelligence is at her core and her ability to get the one over International Rescue certainly shows this.
Given the extremely brisk run time here, I can easily envision myself putting this on for those short train journeys or drives that just need a little extra something to make them go a bit quicker. It is the closest these audio dramas have felt to their source material in terms of tone and pacing and that is by no means a bad thing but I can’t see this story having much of a wider appeal outside of the most diehard of Thunderbirdsfans.
7/10
Our second story of the pair is Blazing Danger, adapted by Nicholas Briggs from a comic strip by Alan Fennell. A visit to Tracey Island from London agent Lady Penelope and her trusty valet Parker turns sour when they sit in on a rescue mission to a Canadian forest fire, caused by a failed murder attempt. Soon the team are dragged into Sam Lincoln’s reckless plan to take over her partner’s company for herself, and as the fire rages on time begins to run out for all those wishing to escape.
This one is very similar to our previous episode but the script ends up being a bit more fleshed out thanks to that extra bit of run time and the addition of Penelope and Parker in to the mix. The burning forest has this ticking time bomb quality to it as the cast are plunged into this inferno with very little options for escape. I think Gaunt’s Sam Lincoln is the better of her two villainous turns, she feels a bit more rounded than Soltan in that her greed fuelled aims have a more personal connection to the character as opposed to a more generic ‘I must have all the money in the world.’ She even gets the chance to hold Parker hostage for a bit, which added a nice dash of comedy to the script to make it more in line with the tone of the television show. Parker himself gets quite a lot of the best comedic lines, there’s a fun sequence near the opening of the story involving a pilots license that feels perfectly in character.
Despite very similar to its sister story in this set, Blazing Danger comes off as the slightly stronger of the two since there is just a little extra added layer to the villain and set up that feels more intricate and thoughtful. While there is a place for The Space Mirror’s silly action romps, I think Blazing Danger is going to be the one I come back to more often on the relistens.
8/10
On the whole this another excellent piece of Thunderbirds content that Anderson Entertainment and Big Finish have co-produced, while not as strong as the first set there is still a lot of fun to be had with these more conceptually bombastic and tonally campy narratives that perfectly the feeling of reading the technicolour pages of TV Century 21. If you want some quick and easy Thunderbirds stories to listen to if you don’t much time on your hands then this is the set for you, although I can also see the briefer and simpler stories being appealing to both younger listeners and those wanting to get into the world of Thunderbirds on audio.
8/10
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Review: TV Century 21 Audio Annual 2022 – Anything Can Happen
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