# Jeff Tracy

Jeff Tracy is a fictional character from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds and the subsequent films Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6. The character was voiced by Peter Dyneley. Jeff also appears in the live-action film Thunderbirds, played by Bill Paxton.

## Original series biography

According to his backstory "bio", Jeff was born 2 January 2009 the son of a combine harvester driver on a Kansas wheat farm.
Jeff joined the U.S. Air Force, where he achieved the rank of colonel. He later transferred to the Space Agency to become an early lunar astronaut.
He married Lucille, with whom he had five sons: Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan. Each of the boys was named after one of the Project Mercury astronauts: Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Gordon Cooper and Alan Shepard.
According to a non-canonical 1993 comic strip, Lucille and Jeff's father, Grant Tracy, were both killed in an avalanche. A 2008 novel had Lucille die from a road accident in which her vehicle fell off the side of a cliff.
Jeff founded a civil engineering, construction and aerospace business that made him one of the richest men in the world. He later became a philanthropist and founded and financed International Rescue. As the Tracy family's patriarch, Jeff spends most of his time on Tracy Island, remotely coordinating rescue missions. Jeff, Scott and Virgil are the only Tracys to appear in all 32 episodes of Thunderbirds.
It has been suggested that the Tracy family are based on the Cartwrights from the TV series Bonanza, and that the Jeff Tracy puppet is based on actor Lorne Greene, who played Ben Cartwright.

## 2004 film

In an interview, Bill Paxton, who played the live-action version of Jeff, described the character as "a kind of teacher, this father figure who has to teach his sons, particularly his youngest son Alan, these basic lessons of ethics and integrity, about doing the right thing."

## Remake series

In the 2015 remake, Jeff vanished six years prior to the start of the series, for which The Hood is shown to be responsible. Scott appears to have assumed command of International Rescue in his father's place as he is the oldest of the Tracy brothers, while Grandma Tracy, who has herself changed from the original series, has taken over his role as head of the family.
The origins for International Rescue are also explained gradually throughout the series. Jeff originally was the only member with one ship: the TV-21, an ultra-high speed rocket and a vehicle by Brains' own admission that was faster than any Thunderbird, with his ultimate objective to be the first one to the rescue. However, when he lost the TV-21, he instead created the five Thunderbirds to be there for any emergency.
Jeff finally appears in series 3, initially in recordings in the two-part episode "Signals", which reveals that he was last seen trying to stop The Hood stealing the Zero-X spacecraft. When the Hood's actions nearly caused Zero-X's engine to overload and cause an extinction-level event, Jeff took the ship into space, with the apparent detonation believed to be the ship's engine overloading and exploding. However, at the end of "SOS", Brains discovered that rescued robot Braman was not sending a distress call, but was actually acting as a relay to send the message to Earth, and discovers a coded message within the distress call that could only have come from Jeff. After recovering the escape pod that The Hood made his escape in, Brains realises that the explosion was a shockwave created as a result of the ship's faster-than-light engine working, which propelled Jeff into deep space.
Working with former adversary The Mechanic, Brains is ultimately able to create the Zero-XL, a ship powered by the same engine as the Zero-X and capable of transporting all five Thunderbirds, allowing the Tracy brothers to follow the signal back to its source. At the end of "The Long Reach – Part One", Scott, while trying to make his way back to Thunderbird 1 after investigating the cave that was the source of the signal, almost falls into the reaches of space after two asteroids collide with each other. Scott is caught by a mysterious figure's hand; he looks up and realises that it is his father, Jeff. In "The Long Reach – Part Two", Jeff is reunited with his sons after Scott brings him home. After The Hood is defeated, Jeff returns to Tracy Island.
Lee Majors provided the voice of Jeff in the remake.