Stingray - Show News, Reviews, Recaps and Photos - TV.com EDIT "Stand by for Action! We're about to launch Stingray! Anything can happen within the next half hour!" These were the words spoken by Commander Shore at the beginning of each episode of Stingray, the first Gerry Anderson Supermarionation show to be made in colour. Set in the year 2064, Stingray is about the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) who patrol the world's oceans, helping and defeating underwater races. The pride of WASP is the revolutionary submarine Stingray, which is controlled by Captain Troy Tempest and Lieutenant George Lee Sheridan, better known as "Phones". The WASP headquarters at Marineville, a huge complex, 10 miles inland. The heart of WASP operations is the control tower, where Commander Sam Shore, Lt. Atlanta Shore (also his daughter) and Sub-Lieutenant Fisher can control and communicate with the entire WASP organization. When Marineville is under surface attack, Battle Stations sound. What happens next is that the whole complex sinks beneath the ground on massive hydraulic platforms. Huge concrete blast doors then protect the base, as well as WASP Interceptor and hydraulic missiles.

The WASP call is "PWOR" (Proceed With Orders Received). The main villain of the WASPs is Titan who rules the underwater city of Titanica and has sworn to invade the surface world. His slaves are the Aquaphibians, who control mechanical fish called Terror Fish, armed with deadly missiles that have destroyed many unsuspecting victims. Titan is also assisted by Surface Agent X20, who talks incredibly like Peter Lorre. X20 can infiltrate Marineville through cunning disguises. He lives in an old house on the Island of Lemoy, where he can communicate with Titanica by pressing a button in his living room, which changes the room into a communication centre within seconds! Before becoming a member of the WASPs, Marina, a tailless, voiceless mermaid was the slave of Titan before Troy Tempest rescued her from his clutches. Her father, Aphony is the ruler of the underwater city Pacifica. Marina and her people have been sworn to silence by Titan, who said if they were to speak again, they would be destroyed. Occasionally, Marina accompanies Troy and Phones on their missions and sometimes Atlanta goes in place of her if they feel the mission is unsuitable for Marina.

Troy has love interests for both women. Rarely seen on missions is a seal named Oink. Each episode ended with a song called "Aqua Marina" which was composed by Barry Gray and sung by Gary Miller. Not only was Stingray the first Supermarionation series to be made in colour, it was also the first British TV series to be made in colour! The series has also been repeated on BBC 2 over 1992-4 and 2001/2 and recently on weekday mornings over 2003/4. It has also been shown on Sky One.moreless Ray Barrett | Actor | Obituary | Television & radio | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Aussie actors don't come much tougher than Ray Barrett, who has died at the age of 82. His heavy build, steely eyes and pockmarked, though handsome, face became well known to British television viewers in the 1960s, mainly as Peter Thornton, a hardnosed, globe-trotting field agent for a multinational oil company in The Troubleshooters (1965-72).

The Brisbane-born Barrett once joked to a journalist that the scars on his face had resulted from catching himself on a barbed-wire fence while helping fellow prisoners of war escape from the Germans during the second world war, and was astonished to see the story quoted in the article. In fact, the pockmarks were a legacy of severe acne in his teenage years, though he later conceded that this helped him get roles as tough guys. But it was not only Barrett's face that was his fortune. His voice was equally renowned, and he notably provided it for John Tracy, the operator of space station Thunderbird 5 in Thunderbirds (1965-66), the puppet opera set "100 years in the future". He later became even more famous in Australia for his appearances in many locally made films and television series. Barrett's father was a travelling hardware salesman and his mother (born in England) was a secretary for the same company. It was she who persuaded him to take elocution lessons and enter radio talent contests. After Brisbane state high school, he got a job hosting a daily radio show, presenting, interviewing and singing, and acting in radio plays.

At 17, he became the first actor to be put under exclusive contract by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1951, Barrett married Audrey Bettanay – having been rejected by her sister Joy – and the couple had a daughter, Suellen. By 1955, having moved to Sydney, he was getting roles on radio and became adept at changing his accent to suit the parts, which later became handy for voiceover work. But in 1958 he decided to try his luck in Britain, though it took him two years to find work as an actor. His career in Britain began with the lead as a detective sergeant in an episode of Armchair Mystery Theatre (1960) and, in the same year, he joined his fellow Australian Charles Tingwell in several episodes of the medical soap opera Emergency-Ward 10.

Mainly playing British characters, with only a smidgen of an Aussie accent, Barrett's often unsmiling face was seen in series such as The Avengers, The Saint and Doctor Who, as well as seven episodes of the espionage drama Ghost Squad (1963-64) in which his character was described as "a soft-spoken secret agent who abhorred violence unless aroused". From 1963 to 1964, he provided the American voice for the irascible, disabled Commander Sam Shore in Stingray, the Supermarionation futuristic sub-aquatic puppet series made by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson that preceded Thunderbirds. Each episode began with Barrett announcing: "Stand by for action! We are about to launch – Stingray! Anything can happen in the next half hour." Barrett was then called upon to voice Tracy (and the villainous The Hood) in Thunderbirds on television as well as the feature film Thunderbirds Are GO (1966). Apparently, the Andersons liked using Australian actors as voice artists because they considered that they were better at transatlantic accents than their British counterparts.

But it was The Troubleshooters that gave him his highest profile, instantly from the all-action title sequence with Barrett in a speedboat. Almost every episode saw him in some danger in one of the hotspots of the world, which the character faces with insouciance. The role was written specifically for Barrett after the series' creator, John Elliott, had spotted Barrett in a bar, behaving with what he described as "typical Australian forthrightness". The Troubleshooters earned Barrett enough money to build a house on the Spanish island of Formentera, where he lived on and off for 30 years. Barrett's first marriage had broken down, and it was while making The Troubleshooters that he met and married his second wife, Miren Cork, with whom he had two sons, Reginald and Jonathan. In 1975, Barrett appeared at the Royal Court theatre as the larrikin Cooley in Don's Party, an Australian play about an acrimonious gathering on the night of the country's 1969 general election.

The playwright, David Williamson, had been impressed, and when Barrett went back to Australia in 1976 to make a cigarette commercial (he had given up smoking, but the money was too good to refuse), the director Bruce Beresford offered him a role in the film version. Barrett was brilliant as Mal, the bitter, foul-mouthed former professor of literature who has sold out to industry but is still broke. After being offered the leading role as the racist constable in Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), adapted from Thomas Kenneally's novel about a rebellious mixed-race Aborigine, Barrett realised that the Australian film industry had grown considerably since he was last in the country, and decided to stay. For the following decades, he remained active in both television dramas and feature films. Among the less dispensable films was Goodbye Paradise (1983), in which Barrett played a former deputy commissioner who turns his hand to journalism to blow the whistle on politics in Queensland. In the meantime, his second marriage broke up, and he began to drink heavily.

Happily, he was rescued by Gaye O'Brien, who helped him sober up, became his agent and manager, and married him in 1986. In his memoirs, Barrett says of Gaye that she "pulled me up by the bootstraps from what could have been a long slide to the bottom". In his last years, he made several films including Heaven's Burning (1997), appearing as the stoical father of the fugitive Russell Crowe, and he also featured in 35 episodes of the television series Something in the Air (2000-02) as the coach of a hopelessly bad soccer team. His last film was Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia (2008), in which he had a cameo role. Barrett is survived by Gaye, his daughter from his first marriage and his two sons from his second. • Raymond Charles Barrett, actor, born 2 May 1927; died 8 September 2009 Stingray (TV show) Stingray (TV show) DVD box set ( 2001 ). Note Stingray submarine beneath logo. Cast, L to R: Atlanta, Troy, Marina and Phones.

Stingray is a children's puppet television show, made by Sylvia and Gerry Anderson . An AP Films production for ATV and ITC Entertainment. 39 half-hour episodes, 1964 - 1965 . Originally screened on ITV in the UK and syndication in the US . Scripts by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Alan Fennell, and Dennis Spooner. Music composed and conducted by Barry Gray . Special Effects Director Derek Meddings. Stingray was the first Supermarionation show to be filmed in colour, and also the first in which puppets had interchangeable heads with different facial expressions. Supercar had featured a vehicle that could travel on land, sea and air, and Fireball XL5 featured a spaceship. The next logical step was a series about a submarine, although this presented a number of technical challenges. For scenes where model submarines or puppets were seen underwater, they were actually floated on wires through a dry set, but the camera filmed them through a narrow water tank containing air bubbles and fish of different sizes (giving the impression that they were at different distances from the camera), thereby convincingly creating the illusion that the models or puppets were underwater.

This was enhanced by the use of lighting effects which gave the impression of shafts of light refracted through the surface of the sea. Scenes on the ocean's surface were filmed using a large tank that was filled with water dyed blue. To prevent the edges of the tank from showing it was deliberately overfilled so that the water would constantly spill over the edges and conceal them. These techniques were so successful that they were also used in Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet . Story and Characters "Stand by for action! We are about to launch Stingray! Anything can happen in the next half-hour!" These words, accompanied by a montage of action scenes, get each episode off to a rousing start. Stingray, a highly sophisticated submarine built for speed and manouevrability, is the flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol, a 21st Century security organisation based at Marineville, located somewhere near the west coast of the United States . In case of an attack the entire city can be lowered into the ground on hydraulic jacks. Marineville is 20 miles (32 km) inland, and Stingray is launched through a tunnel leading to the Pacific Ocean .

"Action Stations", "Launch Stations" and "Battle Stations" are sounded not by sirens but by recordings of Native American -style drumming (composed and recorded by series composer Barry Gray). The pilot of Stingray is the square-jawed Captain Troy Tempest (modelled on James Garner ), accompanied by Dixie navigator "Phones", so called because of his skill at interpreting hydrophone bleeps. (His real name, George Sheridan, is referred to in the show's publicity but never actually spoken). Troy and Phones board Stingray by sitting in their command chairs, which are lowered into the submarine on long poles. They take their orders from the crusty, wheelchair-bound Commander Sam Shore, whose daughter Atlanta Shore is also a WASP operative and enamoured of Troy. During the course of the series Stingray encounters lots of underwater races, hostile and otherwise. In the pilot episode Stingray is attacked by the forces of King Titan of Titanica (modelled on Laurence Olivier ), and Troy and Phones are captured. They are rescued by Titan's slave girl Marina (modelled on Brigitte Bardot ), a beautiful mute young woman who can breathe underwater. Troy is immediately smitten with Marina, and Atlanta becomes jealous.

Meanwhile Titan swears revenge for Marina's betrayal. Marina becomes a regular member of Stingray's crew, and later acquires a seal cub called Oink, who features in a number of episodes. Many subsequent episodes involve Titan's schemes to destroy Stingray and Marineville. These often fail due to the incompetence of Titan's surface spy, Agent X Two Zero (modelled on Claude Rains , but sounding like Peter Lorre ). Voice actors Troy Tempest: Don Mason (speaking), Gary Miller (singing) Phones: Robert Easton Agent X Two Zero: Robert Easton Oink: David Graham In addition to the 39 television episodes, three original "audio adventures" featuring the original voice cast were released on EPs during the show's British run. These were later reissued on tape, and are included on the British DVD box set of the series. One of these audio episodes reveals that Marina is not actually mute at all. She and her people have been cursed by Titan; if any of them speaks another will die. They are not certain if this is true, but none of them dares find out, and so for years they have lived in self-imposed silence.

Stingray represented a breakthrough from Fireball XL5 both in terms of special effects techniques and storytelling. The love triangle between Atlanta, Troy and Marina is a surprisingly mature development for a children's show, and is even reflected in the closing credits where Troy sings "Aqua Marina" while Atlanta gazes wistfully at Troy's photograph. Some feminists have complained about the inclusion of a mute and apparently subservient female character, but in fact Marina is no shrinking violet. She is tough and resourceful and quite capable of making her own decisions, even if she cannot voice them. Fact-index.com financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from Wikipedia . All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License .

Stingray 2015 | The South London Warlords Wargaming, Roleplaying and Military Modelling Club Stingray Anything can happen in the next half hour John Treadaway describes a game that will thrill children of the 1960s, bringing back memories of blurry TV screens and a narrator warning us to “Stand by for action!” Some of you young ’uns might be scratching your collective heads at the moment but, for those old enough to have been a small boy in the 1960s, the TV show Stingray may well bring back fond memories. Stingray, the eponymous super submarine of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol, was a puppet series by the same Anderson team that, in the following year, brought the world Thunderbirds. It was ground breaking TV, too: the first ever full colour TV series made in the UK (and so proud of that or men of a certain age (ahem!), that phrase immediately conjures up the sound of strident bongo drums and images of huge, unconvincing mechanical fish jumping out of the water.

makes for such sterling inspiration that I’ve already had one pop at this for a Salute game: in 1989 (gosh, over a quarter of a century ago! – I now feel even older...). We wrote a set of rules for playing games in this nautical environment using what was available at the time for miniatures: some (frankly unlicensed) white metal models in about 1/400th or thereabouts by Comet Miniatures, and a fun time we had, too, with cork scenery and based on a three inch hex cloth. When we started doing research for this game (yes, non-historical gamers do research as well!) I found, to my delight, that at least two gaming groups in the UK were still playing the rules we created all those years ago (a shout out for Tel’s Kingdom and the North Ayrshire Wargames club which was pretty satisfying, I have to say, and the original rules we did are still available to download (on But we were looking for a new challenge.

fact that’s it is mentioned in the titles), it told the exciting – if a little repetitive – story of the fast, agile underwater craft piloted by James Garner look-alike Troy Tempest of the quasi-military WASPs and their continuous fight against the various undersea races determined to wipe us air-breathing ‘Terrainians’ (as they referred to us) from the face of the earth or, at least, to reduce our dominance of the planet. Stingray reflected Mr Anderson’s apparent love of militaristic – and often secret – organisations that had started with the likes of Fireball XL5 the year before and went on through Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and (beyond puppet shows) to the likes of his first all-live-action series UFO. On that basis, it makes a good candidate for a ‘wargame’. In fact, the subject matter Stingray by Product Enterprises. Photos JT. WHY STINGRAY? In recent years, the Warlords have stirred the Anderson ‘bucket’ quite hard.

Many years ago, one club member did a Thunderbirds game but, fun as the TV show was, a ‘wargame’ as such never really appealed to me (and, as Modiphius are about to release what looks to be an excellent attempt at a board game on that very theme, it’s probably best to leave it there). But we have done Scarlet Thunder, a Captain Scarlet road race and destruction game, and several UFO outings, all of which lent themselves to various conflict based games and – while we will undoubtedly return to UFO at some point (the space interceptors and mobiles trundling through the forests are just too great as concepts) – we wondered if there was any meat left on the bone with Anderson’s underwater extravaganza? A few years ago, a company (now defunct) called Product Enterprises made some beautiful diecasts of various Anderson vehicles and one was of Troy’s fabulous sub. It comes fully painted and is spot on 1/100th in scale. I’ve had one in a glass cabinet indoors for a decade or more and wondered what to do with it, to be honest.

I could carry on gawping at it (it is lovely) or I could put it on eBay (a mint in-box will fetch over £200 – not that I have the box anymore!) but I checked with my mates and several of us have one in a similar condition. So, we thought: 1/100th; three of them between us; and we found a resin Terror Fish (the clunky, mechanical opponent to Captain Tempest’s sleek, finned wonder) and we pondered whether there was another game there, like the last one but bigger for a show... The answer was “yes”! We could have used the same rules as last time but we would have been left thinking that we could have done something a little slicker. I wrote some card based rules for the space interceptors in the UFO game I mentioned earlier which seemed to work well, so my colleague Pete Merritt and I worked up a variant of them, swapping the vacuum of outer space for the crushing pressures of the deep ocean. We did a bit of home casting and we found we had enough Terror Fish for the game, so all we needed was some cloths, some scenery and some finishing of vehicles.

STINGRAYS As I type this, this part is still a work in progress. We wanted different versions of these nine inch long submarines – we figured that, although only one is shown in the TV programme, they can’t all be Stingray with number 3 on the fin – and, anyway, it’d confuse the players! So, more research was done and, whilst not strictly ‘canonical’, the TV21 comic strip featuring Stingray that was published in the 1960s featured various other named and numbered ships, so the conversions would be pretty straightforward: all I did was draw up a set of custom decals which I had printed by a specialist company, and ordered some special colour matched paint. So, between now and the date of the show, we should have three £200 collectibles, two of which have different names and (in the wacky world of ‘mint in box’) will be worth a quarter of what they could be. What we do for our art! If you want to do this, mind you, this is not the route we’d suggest you take.

Go on eBay or somewhere similar and hunt down the older Matchbox models (in a two-pack with a Stingray and a Terror Fish) and you’ll get ready painted models in about 1/300th for as little as a tenner the pair. Or you could go for the slightly nicer ones by Konami, the Japanese collectibles company: they’re roughly the same size but at least twice the price. In that size, you could use much smaller hexes too, which would be... sensible! TERROR FISH The Mighty Titan, Lord of the undersea kingdom of Titanica, has a fleet of nine of these resin model fish. Well, he probably has loads (he loses about one aweek on the TV series!) but we have nine. They are about seven inches long or so and are being airbrushed for the game by Kevin Dallimore to closely resemble the TV originals which, to be honest, is not an easy task: TV lighting and a very flat fish tank (full of minnows – and water) placed between the camera and the models means that getting a good colour steer on the originals is not easy. But Kevin will, of course, do his best...

Our Stingrays and the Terror Fish are mounted on clear acrylic bases by CorSec engineering, as you can see in the accompanying photographs. Smaller models of the sort you might buy as I suggested above could be mounted on anything that’ll fit your hexes. SCENERY The cloth is a quad of five-inch hex cloths from Hotz Mats in green and thick, pink insulation foam scenery has been cut to fit the hexes using a (very large) hot wire cutter. This represents the ocean floor with irregularities for the craft to steer around and – occasionally – to jump over, as in the original TV series. Still in the ‘manufacturing yard’ (read ‘my garage’) are some components of an outlying element of Titanica itself: a bizarre collection of cylindrical habitats and submarine docks connected by a transit system, all within clear tubes. After cutting and shaping, the pink foam has been PVA glue-and-sand painted to give it some texture, then sprayed with Army Painter primers (and some car primers for the greys) in a selection of greens and browns. They were then dry brushed with ‘match pots’ from my local B&Q and using cheap, disposable two-inch brushes.

They have then been textured with shells, small plastic creatures and lots of fish tank plants – the more bizarre the better (again, very much as per the TV show) and then ‘weathered’ with some of the excellent ‘dirt brown’ sprays from PSC. THE GAME We will place rules on the web as soon as we can but, in short, they are a card based game with the three Stingray accurately – Stingray Class Vessel) crews each represented by one player. Each of those players controls his ship via a deck of action cards, a number of which, determined by a dice throw at the start of each turn, can be played to manage manoeuvre and the firing of ‘Sting Missiles’ (torpedoes). If the Stingrays take damage via enemy action or simply bad navigation (i.e. hitting rocks), then this is generated drawing damage cards, the result of which will be the players losing some of their card options (some cards are removed from their ‘hand’).

The Stingray players’ opponents are the Terror Fish: moved but not actually ‘played’ by the umpires, these use an automated, card driven movement and firing system with a thick deck of random action cards that interact with a set of fixed rules.The Stingray players missions – and we hope to get participants throughout the day at Salute 2015 – will involve taking the WASP fight back to the Aquaphibians and attacking Titan’s undersea headquarters while, in the process, losing as few Stingrays as possible and, simultaneously, destroying any of the undersea dictator’s mechanical killer fish that foolishly stray into their path. Stand by for action! No Strings Attached - ITV - Transdiffusion No Strings Attached Kif Bowden-Smith 3 Sep 2005 1 comment. tbs.pm/3464 One of the most remarkable cultural legacies of the fifty years of Independent Television in Britain is little mentioned by media historians, television critics and style gurus, yet it was nothing short of a revolution in television programming for children.

From the creative crucible of early ITV sprang a sequence of television series made between 1956 and 1970 that captivated the hearts and imaginations of millions – and all of them featuring puppets. Gerry Anderson was the master of the “supermarionation” genre of action adventure series for children and produced a string of hit series featuring his creations that were exported widely, loved by all who saw them and seen around the world. These programmes were new when television was new and their daring and innovation caught the imagination of the viewers. Anderson-Provis Films, based in a new post-war trading estate in Slough, Bucks, had a hit formula on their hands and they exploited it time and again in different settings. It is impossible to avoid using the word ‘puppet’ when discussing these productions, but the word distracts the mind and does not do justice to the full flavour of these filmed productions. To the original viewers in the fifties and sixties, when television was new, exciting and less cynical than today, these programmes contained their own special kind of magic.

The ‘suspension of disbelief’ has traditionally been seen as the very minimum psychological requirement for the reader or viewer of fiction, if the material at hand is to be fully appreciated. It might seem that a series involving puppets, or “Supermarionettes” as the Anderson team named them, would make it visually hard for that suspension to be achieved. Yet amazingly, no regular viewers ever had qualms about plausibility. The story lines, dialogue, special effects and suspense-filled scenarios ensured that the onlooker quickly forgot that puppets were the stars. The first experimental Anderson puppets of the fifties quickly gave way to a more sophisticated marionette with electronic lip sync and motorised movement. Clever photographic tricks of scale were used to ensure that the characters fitted well into the background and the copious use of very high quality background music – all specially written by leading popular composer Barry Gray – worked together to make suspension of disbelief a piece of cake. The first experimental series “The Adventures of Twizzle” was filmed in the mid-fifties. The story about a boy doll and his adventures is hardly part of the later canon but led the way into the drama and science fiction that were to follow.

With ambitious plans for his second series, Gerry Anderson sought outside finance and was lucky to persuade Associated-Rediffusion to underwrite 26 episodes of “Torchy the Battery Boy”. The story of a boy with a torch on his forehead had much in common with the Pinocchio fairy tale of old – but was updated to an era of technology. Transmitted about a year after production, it was an immediate success. Being made on film it was thus available for export: ensuring that the series paid for itself through foreign syndication. A second series was made – but not by Anderson and AP Films. Instead now-former colleague Roberta Leigh made it with funding from Associated British Pathe. It was distributed by ABPC and abroad by Warner Television Films. The puppet masters now hawked their ideas around the network and persuaded Sydney Bernstein of Granada to underwrite the next project, “Four Feather Falls”, a cowboys and indians series with an undercurrent of magic. This went into production in the late fifties. The popular singing star Michael Halliday voiced our hero, Tex Tucker; and as his dog and horse could also speak, all the ingredients were in place for the children of the era to sit at home enchanted.

So far the productions had been aimed at the younger child but with the next series came a switch to science fiction and a younger teenage audience. Granada could not be persuaded to finance a further series, despite the success of the last. It may be that backer after backer expected the genre to fall out of fashion. Unknown to these putative backers however, the productions of AP Films would stride from strength to strength, from hit to hit. In what proved to be a masterstroke, Anderson visited the ATV tycoon Lew Grade, and in a moment the backing for many future series was secured. Lew was enchanted by the quality of production and the versatility of the marionettes – if nothing else, foreign language sales, so difficult with live action, would be easy to achieve with simple redubbing. He immediately financed “Supercar”, a series about a supersonic car that could extend wings and fly – its ‘Vertical Take-off and Landing’ capability foreshadowing a real invention – the Harrier jump-jet – of later years. The pilot, Mike Mercury quickly became a hero figure for a generation of schoolboys. The programme went into production in 1958, ran to two annual series and was very successful.

ATV sold the programme to the ITV network and thereafter there was no looking back for the APF-ATV relationship. Sold abroad by ITC, the shows and their successors joined their live-action partners The Saint, The Baron and Danger Man on the ITC menu. “Fireball XL5” followed into production 1960. This first ‘space adventure’ was an immediate success at a time when the US and the Soviet Union planned man’s first tentative footsteps into space. Although set a hundred years into the future, it concerned where the space race might ‘end up’ and seemed topical to the viewer. These series rapidly became as popular with adults as with younger viewers and gained astonishingly large ratings. The programme was again widely exported by ITC and became another dollar earner for Lew Grade and ATV. A hit single of the theme tune followed and the catch phrase “On our way home” from the robot helmsman of the spaceship could quickly be heard in every playground. The hero, Steve Zodiac became such an iconic figure for children that merchandising of replica puppets took off as another big earner for ATV.

By 1962 the team were keen to try something more ambitious, and moving into colour for the first time, they produced “Stingray”, a cross between the previous two series but in a new underwater setting. In one of the most ambitious opening title sequences ever devised for a children’s television programme, photography, special effects, graphics and stunning music combined to create a piece of television so iconic that no child of the age has ever forgotten it. The opening catchphrase “I am calling battle stations – anything can happen in the next half hour” became the children’s chant of the year when the series hit the screens. The biggest APF success to date, it earned its ATV backers huge profits. Almost everything achieved so far was combined the following year into what is generally recognised as the most successful and popular children’s television series in the history of ITV. “Thunderbirds” went into production in 1964 and for the first time used a whole hour per episode – a revolution in children’s drama and a big increase on the 25-minute long segments of old. The stories of heroic endeavour in the fictional “International Rescue” organisation stunned millions with their special effects, technical accomplishment, plot lines, drama and characterisation.

Gerry Anderson’s then-wife Sylvia had worked to achieve detailed characterisation of the figures in the drama – with a back-story and almost soap-like characteristics. It gave the series a believability that enabled the viewer to forget the puppetry. Top class actors provided the voices and as always the Barry Gray music was a lesson in what tension building was about. The series was an enormous worldwide success and is regarded by some as the best children’s television series of all time. By 1966 a new technology of microelectronics was allowing the marionettes to become smaller and more precise in their features. The lip sync mechanism was further refined and the next Anderson outing, under the new brand name of “21st Century Productions” was to become the most subtle and adult toned of the genre. “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”, about a secret world organisation called ‘Spectrum’ facing up to a Martian invasion, was both frightening and, for the genre, hyper-realistic. The background music, photography and special effects reached a new high and, although the episodes reverted to the traditional half hour format for export reasons, the series was a critical success.

It did not gain the high profile of its predecessor “Thunderbirds” but was greatly loved by its fans. After Captain Scarlet, a quieter period followed with the subtle delights of “Joe 90”, filmed in 1968, about a schoolboy hero who could be sent on spy missions of his own by his scientist father – every schoolboy’s dream. This did not receive the critical acclaim of its forerunners but was much loved by the viewers. Ending the puppet era for Gerry Anderson and bringing up the rear was “The Secret Service”, an experimental format in which real puppets were inter-cut with scenes from real life, background shots and full size panoramic views. The series was filmed in 1969. The opening credits pictured the actor-comedian Stanley Unwin ‘live’, while the action scenes used a puppet modelled on Unwin and given his face. This was essentially an experimental format for the following live action series with human actors that Anderson was to break into next with his ground-breaking adventure, “UFO”, about a secret Earth-based organisation repelling another invader. The supermarionettes of the Anderson films had represented a step-change in children’s television.

The programmes are still repeated more than 35 years later and Thunderbirds even now impresses a new generation of children. Still a hit in ratings terms, it seems that the more sophisticated child of today is in no way fazed by the puppet format. For the baby-boomer children of the 1960s, now fathers and even grandfathers themselves, these programmes represent a unique element of childhood. They are a piece of twentieth century television escapism with a distinctive formula and innovative visual format that has never been matched or bettered. I never met a sixties child who was not in thrall to Gerry Anderson. They knew that “anything could happen in the next half hour” and they loved it! These series were an original and major contribution to television culture and represented one of the finest creations in the history of Independent Television in the UK. Watch Stingray Free Online Watch Stingray Free Online Categories: TV Action Adventure Family Fantasy Sci-Fi The flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (W.A.S.P.), Stingray is the world's most highly sophisticated submarine, capable of speeds of over 600 knots and the ability to submerge anywhere on the Earth's ocean floor. Under the command of the squar...

Show More The flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (W.A.S.P.), Stingray is the world's most highly sophisticated submarine, capable of speeds of over 600 knots and the ability to submerge anywhere on the Earth's ocean floor. Under the command of the square-jawed and heroic Captain Troy Tempest, Stingray explores the most treacherous depths of our waters and protects the world from the perils that lurk undersea. Show Less CP Loves...Gerry Anderson. The movie director that never was. CP Loves...Gerry Anderson. The movie director that never was. Published 21/09/2012 by John Fountain When I was a young lad one of my greatest joys was screened on ITV on Saturday mornings. It was an action-packed TV production with high-octane plots, daring dos and heroics that young boys, raised on a diet of Bobby Moore, Scooby Doo and Jacques Cousteau, could truly admire. The great work, or works, that I refer were written and produced by a quiet, softly spoken Englishman with the name of Gerry Anderson and today I'd like to take a look at this truly great man.

The Gerry and Sylvia Anderson shows were the backdrop to my childhood. Although I only have only slight memories of the early series such as " Fireball XL5 " and "Supercar", it was with " Stingray " and later " Thunderbirds " that I became a convert. I was not alone. Along with millions of boys my age, we turned our backs on Dinky Toys, apple trees, and keepy-uppy for 30 minutes every week (anything can happen in the next half-hour) and sat in darkened rooms while Gerry and Sylvia weaved their magical spell with some puppets, some string and an eye for a Hollywood blockbuster. Gerry Anderson was indeed a magician. In his book, "Hope and Glory", the writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie describes Stingray and Thunderbirds as "the great central works of his cannon. His "Revolver" and "Sgt Pepper." The orchestrated theme tunes to these shows, written by Barry Grey , (John Barry for the under 10's) were thrilling beyond words. And yes, the plots were flawed, the characters often cliched and the strings were clearly apparent to my young eyes - but these points were irrelevant and beyond consideration.

This was action/adventure at its finest and it captured the imagination, chilled the bones and stirred the soul. Yet sadly, while we kids were lapping up every second, the man behind the camera was not quite so enthusiastic. In fact Gerry hated the bloody things. His dream was to make live action movies and be the next Steven Spielberg. He thought the people with the money would say, "Christ, this guy's making good puppet films here, we ought to give him some live action!" Instead of that they said, "Doesn't he make good puppet films, let's give him some more puppet films." So Gerry became trapped. He carried on making more and more of these shows and created whole new series such as " Joe 90 " and " Captain Scarlet ." His success with the puppets continued and there was no question that he made them brilliantly, but all the while the man despised his work. Each one another straightjacket. Each one another step further away from his dream. As Gerry once said while being interviewd on the Derek Jameson show, "I dug my own grave.

I hated those little bastards." The Avengers Forever: Ray Barrett Strong, Man in the Mirror by Pete Stampede Craggy-faced, heavily built but (usually) with impeccably-groomed hair, Australian star Ray Barrett was quite a heart-throb on British TV in the 60s, as star of the long-running series The Troubleshooters. To telefantasy fans, however, his primary importance is as a voice artiste on several of Gerry Anderson's puppet sagas, most notably the immortal Thunderbirds. Born in Brisbane in 1927, as a boy he was fascinated by radio, and, aged 12, made his first appearance on the medium when he won a talent competition; he'd been encouraged to enter by his mother (who was actually from the North of England, so there wasn't much of a culture shock when he later came to Britain). After leaving school, he got a job in the record library of the same radio station that had held that contest (or "eisteddfod", in a strange Welsh / Australian crossover); his enthusiasm landed him the job of hosting a daily show by the age of 16.

An unfortunate legacy of his teenage years was an acne problem which didn't clear up satisfactorily, leaving pock-marks on his face; however, he later conceded that this helped him get roles as scarred, "tough-guy" characters. While shooting a minor Hammer horror, The Reptile (1965), he jokily claimed to an interviewer that the scars had resulted from catching himself on barbed wire while helping fellow prisoners of war escape during WW2, and was amazed on seeing the finished article that she'd actually believed him! His presenting, interviewing and even occasionally singing on radio led to him participating in plays, and doing so well that he became the first actor to be put under an exclusive contract by the ABC—the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, roughly modelled on BBC lines. By 1954, he had moved to Sydney, the hub of the burgeoning radio industry, and was constantly taking leads, in everything from adaptations of the classics to commercials; the experience of working to the microphone, changes of accent and so on, came in more than handy later.

One version of Tarzan saw him taking over the title role from Charles Tingwell , who had in turn taken it over from the now-forgotten Rod Taylor; Barrett recalls meeting Taylor in later life and disappointedly finding he had very much 'gone Hollywood'. An early TV appearance was in an episode of The Adventures Of Long John Silver (1955), with a (pissed?) Robert Newton reprising his most famous role; it was one of the first series anywhere to be made in colour, but was reputedly no-one's finest hour. Along with John Bluthal , Barrett supported Spike Milligan, who was (and is) very popular in Australia, when the founder of absurdist British comedy arrived for a Goon-ish radio series for the ABC called The Idiot Weekly (1958), also the title of one of his early British TV series.

Barrett got another crack at TV when Milligan did a special, again for the ABC, which as it was live, meant getting the settings ready for the fast-moving daft sketches wasn't easy; Milligan's solution was to have the camera, during scene changes, cut to Barrett, upside down on a swing, coming in and out of shot then saying, "I'm not mad, you know. I just do this until they're ready." By the end of 1958, Barrett felt ready to move on, and sailed to Britain, where he found an agent through the already-resident Madge Ryan . His first, atypical, assignment was as a stooge to ventriloquist Peter Brough and dummy Archie Andrews (the showbiz joke at the time was that Brough's mouth moved more than the dummy's did) in the TV transfer of their radio series, Educating Archie (A-R, 1958-9); he'd performed a similar function on one of Brough's visits to Australia.

His participations in various drama series were more in character, beginning with Armchair Mystery Theatre, "Flag Fall" (ABC, 1960), an Australian-set entry, with Patrick Barr (seen in " Take Me To Your Leader ") and again, Madge Ryan , in a series hosted by Donald Pleasence. On recommendation from Charles Tingwell , by now in Britain, Barrett joined him in the regular cast of the medical soap Emergency Ward 10 (ATV, 1961-62), playing Dr Nolan. Like Tingwell, he largely avoided broad Aussie stereotyping while in Britain, and quite often played British characters.

Then; Man Of The World, "The Highland Story" (ATV/ITC, 1962), an obscure (despite a theme tune by Henry Mancini), early ITC series in which he guested along with the splendid John Laurie (from " Death of a Great Dane ," " Brief for Murder ," " A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station " and " Pandora "), Armchair Theatre, "Dumb Martian", (ABC, 1962), actually the pilot for the SF anthology series Out Of The Unknown, and featuring Garfield Morgan ; and, First Night; "The Strain" (BBC, 1963), written by Alun Owen and set in the writer's native Liverpool, with Barrett tackling a Scouse accent as a villain just out of jail who finds things have changed on his patch in his absence, also with John Junkin .

He was definitely in episodes of Harpers West One (ATV, 1962) an early soap set in a department store whose title rings the faintest of bells with viewers if the time, and Z Cars (BBC, 1963) which he says he got paid ï¿½151 and ten shillings (!) for, but I haven't been able to trace the episode titles for either. He had a guest role, along with then-stuntman Ray Austin, in an episode of Ghost Squad, "Polsky" (ATV, 1963), a then-popular spy series which had some other Avengers elements, notably Brian Clemens and Philip Levene as writers. At the end of that season (its second), Neil Hallett 's co-star, an equally obscure, apparently American actor called Michael Quinn, was killed off; when it returned, now titled G.S.5 (ATV, 1964), it had Clemens as script editor, and Barrett and Austin, as different characters, added to the regular cast.

Dave Rogers describes Barrett's role of Peter Clarke as "a soft-spoken agent who abhorred violence (until aroused) and preferred to get his quarry through slow, methodical investigation"; but a sign of how much it's remembered now is that, in his own autobiography, Barrett doesn't mention it once. However, some of his next work continues to captivate children of all ages. For Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, he provided voices for Stingray (ATV/ITC, 1963-64), the first of the pair's puppet series in colour (although, for obvious reasons, still shown in black and white in Britain); as well as voicing several minor characters in each episode, he assumed an all-American tone for the irascible, wheelchair-bound Commander Shore, getting to declaim "Stand by for action! We are about to launch — Stingray!" over the exploding, all-action opening titles, continuing with "Anything can happen in the next half-hour" (unfortunately, loads of people, especially in pub conversations, think that was said in Thunderbirds).

Showing his vocal versatility, he switched to a cut-glass, upper-class English accent for the villainous undersea ruler King Titan; his pronunciation of Titan's command "Mechanical fish!" always sticks in my mind. As John Bluthal , Charles Tingwell and others had found, the Andersons liked using Australian actors as voice artists, considering that they were better at the all-important transatlantic accents than their British counterparts, and Barrett would be called on again for their most famous series, Thunderbirds (ATV/ITC, 1965-66). It's easy to laugh at the puppets' awkward way of walking, and to point out the repetitive nature of the plots, but... something about the Tracy family's rescue missions, especially the launching sequences, and the countdowns—synchronised to Barry Gray's staccato-rhythm scores—to saving lives before everything explodes, give the series a charm and charisma all of its own.

Barrett voiced John Tracy, manning the space station Thunderbird Five, after taking a liking to the puppet on his initial visit to the studios in Slough, and the bald, vaguely Oriental villain The Hood; more than a few British characters waiting for International Rescue, saying things like, "It's... got to work! It's... just got to!" sound like his work as well. However, few could have recognised his contribution to "The Duchess Assignment", which saw an elderly titled acquaintance of Lady Penelope falling foul of jewel thieves; when Sylvia Anderson (who voiced Lady P herself) and Christine Finn, the series' other voice actress, couldn't manage the right voice, Barrett, of all people, stood in, by doing what he says was an impression of Edith Evans! With the rest of the series' voice cast, and, for some reason, Bob Monkhouse and Cliff Richard, he was on hand for Thunderbirds Are Go!

(1966), the Andersons' first feature film, always described as having been a financial failure, although judging by the amount of times it and the sequel Thunderbird 6 (1968), which Barrett was unable to do, were shown in cinemas as children's matinees, in the pre-video days, they must have made their money back eventually. According to interviews with puppet operators, in the 1980s Anderson fan magazine S.I.G., Barrett, alone among the voice cast, actually turned up at the filming sessions a few times and seemed fascinated by the whole process. The only drawback to all this is, in all the times that the rights to the series have changed hands, the voice artists have never received their proper remuneration; Barrett says "The distributors claim to have based our residual payments on a percentage of the original contractual fee. The snag there is that no such original contracts exist!...as far as the actors are concerned, it's a case of Thunderbirds Are Not Go and certainly Not F.A.B." Barrett somehow found time for films in the middle of all this.

Although Fred Zinnemann's The Sundowners (1960), starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, had extensive location filming in Australia, these had been shot after Barrett left his homeland, and several of the interiors were shot in Britain, hence people like Ronald Fraser pretending to be Aussies; Barrett had a small unbilled role in the studio scenes, noting he was in the odd position here of playing a role that, in the location long-shots, had been played by someone else. Several crime dramas for the big screen followed, notably a couple in the Edgar Wallace B series; another monochrome mystery, Jigsaw (1963), was quite well written and directed by Val Guest but, what with Jack Warner as the star, couldn't help but feel like an extended episode of Dixon Of Dock Green. On TV, his guest roles and one-offs kept coming. He says some of his best work was in a classic serial adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov (BBC, 1964-65), as Mitya, with Jane Asher.

The Saint, "The Loving Brothers" (ATV/ITC, 1965), saw the always enjoyable but rarely convincing series at least making some attempt at authenticity for this Australian-set story, with Barrett one of an all-Aussie guest cast including Annette Andre , Ed Devereaux from " The Midas Touch ," and Grant Taylor from " Killer ," plus " Pandora " and " Bizarre " helmer Leslie Norman, who had worked for Ealing Studios' Australian unit, directing. Norman also directed Gideon's Way, "The Lady Killer" (ATV/ITC, 1965), with Barrett suspected of being a latter-day Bluebeard. Blackmail, "Call Me Friend" (Rediffusion, 1965) was one of yet another anthology series, centering on the theme of... go on, guess!

Naked Island (BBC, 1965) was a play, which he had done on stage in 1960, about a group of Australian prisoners-of-war being held by the Japanese; clearly a sombre drama, but Barrett's co-stars were (and are) generally associated with comedy—James Bolam, then one of The Likely Lads, Fulton Mackay and the inevitable Burt Kwouk, seen in " Kill the King ," " Lobster Quadrille " and " The Cybernauts ." Doctor Who, "The Rescue" (BBC, 1965) was a two-part story, as opposed to the usual Who length of four or six parts per adventure, designed to introduce William Hartnell's Doctor to the fey companion Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), who was being menaced by a horned creature called Koquillion. It didn't take a genius to guess that Koquillion was really Barrett's character in disguise, as he was the only other guest actor; in the first part, Koquillion was billed as being played by "Sydney Wilson", the pseudonym deriving from the series' creators, Donald Wilson and the ubiquitous Sydney Newman .

As several Whovian scholars have noted, Barrett's appearance in the show at this time was apt, as it had just started showing on the ABC. Following Barrett's performance in a play for producer John Elliott, Reunion Day (BBC, 1962), Elliott cast him in Mogul (BBC, 1965), as Peter Thornton, an Australian field agent for the multinational oil company of the title, headed by Geoffrey Keen, ever-present in British films of the 50's and 60's, and later an acolyte of M's in the later Bond films. After its first successful series, the show's title became The Troubleshooters (BBC, 1966-72), although for some reason, it kept the title Mogul when shown in other countries; an episode shown at the National Film Theatre in 1999 had The Troubleshooters on its opening titles, but Mogul on its closing ones!

Those opening titles went all out to create a tense mood for the show, with a brassy theme tune by Tom Springfield (brother of the wonderful Dusty) playing over shots of oil gushing forth, things exploding, planes taking off, racing cars, Barrett in a speedboat and Keen coming out of a Rolls, looking every inch the Big Businessman. To be honest, by today's standards, the episodes themselves hardly maintain the same pace; nonetheless, it certainly had a loyal Monday night audience, moving into colour from its 1970 run onwards, and in what was rare for a videotaped drama of the time, travelling to other countries for location filming. That very actor-ish actor Robert Hardy was later added to the regulars, and sometime Avengers director Peter Graham Scott later became producer, while Ridley Scott was given an early chance to direct on some episodes.

Keeping his hand in during this time, Barrett guested in The Man In Room 17, "Lady Luck's No Gentleman" (Granada, 1966), a cerebral detective series starring Denholm Elliott; Till Closing Time Us Do Part (BBC, 1967), one of several celebrities playing themselves in a Till Death Us Do Part special set in a pub, with Alf Garnett ( Warren Mitchell ) making unflattering comments about Barrett's complexion; Barry Humphries' Scandals (BBC, 1970), helping out another Aussie in London with a cameo, as the first Australian on the moon; and Public Eye, "The Bankrupt" (Thames, 1972), a series much-loved by vintage TV fans but never repeated today, in the episode's title role as a busted shirt-maker.

And at a time when practically every popular British TV actor felt the need to release an album or two, a practice which was more or less instigated by Edward Woodward (with the most uncharacteristic and notorious contribution to the genre coming from Peter Wyngarde !), Barrett weighed in with a couple of LPs of cover versions in 1969 and 1970, the first reflecting his TV fame with the title No Trouble Now! Also during this time, he acquired a farmhouse on Formentera, an island off the Spanish coast, where he still spends as much time as possible. In 1976, Barrett went back to Australia to make a commercial, a visit which at the time he assumed would be a well-paid interlude rather than a return home.

While there, however, director Bruce Beresford offered him a lead role in the film of David Williamson's play Don's Party (1976), about an acrimonious gathering on the night of an Australian General Election, in which the results don't go as forecast, in every sense of the word; having already done the play, in its London production at the Royal Court, Barrett accepted his boorish role with gusto, even showing more than could be expected in an impromptu swimming scene. Immediately following its completion, Fred Schepisi offered him a key supporting role in The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith (1977), from Thomas Kenneally's novel about a rebellious Aborigine; Barrett not only signed up but, having realised that the Australian film industry had changed greatly since he was last in the country, decided to move back. His role in this as a racist police sergeant earned him an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Supporting Actor; he got another, for Best Actor this time, for Goodbye Paradise (1982), as a former Deputy Commissioner who turns journalist to blow the whistle on politics in Queensland.

There was a very quick return to Britain for Golden Soak (Portman, 1979), an adaptation of a Hammond Innes novel which I can dimly remember being shown late at nights on BBC1, then he supported in one of William Holden's last films, The Earthling (1980). He was personally fond of Sporting Chance (ABC, 1981), a series in which he was a grouchy sports writer, and was disappointed that it only ran for one series. Character parts in films included Where The Green Ants Dream (1984), in some ways a characteristic Werner Herzog film, except that it was made and set in Australia (and there was no sign of Klaus Kinski), Rebel (1985), a co-production with HBO starring the then-hot Matt Dillon, which Barrett thinks ended up looking more like a promo video than a film, and Blood Oath (1990), a war film with the inevitable Bryan Brown.

Both Waterfront (10 Network, 1984), about Australian mine workers striking over Italian immigrants, and the WW2-set The Last Bastion (10 Network, 1984) were mini-series in which he co-starred with frequent visitor to Oz Warren Mitchell , while Waiting (1991) and Hotel Sorrento (1995) were both emotional dramas with strong female leads, the latter is not to be confused with Hotel De Love (1996), a romantic comedy in which Barrett also appeared. Dad And Dave; On Our Selection (1995) saw the return of a couple of comic characters from the earliest days of Australian films in the 30's, here somewhat surprisingly played by Leo McKern (on a rare return to his homeland) and future Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush, with Barrett again in a featured role. He netted excellent reviews for In The Winter Dark (1998), another character-driven drama with Britain's Brenda Blethyn as his wife.

In an interview in TV Zone in the mid-90s, following the great success of BBC2's re-runs of the Anderson shows (which continue today; they've just started showing Thunderbirds again at the time of writing), Barrett mentioned a recent visit to his grown-up children in London, in which he collected his grandchildren from school and obliged them, and their friends, by bellowing "stand by for action!" in best Commander Shore mode. He added that he'd like to work in Britain again, as after all it's easier to get to from Spain than Australia, but this doesn't seem to have happened so far. He published a self-titled autobiography in 1995, which most of the info for this entry has come from. Still very much active, he's currently a regular in an ensemble drama series, Something In The Air (ABC, 2000), as a local busybody coaching a hopeless soccer team.

Question: On which puppet series was the phrase “anything can happen in the next half hour” spoken?
Answer: STINGRAY