What Made Thunderbirds Go

Angelo wrote:

> update on ISOSHADO UFO MERCHANDISE COLLECTION with SFX 92 issue of
> June 2002 and some UFO DVD related review and competition plus review
> on the recent re-issue of the Gerry Anderson book What Made
> Thunderbirds Go.
>

By the way I bought 'What Made Thunderbirds Go' on Tuesday -
lots of interesting stuff, and snippets about UFO. For example,
did you know that:

[*] SHADO was originally to be called 'UfoeDO' - Unidentified
Foe Defence Organisation

[*] The original premise for UFO would have seen it set in 1985,
with the Earth in the middle of a conflict between two
warring factions from Alpha Centauri.

[*] The Interceptors' missiles, according to a a guide for
writers & directors written by Desmond Saunders actually
contain multiple atomic warheads - they break up into ten
smaller parts to create a blanket nuclear explosion.

[*] A Question Of Priorites was unpopular with ITC's New York
office, who complained that Gerry was moving away from sci-fi
into soap opera territory. Although the story had originally
been devised by Gerry Anderson himself, No further scripts of
this type were commissioned.


Well, I'm sure one or two people will know some or all of the
above, but I didn't.

I was interested to see that the book quotes Ed Bishop referring
to the broken ankle which caused the production to close down
for six weeks .. I read somewhere that Ed disputes this story?
According to What Made Thunderbirds Go, Michael Billington broke
it by inadvertently stepping on it.

There's some interesting personal stuff about the breakup of
Gerry's marriage to Sylvia as well. Highly recommended.

James

>I was interested to see that the book quotes Ed Bishop referring
>to the broken ankle which caused the production to close down
>for six weeks .. I read somewhere that Ed disputes this story?
>According to What Made Thunderbirds Go, Michael Billington broke
>it by inadvertently stepping on it.

Yes, Gerry keeps telling that story, and Ed keeps disputing it... :-)

Fanderson's research on the shooting dates of the series (based
on the call sheets attached to the original scripts) also disputes
it. According to these, the only break in production was the
transfer from MGM to Pinewood (last day at MGM was 28 November 1969,
first day at Pinewood was 21 May 1970).

According to Ed, Mike stepped on Ed's ankle during the western
gunfight scene in MINDBENDER, and although it didn't break,
they did have to film him sitting down for a few days (presumably
the Howard Byrne & viewing of the rushes). According to
Fanderson's dates, MINDBENDER took 13 days to shoot instead
of the usual 10-12, and shooting for the next (and final)
episode THE LONG SLEEP began the day after MINDBENDER wrapped.

So I think Gerry is mis-remembering what happened...

Marc