BBC reports that Gerry Anderson, creator of Joe 90, Supercar, Stingray, Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, UFO and Thunderbirds has died peacefully at the age of 83.
Not only was he a pioneer of Supermarionation, he was also a pioneer in the field of special effects work. Derek Meddings cut his teeth with Gerry Anderson, and was responsible for the model work on many James Bond movies including GoldenEye, his last film before he died.
Today, everything is CGI, which is sad. Many of the models used in older science fiction movies and TV shows still look more realistic than most of the CGI crap we see today.
Some Space:1999 fans may not be aware of the fan-produced "Message from Moonbase Alpha" which explained what happened to all the people, 20 years later:
Regrettably, it's the old style "monster" stories that pretty much killed it. Star Trek had already demonstrated that not all alien creatures had to be hostile, and everyone could work together. If Space 1999 had worked that angle a bit better, the series could have spun off a few multi-episode story arcs.
Still, the special effects were extremely well made for a TV show, and the Eagles had the advantage of being a feasible design for the environment of the moon.
Furniture and fixtures as well, most of the stuff was high end Italian.
Ian, whole premise of the show was bad I freely admit it; magnetic radiation which makes people go insane, causes spontaneous fusion in fissile material, then sends the moon floating off (intact despite some sort of formidable explosion) through a blackhole and into the vast distances of outer space, yet managed to come across some other planet, ship or thing every episode. Still was fun to watch however.
As far as I can tell, Gerry Anderson isn't even mentioned anywhere on her site. She credits herself with "co-creating" and "co-writing" these shows but never mentions who the other partner was. Very crass.
As far as I can tell, Gerry Anderson isn't even mentioned anywhere on her site. She credits herself with "co-creating" and "co-writing" these shows but never mentions who the other partner was. Very crass.
I gather they did not have the best of relationships.
I am not so sure, the statement references a show that was back in mid October and the rest of it appears to have been written shortly after, the well wishes and such are all forward looking. There is no recent activity on her forum, and the only new stuff is a handful of comments in the guest book about Gerry’s death.
Seems like a page which is infrequently updated and was mainly used as a promotional platform for her book.
