Thunderbirds (series)

Thunderbirds
Publisher:	City Magazines
Type:	TV series Comic series
Release date:	30 September 1965

Thunderbirds was a science fiction series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Originally running as an animated puppet series, Thunderbirds was also spun off into comics published in TV Century 21 alongside The Daleks. TV Century 21 also published comics and short stories starring Thunderbirds character Lady Penelope.

Crossovers with the DWU

1960s

As the conceit of TV Century 21 was that all its series took place in a single universe, several Thunderbirds stories from its pages crossed over freely with the DWU. This mostly included allusions to Lady Penelope or International Rescue's activities in the prose "cover stories", but also Lady Penelope being the narrator and main protagonist of a short story tying in with the release of Dr. Who and the Daleks in 1965.

One two-page comic story also involved Penelope in a multi-series crossover story arc with Fireball XL5 and Stingray centering on the DWU planet of Astra. Another Thunderbirds comic story crossed over both with the DWU and with Fireball XL5 by featuring Nikita Bandranaik and Wilbur Zero.

In 1966, the television series of Thunderbirds briefly crossed over with Doctor Who. In The Man from MI.5, the Daleks made a licensed appearance in the form of a report from the Solturian News Agency, the final page of The Penta Ray Factor in TV21 32 in the real world. Not only did this mark the first time the Daleks appeared outside of Doctor Who, ironically on the BBC's main competitor ITV, but it also constituted the televised debuts of the Dalek Prime and the rank of Dalek Emperor, predating their Who debuts in The Evil of the Daleks by over a year.

In addition to these "one-off" crossovers, Thunderbirds stories featured concepts which debuted in The Daleks on a semi-regular basis. The final panel of The Daleks strip was usually one or two "Stop Press" news stories, continuing the idea that the entire contents of TV21 was part of a fictionalised newspaper from the future and offering readers a teaser of the events of the next issue. As well as often referencing future Dalek comic stories, it also regularly referred to the other strips in the magazine. This meant, for example, that the invisible ray torch seen in The Vanishing Ray actually made its debut in The Menace of the Monstrons. Direct sequels or continuations to crossover stories printed in TV21 also occasionally appeared in its sister magazine, Lady Penelope.

The following Thunderbirds stories involved DWU elements and are thus covered on this Wiki:

Title	Issue	Featuring	Released
Mr. Steelman	TV21 1-11	Lady Penelope, Parker, Roger, Mr Steelman	23 January - 3 April 1965
Lady Penelope	TV21 19	Lady Penelope, Parker, Zodiac, Zero, Lugosti	29 May 1965
The Return of Mr. Steelman	TV21 20-34	Lady Penelope, Parker, Mr Steelman	5 June - 11 September 1965
Lady Penelope Investigates the stars of the Sensational new film Dr. Who and the Daleks!	TV21 28	Lady Penelope, Parker	31 July 1965
The Enemy Spy	TV21 Summer Extra	Lady Penelope, Parker, Bandranaik	1965
The Vanishing Ray	TV21 44-51	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Brains, the Hood	20 November 1965 - 8 January 1966
The Man from MI.5	N/A (ITV)	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, John, Tin-Tin, Grandma, Bondson, Daleks	20 January 1966
Sands of Terror	TV21 TB Extra	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, John, Bandranaik	March 1966
The Great Silver Robbery!	LP 17-28	Lady Penelope, Parker, Mr Steelman	14 May - 30 July 1966
The Assassination Threat	LP 29-35	Lady Penelope, Parker, Roger	6 August - 17 September 1966
Solar Danger	TV21 83-98	Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, John, Tin-Tin, Zero, Bandranaik	20 August - 3 December 1966
Down Under!	LP 36-42	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Scott	24 September - 5 November 1966
Blackmail for Power	1966 TB Annual	Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, John, Zodiac, Zero, Bandranaik	1966
Desert Drama	LP 43-52	Lady Penelope, Parker, Bondson, Mr Steelman	12 November 1966 - 14 January 1967
Cloud of Death	1967 TB Annual	Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Gordon, John	1967
Letters from the Past	N/A (Online)	Lady Penelope, Parker, Daleks	11 February 2017

Later crossovers

In the Doctor Who Magazine comic story Party Animals, Thunderbird 3 can be seen docked at Maruthea for Bonjaxx's birthday party. Although a plethora of BBC owned and non-BBC owned characters are seen at the party including Captain Scarlet from the Gerry Anderson-produced Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, the ship's main pilot, Alan Tracy, does not appear.

Lady Penelope later made one last cameo in the DWU in the Virgin New Adventures novel The Dying Days. It was stated that Bernice Summerfield had often seen her being driven around the Kent countryside and identified her readily among the celebrities observing the Mars 97 mission at the National Space Museum.

Additionally, the Second Doctor novel The Indestructible Man features many elements that were borrowed from three of Anderson's series: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and UFO, although under thin aliases rather than an explicit crossover.

In The Lodger, the Eleventh Doctor also namedrops International Rescue as part of the line "I'm Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue". In Resurrection of the Daleks, the guards on the Prison Station wear uniforms similar to those worn by the main characters in Thunderbirds.

In 2017, the Gerry Anderson website released Letters from the Past, a collection of in-universe letters written by the TV Century 21 team in 1965, as a Lady Penelope Investigates story. One of these letters featured Lady Penelope and Parker investigating the Daleks and William Hartnell, which involved them observing the Daleks from a distance.

Cast and crew connections

The original Thunderbirds TV series from 1965-1966 featured the voices of a number of actors who also played roles on Doctor Who, such as Shane Rimmer, Jeremy Wilkin, David Graham and Ray Barrett. Cliff Richard and John Carson were involved in the feature-lengths films Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968) respectively.

Sophie Aldred was an avid fan of Thunderbirds as a child and for a time insisted on being called Scott, after Scott Tracy. She later wrote her university dissertation on puppets and especially on Thunderbirds and Gerry Anderson's other works. When cast as Ace in 1987, Aldred added her own Thunderbirds and Fanderson badges to Ace's jacket.

Sophia Myles, Ron Cook, Lex Shrapnel, Bhasker Patel and Nicola Walker all appeared in the 2004 live-action Thunderbirds film, adapted from the series. According to Myles, it was her role as Lady Penelope in the film and Steven Moffat's repeated viewing of said film with his son that resulted in her being offered the part of Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace without having to audition. Moffat's son visited the set one day and reportedly couldn't get his head around the fact the Doctor was kissing Lady Penelope.

The 2015 TV reboot, Thunderbirds Are Go, also included several actors involved in Doctor Who and its spin-off materials, such as David Tennant, David Menkin, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Angel Coulby, Kayvan Novak, David Graham, Reggie Yates, Sandra Dickinson, Adjoa Andoh and Teresa Gallagher. Crew members Derek Meddings, Ian Scoones, and Michael Wilson also worked on both shows, as did writer Dennis Spooner. John Peel is the author of Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet: The Authorized Programme Guide, as noted on the back of his Virgin Missing Adventures novel Evolution.

Christopher Fowler, writing the foreword for Simon Clark's Telos novella The Dalek Factor, compares the Daleks to Thunderbird 2 in how familiar and iconic they are.