The very creative, pioneering husband and wife team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson created in the 1960s several shows based on marionettes and various vehicles on threads, plus excellent models and special effects long before CGI had been concieved of. The shows were centered around futuristic vehicles, and included 'Supercar', 'Stingray' (a radical submarine), 'Thunderbirds' (a whole fleet of radical planes and spaceships) plus my favorite, 'Fireball XL-5'. Each Saturday morning in 1963, when I was 10, I'd be GLUED to the TV to watch Fireball XL-5's radical boosted horizontal take off from Space City. I virtually worshipped the design of that ship, and to this day think it is a very progressive, creative breakthrough visually. Once in orbit around a planet, the nose cone section, called 'Fireball Junior', could detach and land on the planet, then return to orbit and re-attach to the main fuselage. I think my love of that spaceship set me up to go mental over the Enterprise when 'Star Trek' came out when I was in 8th grade in Homestead, Florida a few years later.
Today I stumbled on a YouTube capture of that exciting intro, plus the end credits....I am pretty sure that the song at the end was a No. 1 pop hit that year. One of these days I am going to have a model of Fireball XL-5. If only I'd kept my Fireball (and Beatles) lunchbox!
enjoy, John
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