Sci-Why? F.U!: The Universe of Gerry Anderson

 In our ongoing series we’re tracing Jerry Anderson’s strange, essential legacy and why early Sci Fi Channel programming kept looping Supercar, Stingray, and Space: 1999 into the brains of American kids who had no idea what they were watching, only that it felt like a secret door into another era of science fiction TV.

Transcript

Cold Open And Crypto Bits

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Gentlemen, what's wrong in our minds?

SPEAKER_05 0:23

How much the lightning field Every second counts. Let's get to work.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Supercar Dispatch Ajax a go?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

We're ready for action.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Look, it's a puppet underwater.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Damn it, I was thinking about it earlier and I was gonna use it as an intro. I fucking forgot. Damn it.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, uh, when you remember it, just put it in. Just put it in.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Just stick it in.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Just spit on it and shove it right in there.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, come on. You know the Hoctua girl, she's still relevant, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Hmm. Mm-hmm. That's why we're putting out our new dispatch Ajax coin on your favorite crypto wallet purveyor.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

We're only available at ATMs in vape shops.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

We're only available at ATMs that also are vape shops.

unknown 1:18

Yeah.

Sci Fi Channel Programming Memory Lane

SPEAKER_01 1:20

This is the biggest ATM I've ever been to.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

I saw this uh story about these. I think they're NYU students who attach Tamagotchis to their vapes, and so you'd have to vape so that your Tamagotchi like stayed alive.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Oh god. That's it for humankind. You know it's coming. It's over for all of us. I have seen people that have actually figured out how to hack into their vapes and learned how to play Doom on them.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I want a TI-85 but turn into a vape in?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Oh, guarantee it somebody's done that. I guarantee you just like somebody has figured out how to turn an apple into a bong. I guarantee it.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

We're doing great.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

That also plays Doom. Yeah. We're killing it right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

You gotta maneuver the snake down to the endpoint so that you can actually take a puff. And then you vape through the snake itself.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Its head is full of cotton. It's a cotton head.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

This is writing its fucking self right here.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

We could make a million dollars, Jake. Get your cotton head 85 right now. Cottonhead. T.I. Cottonhead 85. Sponsored by TI.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yo. Puff it. I don't know what I don't know what T.I. sounds like, but.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

There's a whole thing about that. Alright. Yeah, there's a whole controversy about T.I. and his daughter.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I'm not up in my TI controversies.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

You don't follow all the drama behind the AntMed franchise? That surprises me.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I forgot he was even. Is that is that T.I.? Yes. I don't. It's It's 100% him. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just forgot, man. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

It's because those movies suck if since Edgar Wright bowed out, I have no interest in those movies. What a different world it would have been. Yeah. But who knows? This is Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. Jake is a go. Jake is go. Today we're gonna continue our little dive into the early programming of the Sci-Fi Channel and why it was cool and why uh that was super fun. The Sci-Fi Channel was lousy with Jerry Anderson Productions, mostly because he did a fuck ton of stuff. Granted, none of it lasted very long, but his output is Dick Wolf level crazy. Uh-huh.

Britain’s Long Puppet History

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I'll preface this by saying that Britain itself has a long history with, of all things, puppets. The word puppet was common going as far back as the 14th century in England. It even appears in Chaucer's The Romance of Alexander. The earliest recorded puppet plays in London took place around 1600. In 1561, the Duchess of Suffolk once was recorded paying, quote, two men who played upon the puppets. Is that what she did? Okay. Is that what we're calling it these days? Well, you don't write that part down. Peasants, I want puppet play. Theaters were closed during the mid-17th century because of the political and religious upheaval where they banned plays. However, for some incalculable reason, puppet plays were still the cat's pajamas. When Charles II returned to England following the end of the Second English Civil War, people came from all over Europe who had been putting on not just plays, but very specifically puppet plays, because Britain was nuts about the subject. They brought a string puppet character based on the Italian Commedia Dellarte figure, Pulchinella, in England, because they anglicized everything and they were uneducated and poor, called it Punchinello, which was eventually shortened to Punch. So, that's where eventually you get the Punch and Judy show, which was a classic marionette puppeteering slapstick show for the masses and also for children. A man named Jerry Anderson was an odd duck, born on April 14th, 1929, who hated puppets. I don't know that he hated them from birth, but he also hated puppets.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Unfortunately, his entire life was filled with um.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It was all puppets all the time forever, and I think he really regretted that. Though Europe did take puppetry and marionettes seriously, and they did, there is still to this day a royal puppet theatre. It's always been a big deal, but by the time you get to the 20th century, it was mostly seen as children's entertainment. And for valid reasons, because it was oftentimes used to teach children Bible stories or lessons. Think of G.I. Joe PSAs or whatever. They would have just been done as puppet plays back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, yeah. Where did the bad man touch you? Show me on the puppet.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Right, exactly. Show show me on uh Scarface. Here you see, that's the ticket. Here rub my body, you see? Like you're complaining j conflating John Lovitz with uh Alright, this is a side tangent, obviously, because it's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

If they had cast, say, Batman 4, and this would have been like, you know, the Michael Keaton Batman, Tim Burton stayed on, or I guess even, you know, uh three would have been Robin Williams is the Riddler and And uh yeah, four would have been like uh it's John Lovitz, but he's the puppeteer, and he does the voice of the puppet. Oh, of uh Scarface? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Oh, okay. That would have been different. That would have been ventriloquism.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Well, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

It is a puppet that is still a puppet, yes. It's puppet related. They're the same family and genus. It's it's germane to the conversation. No, it is, you're right. John Lovitz is a Batman villain. That's when when the Tim Burton movies would have just abruptly ended. Like, we're really scraping the bottle of the barrel here.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

A quick thought. Lower level, they've already burned through all of the top-tier Batman villains. It's Batman 4, it's Batman 5. Who are they doing and who are they casting as those roles circa 1995?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Phil Hartman, obviously, as Toy Man, and then uh he had to bow out uh uh due to his untimely demise. And then uh then that's when you see John Levitt step in as the the the puppeteer for Scarface. It was a late season replacement. He was already uh alongside Andy Dick as the Riddler. Oh Andy Dick can be the Matt Hatter?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Oh shit!

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah!

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Okay. That's a pretty good one, I think. That's pretty good. Do we just cast the cast of uh News radio? Newsradio as Batman villains and who they would be? You gotta choose from that oofer of actors, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

So you got Steven Root as Commissioner Gordon, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Well, no, no, they all have to be Batman villains. Oh, just villains. Just villains. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I I we see the Bathead are sort of more small and squatty, but that's just because I don't think of Andy Dick as a big guy.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Besides, he's gonna be sitting down the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

That's true. Alongside him, you have Phil Hartman as Mr. Zaz. No, uh you think you've got Phil Hartman's head shaved, not just cutting in his in his skin on every every inch of his body. What about a clock man for uh the The Clock King? The clock king. Tempest fugit? Yeah, I mean I can also make an argument for Eddie Dick playing that. No, no, I couldn't. His whole thing is being organized and rational.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

So Yeah, I mean imagine Phil Hartman, I could see it. Phil Hartman, his role in Soy Mared an Axe Murderer. Okay. But translated over into Clock King. Interesting. Now who would Dave Foley play?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Well, Dave Foley would have to play The Toy Toy? Well, Toy Man's a Superman villain, so I don't really I don't think that works, but see. Dave Foley would play Joe Rogan would play Killer Croc, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

I guess so. It's either that or Bane. What if Joe Rogan was Zaz?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Well, he does shave his head now. You had a good point.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

He has the kind of the athletic body at the time, and this is before he's gone completely crazy.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Well, and then you've got Vicky Lewis, who plays Beth. She could very easily play Poison Ivy.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Because are we keeping the canon Bat Universe actors or are we recasting all of them?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Well, Poison Ivy was only in the um In the fourth one, right? Yeah, but we're we're saying that Tim Burton kept going. Right, yeah. So I mean, yeah, yeah. Well, he's not coming back.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Well, who's more a tyranny then?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Well, they've already done Vicky Vale, so that's hard to do. And it has to be a villain? It's gotta be a villain. Fuck. Well, she'd make a lousy Harley Quinn.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Uh Tali Al Ghoul? Okay. Okay, then Steven Root bross Al Ghoul, because that's fucking. Oh yes! Great character actor Steven Root, muse of the Cohen brothers. He essentially would be kind of playing a more competent version of his character in No Country for Old Men. Yeah. Gets killed.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

You're obviously doing something different with these characters, so you know, he's kind of the man behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

So he's Raz El Ghoul. Dave Foley would be more like Calendar Man.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah, okay. Ah we were both thinking the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Oh no. Oh, we both taught a calendar man at the same time. Nobody should know who Calendar Man is. Oh, that's great. Oh, that's that's great. But that also means that, yeah, like Riddler and Two Face are both up in the air.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Oh, well, I guess if we're yeah. Well, I mean. I mean, if if we kept let's say we kept all four films that actually did come out in their place. I mean, the only thing we're switching I mean we could keep all of them that we've we've done so far, except for Vicky Lewis.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

What about what about uh I mean think about this, what about uh honestly, uh Andy Dick is the Riddler doesn't not make sense. Considering we had Jim Carrey, I think he'd actually funny funnily enough play it more subtle than Jim Carrey did.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

I don't think 1995 Andy Dick would play the Riddler subtle.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, it depends on how much cocaine he has. All of it. Phil Hartman is Too Faced kind of makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, I guess if we're recasting everything at that point, then if you do the next one, it would be what? It was Poison Ivy and Bane and Mr. Freeze.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Mr. Freeze, there you blanked out on Mr. Freeze, Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Phil Hartman is Mr. Freeze is nice.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I think he'd be a good Two-Face. I mean Phil Hartman would be great at everything. Just like Steven Root, like you put him in anything, it's great. Doesn't matter what he does. Steven Root is Mr. Freeze's a stretch.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, that one's not quite hitting the same. Maybe uh gender swap it and have uh Candy Alexander.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Oh, it's Two Face? Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

It could be Dual Adent, you know, instead of uh Harvey.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Uh yeah. Or, I mean, if you're looking for something to put morativity in. Straight lace DA. That's what she plays on Law and Order now. True. I can see it. I don't know that she's got like a wild side she can play, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

I mean, of all of these, Phil Hartman is the best choice of Two Faced. He's just the best choice for most of these, so that's why it becomes difficult.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Most of these films would be better off if it was Phil Hartman.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Let's just do an all Phil Hartman Batman film. He plays all the roles.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, it's a one-man play. It's called I Batman, and it's Phil Hartman playing every single role, including Robin.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Do it. Cowards.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Oh, you little pussies, do it. I dare you. Fuck you, Warner Brothers.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

You Wait, you're gonna write this one off for taxes? Eat it.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Alright, sorry. That's a lot like puppets.

Jerry Anderson Origins And War Shadows

SPEAKER_01 12:52

That's a lot like puppets. Uh it is indeed. So Jerry Anderson was born at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. Fortunate considering that's his last name, in London in 1929. Originally his name was Gerald Alexander Abrahams. It's possible the hospital changed it after he and his mother bugged his father. Basically, this is Ellis Island shit. They were Jewish and they were trying to like hide it. His family didn't grow up close. His brother was seven years older, and Jerry was considered not particularly bright, possibly not even average, but a creative. Let's see, at one point he detailed a cardboard heart and writing a short play to use it in. I don't know what that means exactly. This comes from a lot of his bio shit. He would tinker with stuff. He made a kennel for their pets and put an alarm on the chicken coop. Now Jerry's older brother, Lionel, volunteered for the RAF during World War II, and during training was posted in Arizona. Lionel would often write back to his family telling him about the RAF, including details about where he was stationed at Thunderbird Field. Nice. Keep that in your back pocket. Yeah. After 38 missions for the 515th squadron, Lionel was reported missing in action. This weighed heavily on the family. The matriarch never really got over it. Jerry had lost his brother, who was now considered a hero, so they gave him a complex. And he was relatively close with him before he left. He kind of idolized his brother. This sort of informed a lot of direction in which Jerry's creative outlets would go. I do think it's funny that in a lot of his official bios and everything, they make this claim. Jerry finished school with no academic qualifications. Okay, that's unfortunate. But due to you got through school and knew nothing. But due to the war and a shortage of pupils, he essentially got enrolled into college. He wanted to be an architect. Unfortunately, he was allergic to plaster, which kind of a thing when at that point when you're modeling architectural plans.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

So instead he decided to move over to the movie industry. He had a distant relative of his father, the Jerry had made contact with, who was in the movie industry and got an interview. Nothing came of it. They're like, well, maybe in six months we can bring you on board or whatever. But because that didn't go anywhere, he immediately took a trainee's position at the Regent Street Gallery before advancing to the Colonial Film Unit, which does have its equivalency in the United States. Frank Capra famously did a film for the American equivalent called Why We Fight. These were straight up Hollywood-produced propaganda films for World War II. At CFU, Jerry got to work with George Pearson, who had acted only in one movie before he decided to become a director and writer. Comet story. He was essentially a mentor to Jerry and taught him the ropes of the industry. But then comes 1947, when he gets conscripted, where he would leave his internship and serve his country for question mark? World War II is over, but they have conscription. So he got drafted and then entered the military. So when they drafted him, they evaluated him and then realized he was best suited to radio and telephone operating. Well they weren't they weren't wrong, right? They weren't wrong. So they went to what they called radio school and then was posted to the Royal Air Force base in Manston, Kent. There, Jerry witnessed two accidents in the last year of his conscription. They were both extremely formative to the rest of his life. One of which was when a mosquito, which is the same type of aircraft that his brother flew in the war, crashed during a celebration commemorating the Battle of Britain. The other, when the aircraft's undercarriage was non-functional, they had to delay landing until it had no choice but to land without it. Which is depicted in an Amazing Stories episode, by the way. Except that is Spielbergian and uses cartoons. The crew the crew did survive, and Jerry had recalled this as an inspiration for one of the Thunderbird stories he'd write later. Now, because of his conscription, legally, Jerry was entitled to get his old job back at Gainesborough Pictures, but Gainsborough Pictures had gone under. So he drifted around, eventually he found work at Pinewood Studios, and then to Elstree Studios and Shepperton Studios, and this is when his marriage falls apart because of his constant being on set and and the hours he put in. His last job during this era would have been at Polytechnic Films in Berkhamshire, Berkinghamshire, Jesus Christ, guys, get it together. Where he met a guy named Arthur Provis, who was a camera operator. Then, of course, that went under. Sick of all this kind of rigor morale, Jerry and Arthur Provis started their own film company called Polygon, not the online media empire, bringing along a guy named Reg Hill and John Reed, and then Sylvia Tam. They shot some commercials for Kellogg's cornflakes, but Rickles. Yeah, exactly. It it didn't work either. So then they dissolved and then regrouped under the name AP Film.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

I was fascinated by rice cicles, which are essentially rice crispies, but marketed in the UK, they were rice crispies with like sweet sugar coating on them. Kind of like what you think the opposite would be, where all of their stuff is plain, it's sugary rice crispies.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

It's like one of the few things that we have that isn't like that that they managed to put sugar on.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, it's bizarre.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, yeah. They had headquartered at Islet Park near the Thames and spent six months earning independent incomes, trying to patch the whole thing together, waiting for someone to call them up, and then eventually rediffusion television was looking for a budget company, and a woman named Roberta Lee called them to do a puppet series, something which Provost nor Anderson really were into. Quote, here I was, ready to make the Ten Commandments, and they were asking us to work with puppets, said Anderson. Okay, well take it where you can get it, brother.

From Film Work To Puppet TV

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Come on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Because he had used puppets on the commercials.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Yeah, yeah, which he didn't care for. He didn't like it, he didn't care for it.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

No, sir.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

His fur uh No sir, I don't like it. His first TV production was the 1957 Roberta Lee children's series, The Adventures of Twizzle, which you all remember fondly. That lasted a year. Torture the Batter Torchy, sorry, Torchy, wow, that's even funnier. Torchy the Battery That's the that's the uh That's the one they showed in Cuba. Torchy the Battery Boy in 1960, Four Feather Falls in 1960, as well. Jeez, two in the same year. Supercar. Subacar, which is one of the ones we're gonna talk about today from 61 to 62, Fireball XL5 from 62 and 63, and then, of course, Stingray. We are about to launch Stingray! Captain Scarlet and the Mysterians, Joe 9, but most famously Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are gone! He also went on to write and produce several live-action feature films, including one called Doppelganger, which is also referred to as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun in 1969. This is gonna take Launch Control, a mission sequence commenced.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

This is a sight of screens have made familiar. In the split second of time, you can tell an adventure unlikely to be repeated in our lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Did a lot of live-action stuff in the 70s and had a long collaboration with a media catch-all guy, a producer named Lou Grade. That was his real name. Which I do think is very funny because the name of his company is Lou Grade Productions, which just makes it sound like it's really poor quality.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Maybe not the best name to uh transition to your production company.

unknown 20:54

Lou Grade.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Eventually that would become ITC. My name is Shitty F Films. Uh uh I'm gonna do Shitty F Films production. Scrapie the bottom of the barrel LLC. Uh and this collaboration would go on until the second season conclusion of Space 1999. So they got basically no money for Adventures of Twizzle. They literally got 450 pounds per episode, which is insane even for back then. They basically hated the entire idea of having to work with puppets, they thought it lowbrow. Which it kind of was. I mean, it it's not that it was lowbrow, it was that it was accessible for the masses, is is more the idea behind it. It's kind of like burlesque. Contemporary humor, commenting on contemporary things. Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

The production cost for using the puppets was much. Less than using live action. So it was going to be cheaper to do. Plus, there were it was four kids mostly to start out with. So kids were much more likely to engage with the puppets and follow along with that.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

And despite his apprehension toward the whole thing, he really revolutionized puppeteering. He's essentially John Malkovich at the end of being John Malkovich. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Truly a pioneer with Super Marionation.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Oh yeah, Super Marionation.

Supermarionation Tech Explained

SPEAKER_01 22:33

That will definitely come up. So what made these pupp Pluppet made these pluppets special. You said Pluppet again. I know I did that one on purpose.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

What about plumpets?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

It's an old uh check it out bit where he's scared of pluppets. And he finds out later that pluppets are not made of puppet blood. Essentially, what he did was worked on improving basic puppets that had been worked out throughout the production of these type of shows over the decades by inserting electronic lip sync mechanisms using a solenoid valve placed in the puppets' head and fed with power from a tungsten wire, and it would allow them to do all sorts of crazy, well, at that point, crazy special effects with them. This was one of the foundations of what we would call super marionation. It would allow them to electronically lip sync the puppets with audio played back so that their mouths wouldn't have to be operated by a person physically. They would be operated by the audio playback that was played on set. The characters were played by electronic marionettes with this movable lower lip, and it would open and close in time with pre-recorded dialogue, and it would either be in the puppets' head or chest, which is why sometimes their proportions are weird, because they have to fit these electronics inside either their oversized head or their oversized torso.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah, because originally they wanted it to be all uniform so that it looked more realistic.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

But it just wasn't going to be viable because either the puppets would have to be too big and too unwieldy to move naturally the way they wanted. Well, naturally, quote unquote. That's why they opted to go with a larger head to fit in the mechanisms, but it also gave them this weird quality.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, we might as well get it out of the way now. This is 100% what directly inspires Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America World Police. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

I mean, a lot of people who maybe listen to this maybe haven't seen Stingray or Thunderbirds, you know, Supercar, but they probably know about Team America.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Which utilizes basically this technology just miniaturized. Oh yeah. They use straight up Super Marionation, they just don't use the branding.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, no, Team America is is a complete parody of Thunderbirds uh in a lot of ways and some of the other Super Marionation projects that Jerry Industrien did. They take a lot from Stingray too. But I think I think why Team America might work better in a lot of ways is that it's not taking itself seriously. Oh, right. And you are meant to laugh at it as opposed to a lot of the Jerry Industrial productions where it's played straight.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Oh, and it's very serious, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, and that uncanny valley that it's trying to delve into, it it it's off-putting in a lot of ways for a lot of people. Myself in particular. I do not like watching these puppets.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I never did. Mr. Peepers comes to life at night in your room when you're trying to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It's like the movie Magic. Which they're remaking, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

I I have heard. I I wish it was just Anthony Hopkins again. It'd be kind of fun. I mean, why not?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

You could just make it a CGI puppet that's Anthony Hopkins.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

So the National Science and Media Museum of the UK defines the use of electronics to synchronize puppets' lip movements with pre-recorded dialogue as super marination. It has a very defined thing in academia, and was designed as sort of a brand that they would use like Cinemascope or Technicolor. He was trying to do something to revolutionize the industry. Uh it was in a what they refer to as an elaborate style of puppetry, and it was sadly motivated by Anderson's embarrassment for working with puppets in general. Uh he said at one point that he wished to dispel the notion that their company's marionettes were, quote, the sort of puppets that were used in preschool programs. Okay, I mean I get it. But the funny thing is that in Britain this was treated as real theatre for a very long time. It wasn't really until after World War II that it was sort of considered strictly children's fair. Kind of like how animation was in America for a long time. It was said that Super Marionation productions contained three to four times as many cuts as live action features because the puppets' lack of facial expression made it nearly impossible for people to pay attention to it for more than a few seconds per shot. So they would have to cut away quickly, otherwise you get that uncanny valley problem.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah, they also they also had like major problems with the puppets constantly. Like they would shoot for hours and get like minutes worth of footage because they just couldn't get things to operate properly or the eyes would go all wobbly.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Mm-hmm. Which they do anyway. Uh it happens a lot.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Just think like this is this is what made it and it was like, okay, this is good enough. This is the best we've got. Fuck it. Everything on the cutting room floor would have been like, uh, no wonder he was so annoyed.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah, he didn't want to do this. This is against his will, essentially, but he's he's essentially like, if I'm gonna do it, I'm going to do it right. Which I respect, though I it's kind of sad that he completely disrespects the entire genre, but I get it. Yeah, so one character's dialogue would be recorded twice. One of the recordings would then be played during filming to guide the puppeteers, and then the other would be converted into a series of electrical signals, and those signals would then go to the physical

Why The Puppets Feel Uncanny

SPEAKER_01 28:02

puppets themselves, and then the solenoid in the head would cause the puppet's lower lip to open and close with each syllable. It's actually pretty ingenious, really, uh, considering what era this is.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

I mean, technically, it it does what it's tried to do well.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

What that is, who knows? Did that need to happen in the first place? I don't know, but they did it right, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

But I also think it helped him explore, I think, what these shows actually did do well, which is a lot of the set and prop design, the uh special effects and you know miniature action scenes.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Which are way ahead of their time.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yes, super well done. And a lot of the designs for things that they do, especially you know, in like Thunderbirds and whatnot, and then later in his like hybrid stuff into like UFO and Space 1989. This is coming out years before 2001 or Star Wars, and you can kind of see people were watching some of that and taking some of those design ideas and translating into those much bigger, long-lasting sci-fi properties.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

That is the one thing that I've noticed now marathoning this Jerry Anderson work all day today, is that the production design of each of these shows, even some of the early stuff, even Supercar, which is really, really rough early on, especially, the production design is immaculate and extremely excruciatingly thought out for the kind of show that it is. There's logic and reason behind every set piece. The sets work, they look cool, there's little MacGuffins and little sci-fi greebles and little things that it does that make sense. It never feels like they just shrug their shoulders. Everything in it, even if the plot feels like a throwaway, at least the sets and the staging feel completely grounded. And I think these shows would have had, though granted they had no lasting power since each of them lasted about what a season each.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Part of that was because they couldn't get money to keep doing more and they kept trying to pitch things and make things that they thought would work in America. Yes. Which is why, like, a lot of the Thunderbirds, especially like that's American voice actors, because they they use them thinking that that would translate and wouldn't be odd for the viewer in America. But even though they had at one point in time three different studios vying for showing their stuff in America, none of it came to pass up until much later after the fact.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

When people had already forgotten and they were only playing on nostalgia at that point. And so I thought we'd focus on just a f a couple of

Supercar And The Peacekeeping Fantasy

SPEAKER_01 30:36

these shows. Three in particular. And then we'll of course we'll sort of tangentially talk about a lot of other ones, but I figured we'd focus on, first of all, supercar. With beauty and grace, the swiftest could be. Because it's one of his early ones. It's one of the first ones I remember watching on the sci-fi channel when it was two seasons, totaling 39 episodes, filmed between September 1960 and January 62.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

That is a lot of episodes for the concept of supercar.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Right. It's even more ambitious than Star Trek, which had 79 episodes through three seasons.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

This is fucking crazy. Again, the idea of supercar, there's a supercar. The end. It can function on land, sea, and air.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yep. It's Night Rider, but without Passelhoff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

If you combined Airwolf and Night Rider and the one with the motorcycle? What was the boat one with Hulk Hogan?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Are you talking about Tropic Thunder? Or not Tropic Thunder? Um Tropic Thunder.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

No, no, no, no, but that's something like Tropic.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

It's like Tropic Lightning or something, isn't it? Isn't it a like Trop uh what is oh fuck, what is the name of that stupid sh stupid ass show? Thunder in Paradise. Thunder in Paradise, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Thunder in Paradise.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

The title that makes zero sense whatsoever. Crime Fighting Boat. Crime Fighting Stealth Boat or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Stupid. But if you took all of those, but the things that made them interesting, particular characters, or the actors, or the type of action, and you got rid of those, and you put it all in puppets, and you just had this one boat doing all of it. Supercar.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

There you go, it's supercar.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Supercar.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

That's all you need to know. It was essentially a series of set pieces to show the skill and imaginative creativity of production design. Uh in the show. The star, of course, the main character is Supercar. Which is invented by a guy named I do appreciate this through a lot of these shows. They do intro credits where they credit the puppets as if they are actors. It is quite delightful, actually. In this, it's invented by, quote, a guy named Professor Rudolph Popkiss and Dr. Horatio Beaker. And Supercar is, of course, piloted by Mike Mercury. It's got all sorts of uh fun buzzword MacGuffin-ish jargon from the era like air-breathing jet engines, retractable wings, a vertical takeoff and landing, retorockets. Then it becomes a submarine. You can go into space. It has a navigation system called Clear View VU, which allows them to see through fog and smoke. And it's got a laboratory. Well, it's controlled from a laboratory, a secret laboratory, in Black Rock, Nevada.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Does the supercar have a laboratory?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

No, yeah, it has your pants.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

You didn't have to strap up like that astronaut to go get a killer boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Right, right. Yeah, to wear diapers the whole time and a wig. The premise essentially is that it's a sort of non-governmental aligned, but also quasi-governmental aligned organization designed to keep world peace against super villain incursion threats. But that's kind of it. Um a lot of shows are about that. It's not really all that complicated, but it does speak to an era of post-World War II United Nations sort of optimism about international the international stage being a thing of unity in the second half of the 20th century. Do you have anything else to say about uh Supercar? No.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Not really.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Then I think that also segues well into the second show we're gonna talk about, Stingray, which is basically the same show, but it did happen first.

Stingray And Marineville Worldbuilding

SPEAKER_01 34:49

It's just an underwater show. It's the sequest DSV of its time, where everything is marine something. It's Sequest CSI. They are a they are the uh World Aquanaut Security Patrol, or WASP, which is very funny considering they're all white. That that polices the Earth's oceans. Their sort of enterprise flagship is the Stingray, which is a combat submarine. Captain, of course, by Troy Tempest and Navigator Lieutenant Phones and Marina, who is a mute mermaid? Question mark? I guess. Okay. And their thing was the same kind of missions that supercar went on but underwater. Stingray was armed with quote Sting missiles, which were torpedoes that could travel 600 knots and reach a depth of over 60 uh 36,000 feet. Whoa. Now Wasp was based in an underwater city, a bubble dome, called Marineville. Off the west coast of North America. I know. Marineville. It's like straight up sea lab vibes, man. Oh, it's uh what do you're in Waterland?

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it there was a lot of detail and a lot of things infused in here. Very Jerry Anderson, where they had their own jargon. Like wasp personnel would acknowledge commands with the phrase PWOR, which means for proceeding with orders received. There was a lot of thought put into some of this procedural stuff. It is very procedural. It felt very procedural.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

I'm sure a lot of that comes from his being in the military, especially over you know the radio and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Yes, and it does feel very Star Trek in that sense, where it definitely feels like a lot of procedural stuff formed by military experience. And it is interesting because it does it in a in an adult written way, not in like a fantastical child way. In those procedural parts. In the plot narratives, oh my god. But in the procedural parts, it's very, very detail-oriented and about specific practices. It's even shot that way, which I think is very fascinating. I had a blast watching Stingray earlier. It's ridiculous and cheesy and awful, but like some of the detail work that's put into it is extremely well thought out. Shockingly so. More so than you would give most writers for a show that is considered a throwaway for children. Their boss, of course, is in a 1990s Professor X hovering wheelchair, whose name is Commander Sam Shore. Okay. And his daughter, Lieutenant Atlanta Shore, who works in the Marineville Control Tower, and of course is secretly in love with Troy Tempest.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Well, who wouldn't be?

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Well, it's Troy Tempest. We all have a picture on our wall.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yeah, I had to pull off the new kids on the block and the backstreet boys to put up Troy Tempest.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Your Ferrafaucet poster. Yeah, to take that tunnel behind your uh 1 million BC poster.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

I would hit the electrode and his uh his his his jaw would like drop and try to like uh you know hit it in time.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Try to fog it in time, yeah. The entire thing was filmed on a budget of one million, so we're escalating, and it was the first British TV series that was ever filmed entirely in color. And the reason for that was to appeal, like we mentioned earlier, to the American market. So that really pushed that whole thing forward. It's crazy that that was the first show filmed in color.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, that's nuts. That's really crazy. That's a wild uh factoid.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

It is. And it is super fun. I watched a couple episodes, but the remarkable thing is the thought that's put into its conception, into its production design. It's kind of a shame that it's put in this format because it feels so limiting for somebody who had so many ideas, or at least had the wherewithal to be that mindful of production. He will do some live action stuff later, and it doesn't quite have the staying power, I feel like. But that is a stingray. The third series we were gonna talk about that I wanted to talk about, and if you have more you wanted to get to, that's

Thunderbirds Legacy And American Reception

SPEAKER_01 38:59

totally cool. Was 1969's UFO. Oh, I thought you were gonna go with Thunderbirds.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Interesting. Do you want to talk about Thunderbirds instead? I have that too. No, I'm fine. I the Thunderbirds is, I would say, his biggest and perhaps most long-lasting work. Yes. Which maybe is the reason, like, not to cover it as much. I think they put a lot of chips in Thunderbirds. Essential idea is that there's a non-government group that is not out to attack other nations, but just out to save the day and help people. They are a rescue team. Yep. And they have, you know, uh high-tech rockets and ships to go uh take care of their mission. This is the one-to-one comparison with the Matt Parker Trey Stone vehicle. And this is what I think Jerry and the producers of his Super Marionation projects thought would really take off. Originally they were supposed to be like 30-minute episodes, but they thought they had so many legs that they turned them into hour-long episodes. And then they did a movie, which they thought was really going to be big, especially because on the opening night packed theater, people were raucous for it, they loved it. Supposedly, the story goes that when Jerry went back the next day to a different theater, I think in Tottenham Court in London, he sat in the theater with ten people. They thought this was gonna be bigger than James Bond. And the first day it it seemed like it would, um, but it ended up being a complete flop and uh was just another just another kick in the side to old Jerry Anderson with these puppets.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

But it is the one that I think has the most staying power of his entire oeuvre because it did get a movie and then eventually a remake series and a live-action movie directed by Star Trek's Jonathan Frankes.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Yeah, I didn't realize I guess I just forgot about this up until I was looking into this again. Sir Ben Kingsley? Ben Kingsley, Bill Paxton, Anthony Edwards, Brady Corbet or Corbett, who went on to become an Oscar-winning director. Really fascinating stuff.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

I mean, this right here is the legacy of Jerry Anderson. As cheesy as it is, but between Trey Parker and Matt Stone and the Thunderbirds movie really does have a nostalgic lasting power. I mean, uh nobody went and saw the Thunderbirds.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Nobody liked the Thunderbirds live-action movie. No, nobody liked any of it. But people remember it. You know, it I will say one thing I do want to say about the Thunderbirds. They are go. Is that I hate how they look. I hate their costumes, I hate their pointy fucking hats that look like male stewardesses circa 1960. They all kind of look like M. Bison from Street Fighter. Little sashes. I think of the awful design. It wouldn't be functional. These puppets would not be functional in the real world. Alright. You could not go into dangerous situations with that on.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

How are we gonna fight our Forever Wars with these puppets? I mean, come on. You know what? I don't believe it. No, sir, I don't like it. That is we could spend a whole thing on Thunderbirds, but I think that's the most remembered of his stuff. And Thunderbirds didn't really get a lot of purchase on the sci-fi channel either, so it doesn't really fit into a premise. I remember seeing Supercar and Stingray way more than I ever saw Thunderbirds on sci-fi. Now it did appear, if I remember right, but much later, I wanna say. It definitely wasn't part of their early sci-fi channel uh program.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yeah, uh apparently in the late 2000s, they brought the Thunderbirds to the Sci-Fi Channel?

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Which is bizarre.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

They were about to reboot it into an animated show.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Yeah, that's a choice that they made.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

That's a choice they made. All of those things are choices that they made. And of course the movie Thunderbirds. On paper, I'm like, yeah, that's kind of a perfect choice for that. I don't see it getting a lot of purchase. And it didn't. That was at the time when they were still rolling the dice on nostalgia. Some things stuck and some things didn't, and that one didn't, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Didn't really port over to America. Like so many of these things, the puppet stuff, it just didn't quite catch on here. Well, I mean it did with Parker and Stone. It did many years later. Obviously, people saw it. Yeah. But it just it was never big, you know, it never never had the puppet legs. Couldn't quite cut those strings.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Good stuff. America came up with the Muppets, so.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Yeah, well, if you think of all of the puppets that became big in America, they are exaggerated, non-lifelike versions of things. There is like artifice always there. Yes. And even if it's not, you know, like with Kermit and Miss Piggy interacting with human people, yes, we'd recognize that they are supposed to be in universe similar. But as viewers, they are not trying to tell you that these are. human beings. This is obviously anthropomorphic pig and an anthroporphic frog and whatnot. But with super marination, you have these very stiff, oddly proportioned, realistic looking facially that just it just it it gives the ick, honestly. And it always did to me, which is why I never got into any of these puppet shows. We're talking about shows that at this point are 50, 60 years old. Mm-hmm. So they always felt dated but dated in a way that it couldn't overcome for me. The strangeness of the puppets and the dated nature of what they were portraying.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, when I was watching it earlier, yeah, I I got the same impression. It reminded me a lot of like Clutch Cargo, if you remember that they show it in Pulp Fiction, Tenacious D makes a reference to it. They would do these stills and then have a real human's mouth speak the word it feels like that where it's like, oh this is an innovation I don't know that it has legs in any other application. I don't know that this works.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

It feels like this was innovation then but it's no longer something now.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

It felt like an evolutionary branch that just reached a dead end.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Mm-hmm. I will say rewatching some of the stuff or watching it for the first time I do think a lot of the action explosions and the miniature work that still works. I think that was super well done. It does it's surrounded and weighed down by these weird puppets. Right if we have to work the puppets this would be pretty cool. Which is what what he tried to do with this next thing you're going to talk about. Yeah.

UFO Goes Live Action

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Like what if we do the cool bits that we had this interesting production design, you know my my visions of a sci-fi future but I can actually work with people. I don't have to work with these puppets.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yeah we don't have to figure out which times we need to actually use real human hands in shots because we can't get the puppets to do the right thing. So UFO was a show that the Andersons and I'm not trying to downplay Jerry Anderson's wife's contribution to that Sylvia is hand in glove with this the whole time. She doesn't get half the recognition that she probably should. Their newly formed company Century21's first full live action series UFO it starred an American actor named Ed Bishop who did a bunch of other earlier Jerry Anderson work. Commander Ed Stryker this was before the 90s where he would have been called Ed Stryker head of the secret defense organization Shadow Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization. There you go. Their shield yes yeah but specifically about alien invasions it was definitely more adult it was definitely more sort of like advanced and there's a hell of a lot of creativity in production design production quality it's really thought out production design oriented than even Star Trek was but didn't really catch on. And I've been watching a lot of it today. It's fun I think some of the costuming I'm like if I still own stuff like that I'd wear that every fucking day like a lot of the design work is great a lot of the technical details are really ahead of their time way better than anything else on TV better than what Battlestar Galactica would be just a a decade later but didn't really find much purchase once again well there we are commander I don't think you'll need us anymore so uh we'll leave you to it well thank you Major Alright on in the day's work why don't you go back with them I can take care of this well thank you Paul but uh I think I'll stay here and see this through uh would you go back and look at the captain. Oh tell her uh tell her I'll be back as soon as I can cool during the production of UFO Anderson was approached by Harry Saltzman to write and produce the next entry in the Jane's Bond series Moonraker bring that full circle but they didn't like his approach and they

Moonraker Detour And Bond Rankings

SPEAKER_01 48:35

passed on it.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Now if you watch Moonraker today um which I did really you did yeah remember we're like we're making our way through all the the bonds which we we finished okay unrelated like because of this no no no no it was part of the ongoing bonding process the great bonding yes indeed what did you think about Moonraker? Oh it sucked it sucked so bad it's so bad so bad it was like one of the handful of Bond films of the Roger Moore Sean Connery era that I had seen oh sure but I hadn't seen it since I was a tyke. So I only remembered like bits I remember Jaws and I remembered some of the space stuff but everything around it was new to me and I mean other than like feeling very Elon Musk coded currently it doesn't work on any layer no or or level.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

No it doesn't make any sense. It's definitely one of the worst and that's saying something considering it's the Roger Moore era. It's one of the it's one of the worst Roger Moore's which makes it one of the worst ever. Oh it's definitely bottom three bonds I would say that and octopusy which I think are what like back to back?

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Yet sounds right there might have been one in between again I just mainlined these back to back to back to back so they all kind of blend together.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah well obviously nothing came of the James Bond thing Jerry Anderson was never involved though I would not have been surprised had he been considering the quality and the tenor of the Roger Moore movies. Bringing Jerry Anderson on board just kind of makes sense in in-house schlocky sci-fi dude during the worst period of Bond films. I'd buy it but it didn't happen. So they made UFO they made a bunch of other stuff obviously the Jerry Anderson ouvre would go on

Space 1999 And Sci Fi Channel Reruns

SPEAKER_01 50:24

for quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Yeah you got the UFO sequel yeah what? Space 1999.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Oh well oh I think you meant an actual direct sequel to UFO UFO no I mean it's the there's a lot of elements they took and reused them Space 1999 which is you know it's an absolutely schlocky ridiculous series I mean it's classic Jerry Anderson. The more clout he got the more he was able to put like real stars in front of people. This time you got Martin Landau some big British actors in the genre Peter Cushing Peter Cushing for one yeah I mean it was Ryan Blessed as typical with Jerry Anderson Space 1999 was an absurd premise. Yeah I mean I mean it feels a lot like UFO in the opening sequence they keep flashing 1980 1980 this is nineteen eighty and like oh wow the amazing future year of 1980 and space 1999 they kind of do the same thing where it's like well we're using the Arthur C. Clark 2001 sort of premise that everything's gonna be way more advanced in 1999 than it is now because of the pace of the space race projecting that out into the future which obviously unfortunately didn't pan out. But the idea was that we'd have bases on the moon and ships that can travel between the Earth and the moon regularly and then all of a sudden the moon explodes apart the mission main mission to all eagles return to base immediately.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Repeat return to base immediately waste and weapons in one spot and then there's some radiation that sets it off and it shoots the moon out into space like a runaway planet.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

That now for some reason can't find its way back to Earth? I mean that's a hell of an explosion man.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

It's going too fast, Kip It's fair.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Even in Buck Rogers and or Planet of the Apes they managed to just find their way back to Earth. But this one they were like I don't know where we are what the fuck happened?

SPEAKER_00 52:58

Well we missed our opportunity so I think they did they go in like a black hole or something and uh there's like warp stuff and blah blah blah. Yeah I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

I didn't I didn't watch UFO much I didn't watch Space 1999 so I did watch I did watch Space 1999 more than I watched UFO I didn't watch UFO as a kid it wasn't on as much Space 1999 though was on all the time on sci-fi channel and uh that's honestly where I got most of my knowledge from of that show was from those air rings just like with all of these other shows. I wouldn't have known of any of these shows were it not for the sci-fi channel. And Jerry Anderson's fingerprints all are all over all of this stuff. He did a ton of stuff in the 60s and 70s that people who grew up with that remember. And when the sci-fi channel comes out he's maybe the perfect person to put front and center for syndicated programming of his old shows because there are a lot of them they all kind of failed and they're not all that long but they are intriguing and nostalgic. So I mean really it's kind of the perfect thing to do for our premise of I was trying to think of a modern analog of Jerry Anderson.

Collaboration Lessons And Closing Plugs

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Other than people like I don't know like Dick Wolf Law and Order and all of its spin-offs and now the Chicago Fire Chicago PD all those spin-offs or maybe Steven Bonchko maybe but not really especially since Jerry Anderson is and his wife she did a bunch of costuming and makeup and also production design which is really cool. I don't know that there is a direct analog it's like if Stan Winston was just given a blank check to make shows. Because he's half Jim Henson, half Stan Winston, but never quite achieved the success of either and never wanted to be in that genre. He just wanted to be a real director. Yeah. And when he works with live action stuff, you would go like oh finally he gets his thing and it'll make more sense but it doesn't it's still just a schlocky it just has live action actors instead of puppets that's why it reminds me of Stan Winston Stan Winston was never gonna be I mean he directed what Pumpkin had and he did some other stuff but he didn't write movies. He didn't pitch TV shows but he was really good at certain things. Like I want to dress like everybody from UFO.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

You need that alien haircut is what you need.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Oh you know the the purple Bob yeah I need that's what I need for sure the I should have already owned that stuff like I was rocking that like 15 years ago. Why don't I own all that? That's great but yeah I feel like he's one of those guys that was both ahead of his time but also didn't have the Jews to really move things forward as much as I think he thought he could.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

He is a stepping stone. Unfortunately s you need somebody that needs to be that intermediary you know introducing some of these technical innovations some of these looks for the future and ideas but they just don't quite click. They don't quite work and you need other people your Kubrick's your Lucas's gonna take some of that stuff and make something bigger and better.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Well it's funny because I th I I I figured you were going to say like he needs a Lawrence Kazden to come in and write the actual story and the heart of the whole thing. He reminds me a lot of Lucas and Spielberg both early on and a lot of their horrible ideas that they wanted to do and and Lawrence Kazden came in to be the adult in the room and and and pair it down just like with Raiders just like with the Empire Strikes Back you know the guy that comes in and goes hold on guys let's just hold on a second. Let's make this real instead of just you're spitballing on the beach in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

One of the things with a truly great artist you have the singular visionaries but you also have people who can recognize that making films and TV are collaborative adventures. And you need someone who can push and pull uh you know have their creative vision but are able to absorb and articulate other people's ideas to make that a better thing. A lot of times the people who are too hard willed and wired in or they become that way when they lose their their guiding rocks. I mean look both Lucas and Spielberg I think when they separated from their significant others they kind of lost that touchstone. Oh yeah at least for a bit you know I think Lucas never got it back. Nope I think Spielberg was able to get on a different track but without someone to bounce those ideas off of that they they trusted and they respected you know you can you can lose that vision to your own core intentions.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Lucas had done Star Wars obviously and Spielberg had done you know close encounters but then when Spielberg does 1941 you're like you need somebody else in the room to rein you in because like you don't know what's going on and then and Lucas was the same way and Lawrence Caston was that guy. Now granted earlier on it was Lucas's wife that was really reigning him in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

Yeah we can see with the prequels where he didn't have another voice that he respected to like say hey this isn't the right way.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

And boy did he try though Yeah you gotta have that other person in the room and that's I think something Jerry Anderson probably would have benefited from because his ideas are really there and the production design and quality are there.

SPEAKER_00 58:23

Yeah you gotta know when you're like you're the idea man or you're like I'm good at this one thing, but maybe I shouldn't do everything.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

You gotta know when to hold them and then subsequently know when to fold them that's what you do.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

Okay. I could never get that second part down.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

Well no wonder you're so bad at poker, Jake. Jesus Christ That's why no wonder Someday I'll get it no wonder you got uh fleeced by Lechy At least he he got that itch on the underside of my uh how's your father well it's because you were crying blood kind of a tell there's nothing there's nothing sinister in crying blood. Yep that's basically uh our breakdown of of Jerry Anderson a really successful creative and was a successful creative in fact his family is still selling merch there's a uh there's a Jerry Anderson uh podcast hosted by his son you can buy stuff from all of their series online through jerryanderson.com it still has a pretty loyal following uh all of his shows they're fun they're yeah and you can see the the sci-fi n of them and why the sci-fi channel brought some of that stuff over um you know during their early periods. Oh yeah especially since I mean no one else was showing this these were just sort of like sitting on a shelf somewhere might as well show them. And sci-fi channel took full advantage of that and I think much to their credit because I would never have known about these shows. I would never have seen them especially not as a child sci-fi channel is one of the reasons that I have a much broader view of the sci-fi genre landscape in general. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

That's true. Before they descended into what they become but we will discuss more of that evolution or de evolution as we continue on with our Psy Y F U series next week. And we hope that you guys have all enjoyed listening to your little marionettes chatter away at you just our lower lips on this episode of it's always just our lower lips. Please come back for the next episode of Dispatch Ajax. Before you do that if you wouldn't mind like sharing subscribing if you know of any other puppet heads out there that need to hear about Jerry Anderson and how he fits in the sci-fi channel do send that to them. If you wouldn't mind rating us 1999 stars on the podcast app of your choice ideally Apple Podcast. It's the best way for us to get heard and thus seen we'd super appreciate that we'd super marry a nation appreciate that and just want to say thanks thanks for coming around thanks for listening. Thanks for going on this puppet filled journey but until the moon explodes in a ball of thermonuclear fire sending us and this podcast deep into the bowels of space skip what should they do?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

Well they should probably make sure they've cleaned up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree make sure they have tipped their bartenders their weight staff their KJs their DJs anyone who qualifies quite frankly make sure they support their local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax Jake and I would like to say no matter where you go there you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Please go away