"WHAT WAS FIREBALL XL5?"

Fireball XL5 is an early Gerry Anderson series from 1962, filmed in black and white in "Supermarionation" (ie using puppets). Set in 2067, Sector 25 of space is under the watchful eye of Steve Zodiac and his crew aboard the rocket ship, Fireball XL5, providing planetary protection from alien missiles and attacks. His crew is made up of Venus, Dr of Space Medicine, scientific officer Matt Matic and co-pilot Robert the robot.

The puppets and models in Fireball XL5 lack the sophistication of the later series (and I don’t use the term sophistication ironically – Thunderbirds certainly used and developed realistic and effective modelling and pyrotechnic effects), and the plots are fairly simplistic, but the series was nevertheless innovative and the team that worked on these early shows would bring techniques developed here to later series. In fact, the 1962 series is very much the prototype for Thunderbirds and the later Captain Scarlet, on the one hand a accident-recovery and disaster-prevention team, on the other, defenders of the earth from mysterious and threatening alien races.

Fireball XL5 was also made before they had developed the "invisible" puppet strings used in Thunderbirds – not strictly invisible of course, but certainly less evident than they are here in Fireball XL5. Figure movements fare slightly better when the puppets are not made to attempt any complicated movements like walking (a problem Anderson’s puppets notoriously never managed to convincingly overcome), but as the main part of the series fortunately takes place in space, there are opportunities to move in other ways - floating in space and riding around on jet-packs and rocket-bikes. However, it is the strength of the material in Fireball XL5, the charm of the plots and the characters that, like Stingray and Thunderbirds, manages to overcome the limitations of the puppetry.

These models are incrasingly rare to find. The XL5 model is highly detailed an a great addition to the Konami range.

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