By Fred Topel/March 28, 2016 4:00 am EST
“We’re not going so far as to have that sort of puppetry really on the nose aspect of it, but we definitely didn’t want to burnish away the style of the original,” said head writer Rob Hoegee. “Sometimes you’ll see when a ship comes in to land, while it’s a CG ship, every once in a while there’ll be a little bit of herky-jerkiness to it so it looks like it’s a model on a string coming down to land in the dirt. There was definitely some specific intent when the characters were being designed to give them that constructed look.”
Some children will be seeing the Thunderbirds for the first time, particularly in the U.S. “I think we’re kind of forging new territory here in the United States because it’s not a brand that really has a lot of history here,” Hoegee said. “So I’m really excited to introduce it to the new generation, but of course in places where the show’s never gone away, like the U.K. for example, every kid knows about this show. It’s as enduring to them as, say, Star Wars to a kid here in the United States.”
The 2065 of Thunderbirds Are Go is speculative science fiction. In one episode a character notes that he hasn’t seen paper since he was a child. Hoegee suggests they have better uses for trees in 2065, but have perfected technology that is only theoretical today. “Things like space elevators and hyperloops are commonplace in this world,” Hoegee said.
“In season one they’re almost all standalone,” Hoegee said. “There is a very sort of light series arc that threads through the first 26 episodes we’ve done, but they definitely can be seen in any order.”
There are five Thunderbird crafts, and they each get a chance to lead the mission in different episodes. “We try to do that,” Hoegee said. “We tend to pair them up a lot, so in other words, Thunderbird 1 might go out with Thunderbird 2. Often if Thunderbird 4 is going to be in the mission, 99% of the time Thunderbird 2 is going to be in it because that’s how it will get there.”
David Menkin provides the voices of both Virgil and Gordon Tracy. Virgil may get more heroic moments, as Thunderbird 2 is often the one to save the day in other Tracy-led missions.
“What’s better than having Thunderbird 2 rising from behind a cliff or through a cloud?” Menkin said. “That’s the thing. The other guys have to use their ingenuity and they have to think of smart ways to do it. In the end, you find that what they do need is for someone just to come and grab the crap out of something and pull it away. That’s Virgil’s job. He’s the heavy lifter.”
