Back in 2004 on this blog, I wrote about a favorite TV show of my childhood — Supercar. It was not a cartoon show and it did not feature human beings on camera. It starred marionettes and I liked it a lot, though even at the age of ten, I was quite aware I was watching puppets and that the scripts were written to avoid having them do the jillion and one things that marionettes could not do. Here's some of what I wrote here in '04…
Supercar was the first of the Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" shows from Great Britain to make it to Los Angeles television…and, as I was later to learn, it was the show that put him and his company on the map. Later, they produced Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and other shows in which marionettes had exciting adventures, usually piloting incredible machinery throughout the universe. It was about the time Stingray came on that I realized that the creation of every Gerry Anderson show probably began with someone asking the question, "Okay, we need another premise where our characters won't have to walk too much."
Anderson's puppetry wizards had invented ways to make their players' mouths move enough that I could pretend the heroes were speaking, and the strings were visible but not so much that you couldn't ignore them. What they never quite mastered was how to make their cast members walk more than a step or two. Even when hidden from the waist down behind something, that's when they really reminded you they were puppets. (I also noticed early-on that they never walked through doors. They'd "walk" to the open door and stop and then the camera would cut away.)
This limitation led to the early Anderson shows all revolving around vehicles…like Supercar, in which the heroic Mike Mercury flew about for much of each adventure. Mr. Mercury was the test pilot of this incredible contraption that could fly and go underwater and once in a boring while, even zoom across dry land. He and his crew lived and worked out in the Nevada test flats…and just who they worked for was never made clear. Still, they kept testing their invention and the evil Masterspy kept trying to steal it…
Did you ever see an episode of Supercar? You didn't? Well, here's your chance. This is the entire first episode. I don't guarantee you'll like the show but I'll bet you at least like the theme song…