Anyone else have the Supercar DVDs? I was kind of hesitant about getting them but decided to give them a try. They're not bad, but are my least favorite of the shows. Also, the DVDs have very few extras.

The stories do seem to get better as the series progresses and you can certainly see traces of the other shows here - especially Stingray.

I like the Mike Mercury character. He seems to me to be a bit smarter than Steve Zodiac and Troy Tempest - also, less arrogant and has a better sense of humor.

I can't stand the monkey. Zooney didn't bother me, but Mitch drives me crazy. He wouldn't be so bad if he actually behaved like a monkey. Instead, he's just sort of human who doesn't talk and has lots of hair.

Beaker and Popkiss are okay but are the creepiest looking puppets in the whole series. Is Felicity Farnsworth just the Beaker puppet with a wig?

Anyone else find this annoying - the attitude of "Gee, we're going to a potentially dangerous situation - let's take a child and a monkey along"? When and where does Jimmy go to school? I kind of doubt the stories only take place on weekends and during summer vacation. This kid needs new guardians.

I've only seen three of them so far, but they've been reasonably interesting.

I like Mike. He has a very pleasant voice. He's concerned about others, and has a good, dry wit. So far, he's refrained from making any annoying sexist comments, but that may just be because there is no regular woman character.

Prof. Popkiss looks cute and cuddly when you seem him face on. Look at him from the side, and it looks as if someone squashed his face in.

Dr. Beaker looks about as weird--that bulging-eyed stare makes him look as if he's permanently horrified about something.

I really don't understand why they would so readily accept a ten-year old as part of the gang. I think that it must have been simply a plot device--Jimmy asks the questions that the child viewers would want to ask.

In two different books on Sci-Fi television, Mitch is described as a "talking monkey". As far as I know, the only time that he talks is during a dream sequence. (Thank heaven!) Mike refers to him in the first episode as a monkey, then Dr. Beaker calls him a chimpanzee. In THE COMPLETE GERRY ANDERSON episode guide, he is also described as a chimpanzee, and his face would certainly bear this out. However, in the third episode, it turns out that Mike was right--Mitch is shown with a distinctive tail, and chimpanzees do not have tails. Mitch is a monkey. Now, if we could just figure out what kind of monkey...if he's anything like Zoonie, he's going to be causing a lot of trouble that could have been avoided if they'd just kept him under control.

BTW...if they're out in the middle of nowhere, just how does Jimmy get out to see them?

It seems to me (so far, at least) that the puppeteers did a better job with the walking than they would do in future series. The puppets walk fairly slowly, but you don't see so much of that skidding step that is so ubiquitous on the other shows. Masterspy walks funny, but with his size and shape, you would expect him to.

I've finally seen them all and I have to revise my initial opinion - they're pretty good! I have to agree - the walking is better than some of the later ones. I always laugh my head off in Fireball XL5 whenever Professor Matic does his funky little leg kicks when they're floating around in space (after taking the oxygen pills of course!) or when he runs from the lion in The Triads. It almost looks like he's floating.
Actually, when I first took a look at the box and saw the big puppet heads, I thought it would be very primitive puppet-wise, but it's really not.

This is certainly the least sexist of the shows. I don't remember anyone making a "just like a woman" comment.

I don't recall Mitch talking except in the dream episode. He seemed to become less annoying as the series progressed.

Even though he's in every episode, Jimmy doesn't annoy me as much as the kids in the other programs do - Fireball's Jonathan was ok, but the kids in Thunderbirds are unwatchable!

Also, the humor doesn't seem quite so silly and forced as in the later shows. The whole series seems to have been made with a lot of thought and care put into it.

I agree. This was a fine show. It certainly was not as silly or as irritating as Fireball XL5 (although Fireball was fun in its own way). Aside from occasional absurdities such as invisible paint, the science seemed quite realistic--much more than Fireball.

Dr. Beaker has been described as having a stammer; perhaps the forerunner of Brains' stutter. Actually, he didn't really sound like he was stammering. He sounded as if he were groping for an appropriate word. (And did you notice that it happened less and less as the show went on?)

At first viewing, the puppets looked really bizarre, mostly because I had seen the later shows first. However, watching them regularly, I got used to them. Especially Mike; his voice sounded handsome, so I saw him that way. I even got used to Dr. Beaker's pop-eyed expression.

I noticed a tiny change of lyric in the song. During the first season, the man sang of "Heaven's stormy rage," giving you a clear idea of what is meant. In the second season, they changed it to "Heaven's mighty rage, which might have sounded good, but which made me think that Mike and Supercar might have offended Someone Upstairs.

In all the episodes, Mike spoke of charging the port and starboard engines, then firing them off. "Port" means left, and "Starboard" means right. However, when they show the jets firing, they're on both sides--"port" is the two outermost holes, while "starboard" is the inner two.

There is a kind of sexism in this show, in its very lack of female characters. The ones that do show up are rather passive. Even the intrepid Miss Farnsworth doesn't have the sense to hang on to the railing when the bridge is being cut, and therefore has to be saved. In Scotland, she makes no attempt herself to find out what's going on, instead sending for her cousin and Supercar immediately. The Indian princess stays close to her brother's side, and apart from somehow knowing how to dose her brother with penicillin, does little. The Chinese maid mostly makes doleful comments, says that she is frightened, and makes a ridiculous attempt to reason with her father's kidnapper. The Irish colleen shoots her mouth off at Harper, which might or might not have been the reason that he took her hostage. She then stands around helplessly. The receptionist for the film developer was heavily nasty, but immediately went to pieces at the sight of a monkey. Aunt Heidi cooks. That sums her up. The only female that really shows courage and initiative is a little child, Zizi, and that will likely get smothered by Aunt Heidi's maternal femininity. There was a lady at the grocery store who showed some interest in Mike, but of course he was busy saving lives at the time, and couldn't pay attention.

However, none of them are on a par with the helpless, silly, and foolish Dr. Venus, the silent Marina whose sole functions were to look decorative and require rescue. And at least they didn't have an Atlanta counterpart to bleat, "It's too dangerous!" or "Mike--you'll be killed!" whenever they went off on missions.

This series must have spanned quite a bit of time--every time they had a night shot, there was a full moon!

They show a bit of change in Dr. Beaker's attitude towards Mike. In the first episode, Dr. Beaker refers to him simply as "Pilot." In the episode "False Alarm" he was still calling him Pilot, and he also made the rather nasty comment that henceforth he would remember not to depend on an...er...um...action man like Mike. (Mike accepted the rebuke very quietly.) By the end of the series, he was calling Mike "Mike" as a matter of course, and making statements along the line of "What would we do without Mike?"

A lot of times they would angle the puppets to make it look as though Dr. Beaker was considerably taller than the others, including Mike. Then they'd have a shot of Dr. Beaker and Mike side by side, and about the same size.

I do wish that they'd included an explanation of why Jimmy was more or less adopted by the team. If they'd taken in everyone they rescued, it would get rather crowded at Black Rock! It would also have been nice if they'd included the occasional scene of one of the grownups tutoring Jimmy, instead of implying that he'd been allowed to quit school completely.

It seemed odd that in the early shows, they were making such a big deal about secrecy, and then later, practically everyone knew about them. Someone made comics about them, and presumably someone wrote a song, that Prof. Popkiss and Dr. Beaker would both sing. On the other hand, even in the later episodes, they were referring to "the secret laboratories at Black Rock." Does "secret" have another meaning of which I am unaware?

I notice that when they show a close up shot of Supercar with more than one person in it, the people look rather crowded--shoulder to shoulder, almost. In the distant shots, they look as if they have plenty of room between them.

I would like to know just what went into Mike's decision to wear or not wear his hat in Supercar. Sometimes he did, sometimes not. He wore it when they were traveling to the North and South Poles, where a warmer hat would have been in order.

I agree about the women on Fireball and Stingray. Venus is competent in some episodes and a joke in others. Marina is a complete waste. I truly don't know what Atlanta does - would she even be there if it wasn't for daddy? Is she an officer? Then why isn't she on one of the subs (there are more subs than Stingray, aren't there)? Is she a secretary? If so, she's not a very good one - I'm a secretary myself (and a darn good one!) so I know how much work is involved.

There doesn't seem to be any consistency to the secrecy - no one seems to know about it at times and other times the police are calling them to help. I also would think the little Supercar logo on Mike's hat wouldn't do a whole lot for keeping it secret.

I imagine Bill is Jimmy's legal guardian, but he doesn't seem like he'd be a very good one. He probably just left Jimmy at Black Rock while he does whatever it is he does.

I agree about Mike's voice - is Graydon Gould the guy who voices Mike? He and Ed Bishop as Captain Blue are my favorite "voice people".

Has anyone got the comic book yet? I sent in the coupon that came with the DVDs about 2 months ago and haven't gotten it yet.

I like the music on all of the early shows. Captain Scarlet has the worst closing themes. Both the early one and the later one (sung by The Spectrum) are horrible. I grab for the remote everytime it starts.

>> I agree about Mike's voice - is Graydon Gould the guy who voices Mike? He and Ed Bishop as Captain Blue are my favorite "voice people". <<

I disagree with you there, Reggie - I prefer the 'voicists' such as David Graham and Ray Barrett who doubled up and did loads of different voices. Although I think Ed, Francis Matthews, Rupert Davies etc. did a fantastic job with their charactrs.

I do admire the voice actors who can do many voices. On the other hand, Graydon Gould--who did voice Mike, BTW--had a very pleasant voice that suited Mike's character admirably. So did Ed Bishop's voice for Captain Blue, and David Holliday for Virgil Tracy. If you watch all of the different series, you'll recognize the same voices for different characters, and they basically all work pretty well. But when you find a voice that really fits a particular character--Bingo!

David Graham was great - I especially like his Prof. Matic. I can't place Rupert Davies - whose voice did he provide?

Did Sylvia Anderson do all the the female voices on Supercar (in addition to Jimmy)?

I forgot to mention Shane Rimmer earlier - my favorite Thunderbird voice!

Rupert Davies played Prof. Mac McClaine in Joe 90.

I haven't bought the Joe 90 DVDs yet. Are they good?

I bought them last week. I think that they're great! (If you ignore the basic ridiculousness of a nine-year old spy, it's great fantasy.)

Shane Rimmer wrote of number of Joe 90 scripts, and voices some characters, although guest voices were never listed in the credits. You can always tell when he's on!

I believe that Sylvia Anderson did voice all the females on Supercar--in fact, I think the only show where she did not voice all the female parts was on Thunderbirds.

I'll have to get Joe 90. My local Best Buy doesn't have it for some reason. They've had all the other Anderson shows at a considerably lower price than most places, but I may have to breakdown and get it from Amazon.

I hoping there are no Mitch- or Zooney-type characters!

No, not at all.

However, the head of the London Branch of the World Intelligence Network has a penchant for making bad puns. Fortunately not all the time, or someone would probably have assassinated him by now....

BTW, you might ask your Best Buy if they can order it. Borders only got it fairly recently--maybe they just haven't received it yet.