30 Minutes After Noon
"30 Minutes After Noon" | |
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Thunderbirds episode | |
Episode no. | Series 1 Episode 18 |
Directed by | David Elliott |
Written by | Alan Fennell |
Cinematography by | Paddy Seale |
Editing by | Harry Ledger |
Production code | 18 |
Original air date | 11 November 1965 |
Guest character voices | |
| |
"30 Minutes After Noon" is an episode of
Set in the 2060s, Thunderbirds follows the exploits of International Rescue, an organisation that uses technologically advanced rescue vehicles to save human life. The main characters are ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy, founder of International Rescue, and his five adult sons, who pilot the organisation's main vehicles: the Thunderbird machines. In "30 Minutes After Noon", International Rescue race to save a British secret agent caught up in the latest scheme of the Erdman Gang, a notorious criminal organisation.
Drawing inspiration from the spy film The Ipcress File, Elliott decided to realise Fennell's script through the use of what commentator Stephen La Rivière terms "quirky visuals".[2] Elliott and camera operator Alan Perry experimented with original camera angles and movements, choosing to open one scene with a long tracking shot.[3] The episode's incidental music is largely recycled from earlier APF productions.[4]
Commentators including media historian
Plot
While driving through Spoke City at night, government employee Thomas Prescott gives a lift to a seemingly innocent
The fire is brought under control but Prescott is cut off. News of the disaster reaches International Rescue on
Southern, a
Driving to the store, Southern, Dempsey and Kenyon bypass the security doors and use a
Southern transmits a distress call to his superior, Sir William Frazer, who in turn radios International Rescue for help. Flying to the store in Thunderbirds 1 and 2, Scott and Virgil use the
and use the car's gun to shoot down them down just as they are getting away in a helijet. Southern recovers from his ordeal at Creighton-Ward Mansion.Regular voice cast
- Lady Penelope
- Peter Dyneley as Jeff Tracy
- David Graham as Parker
- David Holliday as Virgil Tracy
- Shane Rimmer as Scott Tracy
- Matt Zimmerman as Alan Tracy
Production
Director David Elliott was unenthusiastic about realising
The Glen Carrick Castle scene opens with a tracking shot covering all three walls of the puppet set, for which Elliott co-ordinated the camera movements with operator Alan Perry.[3] In a pioneering move for a Supermarionation series, this scene also uses forced perspective to show a human hand and scale marionette puppets in the same shot: while the hand, intended to belong to Southern, twiddles a pen in the foreground, the puppets of Kenyon and Dempsey occupy the background.[1] A visual illusion ensures that Kenyon and Dempsey appear correctly scaled in relation to the hand, even though Thunderbirds puppets were only 1⁄3 adult human size.[1]
The
Much of the episode's incidental music was originally composed for earlier APF series, particularly Stingray. Re-used tracks include the Highland theme from "Loch Ness Monster" and "March of the Oysters" from "Secret of the Giant Oyster", another episode of Stingray.[4]
Reception
Sylvia Anderson noted Alan Fennell's "vivid imagination" and suggested that "30 Minutes After Noon" was "more a vehicle for live action than for the limited emotions of our puppet cast."[8][9] According to Nathalie Olah of The Independent, the episode's plot highlights the "sense of drama" that made Thunderbirds popular: "Sure, most kids didn't understand the workings of a plutonium bomb, but the fact that the show was capable of sustaining their attention, as well as that of their older siblings and parents, meant they had some idea by the end of said episode."[10]
Media historian Nicholas J. Cull links the episode to another of Fennell's Thunderbirds scripts, "The Man from MI.5", which features a British Secret Service agent called Bondson. For Cull, "30 Minutes After Noon" is one of several Thunderbirds episodes that includes visual homage to the James Bond films. In particular, he comments on Southern's briefing scene, in which the characters of Southern, Sir William Frazer and an unnamed aide are represented by hats on a hat-stand: "Southern's hat is a trilby, tossed onto the stand in best James Bond fashion."[5] (Another of the hats – a bowler – belonged to Keith Shackleton, APF's head of merchandising.)[11] Tom Fox of Starburst magazine also praises the "hatstand homage" and names the robot guards and the Scottish castle as the episode's other highlights. He gives "30 Minutes After Noon" a score of 4 out of 5.[12]
Stephen La Rivière, author of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, acknowledges Elliott's decision to use an original visual style but argues that the first half of the episode is "filmed as normal".[2] La Rivière also comments on the editing, noting that the plot of the episode is effectively split into two parts (the explosion at the Hudson Building followed by Southern's infiltration of the Erdman Gang).[6] He suggests that this makes "30 Minutes After Noon" similar to the earliest episodes of Thunderbirds, which were originally 25 minutes long and subsequently extended to 50 minutes through the addition of secondary rescues and character-based subplots.[6]
A review in NTBS News Flash describes "30 Minutes After Noon" as a "thrilling, well-paced episode" that "brings together a very sadistic bad guy scheme and some innocent, and some not-so-innocent victims in peril". It describes the pacing as "especially good" and also praises the "inventive" camera work, noting, "I don't think I've seen more use of 'real hand acting' in any other episode." The review compares the exploding bracelets to the premise of the Saw films, in which people are trapped in dangerous situations and threatened with death if they refuse to carry out tasks placed before them.[13]
Adaptations
In July 1967, Century 21 Records released an EP audio adaptation of "30 Minutes After Noon" narrated by David Graham as Parker.[14]
In 1992, Fennell and Malcolm Stokes adapted the episode into a comic strip for issues 18 to 20 of Thunderbirds: The Comic. Later that year, the strip was re-published in the
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84442-454-2.
- ^ a b c d e La Rivière 2009, p. 125.
- ^ a b c La Rivière 2009, p. 124.
- ^ a b c Bentley 2008, p. 105.
- ^ S2CID 142878042.
- ^ a b c La Rivière 2009, p. 129.
- ISBN 978-1-842224-05-2.
- ^ Anderson, Sylvia. "Thunderbirds – Episode Guide". sylviaanderson.org.uk. Archived from the original on 3 May 2008. Retrieved 17 June 2010.
- ISBN 978-1-85685-011-7.
- ^ Olah, Nathalie (2 November 2013). "Being Lady Penelope: Thunderbirds Co-Creator Sylvia Anderson Looks Back on her Extraordinary Life". The Independent. London, UK: Independent Print. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-753-55635-1.
- OCLC 79615651.
- ^ Pennyspy (January–February 2011). "NTBS News Flash: Thunderbirds Episode Guide" (.pdf). tracyislandchronicles.com. p. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2011.
- ^ Bentley 2008, p. 349.
Works cited
- Bentley, Chris (2008) [2001]. The Complete Gerry Anderson: The Authorised Episode Guide (4th ed.). London, UK: Reynolds & Hearn. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-90528-774-1.
- ISBN 978-1-93256-323-8.
External links
- "30 Minutes After Noon" at IMDb