The Best Of...Thunderbirds - Trapped in the Sky
Thunderbirds, still the best-remembered and most popular of all Gerry Anderson’s series, celebrates its sixtieth anniversary in September 2025. The first episode, “Trapped in the Sky,” had its official UK premiere on 30th September 1965 (although a Dutch-dubbed, monochrome version had the honour of being the series’ world premiere on the 15th). Thunderbirds ran for two series comprising 32 episodes, not to mention film and radio spin-offs, TV reboots and reworkings, yet this first episode is still considered by many to be the programme’s finest.
Thunderbirds was produced by AP Films (later Century 21 Productions), the fourth series to be filmed using Anderson’s special Supermarionation technique after Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray. Many consider the western Four Feather Falls to count as well, although this predated Supercar’s first use of the special credit “filmed in Supermarionation.” As with Fireball, Stingray and its own successor, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Thunderbirds was set a century after broadcast, beginning in the year 2065. From the off, the series showcased the incredible technology of the future, which became not only International Rescue’s strength, but also the crux of the villainous Hood’s plans.
“Trapped in the Sky,” written by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, is very much the first adventure of International Rescue, technically established at the outset but yet to engage in any official missions. It’s a baptism of fire for the team, sent into an incredibly dangerous situation with hundreds of lives on the line. Yet the crisis only exists because of IR and the Hoods’ desire for their technology. Beginning in the Hood’s hideout, an ancient Malaysian temple, from which he observes his half-brother Kyrano through their telepathic link. Kyrano happens to be the manservant to the Tracy family at their base on Tracy Island – a fortuitous turn of events for the Hood, or due to his own manipulations of Kyrano? He certainly has the power to do such a thing. Having learned of the operational existence of International Rescue through his link, the Hood tries to control him, causing him to faint, but not before he’s extracted as much information from him as possible.
The Hood is very much a product of the time. He's never actually called the Hood on screen, but we never get an actual name for him. He wields a vaguely defined magic in a world of high technology. Nebulously Asian in origin, he sports enormous eyebrows and an oversized skull. Very little is known about him. He's essentially a generic foreign villain who embodies the inscrutable Asian stereotype. On the other hand, his overarching goal – to steal IR's technology for his own profit – works just as well today. He goes about it in a strange way, though. Committing various terrorist attacks and engineering disasters to get IR to send out their vehicles, his aim is then to take photos of them. It does come across as a little silly now.
His plan here is a doozy, though. The episode sees the maiden flight of an incredible new hypersonic airliner, the Fireflash, a huge and powerful aircraft that can travel six times the speed of sound. It's believable in both its inventiveness and short-sightedness: theoretically, Fireflash can stay in the air for six months without refuelling thanks to its six atomic generators, but the engines' radiation shielding needs constant maintenance, otherwise the passengers and crew will be killed by radiation poisoning in a little over three hours. The Hood plants a bomb in the plane's landing gear. If it lands, it explodes; if it doesn't, everyone onboard dies from radiation exposure. To make it personal, Tin-Tin, Kyrano's daughter (and the Hood's niece) is one of the passengers.
After the very American pilots liaise with the terribly British Air Traffic Control, a rescue mission is attempted, in the first of the episodes thrilling action set pieces. It goes drastically wrong, as the courageous lieutenant who boards the Fireflash through a service hatch and tries to remove the bomb falls from the plane. Fortunately, up in orbit on Thunderbird 5, John Tracy is monitoring radio transmissions and picks up the exchanges between the pilots and ATC. He reports to his father Jeff, head of International Rescue back on Tracy Island, who immediately assigns Scott and Virgil Tracy in Thunderbird 1 and 2 respectively, IR's own hypersonic rocket plane and supersonic aircraft carrier in IR's first rescue mission.
It's an action-packed story, never letting up with the stakes rising all the time. As Virgil attempts to guide Fireflash into a gentle landing atop two elevator cars, IR's London-based ground agents, Lady Penelope and Parker, her loyal chauffer, chase the Hood down the M1 in FAB 1, their armed Rolls Royce. Naturally, the rescue is successful and while the Hood's scheme technically works, his precious photos are destroyed when FAB 1 blasts him off the road.
“Trapped in the Sky” establishes the voice cast that will last through the series, with Peter Dyneley as Jeff Tracy; David Graham as Gordon Tracy, Kyrano, Parker and Brains; David Holliday as Virgil; and Shame Rimmer as Scott. The only exception is Ray Barrett, who not only voices his regular roles of John Tracy and the Hood, but also Alan Tracy, who would be voiced in all later episodes by Matt Zimmerman. Sylvia Anderson voices Lady Penelope, a character she created and that was physically based on her. Sylvia wanted a strong, more vital female character than the mere pretty faces of earlier ATF productions. Penelope fulfilled this role; Tin-Tin, voiced by Christine Finn, was also intended to but was used far less.
Gerry Anderson famously told two stories from his RAF days that had inspired the plot of the episode. While stationed at RAF Manston in Kent, he witnessed a DH.98 Mosquito plane crash during an airshow, killing twenty people. A few months later, a damaged Spitfire managed a safe emergency landing at the base.
“Trapped in the Sky” is a great example of what Thunderbirds could do. The model and effects work is exceptional throughout, with effects director David Meddings coming up with creative solutions to limited resources (in spite of the remarkably high budget of the pilot episode). He created a “rolling road” technique to give the illusion of an expansive runway in the small studio, while an error during filming that sent one of the elevator cars into a crash looked so impressive on film that he convinced the Andersons to write it into the script.
A well-known story has it that Lew Grade, APF's owner and the programme’s financial backer, was so impressed with the episode that he demanded it be rewritten and expanded from 25 minutes to fifty, long enough to support an hour's programming with advert breaks. This has been contested, however, with some records suggesting that the pilot, at least, was always intended to go out in the longer format. In any case, it appears that Grade was sufficiently impressed by the pilot that he increased the budget from £25k to £38k per episode.
As well as being repeated several times on both ITV and, later, BBC2, “Trapped in the Sky” has been adapted numerous times over the years, including as the audioplay Thunderbird 1 released originally as a gramophone record; edited into the direct-to-video film Thunderbirds to the Rescue along with later episode “Operation Crash-Drive;” hacked to pieces and redubbed twice in the 1990s, for the FOX Kids Thunderbirds series and its follow-up, Turbocharged Thunderbirds; and remade for Thunderbirds Are Go! series in 2015, under the title “Fireflash.”
“Trapped in the Sky” set the tone, style and ambition of Thunderbirds from the outset, remaining one its most fondly remembered episodes.
Published on September 19th, 2025. Written by Daniel Tessier for Television Heaven.
