Terrahawks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Terrahawks | |
|---|---|
 North American DVD release of the series. |
|
| Genre | Supermarionation Science Fiction Adventure |
| Creator(s) | Gerry Anderson Christopher Burr |
| Starring | Jeremy Hitchen Anne Ridler Denise Bryer Ben Stevens Windsor Davies |
| Country of origin |  United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 39 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 25 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | LWT |
| Original run | October 3, 1983 – July 24, 1984 |
| Links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Terrahawks is a puppet based television series created by Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr. It ran for two series during 1983 and 1984 comprising a total of 39 25-minute episodes.
Contents |
[edit] Background
Gerry Anderson was best known for his Supermarionation TV series of the 1960s, which made use of electronically augmented marionettes. Terrahawks was his first puppet series since The Secret Service in 1969, and used latex muppet-style hand puppets to animate the characters, in a process Anderson dubbed Supermacromation. The absence of strings allowed for much smoother movement of the puppets, making the illusion of them walking, which had been a source of frustration to Anderson during his Supermarionation series', more realistic.
[edit] Premise
The series is set in the year 2020, after an alien force has destroyed NASA's Mars base and Earth is under threat. A small organisation, The Terrahawks, is set up to defend the planet. From Hawknest, their secret base in South America, they develop sophisticated weapons to prepare for the battles to come.
Terrahawks was less straight-faced than any of Anderson's previous series, featuring a wry, tongue-in-cheek humour as well as dramatic jeopardy. The series premise has many similarities with Anderson's previous series' Thunderbirds and, to a lesser extent, Captain Scarlet.
[edit] The Terrahawks
The Terrahawks are an elite task force that protect Earth from alien invasion.
- Doctor "Tiger" Ninestein: The team's leader, so named as he is the ninth clone created by Dr. Stein. Somewhat bloodthirsty, his first reaction to alien contact is often to blast it out of the sky. In between alien attacks, he's often seen trying (and failing) to beat the high score on his favourite video-game, although his expertise at playing it saves him and Hiro from destruction in "Space Samurai". Ninestein's catchphrase is, "I have a theory..."
- Captain Mary Falconer: The pilot of the Battlehawk, she often acts as Ninestein's better half, weighing his offensive tendencies with her own regard for the value of life whether in regards to one of Zelda's henchmen or the Zeroids.
- Captain Kate Kestrel: The pilot of the Hawkwing fighter aircraft, Kate is also an internationally famous pop singer.
- Lieutenant Hawkeye: The Hawkwing's gunner. His eyes are fitted with mini-computers that enhance his targeting abilities.
- Lieutenant Hiro: The commander of the Spacehawk, Hiro keeps a large collection of flowers to which he gives names and reads poetry. His thick Japanese accent is sometimes a source of humour.
- Zeroids: Spherical robots that perform ground operations and serve as the firepower for the Spacehawk. There are two leaders among the Zeroids who exhibit human-like capacity for thought and emotion (much to Ninestein's annoyance); Sergeant Major Zero (voiced by Windsor Davies), commands the Zeroids stationed on Earth, while Space Sergeant 101 directs the Zeroids stationed aboard Spacehawk. Other Zeroids are given distinct personality traits of their own, such as Dix-huit (French for the number eighteen), who speaks French and has a handlebar moustache, and 55, who bobs up and down in rhyme. They can increase their mass (becoming as heavy as a black hole), which allows them to perform devastating body-crash manoeuvres. This is often accompanied by a cry of "Stroll on!"
[edit] Vehicles
[edit] Terrahawks vehicles
- The Battlehawk - A heavy-duty carrier aircraft which transports the Zeroids, the Megazoid-manned Battletank for heavy support, and other auxiliary equipment. The Battlehawk is hangered directly below the Hawknest mansion; the building opens out to allow the Battlehawk to launch and land.
- The Terrahawk - A flying command centre which can detach from the main body of the Battlehawk.
- The Hawkwing - A fighter aircraft with a separate over-wing which can be released to act as a flying impact bomb. The Hawkwing launches along a narrow tunnel which leads under the ocean. An mechanically-generated vortex pushes the water away from the tunnel exit allowing the aircraft to leave.
- The Treehawk - A single-stage-to-orbit spaceship which transports personnel to the Spacehawk. The Treehawk is so named because the exit to its launch pad is disguised as a tree, which opens out to allow the craft to leave.
- The Spacehawk - An orbital battle station, that provides the first line of defence against an attack. It is armed with several batteries of Zeriods.
[edit] Other vehicles
- Hudson - (Heuristic Universal Driver with Sensory and Orbital Navigation) Dr Ninestein's personal car (although Kate actually seems to get the most use out of it), Hudson is a heavily modified Rolls-Royce which possesses artificial intelligence and is equipped with active camouflage.
- The Battletank - a large tank manned by two Megazoids (large Zeroids) who are apparently built into the structure of the vehicle. The Battletank is transported aboard the Battlehawk and has a flip-up rollbar which allows it to be quickly airlifted out of battlezones.
- Space Tank - A large, powerful tank-like vehicle the Terrahawks had built to use in their sneak attack on Zelda's home base. It is ostensibly based on the technology used in the Overlander supply vehicle.
- The Groundhawk - A ground vehicle used by the Terrahawks to investigate a bomb in "Child's Play". As it only appears in this episode, little is known about it. It resembles a construction vehicle and has a variety of sensor equipment.
[edit] Aliens
The aliens are in fact androids from the planet Guk, who rebelled against their creators. They are modelled after the oldest and wisest citizens of their planet, explaining their grey hair and wrinkled skin.
- Zelda: The main villain of the series, Zelda is the wicked and scheming would-be conqueror of Earth. She has power over matter, allowing her to enlarge or reduce the size of her spaceships, or to teleport her servants to and from Earth ("Zelda reclaims her own", was frequently said when Zelda teleported a defeated minion back to the Mars base).
- Cy-star: (pronounced "Si-ster") Zelda's "sister" is not very bright, but is endlessly bubbly and optimistic.
- Yung-star: Zelda's "son", Yung-star is, like his "aunt," not very intelligent (he mistakes the term "nincompoop" for a compliment), but he's also cowardly, lazy and greedy, although he is occasionally sent to accompany a monster.
- It-star: Also known as "Goybirl", It-star is a "baby" android mothered by Cy-star near the end of the series. It-star is a hermaphrodite with two minds and voices, a young girl's voice when "innocent", and a male voice with a German accent when plotting.
- Cubes: The aliens' answer to the Zeroids. They can combine into large constructs such as guns and force field cubicles. Cy-star keeps one, Pluto, as a pet.
[edit] Alien vehicles
Zelda commands a fleet of large ships that combine into her headquarters on Mars, which are used for large-scale attacks. Most of the time, she sends her minions out in fighter ships called ZEAFs (Zelda Earth Atmospheric Fighter). It is not entirely clear who usually pilots the ZEAFs; in some episodes Yung-star or the monsters are shown to pilot them, but in most instances the pilots are simply never shown.
[edit] Zelda's monsters
Zelda possesses a collection of monstrous servants, kept in cryogenic storage until needed.
- Sram: A reptilian beast with a devastating roar, capable of shattering mountains and destroying Hawkwing's shots before they can get close enough to hit him. His blood gives off fumes that are highly toxic to human beings. Sram appears in "Thunder-Roar," "Thunder Path," as Zelda's drummer in "Play it Again, Sram", a member of Zelda's war party in "First Strike", and a hallucination of him is seen in "Mind Monster".
- Sporilla: A savagely powerful beast that Zelda controls with a signalling device. After the device is destroyed, however, the Terrahawks find that the Sporilla is capable of halting speech and has no desire to fight them. Appears in "The Sporilla". In "Space Giant", Zelda smuggles another Sporilla to Earth, and uses her powers to make it grow into a giant.
- MOID: The Master Of Infinite Disguise. "I wear many faces, but have none of my own", he once said to describe himself. The Terrahawks seem to find him pitiable, and he seems to regret living a life of servitude to Zelda. Appears in "Happy Madeday", "Unseen Menace", briefly in "Play it Again, Sram" as Mozart, and a hallucination of him is seen in "Mind Monster".
- Yuri: A teddy bear-like creature the aliens find hideous and frightening. He possesses the power to mentally control metal. Zelda sometimes refers to him as "the furry Napoleon". He appears in "The Ugliest Monster of All", "Operation SAS", "Terratomb", and as a member of Zelda's war party in "First Strike".
- Lord Tempo: The master of time, Tempo can travel back and forth in time at will, and alter its flow locally. Lord Tempo appears in "My Kingdom for a ZEAF", "Time Warp", and as a member of Zelda's war party in "First Strike".
- Krell: The Krell is a hairy creature with an eyestalk that can fire a laser beam powerful enough to shoot down objects in orbit. It appears only in "The Midas Touch".
- Cyclops: A black and red crawling creature with one giant eye. The cyclops absorbs metal. It appears only in "Space Cyclops".
- Captain Goat: A space buccaneer who captained a pirate radio ship. He appears in "Jolly Roger One".
- Cold Finger: An alien who is an expert at weaponising water and ice. His entire ship was made of ice.
[edit] Episode list
[edit] Title sequence and end credits
The opening and closing sequences were created using hand-drawn cel animation to imitate computer graphics. The opening titles began with a space invaders-style computer game which is interrupted by Ninestein who declares an emergency. The remainder of the sequence features the key Terrahawks craft and their respective pilots. During the end credits, the Zeroid and Cube robots would often "play" noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) with each other, resulting in a different winner each week (the Cubes usually had to cheat and steal a Zeroid's position in order to win). The exception to this was the episode "A Christmas Miracle", which featured the song "I Believe in Christmas" as sung by Kate Kestrel played over a still of a Zeroid.
The original opening title sequence was used for both the United States and the UK versions of the series, but a different version of the end credits was produced for the US variant, featuring a Zeroid bouncing up and down next to one of Zelda's Cubes as a "Kate Kestrel" song plays. At the credit's conclusion, the Zeroid jumps off of the screen and crashes back down onto the Cube.
When the series was purchased for airing in Japan, the title and ending credits were replaced by an all-new anime-style sequence, the first highlighting the Terrahawks craft and the Zeroids, and the ending credits showcasing a lonesome spacesuited female remembering her life on Earth as Spacehawk flies over her. Despite the ending credits not making a lick of sense, these sequences were one of the most highly sought after of any Gerry Anderson production. They are now available to view on YouTube.
[edit] Trivia
- The series' most prolific contributor, Tony Barwick constantly used different, tongue in cheek aliases whenever he wrote a different episode, calling himself, for instance, "Ann Teakstien", and "Felix Catstien"
- A fourth season would have developed the characters of Stew Dapples and Kate Kestrel further. This was explained on the documentary on the special features disc of the series, in the Gerry Anderson book "Supermarionation" and the Terrahawks DVDs, two of the scripts were called "101 Seed" (a parody of the title "Number One Seed"), written by Anderson himself, and "Attempted Moider" by Tony Barwick.
- Kate Kestrel works at "Anderburr Records," a portmanteau of "Anderson" and "Burr."
- In the UK, six specially-prepared compilations of Terrahawks were released on video cassette, covering 24 out of 26 episodes from the first season. The first tape actually contained a few scenes in the premiere episode that had been edited out of the broadcast master due to time constraints (those scenes are not on DVD). The final volume, entitled "Zero's Finest Hour" had a smaller print run than the rest of the tapes, and was quite a collectors' item, with copies generally going for around £100 on eBay until the series began to be released on DVD.
- Unlike virtually all of Gerry Anderson's other puppet-based series, Terrahawks was not produced by ITC Entertainment. This meant that after Terrahawks repeats disappeared from UK airwaves in the late 1980s and the six compilation video tapes went out of production, the series was noticeably hard to find compared to Anderson's other series, most of which received a renaissance throughout the 1990s.
- In the episode "Play it Again, Sram," Kate sings a song called "SOS Mr. Tracy" that makes numerous references to Thunderbirds.
- The series is available on DVD in the United Kingdom and North America.
- The Dutch pirate radio station Radio Monique used a 2-minute custom edit of the Terrahawks theme tune as its signature music (1984 - 1987).[1].
[edit] External links
- The Terrahawks Cyber Pages
- Terrahawks.org.uk
- Terrahawks at the Internet Movie Database
- Terrahawks at TV.com
| Gerry Anderson |
|---|
| Television |
| The Adventures of Twizzle | Torchy the Battery Boy | Four Feather Falls | Supercar | Fireball XL5 | Stingray | Thunderbirds | Captain Scarlet | Joe 90 | The Secret Service | UFO | The Protectors | Space: 1999 | Terrahawks | Dick Spanner, P.I. | Space Precinct | Lavender Castle | New Captain Scarlet |
| Feature Films |
| Crossroads to Crime | Thunderbirds Are GO | Thunderbird 6 | Doppelgänger |
| Companies/Techniques |
| AP Films | Century 21 Productions | Supermarionation |
| Notable Collaborators |
| Sylvia Anderson | David Lane | Barry Gray | Reg Hill | Derek Meddings | John Read | Shane Rimmer |
