Bring The Magic Home!: The Story Of ITC's Carlton Video Home Entertainment

7 - Stand By For Action!

After the success of the Thunderbirds revival in 2000, Carlton would next release Stingray on video and DVD. A wise choice indeed, Stingray was so very close to what Thunderbirds became, just that with Thunderbirds everything was refined perfectly, resulting in flawless perfection. Even still with Stingray, the technical detail is also incredible, and back in the 1960s, the series reached heights of merchandising like never seen before other than Walt Disney. I always found Stingray as the closest Anderson series to Thunderbirds because it had the same proportionate heads, much music in Stingray can be heard in Thunderbirds, and technically (as I've already said), is that inch away as to what Thunderbirds had. The first children's series to be made entirely in colour, Stingray would begin to air in the new digitally remastered format that Thunderbirds had previously had on BBC2 on Tuesday 17th April 2001 at 6PM with a double bill of the first two episodes.

The series would continue to have repeat runs on the BBC up to 2004, and the order would usually run in the original production order - as the videos and DVDs would. Aside from these forms of merchandise, Stingray would not quite feature so much merchandise from Carlton accompanying the BBC repeats, and especially in comparison to Thunderbirds. One notable piece of merchandise from Carlton was the now very rare Vivid Imaginations toy of the WASP submarine. Included was a small figure of Troy Tempest that could be placed inside the highly detailed craft, and could fire Sting missiles. By February 2001, it had been confirmed that Stingray would be released on video and DVD, which could be pre-ordered for a release date of 2nd April. This included nine videos, and five DVDs comprising all 39 action-packed episodes, as well as a complete VHS and DVD box set. The covers featured a swirling background (with different colours per release), and an explosion in the centre featuring a Stingray character, "Digitally remastered" and "The all colour SUPERMARIONATION underwater adventure from the creator of Thunderbirds". The cover for the complete VHS/DVD set included a picture of Troy, Marina, Phones, and Atlanta with a purple background and an explosion in the centre.

The logo was coloured green and featured explosions around the "Stingray", combined with the WASP vessel. The individual VHS releases (containing four or five episodes) was £9.99, and the DVDs (containing seven or nine episodes) was £15.99 each, all presented in a mono soundtrack. For the spine of the DVDs in the complete set, the covers would form to complete the image of Stingray. All the videos contained the Bring The Magic Home promo like the Thunderbirds videos;

The discs would feature the same whirlpool-like cover of the front of the DVD package, and keep the same colours of the whirlpool effect on the discs. The back of the covers had improved to previous releases as now more can be interlinked more creatively as opposed to standard white boxes with black writing. For example, the extras list now has a background of an explosion and colours depending on different volumes. The leaflets inside the DVDs once again had the cover of the front of the DVD, with inside were chapter points, whilst the back featured promotion for other Stingray DVDs, the complete box set, and the Thunderbirds videos and DVDs. The discs began with the warning and Carlton Video logo, before cutting to a section of the opening titles as Commander Shore declared "Marineville, I'm calling Battlestations - anything can happen in the next half hour!". We were then presented with the controls of a CGI Stingray, and zoomed in onto a monitor to reveal the episode list;

The special features on the discs, which are an improvement from the previous extras like on the Thunderbirds ones, is as follows (aside from the subtitles and interactive menus) - note that some discs are more sparse because they contain more episodes on the disc;

1 - TV21 Audio Adventure - Into Action With Troy Tempest, Factfile - TV21 Audio Albums, Character Bios, Gerry Anderson Commentary - Stingray

2 - TV21 Audio Adventure - Marina Speaks, Factfile - TV21 comics, Des O'Conner sketch, Ad Bumpers, French End Credits

3 - TV21 Audio Adventure - A Trip To Marineville, Factfile - Stingray merchandise, TV ad, Gerry Anderson commentary - Stand By For Action, unseen footage

4 - Original ITC Publicity

5 - Still galleries

The special features menu have the background of a shot of Stingray from Rescue From The Skies, accompanied by a mix of aqua blue to give the impression Stingray is an underwater series. The unseen footage had recently been rediscovered in late 2000. This was linking footage for the abandoned clip show for a Stingray feature-length presentation - written and directed by Alan Pattillo. This comprised the episodes Stingray, An Echo Of Danger, Raptures Of The Deep, and Emergency Marineville. The footage would later be completed as "The Reunion Party" by BBC Wales and Granada International, and included those episodes, bar Raptures Of The Deep to comprise a twenty nine-minute feature for BBC4's "Gerry Anderson Night" Wednesday 2nd January 2008. 

The history behind the discovery of this footage is as follows. In December 2000, television historian Jaz Wiseman was searching a film vault in London for material that could possibly be included on Carlton Video's then-upcoming DVD release of Stingray. The archive's computer records on the series produced a mysterious search result; a film reel simply named Stingray – Japanese Linking Material. Running just over four minutes long, the footage featured Commander Shore in his apartment playing films of four Stingray missions (i.e. old episodes) to his friend Admiral Denver; the pilot episode, An Echo of Danger, Raptures of the Deep, and Emergency Marineville. Featuring the original voice cast of Don Mason, Robert Easton, Lois Maxwell, Ray Barrett and David Graham, and written and directed by Alan Pattillo, the material had apparently been shot in June 1964 for a compilation film intended to be shown to Japanese television executives during a visit to the AP Films studio to help encourage them to purchase the series. Seemingly never completed, the footage had instead been shelved until its rediscovery over thirty years later. The material was found just in time to be included on the UK Stingray DVD release in 2001 (albeit too late to include any explanation of what it actually was) and the news of its discovery was first broken publicly in issue 41 of the Fanderson magazine FAB. This therefore created a fortieth episode of Stingray, even if it is another episode of a clip show. The Reunion Party was first released officially on the Stingray Blu Ray set from Network.

The TV ad was a feature of one of the four ads for Thunderbirds (that also featured Stingray in it). Anderson in his commentaries described how the series was made, such as the effect of filming models behind a tank of water with fish in it. The TV21 albums make their first debut onto a Carlton release, absent from the Thunderbirds releases (maybe because there wasn't enough disc space to fit them on, even if it's only the 3 new original stories that were turned into Thunderbirds 1965). Also in 2002, a DVD ROM of the first two episodes was released. It wouldn't be until August 2002 when the series will be available on DVD from A&E, so sometime after the UK releases.

Aside from the other various releases that combined other ITC series, Stingray was the second of Gerry Anderson's series to be fully available by Carlton, and the third ITC series as well to be entirely available to purchase on VHS and DVD. The next ITC/Gerry Anderson series to be released was already, at least partially, available in the US. And they would be the occupants of Moonbase Alpha...