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

14 - Jumping space fish!

Fireball XL5 was the last Gerry Anderson ITC series to be released under the Carlton Video banner. Various pieces of merchandise were released, including the schematic of Fireball in the SUPERMARIONATION cross-sections book from 2001, and the Konami model of Fireball. Gloriously remastered once again, the series was first released in the US before the UK in March 2003 for $99.95. Extras include stills gallery, a Gerry Anderson bio, a commentary by David Graham on The Doomed Planet, Alan Pattillo recorded a commentary for Space City Special, and The Noble Art of Fireball XL5 is a short but enjoyable featurette about the comic-strip version of the show that was featured in the magazine TV21. Made by and for comics fans, the featurette focuses upon the work of illustrator Mike Noble, who is seen as the definitive Fireball XL5 artist. Noble discusses his beginning as an illustrator and his work on the Fireball XL5 comic, going into great detail about the process of comic illustration.

An entire series box set was released on 20th October 2003 for £39.99. Each disc contained eight episodes, bar disc 5 contained only seven episodes. Available in mono sound only, the synopsis followed as "Set in the 2060s, Gerry Anderson's Fireball XL5 charts the interplanetary adventures of a spacecraft and its crew, handsome blonde pilot Steve Zodiac, the glamorous blonde space doctor Venus, maths genius Matthew "Matt" Mattic, and Robert the Robot. Their mission is to patrol sector 25 of the universe, beyond the solar system". Rated a U, the DVDs, naturally, contained subtitles but no extra features whatsoever! The menus were designed by Robin and Pauline Day, and feature CGI of the Earth (as the one seen on the DVD cover), Fireball Junior, and you could select other episodes on the scene access menu. The front cover of the DVD features the still of Fireball blasting out from a planet and with pictures of the characters. "All original 39 episodes in black and white. Over 16 hours". It seems such a shame that Fireball XL5 wasn't so well treated by Carlton as the other ITC series for its DVD release. Stills galleries, original TV ads, character bios, facts and schematics and memorabilia would have been nice to have been released. This may have been because Carlton was about to merge into a new company and meant a re-release of many products. And because this was around the corner from the Fireball XL5 release, maybe it was felt that it wasn't worth doing. Shame.