Terrahawks: 40th Anniversary

Terrahawks at 40

On 8th October 1983, Gerry Anderson returned to the world of filmmaking following a seven-year absence with Terrahawks, a SUPERMACROMATION series using an entirely new form of marionette created under the guidance of Anderson's new production company established, in collaboration with financial expert, Christopher Burr, to form AnderBurr Pictures for London Weekend Television. Set in the year 2020, the series follows the adventures of the Terrahawks, a taskforce responsible for protecting Earth from invasion by a group of extraterrestrial aliens led by Zelda. Made at a smaller budget in comparison to Gerry Anderson's most renowned puppet series of the 1960s, the series ran for two seasons across 39 action-packed episodes between 1983 to 1986. The series was shot at Bray studios, the home to the effects work produced for previous Anderson series Space: 1999, and the premise compiled a similar idea to that of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and UFO where Earth is under threat by hostile extraterrestrials were a global security organisation thwarts their actions. 

The lead character, Dr Tiger Ninestein, is a clone who if killed, can have a new clone released with the original brain patterns intact of the original Ninestein. Ninestein was killed by a booby trap in the third episode of the series, and a new clone was brought into action to command the Terrahawks for the remainder of the series. This effect was in fact lost during the original ITV transmission as the third episode Gold was held back as the final episode of the series. Dr. Ninestein therefore shares a degree of Captain Scarlet's indestructibility, and some of Zelda's powers had similarities to that of the Mysterons in which Zelda could control matter and create android duplicates of innocent humans. Whilst the series resembles Captain Scarlet, Terrahawks is arguably the most humourous of all the Anderson series, thriving on comedy more so than any other Anderson series since Supercar.

Terrahawks came close to securing an American network and producing another run of episodes. Although some old-school Anderson fans refused to forgive the series for not being some form of continuation of Space: 1999, the series has enjoyed a host of memrobillia since the series finished airing across the ITV regions in the late 1980s with video releases, DVDs, Blu Rays, comics, video games, soundtrack releases, books, toys, models, and graphic novels. The series even received a spin-off from Big Finish Productions in 2015 with members of the original cast returning to voice brand new stories continuing the adventures of the Terrahawks in their attempts to prevent Zelda from taking over the Earth. These adventures went on to receive critical acclaim, and a remake was planned by Anderson Entertainment, the owners of the series, in 2019 in collaboration with Tiny Giants to bring Terrahawks into the 21st century. Jamie Anderson himself has even revealed that his favourite series out of all of his father's creations was Terrahawks!

For the 40th Anniversary of the series, Anderson Entertainment had hoped to work with Network Distributing to rerelease the 1980s VHS compilations of the series on Blu Ray using the HD transfers created by Network. It was also planned that the remaining episodes that weren't turned into any compilation during the 1980s would have new movie edits made of them much in the style of the VHS compilations. Unfortunately, the demise of Network in June 2023 meant that these plans never came to fruition. However, Anderson Entertainment has re-edited these episodes into movie-style features, and has started to release them on YouTube to give us an indication of what these new edits would have looked like.

Happy 40th birthday to Terrahawks - 10-10!