In December 1968, Lew Grade and Anderson arranged a test screening for the pilot episode of the series (A Case For The BISHOP). At this point, ten episodes had been filmed and three more were ready to shoot. And as soon as Stanley Unwin began to speak his gobbledygook," "Cut! Cut! Cut! Stop! Put the lights up! cried out Lew Grade, leaping to his feet. Gerry Anderson was startled by this outburst, just as he had been by Lew's reaction to four years before. However, this time Lew's response was vastly different, as Gerry explains: "Cancel the show, Gerry. Just finish off the first thirteen.' I said, 'Why?' and he said, 'They'll never understand (Father Unwin) in America!' I said, 'But, Lew, that's the whole point, they're not supposed to understand.' He said, 'No, no, no, no'". With thirteen episodes enough to make it saleable to television networks, the three episodes ready to film were the last episodes of the series. The show had been cancelled.
It could be possible that Lew Grade didn't like other aspects of the show, and the Unwinese was the final straw. Grade should have known that Unwin was a big figure in the series and that of his Unwinese - which was one major factor of the series. It is highly unlikely that he just stopped it just for a simple mumble. "I chose Stanley Unwin", said Anderson "Because you are not supposed to understand Stanley Unwin, even if you're British. I thought if the Americans don't understand him either, what's the difference?". Anderson was not made any happier when Grade told him to make a new live-action series, as Doppleganger showed that he could produce live-action just as well, if not better, as puppets."I started to think: 'It's amazing! They speak! Their mouths are in synch with their words! And they can walk! And they can pick up things!'"
Anderson had always wanted to move into live-action anyway, but that meant removing all the puppet stages and marionettes and building more visual effects stages for his next production, UFO. This would make every puppeteer redundant, including those who worked with Anderson for many years. Puppeteer Rowena White remembers, "It was very sad when it all packed up. If found recently in an old diary for that day, "Last day. All had champagne...Cried". And that sums it up, I suppose". Once production finished on 24th January 1969, that was it. The puppets were deemed worthless and destroyed, bar what the production team could save. The series continued post-production over the course of the following months for transmission in late 1969. The Secret Service had been cancelled, that was then it for the series. The days of SUPERMARIONATION were finally over...
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The Secret Service: The Vault
Non-FictionThe Secret Service was a 1960s British children's TV series created by Gerry Anderson and the team of Century 21 studios in Slough, from the makers of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Space: 1999. This was the final of his television series to feat...
