Although The Secret Service had been cancelled, there was still much to be proud of for the Century 21 team. The outstanding development of the SUPERMATIONATION technique over ten years shows how the team has continued to refine and develop their methods further to the standards of The Secret Service. These weren't just horrible hand-knitted and painted puppets you see on cheap children's TV shows, these were highly detailed puppets with great detailed expressions on their faces.
Right from The Adventures Of Twizzle, the puppet team would develop the heads and bodies with more correctly proportioned and more realistic puppets in general. This trend would continue up until the mid-1960s when by Fireball XL5 the puppets now looked generally much more realistic than those seen in Twizzle. For Stingray, the series was now shooting in colour and meant that even more detail would have to be put into the look of the puppets. The good thing about the bigger puppets is that, although the heads weren't correctly proportioned with the rest of the body. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons would see more realistic puppets where the mechanism to operate the mouth of the puppet would be located in the chest and not the mouth, the wire would travel up the neck of the puppet and up to the mouth. With the second Thunderbirds feature film, the puppets were halfway between the original big-headed heads of the original series along with the newly proportioned heads. For the new puppets on Joe 90, the heads are in fact slightly bigger than the revamp puppets from Captain Scarlet, a major problem with the new puppets is that they lacked character and expressions to their faces because they were much smaller to make. This would continue into The Secret Service, but this time the series would combine live action in some shots with puppets.
However, this method for the test of time. Gerry Anderson would return to puppets briefly in The Investigator (1973). This also, like The Secret Service, combined live-action shots with the John and Julie puppets in other shots as miniatures, having much in comparison with the final SUPERMATIONATION series in terms of concept and production techniques. For Anderson's 1983 series Terrahawks, a new puppet technique was used instead of the string attachments, instead of using latex hand puppets (SUPERMACROMATION). Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet (2005) featured the caption "HYPERMARIONATION" involving a method of not just CGI, just also surround sound and high definition. SUPERMARIONATION would return in 2014 for the documentary Filmed In SUPERMARIONATION, a Stephen La Rivière production featuring the journey of the puppet technique hosted by Lady Penelope, Parker, Brains and Scott Tracy in puppet form. This was used once again for Thunderbirds' 50th Anniversary when Kickstarter produced three new episodes with the original Century 21 soundtracks of the 1960s. Another Kickstarter production Firestorm uses a technique named" ULTRAMARIONATION" which uses rod puppetry to allow more life-like movements, planned originally for a new series of Thunderbirds in 2003 which ultimately came to nothing.
This technique has been used outside the world of SUPERMARIONATION, the remainder of Roberta Leigh's shows involved a similar puppet technique, most notably Space Patrol. Many Japanese shows feature a similar puppet technique including Galaxy Boy Troop and X-Bomber (where the crew dubbed this calling it "SUPERMARIORAMA"). Super Adventure Team and Team America: World Police are both American shows with the puppet style of Thunderbirds.
However, The Secret Service ends the incredible work fulfilled by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and marks a key turning point in puppetry technique and the works of the husband and wife team of Century 21.
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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...
