Gerry Anderson on the BBC

Although Gerry Anderson's numerous sci-fi television series -- including the filmed in Supermarionation Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Joe 90 -- are closely associated with ITV, there are several generations of viewers who were introduced to them when the BBC repeated them in the 1990s, and again in the 2000s. That, however, is not quite the full story.

Some years before they would get the rights to the original material, beginning in January 1986 the BBC aired as part of its children's programming Thunderbirds 2086 -- the English dub of a 1982 anime series loosely based on the original series (the Japanese title translates to Scientific Rescue Team Techno Voyager, if you're curious) with no involvement whatsoever from Gerry or Sylvia Anderson. If you compare the BBC airings to the list of episodes given on Wikipedia, the BBC's airings were wildly out of order for whatever reason, and they initially showed 13 episodes (24 were produced, but only 18 of those were ever aired). The series was later aired again as part of Going Live! in early 1988.

Jump forward to late 1990, and Radio 5 (which was not yet Radio 5 Live -- thanks to Jeff Bartrop for the correction) airs several of the "mini-albums" previously released in the 1960s; these were originally released as 7-inch vinyl records, hence the name, and were mostly audio adaptations of the TV episodes with narration from the original cast members (the Radio 5 Live broadcasts had a few changes, presumably to bring them in line with broadcast requirements). It was the success of these that prompted the BBC to secure the rights to the original television show, which made its debut on BBC Two at 6pm on Friday the 20th of September 1991. The broadcast order for this initial run is as follows:

1. "Trapped in the Sky" - 20/09/91

2. "Pit of Peril" - 27/09/91

3. "City of Fire" - 04/10/91

4. "Sun Probe" - 11/10/91

5. "The Uninvited" - 18/10/91

6. "The Mighty Atom" - 25/10/91

7. "Vault of Death" - 01/11/91

8. "Operation Crash Dive" - 08/11/91

9. "The Perils of Penelope" - 15/11/91

10. "Terror in New York City" - 22/11/91 [Billed in the Radio Times with the immortal listing "An attempt to move the Empire State Building hits trouble."]

11. "Edge of Impact" - 29/11/91

12. "Day of Disaster" - 06/12/91

13. "30 Minutes After Noon" - 13/12/91

14. "Give or Take a Million" - 20/12/91 [Brought forward because of the Christmas theme, one presumes]

15. "Desperate Intruder" - 03/01/92

16. "End of the Road" - 10/01/92

17. "The Impostors" - 17/01/92

18. "The Man From MI.5" - 24/01/92

19. "Cry Wolf" - 31/01/92

20. "Danger at Ocean Deep" - 07/02/92

21. "Move -- and You're Dead" - 28/02/92

22. "The Duchess Assignment" - 06/03/92

23. "Brink of Disaster" - 13/03/92

24. "Attack of the Alligators!" - 20/03/92

25. "Martian Invasion" - 27/03/92

26. "The Cham-Cham" - 03/04/92

27. "Security Hazard" - 10/04/92

28. "Atlantic Inferno" - 17/04/92

29. "Path of Destruction" - 24/04/92

30. "Alias Mr. Hackenbacker" - 01/05/92

31. "Lord Parker's 'Oliday" - 08/05/92

32. "Ricochet" - 15/05/92

As with many other series at the time of original broadcast, Thunderbirds was meant to be shown in one order, but due to various production reasons was broadcast in a different one; ITC regard the production order as the 'official' one, and the BBC's airings hew closer to that, but apart from "Give or Take a Million" being moved forward to be shown around Christmas time, after showing the first eight episodes 'correctly', it then skips over "Move -- and You're Dead", "Martian Invasion" and "Brink of Disaster", showing them later in the run instead. Things then mostly get back on track, so it's possible (if not likely) those episodes were moved for some current-events related reason. The repeats were enormously successful, regularly attracting over 6 million viewers and prompting a range of new merchandise including novelisations, reprints of the comic strips that originally appeared in TV Century 21 in the sixties, action figures and playsets.

Following this successful original run, in 1992, as part of schools television, we get a real curiosity -- repeats dubbed in French, with another immortal Radio Times listing, and with "The Man From MI.5" shown split into 5-minute chunks. Later daytime repeats seem to be in English, but in 1993 a serialised repeat of "The Perils of Penelope" is dubbed into Hindi, again as part of schools programming.

On 7 January 1993, the infamous edition of Blue Peter with a make-it-yourself Tracy Island playset goes out; the BBC received so many requests as to the instructions (the real playset being sold out everywhere) that one month later a dedicated 15-minute programme showing how the thing was made is aired. You could also send away for an instruction sheet (which received over 100,000 requests), and the programme was released on VHS. Those repeats really were very popular.

Tracy Island: The Pangaea Years

The enormous success of the Thunderbirds repeats inspired the BBC to secure the rights to its Supermarionated stablemates; Thunderbirds itself was repeated several times, including in digitally remastered quality in 2000 on Sunday tea-times (later Tuesday tea-times, with an afternoon repeat on Saturdays). This time around the broadcast order appears to closely match ITC's official order (apart from "Attack of the Alligators!" appearing where "Brink of Disaster" should be, and "Give or Take a Million" again being moved to coincide with Christmas), further suggesting the moving around of episodes in the 1992 run was due to current events. The show continued to be regularly repeated on the BBC until the end of 2008 (the show even being the subject of a theme night on BBC Four in January 2008), with a 2003 repeat run being the first time the series was shown in the completely 'correct' order, with no pesky real life events or holidays to get in the way.

Anyway, the BBC rapidly secured the rights to Stingray, which launched in the same 6pm Friday slot in September 1992, only a few months after the original run of Thunderbirds. Again, the BBC follow production order, although it appears they only show 29 of the 39 produced episodes, stopping after "Titan Goes Pop". The run resumes at midday on Sundays later in 1993, although the Genome doesn't indicate whether these were repeats or the outstanding episodes (although this run lasts exactly 10 weeks, strongly suggesting it was the latter). Stingray doesn't seem to make quite the same impact with a new generation as Thunderbirds, getting repeated at 7.30am as part of CBBC in 1996, although it does get another primetime outing for its digital remasters in 2001 (albeit one that eventually shifts backwards into daytime), and another daytime run in 2003.

If you remember that BBC Four theme night we were talking about a paragraph ago, you may have noticed the "new" Stingray episode that was a part of it -- the original clip show finale, "Aquanaut of the Year", includes elements of the format of This Is Your Life, but during production there was a time where it seemed the rights weren't going to be agreed, and work began on an alternative framing device for the clip show... which was abandoned when it turned out the rights for This Is Your Life would be available after all. This framing device was rediscovered in late 2000, and had already featured on several DVD releases before the BBC broadcast it as a "new" episode in 2008.

In late 1993, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons entered the Friday at 6pm slot, and completed its entire run without a break or episodes moving about, save for one curiosity: the dramatic but ultimately all-just-a-dream "Attack on Cloudbase" served as the series finale in May 1994, and then when the first repeat run began a few months later the clip show finale "The Inquisition" kicked it off. "Attack" also appears to have been omitted from that first repeat run, but was intact again for a later repeat run in 2002. There was one final daytime repeat run in 2003. At the same time as the initial launch, there was also a documentary exploring the phenomenon of the Supermarionation shows and their recent revival on Radio 1. The Scarlet repeats were also successful and prompted a wave of new merchandise similar to that of Thunderbirds, including cassette re-releases of the narrated soundtracks from the 60s, action figures, diecast Spectrum vehicles, a 14-issue magazine from Fleetway and a huge number of books, including two annuals for 1993 and 1994 and graphic novels which featured more reprints of the TV21 comics.

Joe 90 was screened by the BBC in early 1994, but perhaps because it was so expressly aimed at a younger audience, it only ever did so in the early morning as part of CBBC, with each episode airing no more than twice and finishing by early 1997.

Moving beyond Supermarionation, Space Precinct, which had premiered on Sky One in late 1994, also made its terrestrial debut on BBC Two in September 1995, and received a repeat run a year later. An episode of Space: 1999 was shown late-night on BBC One as part of a sci-fi season in 1994; a full run wouldn't follow until BBC Two did so in 1998, bouncing around different days and times but seemingly managing to show everything. Its predecessor-slash-Captain-Scarlet-spiritual-successor UFO was shown in 1996, but only 16 of the 26 episodes were ever aired by the BBC before they stopped in January 1997; the run finally picks up where it left off over two years later! And on that enigmatic note, we come to an end; no further Anderson series were screened by the BBC. (Although there is, of course, The Day After Tomorrow, the first Anderson work to premiere on the BBC.)