Fireball XL5: The Vault

9 - Puppetry/Space Monster

Anderson was desperate to make the puppets as realistic and convincing as possible. This was a great challenge to the puppeteering team not only to create humans accurately and through their actions, but to also create a whole host of alien beings that looked extraterrestrial in appearance, and act totally inhuman compared to the people of Earth. The puppeteers were a close knit group who called themselves "The Company Of Five Productions", and were Christine Glanville, John Blundall, Mary Turner, Eddie and Yvonne Hunter. Judith Shutt was an essential part of the sculpting team too.

Christine Glanville was puppet supervisor for the series, having been an original puppeteer for the series ever since The Adventure Of Twizzle in 1957. She made the puppet head for Doctor Venus but after several prototypes were sculpted she still couldn't get approval from Sylvia Anderson. In desperation, she asked her father for advice. He suggested she make one that looked like Sylvia. She took his advice and this one was given approval. The same thing would happen again with Thunderbirds and the character of Lady Penelope. Of all the characters of the series, the most difficult puppet to control was in fact Robert the Robot, which was because of the light weight of the character. He was made with a perspex body with a head adapted from a plastic tumbler. Because of the difficulty to control the puppet, it is obviously why Robert did not appear often in the series (or in the background remaining silent). Characters were often made from basing a puppet's look off a real person. Like many later puppets, most obviously with Scott Tracy, Lieutenant Ninety is one of several Anderson puppets based off Sean Connary. At the time of started filming Fireball XL5, James Bond had yet to debut in cinemas until June 1962. Mary Turner was another puppeteer who had worked with AP Films since Twizzle too and later sculpted characters like Brains for Thunderbirds.

John Blundall, who later sculpted the puppet of Parker in Thunderbirds, was a traditionalist when it came to puppetry (which he regarded as a science as much as an art), Blundall was born into an artistic family in 1937; his mother was a painter and his father was a craftsman. Regular trips to the Birmingham Hippodrome as a child with his siblings inspired him to become a performer, and in 1951 he formed his own puppet theatre The Festival Marionettes. Blundall left school at 15 where, like many young artists, he was forced to take what he called a 'proper job' and became an employee of the General Electric Company, before moving onto more creative work as a graphic designer and further endeavours with puppets.

Following an obligatory two years of National Service, Blundall worked as a designer and stage director at various theatres, before a decline in the industry forced him to look for other work in television. Friend and colleague Christine Glanville asked him if he would like to join her at a company called A.P. Films in Slough which was making a series of marionette adventure series. John accepted and joined towards the tail-end of Supercar. Blundall remained with APF for four years and worked as a sculptor and a carver across Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds. He particularly enjoyed Fireball XL5 for its array of strange creatures. However, he increasingly disagreed with the direction the Andersons were taking, feeling strongly that puppetry is about caricature and producing faces and characters that can't be achieved with humans. He left the studio in 1965 to return to traditional puppetry. However, he always remained proud of his final major creation for the studio – Lady Penelope's butler, Parker. The success of the character illustrated that Blundall may have been right about the caricatured puppets being more interesting.

John continued to work with puppets across a variety of mediums until his death. His fascination with the art took him across the world to study puppets in their many forms and he was pleased to meet with, and learn from, many of the world's masters. In 2004 he set up The World Through Wooden Eyes, a museum and library in Glasgow, which houses an extraordinary collection of puppet related items. He died in 2014.

SPACE MONSTER;

Written by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson

Directed by John Kelly

Original UK Airdate: 6th January 1963 (ATV London, Anglia and Ulster)

Additional Voice Cast:

Ken Johnson John Bluthal Al Stomper David Graham

This is also the first episode to feature Fireball XL2. Captain Ken Johnson appears again in Flying Zodiac and his puppet is used again as the IPN Newsreader in Convict In Space, the ETV Announcer in The Forbidden Planet, Johnny Jackson in Space City Special and various TV announcers in the Stingray episodes Tom Thumb Tempest, Titan Goes Pop and Aquanaut Of The Year. The Space Monster creature was seen in a rare photo of Supercar attacking Dr. Beaker in what looks like a cave. Here, the monster makes his first full appearance in a TV episode, and goes onto reappear as the title character in the Stingray episode The Loch Ness Monster, minus its spiny body and legs. The monster looks unintentionally quite comedic, something that is quite rare for a Gerry Anderson series to laugh at the visuals. Barry Gray's grand, thumping music helps to convey a sense of scale to the giant monster. I also find it amusing when the creature menaces behind Matic, giggling to myself at the old "He's behind you" pantomime trick which I found very effective, and when he tries to escape the monster from eating him. CHOMP! HELP! HELP! CHOMP! A thoroughly entertaining episode I find, and one of the most memorable of stories in the entire run of the series.