Fireball XL5: The Vault

38 - Legacy/Space City Special

60 incredible years on now, Fireball XL5 remains a highly enjoyable and famous series. It is one of the most fondly remembered of Anderson productions, and to produce a series even today would be extremely expensive to make, and probably wouldn't be able to be produced unless a huge, big-budgeted production company equivalent to ITC funded the series. The merchandise surrounding the series in the 1960s reached breathtaking new levels of scale of toy product. Countless spin-off adventures have been told in the series, and the mighty scale for the series paved the way for future Anderson productions that would become even bigger and better. 

As Chris Dale once said, part of Fireball XL5's enduring charm, is in its earnest reflection of one of the primary cultural concerns of the era in which it was made; the space race of the early 1960s. As rockets, and then men, were launched into space, it seemed almost inevitable that humanity was about to enter a new era of interplanetary travel that would forever change our whole way of life. The imaginations of an entire generation of young viewers were captivated by the seemingly very real possibility that mankind would be walking (and living) on the Moon in just a few short years – and from there, surely the rest of the solar system (and beyond) would follow? Fireball XL5 was one of several sci-fi shows of the era that ran with that expectation and expanded it to a galactic scale, presenting viewers with an optimistic future in which the entire universe was open for exploration and colonisation – and in which planets were often named after their single defining characteristic ("Aridan! The desert planet!") or just given a random number. 

This optimism regarding mankind's inevitable leap to the stars, was reflected in the show's science – or perhaps more accurately, lack thereof. The XL5 crew were armed with ray guns, as all respectable spacemen of the 1950s and early 1960s were, and could use either thruster packs or jetmobiles to get around more easily (and thus save the puppets the problem of walking). However, the most notable (and infamous) element of XL5's science came with the 'oxygen pills', which enabled the crew to safely leave the ship without first donning a spacesuit. When viewed today it's certainly amusing to watch the XL5 crew launch themselves into the vacuum of space to no ill effect, but it does reflect the strength of contemporary public belief in the future of space travel on which the show was founded. Any boring scientific details could be worked out along the way; the important thing was that we would be living our lives among the stars sooner rather than later. This dream was even reflected in the lyrics of the show's closing titles song Fireball, performed by Don Spencer – which reached number 32 in the UK music charts in March 1963.

Fireball XL5 also holds the unique distinction of being the only Anderson series to have been networked in the United States, airing on NBC from 1963 to 1965, and remains especially fondly remembered Stateside. The closing theme song was used in the opening scenes of the episode Spider from the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Tom Hanks himself is rumoured to have been a fan of the show, with a clip from the series appearing in his 1996 written and directed movie That Thing You Do!, watched by Lenny and James on the TVs in Guy's father's appliance store with one character remarking that his grandmother thought the puppets were real people. The Fireball song playing over the end credits of an episode of the 1998 HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon on which Hanks served as co-producer. The song to the theme even appeared in the film Love, Honour and Obey (2000), sung by Sean Pertwee.

There have been many other easter eggs made to the show in various other forms of pop culture. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray steal a rocket named Pancake XL4. Each ship of the series is traditionally named after the manner of her predecessor's destruction. The Mushroom Cloud XL2 and the Shrapnel XL3 are named as other examples of the Fireball XL5's antecedents. The Pancake XL4 is destroyed by a collision with a mountain, exploding in a huge fireball and earning the XL5 its name. In addition, a Lazoon (called "Lazunes" in another portion of the comic) is bitten to death by other Lazoons due to it chanting "Welcome ho-ome" with a lisp. It is believed the dead Lazoon is Zoonie. In Scarlet Traces: The Great Game by Ian Edginton and D'Israeli, on the cover of issue 2, several ships labelled "FB XL" with a number following can be seen. One says "FB XL5", making it the Fireball XL-5. The 2009 Star Trek film the Ending Credits are in the same style as Fireball XL5 with "zooming" of the credits against a background of plants, moons and craters. Easter eggs to the series also appear in other popular programs of the shows' time such as The Avengers and The Saint.