Supercar – The Complete Series

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Episodes: C

 

 

Have you noticed the return of string puppets to TV lately?  There’s that tightly letterboxed music video by Tiga called “Hot In Here” with puppets dressing and dancing to the Hip-Hop/Techno beat of the song.  What about that Orbitz campaign where the creators seem to be going out of their way for the audience to see the strings?  Well, if you think you’ve seen that before, your right.

 

Many automatically think of the TV series Thunderbirds, but it was part of an entire series of such shows, and they all began with Supercar.  Believe it or not, Supercar goes back to 1959!  Hard to believe, but this groundbreaking black and white series is probably one of the most important in TV history historically, in both the kinds of programs that it made possible and the careers it launched.

 

Though produced for a children’s market, it was far from simple, never dumbed-down, and created a world that any intelligent viewer could get lost in.  Having only so many resources to work with, this is one of the most remarkable shows that would ever be produced by the team that became Gerry & Sylvia Anderson.  Like the earliest monochrome tapes of Fred Rogers, Captain Kangaroo and Soupy Sales, this show squeezed everything it could out of its limited budgets and you can see (and feel) the extra effort being made.  To compare, Fireball XL-5 was the follow-up series and does not seem to be able to balance the bigger budget with the basic ideas that made Supercar work so well.

 

In the series, Mike Mercury is the main driver of the title vehicle, which in its time was a wonder in that it could travel land, sea, or air.  This was five years before James Bond got his Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger, so context is very important in understanding why this show was insanely successful.  The title also stands as a metaphor for the hundreds of classic designs for vehicles of all kinds the Anderson Supermarionation shows would offer for the next few decades.

 

Of course, there is Jimmy Gibson and his pet monkey, forerunners of Speed Racer’s Spridle & Chim-Chim.  Ten-year-old Jimmy become the focus and viewpoint of the show form the pilot when the rescued by Mercury and company.  Throw in the arch villain Masterspy, and you get the gist of the show’s 39 episodes.

 

The 1.33 X 1, full-frame image is among the best black and white on DVD, but does not quite match up to monochrome transfers for Fireball XL-5 and the earlier Diana Rigg episodes of The Avengers.  This is because the shows’ film stocks are simply from negative (and positive) footage that is of an earlier vintage.  Otherwise, this belongs right up there with great full-screen monochrome DVDs like Rhino’s always-impressive Gigantor boxed sets.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix not too stereophonic, but like Fireball XL-5, simply restores and upgrades the original audio without trickery to sound good.  At A&E’s unusually high 384 kbps (kilobits-per-second) encoding, the show sounds remarkably good for its age, more than many simple-soundtrack motion pictures from the same era.  The audio was certainly stored well for the nearly 45 years since its debut.

 

The special features offered are more than the box tells us.  Sylvia Anderson, in doing commentaries for all of the DVD releases of these shows, has established herself as one of the best commentary speakers around.  She always manages to be honest and interesting, always coming up with thorough and well thought-out things to say about the shows that made her a legend.  She talks this time throughout the first episode of the show, “Rescue”.  A fine documentary called Derek Meddings: The Man & His Miniatures (29:12) covers the design, modeling, and visual effects giant’s work on all of the Anderson series.  His great feature film work is not covered, but this is still a must-see program.  Unlisted is a short (2:11) tribute to Meddings by Lord Of The Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson, who admits to Meddings tremendous influence on him and the profession he landed up in.  There is a photo gallery with a very nice computer animated 360—degree turn around the Supercar itself before offering 1:40 worth of stills.  It is the kind of animation I expected, but did not get, in the DVD-ROM section of Captain Scarlet.  Still, it is very nice.  One last item that is noted on the box are 12 stunning, full-color stills from the Supercar set, proving The Andersons and Meddings already had a thorough grasp of what they could do with color, even if the show could not be shot that way.

 

For the rest of 2003, A&E/New Video is offering a free new comic book of either Supercar (the four old Gold Key comics issued at the time of the show’s first run are major collector’s items that rival the show!), Fireball XL-5, or UFO.  It is a major incentive for fans to get this box.  You can find the offer inside one of the DVD cases.

 

So the show holds up just well enough to enjoy casually, but becomes more interesting when you consider what it launched.  Supercar is an all-time classic, and this DVD set could not have given it better treatment!

 

 

- Nicholas Sheffo