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Stingray (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Stingray is a children's marionette
television show, created by Gerry
and Sylvia Anderson
and produced by AP Films
for ATV
and ITC Entertainment
from 1964–65. Its 39 half-hour episodes were originally screened on ITV in the UK and in syndication
in the USA. The scriptwriters included Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Alan Fennell
, and Dennis Spooner
. Barry Gray
composed the music, and Derek Meddings
was the special effects director.
Stingray was the first Supermarionation show to be filmed in colour, and also the first in which marionettes had interchangeable heads with different facial expressions. It was also the first British television programme to be filmed entirely in colour (the earlier series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
had been made in colour from halfway through its run). At that time the US stations were gearing up for full-time colour broadcasting, although Independent Television in Britain did not begin colour transmission until November 1969.
had featured a vehicle that could travel on land, sea and air, and Fireball XL5
had featured a spaceship
. The next logical step was a series about a submarine
, which presented a number of technical challenges.
Scenes featuring model submarines or marionettes underwater were actually filmed on a dry set, with the camera looking through a narrow water tank containing air bubblers and fish of different sizes to simulate perspective
, thereby creating a convincing illusion that the models or puppets were underwater. This was enhanced with lighting effects that gave the impression of shafts of light refracted
through the surface of the sea.
Scenes on the ocean's surface were filmed using a large tank filled with water and blue dye
. To prevent the edges of the tank from showing it was deliberately overfilled so that the water would constantly spill over the edges and conceal them. These techniques proved so successful that they were also used for underwater scenes in Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
and Joe 90
.
The show's 39 episodes were filmed as three blocks (or series) of thirteen episodes each, as ITC boss Lew Grade
was accustomed to ordering further batches of 13 shows each as need demanded, as he had done on the earlier Anderson shows Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5 (all of which also ran to 39 episodes).
Marineville is located somewhere on the California coast of the United States. In the event of attack, the entire base can descend on hydraulic jacks into underground bunkers. Marineville is 10 miles inland, and Stingray is launched from the base's "Pen 3" through a tunnel leading to the Pacific Ocean.
"Action Stations," "Launch Stations," and "Battle Stations" are sounded not by sirens but by a rapid drum-beat, composed and recorded by series composer Barry Gray, played over the Marineville public address system.
The pilot of Stingray is the square-jawed Captain Troy Tempest, the Supermarionation
puppet who was accidentally modelled on James Garner
, accompanied by Dixie navigator Lieutenant George Lee "Phones" Sheridan, nicknamed "Phones" because of his job as Stingray's hydrophone
operator. His real name, George Sheridan, is referred to in the show's publicity material, but is never mentioned on-screen. Troy and Phones board Stingray by sitting down in their side-by-side command chairs in the stand-by lounge, which are lowered rapidly into the submarine on long tubular poles called injector tubes. An additional seat and pole is situated just behind theirs, for use by a third crew member, usually Marina, or a passenger. They take their orders from the crusty, "hoverchair"-bound Commander Samuel Shore, whose daughter, Lieutenant Atlanta Shore, is also a WASP operative and is enamoured of Troy. Sub-Lieutenant John Fisher also regularly takes shifts at Marineville Control. The reason Shore is confined to a hoverchair is revealed in the episode The Ghost of the Sea. As a security agent for a deep sea mining platform, he was attacked by a submarine. He managed to ram his attacker in return, and then escape to the surface with scuba gear, but in so doing, he lost the use of his legs. All this took place five years before the time in which Stingray is set.
During the course of the series, Stingray encounters a number of underwater races, both hostile and otherwise. The "aquaphibians," a submarine warrior race, appear frequently, often under the command of King Titan, whose puppet was accidentally modelled on Laurence Olivier
, and who is the ruler of the underwater city of Titanica.
In the pilot episode, Stingray is attacked by Titan's forces and Troy and Phones are captured. They are rescued by Titan's slave girl Marina (modelled on Sylvia Anderson
but believed for years to have been modelled on Brigitte Bardot
), a beautiful mute
young woman who can breathe underwater. Troy is immediately smitten with Marina, and Atlanta becomes jealous. Meanwhile Titan swears revenge for Marina's betrayal. Marina becomes a regular member of Stingray's crew, and later acquires a seal pup called Oink, who features in a number of episodes.
Many subsequent episodes involve Titan's schemes to destroy Stingray and Marineville. These often fail due to the incompetence of Titan's spy, Surface Agent X-Two-Zero, whose puppet is modelled facially on Claude Rains
but whose voice is imitative of Peter Lorre
.
Almost all the characters, places and vehicles in the series have names connected, in some fashion, with the sea. Character names of this type include Captain Tempest (as in storm), Commander Shore (as in seashore), Lieutenant Fisher, Atlanta (from Atlantic), Marina (from marine), and the hostile aquaphibians. Place names associated with the sea or water include Marineville and Aquatraz; and vehicle names include the super-sub, Stingray, itself named after a type of marine creature, and Titan's deadly submersibles, which he calls Terror Fish.
Actor Robert Easton had previous science-fiction credentials to his credit in a submarine, as radio operator Sparks on the Seaview, in Irwin Allen's 1961 motion picture Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
The character of Marina is unique among Supermarionation characters in that she never speaks. In the episode "Raptures of the Deep" she appears to communicate telepathically with Troy, but this is later revealed to be only a part of his dream, while he was unconscious. In the dream sequence in question, Marina's lips do not move, because the puppet had no speech mechanism, but her thoughts are heard (voiced by Sylvia Anderson).
In addition to the 39 television episodes, three original "audio adventures" featuring the original voice cast were released on EPs
during the show's British run. These were later reissued on cassette, and are included on the British DVD box set of the series.
One of these audio episodes (entitled "Marina Speaks") reveals that Marina is not actually mute at all. She and her people have been cursed by Titan; if any of them speaks, another will die. They are not certain if this is true, but none of them dares find out; and so for years they have lived in complicit silence. However, this storyline to some extent contradicts the on-screen events in the television series proper.
According to the audio adventure 'Journey to Marineville' the 3 on Stingray's fins indicates she is Stingray Mark III and Marineville is 20 miles inland (not 10 miles as per the TV episode The Big Gun).
Stingray represented a major breakthrough from Fireball XL5 both in terms of special effects techniques and storytelling. This was the first Supermarionation series in which the puppets had interchangeable heads, allowing each character to express a number of emotions. The love triangle between Atlanta, Troy and Marina is a surprisingly mature development for a children's show, and is even reflected in the closing credits
, where Troy sings "Aqua Marina" (a song reflecting his romantic feelings for Marina) whilst Atlanta gazes wistfully at Troy's photograph.
On 24 November (Thanksgiving Day
) 1988, Invaders of the Deep was featured as the first broadcast episode of movie-mocking television series Mystery Science Theater 3000
.
In the UK, ITV broadcast repeats of the entire series during 1988, from the original film prints.
BBC2 subsequently repeated the series in 1992, having first obtained new prints from the master negatives. However, these had been re-edited by ITC to substitute new opening credits, identified by an incorrect copyright date of 1964 (instead of 1962, as on the original prints) in a wholesale substitution of the "red" version of the opening titles, originally used only in later episodes, on all the first season episodes from 1962. This error has since been perpetuated by repeating the error in the DVD releases.
It was also shown on Sky One
from 2002 to 2003.
In the USA, the Sci-Fi Channel
broadcast some episodes of Stingray in the early 1990s, as part of Sci-Fi Cartoon Quest
.
On 2 January 2008, a new episode, called "The Reunion Party" (running time 30 minutes), was broadcast on BBC4 in the UK as part of "Thunderbirds
Night". This episode was assembled by Gerry Anderson from recently discovered linking material shot in 1965, and takes the form of a new compilation episode (featuring footage from the episodes "Stingray", "An Echo of Danger" and "Emergency Marineville").
The linking material was originally filmed in order to showcase those episodes to potential overseas buyers of the series, but was never in fact used. The date of 1965 makes it the last footage ever filmed for Stingray, being shot after completion of filming on the 1964 series.
The unassembled version of "The Reunion Party" appeared as an extra on the Stingray DVD boxset.
A similar idea was used by author John Theydon in his second Stingray novel, Stingray and the Monster, some years earlier. In the novel, another WASP submarine (unnamed and referred to as Number Thirteen) is hijacked by an old enemy of Commander Shore. Theydon's description of the hijacked boat, both inside and out, is recognisably similar to that of Stingray, with the specific exception that Number Thirteen is stated to not have Stingrays exceptional performance, being limited to around 400 knots rather than the 600 that Stingray is quoted as being able to reach. The implication, never explicitly stated, is that Stingray is an upgraded version of the design. Somewhat later, TV21 mentioned a second "super-sub" entering service with the WASPs—that is, until it is stolen by a Mysteron agent as part of the plot of a Captain Scarlet story!
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
television show, created by Gerry
Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson MBE is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation"....
and Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson , born 25 March 1937, is a British voice artist and film producer, most notable for collaborations with Gerry Anderson, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1975....
and produced by AP Films
AP Films
AP Films or APF, later becoming Century 21 Productions, was a British independent film production company of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s...
for ATV
Associated TeleVision
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
and ITC Entertainment
ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...
from 1964–65. Its 39 half-hour episodes were originally screened on ITV in the UK and in syndication
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
in the USA. The scriptwriters included Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Alan Fennell
Alan Fennell
Alan Fennell was a British writer and editor best known for work on series produced by Gerry Anderson, and for having created the magazines TV Century 21 and Look-in....
, and Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner was an English television screenwriter and story editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s...
. Barry Gray
Barry Gray
Barry Gray was a British musician and composer who is best known for his work for Gerry Anderson.-Life:...
composed the music, and Derek Meddings
Derek Meddings
Derek Meddings was a British television and cinema special effects expert, initially noted for his work on the "Supermarionation" television puppet series produced by Gerry Anderson, and later for the 1970s James Bond films and the Superman film series.-Early years:Both Meddings' parents had...
was the special effects director.
Stingray was the first Supermarionation show to be filmed in colour, and also the first in which marionettes had interchangeable heads with different facial expressions. It was also the first British television programme to be filmed entirely in colour (the earlier series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
The Adventures of Sir Lancelot is a British television series first broadcast in 1956, produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and screened on the ITV network...
had been made in colour from halfway through its run). At that time the US stations were gearing up for full-time colour broadcasting, although Independent Television in Britain did not begin colour transmission until November 1969.
Production
SupercarSupercar (TV series)
Supercar was a children's TV show produced by Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis's AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment. 39 episodes were produced between 1961 and 1962, and it was Anderson's first half-hour series. In the UK it was seen on ITV and in the US in syndication...
had featured a vehicle that could travel on land, sea and air, and Fireball XL5
Fireball XL5
Fireball XL5 is a science fiction-themed children's television show following the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol...
had featured a spaceship
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
. The next logical step was a series about a submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
, which presented a number of technical challenges.
Scenes featuring model submarines or marionettes underwater were actually filmed on a dry set, with the camera looking through a narrow water tank containing air bubblers and fish of different sizes to simulate perspective
Forced perspective
Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It is used primarily in photography, filmmaking and architecture...
, thereby creating a convincing illusion that the models or puppets were underwater. This was enhanced with lighting effects that gave the impression of shafts of light refracted
Refraction
Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. It is essentially a surface phenomenon . The phenomenon is mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy. The proper explanation would be that due to change of medium, the phase velocity of the wave is changed...
through the surface of the sea.
Scenes on the ocean's surface were filmed using a large tank filled with water and blue dye
Dye
A dye is a colored substance that has an affinity to the substrate to which it is being applied. The dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution, and requires a mordant to improve the fastness of the dye on the fiber....
. To prevent the edges of the tank from showing it was deliberately overfilled so that the water would constantly spill over the edges and conceal them. These techniques proved so successful that they were also used for underwater scenes in Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as Captain Scarlet, is a 1960s British science-fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions company of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, John Read and Reg Hill...
and Joe 90
Joe 90
Joe 90 is a late-1960s British science-fiction television series documenting the exploits of a nine-year-old boy, Joe McClaine, who embarks on a double life as a schoolboy turned spy when his scientist father invents a pioneering machine capable of duplicating and transferring expert knowledge and...
.
The show's 39 episodes were filmed as three blocks (or series) of thirteen episodes each, as ITC boss Lew Grade
Lew Grade
Lew Grade, Baron Grade , born Lev Winogradsky, was an influential Russian-born English impresario and media mogul.-Early years:...
was accustomed to ordering further batches of 13 shows each as need demanded, as he had done on the earlier Anderson shows Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5 (all of which also ran to 39 episodes).
Story and characters
Stingray, a highly sophisticated combat submarine built for speed and manoeuvrability, is the flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP), a 21st Century security organisation based at Marineville in the year 2065. She is capable of speeds of up to 600 knots and advanced pressure compensators allow her to submerge to depths of over 36,000 feet, which permits cruising to the bottom of any part of any ocean in the world.Marineville is located somewhere on the California coast of the United States. In the event of attack, the entire base can descend on hydraulic jacks into underground bunkers. Marineville is 10 miles inland, and Stingray is launched from the base's "Pen 3" through a tunnel leading to the Pacific Ocean.
"Action Stations," "Launch Stations," and "Battle Stations" are sounded not by sirens but by a rapid drum-beat, composed and recorded by series composer Barry Gray, played over the Marineville public address system.
The pilot of Stingray is the square-jawed Captain Troy Tempest, the Supermarionation
Supermarionation
Supermarionation is a puppetry technique devised in the 1960s by British production company AP Films. It was used extensively in the company's numerous Gerry and Sylvia Anderson-produced action-adventure series, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds...
puppet who was accidentally modelled on James Garner
James Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...
, accompanied by Dixie navigator Lieutenant George Lee "Phones" Sheridan, nicknamed "Phones" because of his job as Stingray's hydrophone
Hydrophone
A hydrophone is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates electricity when subjected to a pressure change...
operator. His real name, George Sheridan, is referred to in the show's publicity material, but is never mentioned on-screen. Troy and Phones board Stingray by sitting down in their side-by-side command chairs in the stand-by lounge, which are lowered rapidly into the submarine on long tubular poles called injector tubes. An additional seat and pole is situated just behind theirs, for use by a third crew member, usually Marina, or a passenger. They take their orders from the crusty, "hoverchair"-bound Commander Samuel Shore, whose daughter, Lieutenant Atlanta Shore, is also a WASP operative and is enamoured of Troy. Sub-Lieutenant John Fisher also regularly takes shifts at Marineville Control. The reason Shore is confined to a hoverchair is revealed in the episode The Ghost of the Sea. As a security agent for a deep sea mining platform, he was attacked by a submarine. He managed to ram his attacker in return, and then escape to the surface with scuba gear, but in so doing, he lost the use of his legs. All this took place five years before the time in which Stingray is set.
During the course of the series, Stingray encounters a number of underwater races, both hostile and otherwise. The "aquaphibians," a submarine warrior race, appear frequently, often under the command of King Titan, whose puppet was accidentally modelled on Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
, and who is the ruler of the underwater city of Titanica.
In the pilot episode, Stingray is attacked by Titan's forces and Troy and Phones are captured. They are rescued by Titan's slave girl Marina (modelled on Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson
Sylvia Anderson , born 25 March 1937, is a British voice artist and film producer, most notable for collaborations with Gerry Anderson, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1975....
but believed for years to have been modelled on Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...
), a beautiful mute
Speech disorder
Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorders where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.-Classification:...
young woman who can breathe underwater. Troy is immediately smitten with Marina, and Atlanta becomes jealous. Meanwhile Titan swears revenge for Marina's betrayal. Marina becomes a regular member of Stingray's crew, and later acquires a seal pup called Oink, who features in a number of episodes.
Many subsequent episodes involve Titan's schemes to destroy Stingray and Marineville. These often fail due to the incompetence of Titan's spy, Surface Agent X-Two-Zero, whose puppet is modelled facially on Claude Rains
Claude Rains
Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
but whose voice is imitative of Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
.
Almost all the characters, places and vehicles in the series have names connected, in some fashion, with the sea. Character names of this type include Captain Tempest (as in storm), Commander Shore (as in seashore), Lieutenant Fisher, Atlanta (from Atlantic), Marina (from marine), and the hostile aquaphibians. Place names associated with the sea or water include Marineville and Aquatraz; and vehicle names include the super-sub, Stingray, itself named after a type of marine creature, and Titan's deadly submersibles, which he calls Terror Fish.
Voice actors
- Don Mason .... Captain Troy Tempest (speaking) / Various
- Robert Easton Robert Easton (actor)Robert Easton is an American actor whose career in film and television spans more than 60 years. His mastery of English dialect has earned him the epithet "The Man of a Thousand Voices", For decades he has been a leading Hollywood dialogue or accent coach.Easton was born Robert Easton Burke in...
.... Lieutenant George Lee 'Phones' Sheridan / Surface Agent X-2-Zero / Various - Ray BarrettRay BarrettRaymond Charles "Ray" Barrett was an Australian actor. He was one of the more popular leading men on British television in the 1960s, where he was best known for his appearances in The Troubleshooters . Back in Australia he was a leading man in many TV series over the years.-Biography:Barrett was...
.... Commander Sam Shore / Sub-Lieutenant John Horatio Fisher / King Titan of Titanica / Various - Lois MaxwellLois MaxwellLois Maxwell was a Canadian actress.Maxwell began her film career in the late 1940s, and won a Golden Globe Award for the New Actress of the Year for her performance in That Hagen Girl...
.... Lieutenant Atlanta Shore / Various - David GrahamDavid Graham (actor)David Graham is a British character actor and voice artist. Born in London, after a period in the R.A.F as a Radar Mechanic he trained as an actor in New York but has worked mainly on British television series....
.... Oink / Various - Gary MillerGary Miller (singer)Gary Miller born Neville Williams was an English popular music singer and actor of the 1950s and 1960s. His career spanned only 13 years before he died of a heart attack in 1968. He released 24 singles and six EPs on the Pye Records label between 1955 and 1967...
.... Troy Tempest (singing voice)
Actor Robert Easton had previous science-fiction credentials to his credit in a submarine, as radio operator Sparks on the Seaview, in Irwin Allen's 1961 motion picture Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
The character of Marina is unique among Supermarionation characters in that she never speaks. In the episode "Raptures of the Deep" she appears to communicate telepathically with Troy, but this is later revealed to be only a part of his dream, while he was unconscious. In the dream sequence in question, Marina's lips do not move, because the puppet had no speech mechanism, but her thoughts are heard (voiced by Sylvia Anderson).
In addition to the 39 television episodes, three original "audio adventures" featuring the original voice cast were released on EPs
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
during the show's British run. These were later reissued on cassette, and are included on the British DVD box set of the series.
One of these audio episodes (entitled "Marina Speaks") reveals that Marina is not actually mute at all. She and her people have been cursed by Titan; if any of them speaks, another will die. They are not certain if this is true, but none of them dares find out; and so for years they have lived in complicit silence. However, this storyline to some extent contradicts the on-screen events in the television series proper.
According to the audio adventure 'Journey to Marineville' the 3 on Stingray's fins indicates she is Stingray Mark III and Marineville is 20 miles inland (not 10 miles as per the TV episode The Big Gun).
Stingray represented a major breakthrough from Fireball XL5 both in terms of special effects techniques and storytelling. This was the first Supermarionation series in which the puppets had interchangeable heads, allowing each character to express a number of emotions. The love triangle between Atlanta, Troy and Marina is a surprisingly mature development for a children's show, and is even reflected in the closing credits
Closing credits
Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the...
, where Troy sings "Aqua Marina" (a song reflecting his romantic feelings for Marina) whilst Atlanta gazes wistfully at Troy's photograph.
Reappearances
In 1980 and 1981 two compilation TV movies were made for the US market, airing on American television as part of an ITC Entertainment package of "movies" called Super Space Theater; this practice was common at the time for many of Gerry Anderson's series. The first one released in 1980, entitled The Incredible Voyage of Stingray was made up of the episodes "Stingray", "Plant Of Doom", "Count Down" and "The Master Plan". A year later in 1981 another compilation this time entitled Invaders from the Deep featured the episodes "Hostages of the Deep", "The Big Gun", "Emergency Marineville" and "Deep Heat".On 24 November (Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
) 1988, Invaders of the Deep was featured as the first broadcast episode of movie-mocking television series Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....
.
In the UK, ITV broadcast repeats of the entire series during 1988, from the original film prints.
BBC2 subsequently repeated the series in 1992, having first obtained new prints from the master negatives. However, these had been re-edited by ITC to substitute new opening credits, identified by an incorrect copyright date of 1964 (instead of 1962, as on the original prints) in a wholesale substitution of the "red" version of the opening titles, originally used only in later episodes, on all the first season episodes from 1962. This error has since been perpetuated by repeating the error in the DVD releases.
It was also shown on Sky One
Sky One
Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...
from 2002 to 2003.
In the USA, the Sci-Fi Channel
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
broadcast some episodes of Stingray in the early 1990s, as part of Sci-Fi Cartoon Quest
Cartoon Quest
Cartoon Quest was the name of a block of animated television shows that aired on the Sci Fi Channel starting in 1992. Similar to USA's Cartoon Express, it featured newly picked-up shows and dropped off alternatively with each season...
.
On 2 January 2008, a new episode, called "The Reunion Party" (running time 30 minutes), was broadcast on BBC4 in the UK as part of "Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
Night". This episode was assembled by Gerry Anderson from recently discovered linking material shot in 1965, and takes the form of a new compilation episode (featuring footage from the episodes "Stingray", "An Echo of Danger" and "Emergency Marineville").
The linking material was originally filmed in order to showcase those episodes to potential overseas buyers of the series, but was never in fact used. The date of 1965 makes it the last footage ever filmed for Stingray, being shot after completion of filming on the 1964 series.
The unassembled version of "The Reunion Party" appeared as an extra on the Stingray DVD boxset.
"Stingray Class"
According to the Stingray comic strip in the weekly Countdown comic there was more than one Stingray class submarine in the Marineville fleet. They had names like Spearfish, Barracuda, Moray and Thornback and were identified by different numbers on their fins suggesting that the '3' on Stingray's fins did not indicate she was Stingray Mark III after all.A similar idea was used by author John Theydon in his second Stingray novel, Stingray and the Monster, some years earlier. In the novel, another WASP submarine (unnamed and referred to as Number Thirteen) is hijacked by an old enemy of Commander Shore. Theydon's description of the hijacked boat, both inside and out, is recognisably similar to that of Stingray, with the specific exception that Number Thirteen is stated to not have Stingrays exceptional performance, being limited to around 400 knots rather than the 600 that Stingray is quoted as being able to reach. The implication, never explicitly stated, is that Stingray is an upgraded version of the design. Somewhat later, TV21 mentioned a second "super-sub" entering service with the WASPs—that is, until it is stolen by a Mysteron agent as part of the plot of a Captain Scarlet story!
Translations
: Escadrille sous-marine- (German) : Kommando Stingray
- (Hebrew) : ha-Trigon (הטריגון; Hebrew for "stingray"). The show was broadcast in Israel in the 1970-s and the early 80-s, with Hebrew subtitles incidentally translating "Marineville" as "Kiryat-Yam" (literally "sea town", but coinciding with the actual name of a suburb of Haifa).
- (Japanese) : Kaitei Dai-Sensō Sutingurei (海底大戦争スティングレイ: literally "The Great War Under the Sea: Stingray"）
External links
- Fanderson, the official Gerry Anderson appreciation society
- BBC Cult Television: Stingray
- "Marineville Traitor" Episode Review at Andersonic.co.uk