It’s been one of those days when all the broken bits say “take it easy” loudly enough for me to listen. There’s a reasonable certainty that it will happen one or two days into any project requiring me to do a lot of physical stuff. I tend to forget I’m no longer showroom fresh, and then all the warning systems get to remind me.

(Short form of the above: The Crock sat still and went OW a lot today.)

I was so damn lazy I didn’t even get up when one TV show finished at 8:30 and the next thing I really wanted to see wasn’t until 9:30. And so it was, I saw the last half of the 2004 movie version of Thunderbirds.

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It seems there’s a rule with remaking old crocks classic series: CGI and other production technology (which didn’t exist when the original show was created) must be deployed wherever possible, and the director must firmly impose their big-v Vision on the original, even if it means obscuring most of what made the original popular. For want of a better name, I shall call it “The Doctor Who Factor”.

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Of course, I guess it was always the machines, back then.

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The new mob might move better, but they don’t have the charm. Bah, enough of the 2004 travesty!

We knew what we wanted back in 1966: obviously-miniaturised rocket flames and Blowing Things Up.

Loves our miniature smoke, we does!

Still, there was room for a little adult speculation, or what passed for it in the minds of sophisticated nine-year-olds.

Was there a kind of Chatterley thing going down between herpenelope.jpg and him? parker.jpg

Well, if I haven’t sent you to sleep by now, I can possibly provide the answer. Last week I was disposing of a whole crapload of stuff we decided was just junk. Not collectibles: junk. It included a cassette by the Barry Gray Orchestra, those people who gave us the orignal theme. There’s a track called “Parker, Well Done”, featuring Sylvia Anderson (voice of Penelope) and David Graham (voice or Parker).

Innuendo or what, kids of yesteryear? You be the judge.

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