| "30 Minutes After Noon" | |||
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| Thunderbirds episode | |||
One of the robotic guards grabs Southern (right) while Dempsey (left) unlocks the bracelets. |
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| Episode no. | Season 01 Episode 07 |
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| Directed by | David Elliott | ||
| Written by | Alan Fennell | ||
| Cinematography by | Paddy Seale | ||
| Editing by | Harry Ledger | ||
| Production code | 18 | ||
| Original air date | 11 November 1965 | ||
| Guest stars | |||
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| List of Thunderbirds episodes | |||
"30 Minutes After Noon" is the seventh episode of the 1960s Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds. Written by Alan Fennell and directed by David Elliott, it first aired in the United Kingdom on ATV Midlands on 11 November 1965. In a plot incorporating visual allusion to 1960s spy thriller films,[1] in particular the James Bond film franchise,[2] "30 Minutes After Noon" sees the Tracy family attempt to rescue a British secret agent caught up in the latest scheme of the Erdman Gang, a powerful international crime syndicate.
Drawing inspiration from the 1965 spy thriller film The Ipcress File, a recent cinema release at the time of production, Elliott decided to bring Fennell's script to life with the use of "quirky visuals".[1] As such, Elliott and his camera operator, Alan Perry, experimented with less conventional angles and techniques, introducing one scene with a long tracking shot and presenting the characters depicted with a mixture of live-action close-up shots and forced perspective.[3][4] The music, on the other hand, is recycled from earlier Thunderbirds episodes.[5]
Commentators such as historian Nicholas J. Cull have praised Elliott and Perry's cinematographic innovation for imitating classic espionage film franchises.[2] However, Supermarionation historian Stephen La Rivière regrets that its application throughout the episode is uneven: asserting that the switch in narrative focus from the fire to the infiltration of the Erdman Gang essentially splits the episode into loosely-connected halves, La Rivière remarks that the first part appears to have been filmed using conventional techniques.[1][6] "30 Minutes After Noon" received an audio adaptation in the 1960s and a comic serialisation in the 1990s.[4]
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In Spoke City, office worker Thomas Prescott accepts an apparently innocent hitch-hiker into his car. However, the stranger's true intentions are revealed when he attaches a metal bracelet to Prescott's wrist, warning him that it contains a powerful explosive charge due to detonate in 30 minutes, and that the unlocking key is to be found in his office at the Hudson Building. Speeding to the building with police in pursuit, Prescott slips inside and leaves the bracelet in his office. It detonates as he is returning to the ground floor in a lift, obliterating the top floors and hurling Prescott to the bottom of the lift shaft ten levels underground.
Although the fire is brought under control, Prescott is cut off from outside help. News of the events in Spoke City soon reaches Tracy Island. Jeff dispatches Scott in Thunderbird 1, while Virgil and Alan depart in Thunderbird 2 with brand-new fire-fighting apparatus. Lowered into the shaft in a protective cage fitted with diacetylene sprinklers, Virgil and Alan clamp the stricken lift and return to ground level, whereupon Prescott is arrested. Police Commissioner Garfield notes that classified documentation on criminal organisations, including the dangerous Erdman Gang, has been lost in the blaze. Prescott's explanation about the stranger is proven to be true when the charred remnants of the bracelet are uncovered.
An operation to expose the Erdman Gang leads to the enlistment of Southern, a British Secret Service agent, who will infiltrate the organisation and gather intelligence on its latest scheme. The Gang Leader contacts the undercover Southern and members Dempsey and Kenyon at Glen Carrick Castle in the Scottish Highlands and briefs them on their assignment. The men are to drive south to the Nuclear Plutonium Store, where isotopes for all British power stations are based, and rig explosives to detonate at 12:30 pm, causing the largest nuclear explosion ever and obliterating half of England. To ensure obedience, the charges are pre-set and contained in bracelets identical to the one planted on Prescott's wrist, to be unlocked at the store.
On their arrival, Southern, Dempsey and Kenyon use a ray gun to subdue robot guards and pass through one secure door to the next, ending up in the plutonium vault. Southern reveals his true identity and threatens the others with a gun, ordering them to proceed to the Leader's proposed rendezvous point and capture him. However, after a robot catches Southern in an impossible grip, Dempsey and Kenyon unlock the bracelets and depart, jamming the door controls to trap Southern next to the nuclear explosion.
Southern's emergency call is transferred from his superior, Sir William Frazer, to International Rescue. Landing outside the Plutonium Store in Thunderbirds 1 and 2, Scott and Virgil use the Laser Cutter Vehicle to burn through the jammed doors. Inside the vault, Virgil releases Southern from the robot. As the time nears 30 minutes past noon, Scott lifts off in Thunderbird 1 with the bracelets and jettisons them into the sea to detonate in isolation. Meanwhile, on Jeff's orders, Lady Penelope and Parker race to the Erdman Gang rendezvous in FAB1 and shoot down the Leader, Dempsey and Kenyon as the criminals prepare to escape in a helijet. Southern is permitted to recover from his ordeal at the Creighton-Ward Mansion.
Initially unenthusiastic about how he would realise Alan Fennell's script, director David Elliott returned to the production feeling more inspired after seeing the 1965 spy thriller film The Ipcress File, starring Michael Caine.[3] Elliott remembers, "The director used all the old-fashioned shots—looking through a lampshade, etc. On Monday morning, Paddy [Seale, lighting camera operator] came in and said, 'I saw a film this weekend,' and I said, 'So did I.' 'Was it The Ipcress File?' 'Yep. Right, that's what I want to do.'"[1] Elliott therefore resolved to incorporate "quirky visuals" into his direction of "30 Minutes After Noon".[1]
Elliott decided to open the Glen Carrick Castle scene with a tracking shot around the three walls of the puppet set and coordinated the manoeuvres with camera operator Alan Perry.[3] In a pioneering development for a Supermarionation production, forced perspective is used in this sequence to present both a human hand and puppet characters in one frame.[4] While the live hand, intended to belong to Southern, twiddles a pen in the foreground of the shot, the puppets of Kenyon and Dempsey are positioned across a table in the background.[4] Although the puppets had been sculpted in 1⁄3 scale, Kenyon and Dempsey appear to be of accurate size in relation to the hand.[4] This technique was used again later in the episode when Scott removes the bracelets from the plutonium store.
Incidental music for "30 Minutes After Noon" is for the most part recycled from previous Anderson productions.[5] The "March of the Oysters" track from the Stingray episode "Secret of the Giant Oyster" is emitted from the television of Hudson Building janitor Sam Saltzman.[5] The Highland theme from "Loch Ness Monster" is used for the scenes set at Glen Carrick Castle, while the miniature model itself also appears as Castle McGregor in this Stingray episode.[5] It would make one further appearance in the Anderson productions as Glen Garry Castle in "The Trap", an episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.[5]
Commenting on her website, Thunderbirds co-creator Sylvia Anderson praises scriptwriter Alan Fennell's "vivid imagination"[7] and his complex plot for "30 Minutes After Noon", adding her opinion that "This was more a vehicle for live action than for the limited emotions of our puppet cast."[7] Of David Elliott's decision to invigorate the production with more innovative shots, Supermarionation historian Stephen La Rivière expresses disappointment that the earlier sequences of "30 Minutes After Noon", in his view, are made up of standard camera work, being "filmed as normal"[1] and detracting from the interest of the "quirky visuals"[1] in the scenes depicting Southern's infiltration of the Erdman Gang.[1]
La Rivière further discusses the structure of "30 Minutes After Noon", writing that the episode is divided into a pair of distinct plotlines (the intervention of the British Secret Service following the Hudson Building inferno).[6] He argues that, in this manner, it is comparable to the first episodes of Thunderbirds, for which the production team doubled the runtime from 25 to 50 minutes and therefore needed to expand the stories with subplots or extra rescues performed by the Tracy family.[6]
Historian Nicholas J. Cull links this episode to another of Fennell's Thunderbirds scripts, "The Man from MI.5", in which the star character is a British Secret Service agent called Bondson.[2] For Cull, "30 Minutes After Noon" is one of several Thunderbirds episodes which incorporates visual homage to the James Bond film series.[2] In particular, he comments on Southern's briefing scene, in which the characters of Southern, Sir William Frazer and an unnamed assistant are represented by hats placed on a stand: "Southern's hat is a trilby, tossed onto the stand in best James Bond fashion."[2]
In a review published in Thunderbirds-related fanzine NTBS News Flash, "30 Minutes After Noon" is said to be "a thrilling, well-paced episode that brings together a very sadistic bad guy scheme and some innocent, and some not-so-innocent victims in peril, all providing plenty of action for International Rescue."[8] The author considers the pacing to be "especially good" and also credits the "inventive camera work", commenting, "I don't think I've seen more use of 'real hand acting' in any other episode."[8] The concept of the exploding bracelets is related to the Saw horror films, in which victims are seen to be trapped in dangerous situations and risking death if they do not carry out certain tasks put before them.[8]
The episode achieved ratings of 5.2 million viewers when repeated on BBC2 in 1992.
An audio adaptation of "30 Minutes After Noon" was released as a mini-album in the 1960s, narrated by David Graham in character as Parker.[4] "30 Minutes After Noon" was serialised in issues 18-20 of Thunderbirds: The Comic by Alan Fennell and Malcolm Stokes in 1992, and re-released in the graphic collection Thunderbirds in Action later that year.[4]
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