Jeff Tracy

Jeff Tracy is a fictional character from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation television show Thunderbirds and the subsequent films Thunderbirds Are GO and Thunderbird 6. The voice for the character in these shows was supplied by Peter Dyneley. The character also appeared in the live action movie Thunderbirds. In the latter he was played by actor Bill Paxton.

The series was first shown in 1965 and was set a hundred years in the then future in 2065, when Jeff was (or will be) 56. According to his backstory "bio", Jeff was born 2 January 2009^[3] the son of a combine harvester driver on a Kansas wheat farm.

Biography

• Military service in the U.S. Air Force achieving rank of colonel
• Transfer to Space Agency to become an early lunar astronaut^[4]
• Jeff married^[2] and became the father of five sons; Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan born in rapid succession in the period 2039-2044. The sons were named after the first 5 American astronauts into space via the Mercury space project, i.e. Scott Carpenter, Virgil Grissom, Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper and John Glenn.^[5]
• His wife died prematurely, commonly accepted to have been due to complications with the birth on 12 March 2044 of her youngest son, Alan. A non-canonical 1993 comic strip has a different explanation^[1]
• Jeff raised his five sons, while building up a civil and construction engineering business that made him one of the richest men in the world.
• He became a philanthropist and instigated and financed International Rescue

As the Tracy family patriarch, he spends most of his time on Tracy Island, situated somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, from where he co-ordinates rescue missions.

It has been suggested that the Tracy family are based on the Cartwrights from the TV series Bonanza, and that the Jeff Tracy puppet is based on the actor who played Ben Cartwright, Lorne Greene.^[3]

References

External links

• www.fab1.co.nz - Thunderbirds Characters