| Stingray | |
|---|---|
Stingray title screenshot |
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| Also known as | Gerry Anderson's Stingray (Australia) |
| Genre | Action Adventure Children's Science fiction |
| Format | Supermarionation serial |
| Created by | Gerry Anderson Sylvia Anderson |
| Written by | Gerry Anderson Sylvia Anderson Alan Fennell Dennis Spooner |
| Directed by | David Elliott John Kelly Alan Pattillo Desmond Saunders |
| Voices of | Don Mason Ray Barrett Robert Easton David Graham Lois Maxwell |
| Ending theme | "Aqua Marina" (sung by Gary Miller) |
| Composer(s) | Barry Gray |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 39 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Gerry Anderson Sylvia Anderson |
| Editor(s) | Harry MacDonald Eric Pask |
| Cinematography | John Read |
| Camera setup | Single |
| Running time | 25 mins approx. per episode (excluding advertisements) |
| Production company(s) | AP Films |
| Distributor | ITC Entertainment |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ATV |
| Picture format | Film (35 mm) |
| Audio format | Mono |
| Original run | 4 October 1964 – 27 June 1965 |
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.
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Supercar 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).
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 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.
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".[1]
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.[2]
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.
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 Stingray's 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!
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