Supercar (TV series)

Did You Know?

• Supercar debuted in the U.S. on WPIX in New York City on 6 January 1962 at 6:30 p.m., and after four weeks had an average ARB rating of 15.2.
• In the UK, comics based on the series appeared in TV Comic from issue No. 483 (18 March 1961) to issue No. 667 (26 September 1964).
• In 1998, Fanderson issued a limited-edition album of Barry Gray's music from the series, paired with his work on Fireball XL5.

Premise

The series centres on Supercar, a multi-environment craft invented by Professor Rudolph Popkiss and Doctor Horatio Beaker, and piloted by Mike Mercury. The vehicle uses airbreathing jet engines and retractable wings for vertical-takeoff-and-landing flight, retrorockets for slowing, and rides on a cushion of air on land. Rocket engines allow underwater and outer-space travel, and its navigation system includes Clear-Vu to see through fog and smoke. Supercar is housed at a laboratory at Black Rock, Nevada. In the first episode, "Rescue", the craft saves passengers of a downed private plane; two of the rescued, young Jimmy Gibson and his pet monkey Mitch, join the facility for subsequent adventures. The series introduced a launch sequence that became an Anderson trademark, showing the charging and firing of engines, activation of an interlock, opening of hangar doors, and vertical take-off.

Characters

Mike Mercury, voiced by Graydon Gould, is the test pilot of Supercar. Professor Rudolph Popkiss, co-inventor, is voiced by George Murcell in series 1 and Cyril Shaps in series 2. Doctor Horatio Beaker, co-inventor, is voiced by David Graham. Jimmy Gibson, the kid brother of Mike's pilot friend Bill Gibson, is voiced by Sylvia Anderson; his pet monkey Mitch is voiced by David Graham. Recurring villains include Masterspy and Zarin, a foreign spy and his henchman obsessed with stealing Supercar, voiced by Murcell/Shaps and Graham respectively. Other characters include Mr Harper, a posh English criminal; Ben Judd, a lower-class Cockney criminal; Bill Gibson, Jimmy's elder brother; and Felicity Beaker, Doctor Beaker's cousin.

Production

After Granada Television declined a second series of Four Feather Falls, Gerry Anderson approached Lew Grade of ATV with the idea for Supercar. Anderson proposed a £3,000 per episode budget, which Grade demanded be halved; after working through the night, Anderson returned with a reduction of only a third, and Grade still commissioned the series. Anderson claimed he invented a futuristic vehicle to reduce the amount of walking the marionettes had to do, as walking never looked convincing. Scriptwriter brothers Hugh and Martin Woodhouse devised supporting characters Dr Beaker, Masterspy and Zarin, expanding on Anderson's original concept; they had been developing their own series about Beaker under the working title Beaker's Bureau. The brothers wrote one complete shooting script per week to meet the cost and production schedule. Several working models of Supercar were built: a larger "hero" model about 7 feet long costing £1,000, made of lightweight wood and Perspex by Laurie Barr; a mid-sized model about 1 metre long sculpted by Bill James; and a smaller model about 0.5 metre used for titles. The cast was assembled weeks before shooting; lines were recorded on Sundays once a month in a rushes theatre converted into a recording studio, typically between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., working through at least three scripts per session.

Reception

Robert Sellers notes that while 21st-century audiences may find the series tame and infantile compared to later APF work, it is sustained by good writing, characterisation and production design. Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping regard Mike Mercury as the template for later protagonists, with his "square-jawed, mid-Atlantic" bearing making him the prototypical Gerry Anderson hero. Rick Sanchez of IGN rates the series 8 out of 10, praising writing and characters but finding plots formulaic and Masterspy overused. Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk gives the series an "Excellent" rating, praising puppet sets, scale model work, special effects and cinematography, noting production values not seen in 1960 children's programming. Matt Hinrichs of DVD Talk rates it two out of five, calling it a primitive precursor to later series and best skipped, describing it as repetitive, snail-paced and unimaginative. Marcus Hearn notes the lack of female regular characters and describes the series as aimed at little boys of the Meccano era, with a rescue theme and fetishisation of technology. Jonathan Bignell observes that villains operate outside geopolitical conflict, though Masterspy and Zarin carry echoes of the Cold War, and the heroes are a multinational team.