ScreenRelish pulled these out of a forum and I’m pulling them from ScreenRelish. Click to enlarge.
None of the text can be read. But it looks like they’ve given Lady Penelope a dog (see lower mid-left). Why? Because they can?
I’m not sure of those character descriptions. But I’ll take it on trust that they did a thorough watching of the series and extrapolated from the original characters. I can hear the groans out there about Virgil in a plaid shirt and jeans.
And we have the new character: Kayo. She’s allegedly Tin-Tin rebooted. First, rumors are Tin-Tin is a trademark. Second, Thunderbirds never had an active female team member outside of Lady Penelope, so this “corrects” that.
And perhaps the most controversial bit …
… a new vehicle: The Thunderbird Shadow! What?
Thunderbird One is supposed to be the first-responder ship, based on its speed. Does the Shadow accompany it to oversee the area against any threats?
And who will be the threats? I can’t recall any word of The Hood being in this series.
I’ve been told there’s more or less an uproar by fans of the original series over what they’ve been seeing.
Shit like that is why I avoid all fan forums. I dipped into a few, years ago, and I’ll be blunt: The IQ is just fucking deficient, no matter what the series is (Anderson or otherwise).
Any fan with any IQ points has to concede that a Thunderbirds reboot is nearly an impossible task.
The series was created when there wasn’t widespread knowledge of spy satellites to see the launch of the Thunderbirds. When surveillance and eavesdropping were very difficult things to do, making the capabilities of Thunderbird Five just about miraculous to viewers. And I could go on from there.
I mean, just the basic premise: Who the hell could afford such a base, such machines? Jeff Tracy would have to be the richest guy on earth — yet the press has lost track of him and his money? And five guys living on an island in the middle of the Pacific? That’s unrealistic from a biological standpoint.
Anyway …
To reboot the series, you’d really have to blind yourself to many, many things or find credible ways to work around them. This is not an easy task, despite the shallow dreams of the original fans who should be old enough to know better.
Also, look: Why human beings? We send robots to places now. Drones. Robots to freakin Mars. Not people. How many rescues could be accomplished just by machines being controlled via Virtual Reality?
All of you Anderfans saw Terrahawks. The Zeroids — the robots — had more personality than most of the humans! So don’t tell me a Robo-Thunderbirds couldn’t make any sense. In fact, it’d make more sense because the damn robots could be hidden all over the earth — like Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles were socked away in Captain Scarlet — and could respond faster to a danger zone than any aircraft launched from a remote island!
Yes, I’ve done my own share of thinking over the years about a reboot too.
We’ve already had one reboot: New Captain Scarlet. Done by Gerry himself. It was the wrong approach.
Now we’re getting a reboot of Thunderbirds. I don’t recall the hue and cry for the return of Supermarionation for New Captain Scarlet, so why with Thunderbirds? If anything, the original puppets being cute lend themselves more to CGI than Captain Scarlet did.
I’ve been an Anderson fan since Supercar ran on WPIX-TV channel 11 in New York City. And let me tell you lot in the UK: Being an Anderson fan in America is not an easy thing to do. We don’t get your conventions and magazines and TV reruns. But maybe that distance did me some good. Because I’m not wailing over what I’ve seen so far of Thunderbirds Are Go.
I just wish ITV or whoever would be brave and release at least a fifteen-second teaser with a bit of the score, a bit of a vehicle or two, and a bit of one of the characters against a live model background. Best to keep dialogue out of it because someone is bound to get cramps over it, no matter what’s said.
Previously here:
Twitter HATES The New Tracy Brothers
Twitter: Tracy Brothers A “Boy Band”
Thunderbirds Are Go: Brains, Alan Tracy
CITV: Thunderbirds Are Go In Spring 2015
Thunderbirds Are Go Gives Us A Clip
Thunderbirds Are Go Site Crash
Morons Are Go!
Thunderbirds Are Go Still No-Go
Thunderbirds Are Go Renewed Before Reveal!
Thunderbirds Are Go In One Week
Thunderbirds Are Go Shown At BFI
Thunderbirds Are Go: Second Word
Thunderbirds Are Go: Sneak Peek Of Theme?
Thunderbirds Are Go Tumblr
Thunderbirds Are Go: First Word
Thunderbirds Are Go: The Tracy Boys
Thunderbirds Are Go: New Images
Thunderbirds Are Wait For It
Thunderbirds Are Go Documentary
Large Images Of New Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3, 4
Gerry Anderson Is Go!
Thunderbirds Are Go: October Reveal
New Thunderbirds Are Go Video
The New Tracy Island?
Sneak Peek Of The New Thunderbird 2
Supermarionation Forever
Now That Gerry Anderson’s Dead, Let’s Get Rich!
R.I.P. TV Producer/Creator Gerry Anderson
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
Very interesting analisys.And I agree is very complicate to do a reboot for a fan base.We definitely need some teaser or trailer like you said…April still to far.
There already is a teaser trailer. It’s been out for about 5 weeks.
If you mean the one with Thunderbird 5, that’s been seen by everyone. I mean one showing the CGI characters against live miniatures.
are you a child?
I do not understand americans with their absurd freak likes, thunderbirds?
it is like power ranger in asia, then you demostrate your CI
I don’t give a shit whether you like it or not. Stop reading.
Hey, shithead. here’s a second reply.
http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2015/01/thunderbirds-revamped-characters-revealed/
Go tell Ars they’re also stupid.
You shouldn’t be treating your readers this way, otherwise no one will want to read your blogs if you treat them like crap. You don’t sound like a nice person. In fact, you sound very rude and arrogant.
Fuck off.
Here’s some help with that:
[pathetic bleatings redacted]
You can’t win here, chump. Go whine somewhere else.
Hi Chris, You’ve got an enjoyable blog here, and amongst other things, your writings give me a good laugh, and provide a better set of teasers to the new Thunderbirds series than the woefully inadequate ITV.
First of all, I need to make one thing clear, I’ve not got one of those all consuming interests in Thunderbirds, although, I do recognise that it’s something very special to me. I’d probably put it down as a collecting hobby which I enjoy, but certainly not one of these all-consuming obsessions. And you’re dead right some of the fans are clinical obsessive’s!
So to begin with, just to make a small correction; The Hood does appear in the new series, he’s voiced by Andres Williams. The main omission which is a little worrying, is of the actor who will be the voice artist of Jeff Tracy. Although I suspect that Weta may even use some sort of digital audio technology to re-create Peter Dynleys iconic and distinctive voice. Thunderbirds wouldn’t be Thunderbirds without Jeff… We shall see.
I do know that the New Zealand producers are genuine fans of the original series, and want to make this a success, so more can be made. It’s something they enjoy and will make them money – a no-brainer really. Consequently the only way they can do that is to ensure it will appeal to the biggest audience as possible, while still keeping as much of the original as is practical. Because lets not forget, Thunderbirds was a Children’s Television programme which also appealed to a family audience.
Also, talking of Jeff Tracy; addressing this new vehicle the “Thunderbird Shadow.” In the second and last film, “Thunderbird 6”. Jeff states that they need a new type of vehicle, eventually realising that “it needs to be light, and have a low airspeed.” Of course they end up with using a Tiger Moth biplane, which soars supreme over the state-of-the-art 21st Century technology. This is revealed as Thunderbird Six at the end of the film! I’d guess that the Shadow partly fulfils that role, [without it being a bit of lame joke] and also addresses some of the problems they faced when they needed stealth capability in some of the original stories. It may even be a play on words, all starting with the letter “S”.
In fact, the more that gets revealed about this new series, the more I get the impression that the producers have been reading up on the original 1960’s material. The annuals, TV21 comics, and of course the series bible, and I would suspect talking to all the people who worked on it, including Gerry Anderson. Again, we will have to wait and see.
Certainly, a reasonably meaty promo wouldn’t go amiss about now. I suspect, something will turn up in the next few weeks, and then it’ll be ramped up for the April start.
Who the hell wrote this blog BTW? Who ever it was they clearly have a problem controlling their language.
You can fuck off and I thank you for not visiting again.