The original opening and closing titles were also changed, with the new opening titles featuring narration that explained the purpose of the International Rescue organisation. The 1983 English language version of Technoboyager created by ITC America would be rechristened Thunderbirds 2086, and the show’s characters would receive various re-namings and personality changes in this new version.
#Original thunderbird 2 series
Presented with a ready-made series featuring various futuristic craft saving the day with the letters ‘TB’ (for Technoboyager) on their hulls, it was obvious that an English language dub could be produced that would capitalise on the already-established Thunderbirds name – so obvious in fact that it may always have been Uemura’s plan to try to adapt the series in this way! However, it was to find an afterlife thanks to Uemura’s connections at ITC. Unfortunately, the series was not a hit in Japan when it first aired in 1982, with only eighteen of its twenty-four episodes being broadcast. The series would follow the adventures of the agents of a futuristic global rescue service and their fleet of seventeen rescue vehicles, the Technoboyager craft.
This was to be a twenty-four episode animated series by the name of Kagaku Kyūjo Tai Tekunoboijā, or Scientific Rescue Team Technoboyager. Uemura returned to the ideas he had devised while in consultation with Anderson and revised them into a concept that would essentially follow the format of Thunderbirds (a series he enjoyed and had homaged in previous works) as closely as he dare.
With the Japanese release of Star Wars however came a sudden urgent need for science fiction on film and television – and one man was ready for it. The idea for the series would undergo much revision (including a new title Terrahawks: Order to Recapture Earth) as various ideas were thrown around, but ultimately the project went nowhere due to the belief among Japanese networks that science fiction was no longer marketable.
Aware that his shows had always been very popular in Japan, he met with producer Banjiro Uemura looking to produce a new animated science fiction television series Thunderhawks. While it certainly featured an organisation called International Rescue, a flotilla of futuristic rescue vehicles known as the Thunderbirds, and was even occasionally promoted using the same Thunderbirds logo as the original television show…it was clearly not of the same production stable as the classic Supermarionation series! Instead, Thunderbirds 2086 was a Japanese animated series that had started life as a different show entirely, before being rebranded as a new incarnation of Thunderbirds and then disappearing for good in the space of just over a decade!Īlthough very much a product of the 1980s the roots of the series can be traced back in 1977, to that post- Space:1999 period where Gerry Anderson could no longer look forward to commissions from ITC (following Lew Grade reaching ITV’s mandatory retirement age and his decision to move into film production). Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Thunderbirds fans would have occasionally found themselves faced with another television series also claiming to be an iteration of Thunderbirds.
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