Stingray (1964 TV series)

src: i.ytimg.com

Stingray is a British children's Supermarionation television series, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by AP Films for Associated Television and ITC Entertainment between 1964 and 1965. Its 39 half-hour episodes were originally broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom and in syndication in the United States and Canada.

The series was written by the Andersons, Alan Fennell and Dennis Spooner. Its music was composed by Barry Gray and its special effects were directed by Derek Meddings. It was filmed in Eastmancolor at a cost of approximately £1 million.

Stingray was the first Supermarionation series to feature marionette characters with interchangeable heads that enabled them to show a variety of expressions. It was also the first British TV series to be filmed entirely in colour, primarily to increase its appeal to the lucrative American market.

Video Stingray (1964 TV series)

Premise

Stingray, a nuclear-powered combat submarine built for speed and manoeuvrability, is the flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP), a branch of the World Security Patrol (WSP) responsible for policing the Earth's oceans in the mid-2060s. The vessel is armed with "sting missile" torpedoes and can travel at up to 600 knots (1,100 km/h) underwater, while its pressure compensators allow it to reach depths of over 36,000 feet (11 km).

The WASP's base is Marineville, located several miles inland somewhere on the West Coast of North America. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean via a tunnel leading to an "ocean door", through which Stingray is launched. Alerts such as "action stations", "launch stations", and "battle stations" are sounded by rapid drum beats that are played over the base's public address system. In emergency situations, the entire base is lowered into underground bunkers on giant hydraulic jacks while interceptor missiles and fighter aircraft are launched to counter threats. WASP personnel acknowledge commands with the phrase "P.W.O.R." - short for "Proceeding With Orders Received".

Stingray is piloted by the square-jawed Captain Troy Tempest. He is paired with Southern navigator Lieutenant George Lee Sheridan, nicknamed "Phones" for his role as Stingray's hydrophone operator. Troy and Phones board Stingray by sitting on twin injector seats in Marineville's stand-by lounge, which are lowered into the vessel via injector tubes and then clamped into place. They answer to the crusty "hoverchair"-bound Commander Sam Shore, whose daughter, Lieutenant Atlanta Shore, takes shifts in the Marineville control tower and is enamoured of Troy.

At the start of the series, the WASP learns that the ocean floor is home to many underwater civilisations. Among these is the city of Titanica - whose tyrannical ruler, King Titan, commands a brutal warrior race called the Aquaphibians and possesses a fleet of lethal submersibles known as "Mechanical Fish" (referred to as "Terror Fish" in tie-in media). In the first episode, Stingray is attacked by Titan's forces and Troy and Phones are captured. They are rescued by Titan's slave, Marina, a mute young woman from the undersea city of Pacifica who can breathe underwater. Marina returns to Marineville with Troy and Phones and becomes a regular member of the Stingray crew. Troy becomes infatuated with her, making Atlanta jealous. Meanwhile, Titan, furious at Marina's betrayal, vows revenge on "terraineans" (land people) in general and Troy and the WASP in particular.

Many later episodes revolve around Titan's schemes to destroy Stingray and Marineville; however, these usually fail due to the incompetence of his spy on land, Surface Agent X-2-0. Based on the Pacific island of Lemoy, X-2-0 lives in a dilapidated house whose walls conceal banks of highly-sophisticated surveillance and tracking equipment. Other episodes feature encounters with other races living under the sea or within the Earth, some friendly and others hostile, or investigation of natural phenomena.

Maps Stingray (1964 TV series)

Episodes

Special episodes

Compilation films

Between 1980 and 1981, two compilation films were produced. Each of these comprised re-edited versions of four of the original episodes. The films were produced for the American market and aired in the United States as part of an ITC Entertainment package titled "Super Space Theater"; other Supermarionation series were given similar treatments. On 24 November (Thanksgiving) 1988, the second Stingray compilation feature, Invaders from the Deep, appeared as the first broadcast episode of movie-mocking TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the US.

src: i.pinimg.com

Characters

WASP personnel

• Captain Troy Tempest: Captain of the WASP's main submarine, Stingray (voiced by Don Mason). He was made Aquanaut of the Year in one episode, for his fearlessness and bravery.
• Lieutenant George Lee "Phones" Sheridan: Stingray's co-pilot hydrophone operator (voiced by Robert Easton) He is Troy's loyal best friend. (Phones' real name, George Sheridan, is referred to in the series' publicity material but is not mentioned on-screen.)
• Marina: - A mute mermaid (though in one episode is voiced by Sylvia Anderson), who once was the slave for Titan and princess of the undersea race of friendly Pacificans. In the first episode she helped Troy and Phones escape from Titan.
• Commander Samuel "Sam" Shore: Commander of the WASP base at Marineville (voiced by Ray Barrett). He is a widower and confined to a hoverchair. He is also the father of Atlanta Shore. The reason for his disability is revealed in the episode "The Ghost of the Sea": as a security agent for a deep-sea mining platform, he was injured when a hostile submersible attacked the facility and damaged his patrol craft. He managed to ram the enemy in return, and then escape to the surface, but in so doing lost the use of his legs.
• Lieutenant Atlanta Shore: Control Tower Lieutenant (voiced by Lois Maxwell). She works with her father, Commander Shore. She is also Troy's love interest.
• Sub-Lieutenant John Horatio Fisher: An eager young Lieutenant (voiced by Ray Barrett). He works in the control tower with Commander Shore and Lieutenant Atlanta. In the episode "Rescue from the Skies" he is seen training to be an aquanaut.

Villains

• King Titan of Titanica: Ruthless ruler of the undersea race of the Aquaphibians from Titanica (voiced by Ray Barrett). In the Pilot episode he captures Troy and Phones but they escape thanks to his slave Marina helping them.
• Surface Agent X-2-Zero: Surface agent who lives on the island of Lemoy, near Marineville, and reports directly to Titan (voiced by Robert Easton). He is often blamed by Titan when things go wrong in Titan's plans.
• The Aquaphibians: Titan's minions. Their voices were supplied by Robert Easton and David Graham aided by a looped tape recording of bubbling water.

Recurring characters

• Oink the Seal: A seal pup (voiced by David Graham). He joins the Stingray crew as Marina's pet after saving them from a bomb.
• Marineville Tracking Station operative: An early warning system that alerts Marineville of aerial attacks and unidentified vessels and aircraft in the area (voiced in most episodes by David Graham, and 1 episode by Lois Maxwell).
• Marineville Power Plant Technician: Controls when Marineville goes into Battle Stations Mode (voiced by Ray Barrett).
• Doc: Marineville's main Doctor (voiced by David Graham).
• Admiral Jack Denver: He is president of the WASP underwater research division (voiced by David Graham). He went to college with Commander Shore and enjoys debating with him.
• WSP Commanders: Three World Security Patrol Commanders (voiced by Don Mason, Robert Easton, Ray Barrett and David Graham). They all appear in different episodes to brief Commander Shore.

src: i.ytimg.com

Voice cast

Marina is unique among Supermarionation characters in that she has no dialogue. In the episode "Raptures of the Deep" she appears to communicate telepathically with Troy (her thoughts voiced by Sylvia Anderson), but this is later revealed to be a part of a dream that Troy experienced while delirious, having passed out underwater due to a lack of oxygen. In the dream sequence in question, Marina's lips do not move because her puppet was not equipped with a speech mechanism.

src: i.pinimg.com

Production

As filming on Fireball XL5 came to an end in late 1962, producer Gerry Anderson considered a series set underwater to be the next logical step for AP Films: "We had been on land and in space, so where could we go next? One possibility was underwater." He was inspired by childhood memories of U-boats in the Second World War, as well as by the mysteries of the ocean: "I was ... fascinated by trenches in the ocean that are as deep as mountains are high. There are features that man has never seen and pressures that are almost impossible to withstand. I began to wonder if there were areas of the Earth which had been little explored and felt justified in writing some wacky stuff."

Lew Grade, who had been financing APF since the production of Supercar and had bought the company following the commercial success of Fireball XL5, approved the new concept and commissioned 26 episodes. Anderson named the series "Stingray" in part due to a mistaken belief that stingrays are dangerous animals, but also because it "seemed an exciting title."

Filming

In preparation for the new series, APF moved to larger facilities on a different part of the Slough Trading Estate at a cost of £75,000 (approximately £1.44 million in 2016). The new studios, built inside a factory unit, were located half a mile from the site where APF had filmed Four Feather Falls, Supercar and Fireball XL5. They contained three shooting stages, each measuring 40 by 45 feet (12 m × 14 m): two for puppet filming and one for special effects filming.

Production began in the spring of 1963 and the series was completed in ten months, with each episode taking an average of 16.5 days to film. The total cost of the production was approximately £1 million (approximately £19.22 million in 2016). It was budgeted at £20,000 (approximately £384,000 in 2016) per episode, which enabled APF, whose earlier productions had been in black and white, to film in Eastmancolor. The switch to colour filming was intended to increase the series' chances of being bought by a network in the United States, where colour TV broadcasts were already common. Sets were re-painted after NBC supplied APF with a list of colours believed to cause problems such as flaring or bleeding; according to Anderson, this was unnecessary because if filmed in Eastmancolour, a set "would appear on screen exactly as you had painted it." Nevertheless, some colours were avoided as they did not come out well in black and white. During the production of Stingray, APF became the largest consumer of colour film in the UK.

As filming progressed, Grade extended his commission to 39 episodes. As shooting on the final 13 episodes commenced, Don Mason and Robert Easton, who had been told that all members of the voice cast were being paid the same amount, discovered that they were actually earning less than their co-star David Graham. Mason and Easton did not commit to the remaining episodes until their fees had been re-negotiated.

In a first for a Supermarionation series, Stingray features a Christmas-themed episode ("A Christmas to Remember") and a clip show final episode. The latter, "Aquanaut of the Year", incorporates elements from the documentary series This Is Your Life, which required APF to obtain the approval of its creator, Ralph Edwards. With negotiations between Edwards and APF taking longer than expected, work commenced on an alternative series finale in which Commander Shore and Admiral Denver view highlights from a selection of Stingray's missions on a film projector; however, the production of this episode was halted when Edwards gave APF permission to proceed with "Aquanaut of the Year". The linking material from the abandoned episode was re-discovered in 2000 and subsequently included on the UK Stingray DVD box set. Several years later, it was combined with footage from "Stingray", "An Echo of Danger", and "Emergency Marineville" to create a new 29-minute clip show titled "The Reunion Party", which was first broadcast in January 2008.

Characters and puppets

Gerry Anderson said that the character of Phones was inspired by a sound engineer with whom he used to work: "He spent so long with his headphones plugged in to various bits of equipment that he used to leave them on all the time, earning himself the nickname 'Phones'." Voice actor Robert Easton based the character's Southern American tones on his performance in the 1961 film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in which he had played a Southern radio operator called Sparks. The voice of Surface Agent X-2-0 was Easton's impression of actor Peter Lorre, who had appeared in the same film.

Sylvia Anderson, who had voiced the regular character Dr Venus on Fireball XL5 and was credited for "characterisation supervision" for Stingray, stated in her 2007 autobiography that she devised Marina as mute because she wanted to take a break from voice acting and "concentrate on the scripts and characters". The Aquaphibians were based on a villainous alien from the Fireball XL5 episode "XL5 to H₂O".

The process of designing and making the puppets took four months and each of the main characters was sculpted in duplicate to allow two episodes to be filmed simultaneously using both puppet stages. The likenesses of some of the puppets were inspired by real-life actors: Titan was based on a young Laurence Olivier and Surface Agent X-2-0 on either Claude Rains or Peter Lorre. Troy Tempest was modelled on James Garner at Gerry Anderson's suggestion. Atlanta Shore has been likened to Lois Maxwell (who voiced the character) and Marina to both Brigitte Bardot and Ursula Andress.

Stingray was the first Supermarionation series to feature puppets with glass eyes and poseable hands (both specially made by outside contractors) for greater realism. To make the puppets' eyes sparkle in a lifelike way, they were polished with silicon and illuminated using an "eye light" (a small lamp). Another innovation was the creation of alternative heads to allow puppets to express emotions: in addition to their "normal" heads, which had neutral expressions, the main characters could also be fitted with "smiling" and "frowning" heads. The wigs of female puppets were made of human hair; for male puppets, mohair was used as it was softer and easier to style.

Design and effects

Most of the series' special effects shots were filmed on high-speed cameras with the footage slowed down in post-production to convey greater weight and scale.

The Stingray submarine was designed by Reg Hill and built by Feltham-based company Mastermodels. The Marineville model, which was created in-house, was made of wood and cardboard augmented with pieces of model kits purchased from a toy shop. It was lowered and raised by hydraulics.

The series' underwater scenes were filmed not in a water tank, as Anderson had originally envisaged, but by shooting a model of the ocean floor, mounted against a cyclorama, through a thin aquarium and "flying" the puppets and miniature models across the set on wires from an overhead gantry. A similar technique had been used for the underwater scenes in Supercar. Several aquaria were used; constructed by a company that supplied fish tanks to London Zoo, they were re-built with thicker glass after one of them burst due to the water pressure. Wires were painted over to make them non-reflective, while vegetable dye was added to the aquaria to give the water a murky appearance. Fans were used to simulate currents passing over characters' hair and clothing.

The illusion of scenes being set underwater was enhanced by populating the aquaria with tropical fish of various sizes to create forced perspective. Fish food was dropped at various points around the aquaria to keep the animals in shot. A disc with various portions cut out was mounted in front of a lamp and rotated to simulate light being refracted through the ocean surface, while the water inside the aquaria was disturbed to create "ripple" effects. For the conclusion of the Stingray launch sequence, in which the submarine shoots out of an underwater tunnel, part of the set was painted onto the aquarium to conceal the air line that was used to produce the accompanying bubbles. The move away from black-and-white filming was sometimes problematic as build-ups of algae caused the water in the aquaria to change colour.

Water surface shots in Supercar and Fireball XL5 had been filmed in a single outdoor water tank, but for Stingray a number of tanks were built inside the studio. As the crew were unable to use lighting effects to make the water look blue, it was dyed to give it a realistic colour. Various powders were added to create whitewater and foam effects for undersea explosions and storm scenes. Miniature models were controlled using wires, poles and underwater tracks and rigs.

Each tank incorporated a weir system whereby one or more walls, including the back wall, were built lower and the tank was filled to a higher level to create waterfalls. With the camera mounted at water level, this produced an artificial horizon at the back of the tank. The overflowing water was collected in troughs and then pumped back into the tank to keep the water level constant and sustain the effect. To conserve studio space, some scenes were filmed in a wedge-shaped tank that was built to match the field of view of the camera. One of the effects shots in the opening titles, featuring a complex manoeuvre in which Stingray and a pursuing Mechanical Fish leaping out of the sea, was filmed in a single take.

Shots of aircraft in flight were filmed using a technique known as the "rolling sky", whereby the miniature model remained stationary and an illusion of movement was created by continuously running a loop of painted canvas background around two electrically-driven rollers. This system, devised by effects director Derek Meddings, made aerial shots easier to film as it took up little studio space.

Opening and closing titles

The title sequence consists of a series of action shots featuring undersea explosions, Marineville going to red alert and Stingray being launched to do battle with a Mechanical Fish. This is accompanied by dramatic narration from the character of Commander Shore, who warns the audience to "Stand by for action!" and declares that "Anything can happen in the next half-hour!" In the first 26 episodes, the title sequence opens in black and white before switching to colour; for the final 13 episodes, the first few seconds were replaced with all-colour footage.

Jim Sangster and Paul Condon, authors of Collins Telly Guide, praise the opening titles, writing that "Of all the programmes we've looked at for this book, there is none with a title sequence as thrilling as Stingray." According to John Peel, the Stingray title sequence contrasts greatly with those of Supercar and Fireball XL5, which he describes as "straight narrative openings". Peel also argues that Stingray has influenced the "rapid cutting, pounding rhythms and extreme stylising" of subsequent TV title sequences.

The series' closing titles focus on the love triangle between Atlanta, Troy, and Marina, with Troy singing "Aqua Marina" - a song about his romantic feelings for Marina, performed by Gary Miller with backing vocals by soprano Joan Brown - while Atlanta gazes wistfully at his photograph.

src: s2-ssl.dmcdn.net

Broadcast

In the UK, Stingray was first broadcast on 4 October 1964 in the Anglia, Border, Grampian, London and Southern regions. Although it received little publicity it replicated the success of earlier Supermarionation series. Having debuted in black and white, it was transmitted in colour for the first time in December 1969. It was repeated on ITV in 1981 and BBC2 in the early 1990s. It was also shown on Sky One from 2002 to 2003.

In the US, the series was first broadcast in 1965. Premiering in colour, it was syndicated across more than 100 markets with total sales exceeding £3 million. Sci-Fi Channel aired the series between 1992 and 1997 as part of its "Sci-Fi Cartoon Quest" programming block.

src: i.pinimg.com

Tie-ins

Stingray was featured in the Supermarionation tie-in comic TV Century 21 from its first issue, published by AP Films (Merchandising) in January 1965. The 1960s also saw the publication of two original novels by Armada Books: Stingray and Stingray and the Monster, written by John William Jennison under the pseudonym "John Theydon".

Audio episodes

To supplement the 39 TV episodes, in 1965 AP Films (Merchandising) released three "audio adventures" as 7-inch vinyl EP records (marketed as "mini-albums"). These audio episodes, each running to approximately 21 minutes and featuring the voice cast from the TV series, are included as special features on the UK Stingray DVD box set.

"Marina Speaks" reveals that Marina is in fact not mute at all. In fact, her race has been cursed by Titan - should any one of them speak, another will die. They are not certain that this is true, but none of them dares find out; thus, for years they have lived in complicit silence.

src: i.ytimg.com

Reception

Media historian Marcus Hearn observes that Stingray essentially "[transfers] the format of Fireball XL5 to an underwater setting." Writing in 2006, Robert Sellers described Stingray as the "first truly classic Anderson show", whose special effects "have stood the test of time remarkably well." Daniel O'Brien, author of SF:UK: How British Science Fiction Changed the World, considers it to be "perhaps the archetypal Gerry Anderson series".

Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, authors of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, view Stingray's special effects as more "realistic" than those of earlier Supermarionation productions. They also argue that while many episodes were "predictable and corny", the series contained a "knowingness and a love of character that made the whole thing charming." According to Jon E. Lewis and Penny Stempel, authors of Cult TV: The Essential Critical Guide, the series featured "plenty of kiddie-time exciting narrative action, while the more sophisticated could enjoy its proclivity to spoof virtually everything which passed its periscope." Sangster and Condon argue that while elements such as the animal character, Oink, mean that Stingray is aimed primarily at children, it is the first Anderson series in which the "sophistication of the production" creates appeal for adults. They regard Stingray as "much less po-faced" than its follow-up, Thunderbirds, with episodes that are "mercifully shorter, leading to tighter plotting and an engaging simplicity". Peel suggests that the "tongue-in-cheek humour that [Gerry] Anderson favoured probably reached its peak with Stingray."

Media historian Nicholas J. Cull observes that through its depiction of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP), Stingray is one of several Gerry Anderson series to "assume the development of world government and world security institutions" and "reflect the 1960s vogue for stories set in secret organisations with extravagant acronyms." He compares the premise to the Cold War, noting the conflict between WASP and the various undersea races and the latter's use of spies to infiltrate human society. Cull cites "Marineville Traitor", whose plot concerns the hunt for an "enemy within", as an episode with an "especially strong Cold War flavour". He also notes that while Anderson's series often focus on the dangers of nuclear technology, Stingray also presents it in a positive light: Stingray itself, for example, is a nuclear-powered submarine.

Sarah Kurchak of The A.V. Club argues that compared to villains in previous Anderson series Titan and the Aquaphibians represent a "more classically Cold War-style villainous Other". She adds: "Throughout the 39 episodes, the battle lines between land and sea are clearly defined, the enemy is always watching, and the target of their aggression is always close to home." Kurchak also suggests that the character of Troy Tempest serves as an embodiment of Cold War anxieties through his "multiple nightmares" involving threats against Marineville. O'Brien remarks that Stingray contains "more than a touch of the Cold War ethos", suggesting that Titan "could have easily belonged to an underwater branch of the Soviet Bloc, hungering for the destruction of the white-bread Tempest."

src: i.ytimg.com

Stingray-class

According to the Stingray comic strip in the weekly Countdown comic, more than one Stingray-class submarine was in service in the Marineville fleet. These vessels had names such as Spearfish, Barracuda, Moray, and Thornback and were identified by different numbers on their fins, suggesting that the "3" painted on Stingray's tail fin did not indicate that the submarine was a "Mark III" after all.

A similar idea had been adopted by author John Theydon for his second Stingray tie-in novel, Stingray and the Monster, some years prior. In the novel, another WASP submarine (unnamed and referred to as "Number Thirteen") is hi-jacked by an old enemy of Commander Shore. Theydon's description of the hi-jacked boat, both inside and out, is recognisably similar to that of Stingray, with the exception that "Number Thirteen" is stated not to possess Stingray's exceptional performance, being limited to roughly 400 knots (740 km/h) instead of the 600 knots (1,100 km/h) that Stingray is quoted as being able to attain. The implication, not explicitly stated, is that Stingray is an upgraded version of the design. Later, TV21 comic mentioned a second "super-sub" due to enter service under the WASP that is stolen by a Mysteron agent as part of the plot of a Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons story.

src: c8.alamy.com

Foreign titles

• (in French): Escadrille sous-marine
• (in German): Kommando Stingray
• (in Hebrew): ha-Trigon (???????; Hebrew for "stingray"). The show was broadcast in Israel in the 1970s and the early 1980s, with Hebrew subtitles incidentally translating "Marineville" as "Kiryat-Yam" (literally "Sea town", but coinciding with the actual name of a suburb of Haifa).
• (in Japanese): Kaitei Dai-Sens? Sutingurei (????????????; literally, "The Great War Under the Sea: Stingray")
• (in Spanish): El Meteoro Submarino ("The Submarine Meteor")
• (in Turkish): Denizler Hakimi

src: i.ytimg.com

Footnotes

src: c8.alamy.com

References

Bibliography

src: c8.alamy.com

External links

• Official website (Defunct; archived January 2010) (Adobe Flash Player) ( Page will play audio when loaded)

• Stingray on IMDb
• Stingray at BBC Online
• Stingray at the BFI's Screenonline

Source of article : Wikipedia