I have been working late nights, and needed DVDs that did not require rapt attention. So-o-o-o, I opted to go through Thunderbirds again. You know, the marionettes who save the world (or a little piece of it) every week. It has long been my least favorite Supermarionation series, primarily because the pacing is often the speed of a Victorian melodrama.
I have had an epiphany. I really like Thunderbirds. The visuals are great; the music by Barry Gray is inspired; It's all good! I even love hating Alan Tracy, the whiny little jerk. He should wear John's sash. But I especially enjoy The Hood. He is International Rescue's arch-nemesis, with a jungle temple fastness, a flair for disguises, a savvy-ness for using "audio only" on a videophone while disguised, and a glowy-eyed psychic link that he uses to control his brother Kyrano, faithful man-servant to Jeff Tracy, head of IR, and the billionaire ex-astronaut pater familias of the Chez Tracy. Kyrano falls down a lot from The Hood's psychic predations.
The Hood. He is clearly The Villain With Something Extra. His schemes revolve around foiling Thunderbird One's Camera Detector (!), and then taking pictures of the Thunderbirds craft, and their control panels, whereupon he will become The Richest Man In The World (or The Most Powerful. He is fickle). Because he has pictures. Of aircraft. And control panels. BWAHAHAHA!!! Pictures!
I have whole DVDs of these things. It's done me nought....
So, with his scary glowy-eyed voodoo schtick, and his impossibly small grasp of engineering, I feel sorry for him, and thus, I find myself, after all these years, actually rooting for The Hood, and feeling mildly sad whenever his uppance comes. and oh, it comes.
Behold, and weep.
2 comments:
"a flair for disguises, a savvy-ness for using "audio only" on a videophone while disguised"
That never fails to get an incredulous haw-haw from Jeremiah whenever he sees it (he used to watch "Thunderbirds Are Go!" on a daily basis back when we had it on a RCA Select-A-Vision disc).
"I even love hating Alan Tracy, the whiny little jerk."
There's that bit in "Thunderbird 6" where one of the characters notices that John had given Tin Tin a ring, and he coyly asks if it means John is going to give up the bachelor life. John casually makes a remark that the sort of life he leads doesn't make room for marriage.
Frankly, if I'd been Tin Tin, I would've picked John up, thrown him off the balcony into empty air, then stomped back to my room, slamming the door behind me as his screams faded in the distance. Worthless little turd.
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