I Watch TV: Stingray

 

Stingray (1964)

Watching this soon after Fireball XL-5 you can see the similarities, how Stingray is an iteration on the previous show. In both we have a lightly crewed craft, that is launched into a hostile environment (space or the ocean). They have a cool futuristic base (Space City or Marineville). Sometimes they are out on patrol, sometimes they are investigating something out in space and sometimes they are dealing with something back at base. And of course the characters are puppets, and the various machines are models.

The iteration has several changes, mostly improvements. First colour, and of course the excellent water effects (mostly created by filming with an aquarium between the camera and the models). Secondly the characters. You couldn’t slide a bus ticket between the two bosses, irascible Commander Wilbur Zero and irascible Commander Sam Shore. However Shore’s assistant is Atlanta, his daughter, voiced by the unmistakeable Lois Maxwell. She is one of the two love interests for our main character Captain Troy Tempest.

Troy Tempest, Captain of Stingray, is also an improvement on previous puppet heroes. He is, of course, a basic kid’s show hero, omni-competent, brave, always there to save his friends, and just naïve enough to walk into the villain’s trap. He also has opinions, gets excited or annoyed. For example where a French submarine commander from the navy (Marineville is the headquarters of WASP the World Aquanaut Security Patrol) gets boasting, he argues with him and takes a dare.

His other crew includes Phones, the navigator and sonar and hydrophone operator (they have an “automatic bosun” to handle Stingray when they can’t be bothered to drive it themselves). He’s a little short on actual character, his accent doing most of the work. The other member in Marina, rescued from King Titan of Titanica in the first episode. She’s mute, and has gills so can swim underwater without gear. She’s Tempest’s other love interest, a simmering conflict that adds just a tinge to the scenes on shore when everyone’s having fun. Atlanta is always wanting to go out on missions. Occasionally the two women show some solidarity when the menfolk are being especially annoying.

But what of King Titan of Titanica, the villain of the show? He is offended by the intrusion of the Terranians into his watery domain and so seeks to prevent them. I’ve got to say that I appreciate his point, yet on the other hand he is a tyrannical slave-holding monstrous war-monger, targeting civilians and generally committing war-crimes every time he makes a plan, while Stingray at least offers lip service to the Laws Of The Sea. Perhaps slightly softening his villainy is his reliance on bumbling Surface Agent X-2-Zero, who disguises himself as human and then ineptly tries to get bombs or saboteurs to cause problems for WASP. For less clandestine attacks there are the gurgling aquaphibians, grotesque yet comical creatures whose speech is left untranslated. There’s a little of the paranoia that comes into the APF/Century 21 shows, which similarly is an undercurrent in Thunderbirds before coming to the fore in Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons and the live action UFO.

Stingray remains one of my favourites of the Andersons APF/Century 21 puppet-and-model kid’s shows. Captain Scarlet is cleverer and has better puppet technology, and of course the dark heart of secrets and indestructability. Thunderbirds is brilliant, the machines unmatched, the ideas smart. Yet here, with the inadequate puppets (Phones and Tempest ride their seats down into Stingray to avoid having to film them walking – a more elegant solution than flying up on the jet-cycles of Fireball XL-5) the characters shine through. Well Tempest does, and Atlanta and Marina at least. But three characters that are good? That’ll hold a TV show together, if you have enough submarine chases, explosions and death traps to pad it out.

Watch This: Enjoyable kid’s science fiction puppet show
Don’t Watch This: Weird faced guys sailing about in an unconvincing submarine
But Also: See this megamix