Terrahawks


Gerry Anderson & Christopher Burr's Terrahawks, usually referred to simply as Terrahawks, is a 1980s British science fiction television series produced by Anderson Burr Pictures and created by the production team of Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr. The show was Anderson's first in over a decade to use puppets for its characters, and also his last. Anderson's previous puppet-laden TV series included Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
Set in the year 2020, the series follows the adventures of the Terrahawks, a taskforce responsible for protecting Earth from invasion by a group of extraterrestrial androids and aliens led by Zelda. Like Anderson's previous puppet series, futuristic vehicles and technology featured prominently in each episode.

Premise

The series is set in the year 2020, after an alien force has destroyed NASA's Mars base and Earth is under threat. A small organisation, The Terrahawks, is set up to defend the planet. From Hawknest, their secret base in South America, they develop sophisticated weapons to prepare for the battles to come.
Terrahawks was less straight-laced than any of Anderson's previous series, featuring a wry, tongue-in-cheek humour as well as dramatic jeopardy. The ensemble cast, with each member assigned a vehicle, had many similarities with Anderson's Thunderbirds, whilst the alien invasion plot was reminiscent of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and the live action UFO.

History

Prior to Terrahawks and throughout the entirety of the 1960s, Anderson's series were noted for their use of his patented Supermarionation technique, which made use of electronically augmented marionettes. In contrast, producers of Terrahawks made use of latex muppet-style hand puppets to animate the characters, in a process Anderson dubbed Supermacromation.
This was partly dictated by the relatively low budget, but the absence of strings allowed for much smoother movement, and could be used to more easily produce the illusion of the puppets walking. The necessarily static puppets of previous series had been a source of frustration to Anderson during his Supermarionation days.

Production

The series' most prolific contributor, Tony Barwick, constantly used tongue-in-cheek aliases whenever he wrote a different episode, calling himself, for instance, "Anne Teakstein," and "Felix Catstein." The only episodes of the series not credited to pseudonyms ending in "-stein" are "The Midas Touch," scripted by Trevor Lansdowne and Tony Barwick, the latter billed under his real name for the only time on the series, and the two-part opener "Expect The Unexpected," written by Gerry Anderson.
A fourth season would have developed the characters of Stew Dapples and Kate Kestrel further. This was explained in a documentary on the special features disc of the series, in the Gerry Anderson book "Supermarionation" and the Terrahawks DVDs. Two of the scripts were called "101 Seed", written by Anderson himself, and "Attempted MOIDer" by Tony Barwick.
In the UK, six specially prepared compilations of Terrahawks were released on video cassette, covering 24 out of 26 episodes from the first season. The first tape contained a few scenes in the premiere episode that had been edited out of the broadcast master due to time constraints. The final volume, entitled "Zero Strikes Back" had a smaller print run than the rest of the tapes, and was quite a collectors' item, with copies generally going for around £100 on eBay until the series began to be released on DVD. The series is available on DVD in the United Kingdom and North America. A Blu-ray release of the first series was released in June 2016.
Unlike virtually all of Gerry Anderson's other puppet-based series, Terrahawks was not produced by ITC Entertainment. This meant that after Terrahawks repeats disappeared from UK airwaves in the late 1980s and the six compilation video tapes went out of production, the series was noticeably hard to find compared to Anderson's other series, most of which received a renaissance throughout the 1990s.

Title sequence and end credits

The opening and closing sequences were created using hand-drawn cel animation to imitate computer graphics. The opening title sequence begins with a video game playing on a screen when Doctor "Tiger" Ninestein appears and says: "Terrahawks! Stay on this channel! This is an emergency!". The end credits, the Zeroid and Cube robots would often "play" noughts and crosses with each other, resulting in a different winner each week. The exception to this was the episode "A Christmas Miracle", which featured the song "I Believe in Christmas" as sung by Kate Kestrel played over a still of a Zeroid.
The original opening title sequence was used for both the United States and the UK versions of the series, but a different version of the end credits was produced for the US variant, featuring a Zeroid bouncing up and down next to one of Zelda's Cubes as a "Kate Kestrel" song plays. At the conclusion of the credits the Zeroid jumps off of the screen and crashes back down onto the Cube.
When the series was purchased for airing in Japan, the title and ending credits were augmented by an all-new anime-style sequence, the first highlighting the Terrahawks craft and the Zeroids, and the ending credits showcasing a lonesome spacesuited female remembering her life on Earth as Spacehawk flies over her. The songs used in these sequences are "Galactica Thrilling" and "Taisetsu na One Word", respectively, by The Lillies Naomi and Mayumi Tsubame.

Music

Without the lavish budgets of his earlier television series, it was apparent to Gerry Anderson from a very early stage of production that it would not be possible to record full orchestral scores for Terrahawks. However, the development of synthesised music had advanced considerably since the early days of the experimental 'electromusic' composed and recorded by Barry Gray for Supercar and Fireball XL5, and by 1983 it was possible to create electronic music that could at least approach the scale and majesty of a full orchestra, but at a fraction of the cost.
Richard Harvey was introduced to Anderson by a mutual friend, music producer Tony Prior, who has previously suggested Derek Wadsworth as composer of the music for Year Two. A graduate of the Royal College of Music with a background in ancient and classical music, Harvey had worked extensively with film composer Maurice Jarre in the late 1970s. This experience made him the ideal choice to compose the music for Terrahawks, combining his knowledge of the structure of classical orchestral music with the latest synthesised music reproduction techniques. Anderson and his business partner Christoper Burr had regular meetings with Harvey to discuss the style of music that they wanted for Terrahawks, particularly the main theme which was envisaged as a combination of the 'best bits' of the themes to Star Wars, E.T. and Dallas.
In 2002, Fanderson records released a soundtrack compiling 75 minutes worth of music, the album included 3 of Harvey’s Demo Themes for the show, 6 full episode scores and 3 surviving Kate Kestrel songs, "S.O.S", "It’s So Easy" and the latter half of "Living in the 21st Century" which was used as the End Titles music in the U.S. syndication run. The remaining songs and first half of "Living in the 21st Century" are currently missing, presumed destroyed.

Audio revival

It was announced on 19 April 2014 that Terrahawks would be returning as a run of full cast audio dramas featuring original cast members. The new audio series were produced by Anderson Entertainment in association with Big Finish Productions. The first new series was released in April 2015, and consists of eight episodes. Ann Ridler who played Kate Kestrel and Cy-Star was replaced by Beth Chalmers, as Ridler had since died, and Windsor Davies who played Sergeant Major Zero was replaced by Jeremy Hitchen, as Davies had retired from acting.
A second series was released by Big Finish Productions in April 2016, and a third in July 2017. Free sample episodes are available on the .

Characters

The Terrahawks

Terrahawks is an elite task force that protects Earth from alien invasion.
Robots from the planet Guk rebelled when their creators and masters deteriorated into a state of apathy. Zelda and company are modelled after the oldest and wisest citizens of their planet, explaining their grey hair and wrinkled skin. Zelda hopes to conquer Earth and make it a home for her Family of Androids and NONE-Human Beings.
They need to consume only small amounts of silicate minerals a month to sustain their functions.
Zelda possesses a collection of monstrous servants, Outcasts from various worlds or civilizations, who she keeps in cryogenic storage until needed.
Characters who only appear in the Big Finish audio series include;

Comics

A comic strip adaptation was drawn by Jim Baikie for Look-In magazine.

Video game

The CRL game of the series, released in 1984, was one of the first video games based on a TV show.

''Zeroids Vs Cubes''

On 10 December 2014, an animated spin-off web series was announced titled Zeroids Vs Cubes. It is produced by IDO Design & Animation and Anderson Entertainment and it came to YouTube on 19 June 2015. Both Jeremy Hitchen and Robbie Stevens reprised their roles as the Sergeant Major Zero and Space Sergeant 101. However, only one episode was released.

Episodes

Kate Kestrel And The Terrahawks revival

On 12 August 2019, Anderson Entertainment announced that a revival of Terrahawks is currently in the works entitled Kate Kestrel And The Terrahawks. They revealed that it is to be co-produce with Tiny Giant and "is being executively produced by Jamie Anderson and Stu Gamble. Showrunner is Mark Hoffmeier who is producing with Mike Penketh and Vicky Kjaer Jensen "