Filed: 3rd July 2108

The death of Donald James, one of the key scriptwriters working on Gerry Anderson productions from Joe 90 to Terrahawks has been announced.  Born Donald James Wheal in 1931, he read history at Cambridge, and gained his first TV credits on the long running ITV police series No Hiding Place in 1963, contributing four episodes to that series before gaining his first film credit for The Limbo Line, adapting Victor Canning’s novel.  James then moved on to the then-booming area of filmed television, becoming one of the main writers on The Champions, and writing his only episode of The Avengers, Have Guns, Will Haggle, which had the misfortune of being filmed during John Bryce’s short reign as Producer. 

 His association with Gerry Anderson began with Joe 90, for which he wrote the stories Trial at Sea, Test Flight and The Professional.  The hiring of a writer such as Donald James, with his background in adult adventure series, was perhaps emblematic of Joe 90’s status as a more character-based series than the previous Anderson shows, and a desire to move on to producing series aimed at an older audience.  This trend was even more apparent in the next Supermarionation series, The Secret Service, for which he wrote The Deadly Whisper and A Question of Miracles. 

 The 1968/69 period was to be his busiest period as a scriptwriter, with two scripts also being written for Department S and no less than eleven for its sister series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), plus an episode of Paul Temple, and the script for Gerry Anderson’s first feature film, Doppelgänger. 

 James remained close to Century 21 productions, being intimately involved in their first fully live-action TV series, UFO.  Although he was only credited for one script, Kill Straker, he acted as the show’s unofficial script editor during its early stages, and many early scripts will have been polished and rewritten by him.  He moved on to other ITC series, namely The Persuaders, Jason King and The Adventurer, returning to work for Anderson for The Protectors, for which he wrote seven scripts.

 After a break from scriptwriting, he returned to pen three episodes of Space: 1999’s second year, The Seance Spectre, Journey to Where and The Exiles.  Production of British filmed adventure series has almost dried up by this point, and he began to move into other areas, having an instant hit with his first novel in 1977, A Spy at Evening, which was turned into a BBC serial.   He wrote extensively, both under his own name and with fellow Anderson writer Tony Barwick, their publishers giving this joint enterprise the authorial name James Barwick.  In the 1980’s he made a brief return to scriptwriting for Terrahawks, for which he wrote The Sporilla and From Here to Infinity.

 In the 1990s he has great success with his ‘Vadim’ trilogy of novels, set in a future Russia under totalitarian rule, and had just completed his latest, as yet unpublished, political thriller at the time of his sudden death.

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Filed: 26th June 2108

Gerry Anderson will attend a fundraising day for the Alexander Devine Children’s Cancer Trust  in Slough on Tuesday, July 8th.

 Gerry will be providing signing and photo opportunities in exchange for donations to the Trust, in his capacity of Patron. The day will also include a range of other activities, including a silent auction, a tombola, refreshments and much more.

Organised by Barclays bank, the event will be held at their Slough office at Hamilton Road, Slough Trading Estate, SL1 4RP but all are welcome – not just bank employees. Barclays’ charity pound-for-pound matching scheme means that any donations are likely to be doubled, so please give generously! 

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Filed: 7th June 2108

FAB News From Japan

Filed: 1st June 2108

A Fanderson agent based in Japan has informed us of yet another Thunderbirds advert - this time for NEC.  

Look out for Thunderbird 4's new role and accessing the Internet from the Airport Control Tower. 

A high quality version of this can be seen here.

http://www.express.nec.co.jp/products/thunderbirds/movie/index.html

In addition the New Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and The Secret Service (Japanese title 'London Shirei X') .are being shown in Japan on Super! drama TV.  Note these links are all in Japanese.

http://www.superdramatv.com/line/c_scarlet_new/index.html

http://www.superdramatv.com/line/joe90/index.html

http://www.superdramatv.com/line/london/index.html

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Filed: 27th May 2108

Gerry Anderson graced Bristol's Watershed Cinema on Tuesday 20th May as part of the city's Festival of Ideas, in association with the West of England Design Forum.

 It was Gerry's first visit to Bristol.

Those attending were treated to a walk through his career from the early days of Twizzle through to New Captain Scarlet, presented in an interview style interspersed with illustrative clips from the shows and anecdotes of his experiences at the studios and working with some of the characters we've come to know and love. 

The audience, which consisted of a good mix of "casual" viewers, fans of all ages and Fanderson members, had an opportunity afterwards to meet Gerry at a brief signing session. After being very well received, the only gripe most people seemed to have was that the session wasn't long enough!

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Filed: 25th May 2108

An advert featuring Brains dancing has received over half a million hits on the internet. You can see the advert at the Brains themed website www.staydrenched.co.uk.  You can also see the making of the advert there as well.

This advert follows hot on the heels of the Thunderbirds Spec Savers advert which was shot using techniques exactly as per the 1960s Gerry Anderson productions.  Further details of this advert, featuring Virgil and the Hood, can be seen on the link below.  It includes a link to high quality version of the advert.

http://tandemfilms.blogspot.com/2008/04/strings-attached.html 

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Filed: 19th May 2108

Filed: 13th May 2108

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