this is the last of the pre several fighters thunderbird reviews all new reviews will be written on this site and with images in mind. except the hobbit one, i wrote that on facebook too.
and now for another of these new thunderbirds reviews that i seem to be doing a lot. episode 5: fireflash. I’m doing episode 5 before episode 4 as i haven’t watched episode 4 yet.
by the way: SPOILERS IF YOU HADN’T GUESSED!
the episode is somewhat of an adaptation of the original series’ pilot trapped in the sky, and since i’ve actually watched the original i can make comparisons and stuff.
die cast: survives any earth based crash or your money back.
the episode starts with the titular plane: the fireflash launching from a London airport in the middle of… no idea, it’s surrounded by fields and stuff so it probably isn’t Southend, they make a few references to the original (the control tower, yes airports used to have those back in the 60s looks the same and the pilots retain their names, hanson and frank) and then announce that brains had recently upgraded the plane with new engines and the mysterious thunderbird S is still being worked on (maybe it actually showed up last episode, i don’t know) and… let’s just call her Tin-Tin; because “kayo” has just started sounding stupid, is a passenger. some guy who looks like the hood’s disguise in the original episode burps at her in a french accent then the real hood, disguised as hanson by way of hologram and his accent already being British, makes the plane invisible sleeping gasses everyone with the oxygen masks. why? because he wants to steal the plane’s engines. well fireflash brains built engines are obviously one step down from Thunderbirds so looks like his plan’s the same as usual.
the hood then crashes the plane into… ok too soon. but then again this is like that transformers RID 2001 episode where the predacons try to steal a terrorist bomb from a car… released on the same week as 9/11.
interestingly enough people put on the O2 masks because hoodsey tells them that the plane’s decompressing, tin-tin has enough common sense not to fall for this (read: any) but for some reason doesn’t recognise her uncle’s voice because…
my breathing sense is tingling!
logic?
they fight in the baggage hold and have some actually decent dialog. in fact the dialog seems to have worked itself out by this point. then hood breaks a panel and escape pods the hell out of there. 3 problems with this: 1) the escape pod is labelled first aid, i think this is reference to something but still ?, 2) there is one escape pod, talk about lifeboats on a titanic and 3) remember earlier when tin-tin wasn’t fooled by the fake decompression? she isn’t fooled by the real thing either. they’re apparently “too high for turbulence” and way above 10000ft but apparently she suffers no breathing problems while looking out of the escape pod shaped hole.
anyway the tracy boys come along and since the plane (previously nuclear powered) has leaked all it’s fuel they then land the plane 3 times on an airstrip in mongolia. yes 3. 1st time round 2 of the 3 landing gears don’t fold out correctly but tin-tin seems to land it perfectly fine… either that or KSP has lowered my expectation of perfect landings, but decides to take off again in case the fuel explodes BUT THAT ISN’T A GOOD REASON IF YOU’VE JUST LANDED.
no, it wasn’t perfect. i wanna try again.
then thunderbird 2 comes along.
you may in fact remember that in the original episode they launch 4 landing gear trucks (that they for some reason had lying around) and land the firefly… flash on those.
red paint: optional
for once this series makes a lot of sense: thunderbird 2’s pod has 2 chassis in it that they bolt wheels and landing pads to, essentially filling the role of the original landing gear things. but considering the fuselage shape and the removable wheels i reckons they’re gonna make the mole out of these, along with other things (i believe they had a vehicle called the firebreak or something at one point) alan and gordon have nothing better to do so they drive em out and tin-tin tries to land the firefox on them… then makes up some BS reason about the plane crushing the modular pod things and the tracy bros inside… hold it this springs to mind: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6c3OTr6yA)
#preachitconstipatedspock!
and they then spin out of control and flip off into the desert… hold it again! surely they could have been killed that way too. stay calm matt, there’s only minutes left.
fortunately at this point virgil’s as fed up with tin-tin’s pathetic excuses as i am so he swoops in and bat ropes Firefighter and lands it himself. the day is saved etc.
overall this episode was pretty good. hayo…tin-tin and the hood have a debate, people don’t speak in quick sucession as much and the modular fuselage idea is a neat new touch. i’d say that this series is starting to get good. it’s still incredibly riff-able due to lax physics but still.
next (but technically last) episode: episode 4, has something to do with nuclear power being bad and episode 6 involves gandma tracy as vs terrorists… that’s gonna be fun to watch.