Fireball XL5

1962

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
  • 0
7.2| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 28 October 1962 Ended
Producted By: ITC Entertainment
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Fireball XL5 is a science fiction-themed children's television show following the missions of spaceship Fireball XL5, commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol. The show was produced in 1962 by husband and wife team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson through their company APF, in association with ATV for ITC Entertainment. While developing his new show, Anderson thought a brand of motor oil—Castrol XL—had an interesting sound. A phonetic change created the name "Fireball XL", with the "-5" added as the title seemed a bit flat without the numeral. The show featured the Andersons' Supermarionation, a form of puppetry first introduced in Four Feather Falls and Supercar and used again in their subsequent productions such as Stingray and Captain Scarlet. Thirty-nine black and white half-hour episodes of Fireball XL5 were made on 35mm film: all future Anderson series were produced in colour. Several Anderson series have been shown in syndication in the US, but Fireball XL5 is the only Anderson series to have run on a US network. NBC ran the series in its Saturday morning children's block from 1963 through to September 1965. A similar programme often confused with Fireball XL5 is Space Patrol, produced by Gerry Anderson's ex business partner and co-founder of AP Films, Arthur Provis due to a number of similarities and settings.

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Reviews

Console best movie i've ever seen.
Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
rick_c I remember watching this show and I was surprised, when it came out, to see puppets! I would have not watched it except that I loved the theme song so much. I would actually leave it on just to hear this song. It was the first song that really turned me on to music. I don't think I ever felt that way about any music until The Beatles came out a year later. I don't know if I would still like the song as much, but I probably would. The show never really knocked me out, but the song has stayed in my memory to this day.Because it had puppets portraying humans it seemed very primitive to me. I never could get past the primitive movement of these things. Maybe I was too old for the show and just left it on because of the song. I cannot say, but the song definitely had some real magic to it.
StuOz Early Gerry Anderson puppet series.Being a 1960s B&W space show gives it a first season Lost In Space-feel.I had a mixed reaction to the series, sometimes I would flick on a tape and enjoy it, some of the spaced out sets were cool, while other times I found it too unlike the more traditional Stingray/Thunderbirds material. The spacecraft the series is named after and the robot did nothing for me, but the series should be viewed as just simply a warm up for the much better Stingray series that followed.
doctardis It has been so long I hardly remember the show, but I do remember the begging and pleading I did to get my parents to let me watch the show. It was, at the time, my favorite television show. It was my introduction to science fiction. It is genre that I almost always prefer. I just saw a show recently, and it is still great fun. It is particularly interesting to compare this to the latter shows of the Andersons like Stingray, Thunderbirds, Capt. Scarlet, UFO, Space:1999, and journey to the farside of the sun. They always are fun to watch. I grew up being a fan of their work without always knowing it was the same producers.
c.sherlock A pox on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson for coming up with this one! Not that it was bad, but I found it terrifying! Surely I was not the only small child that it scared. Those cursed marionettes were so lifelike that I got the impression--childlike though it was--that they were people who had somehow been turned into marionettes. The thought that this could actually happen was frightening to me. To this day, I remain traumatized by my memories of this show. Hearing some of the .wav files from the show remind me of just why I found the whole thing so traumatic.

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