Stingray - Complete Series

Starring: Don Mason, Ray Barrett Director: Alan Fennell, Alan Pattillo, David Elliott, Desmond Saunders, John Kelly Original UK Premiere: 1964 Dvd Release: 2nd April, 2001 Number Of Discs: 5 Format: Box set, PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Stingray is a childrens marionette television show, made by Sylvia & Gerry Anderson. An AP Films production for ATV & ITC Entertainment. 39 half-hour episodes, 1964 - 1965. Originally screened on ITV in the UK & syndication in the US. Scripts by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson, Alan Fennell & Dennis Spooner. Music composed & conducted by Barry Gray. Special Effects Director Derek Meddings. Stingray was the first Supermarionation show to be filmed in colour & also the first in which marionettes had interchangeable heads with different facial expressions. It was also the first UK TV show to be filmed entirely in colour. At the time the US networks were gearing up for full-time colour broadcasting, although ITV in Britain did not begin colour transmission until late 1969. Supercar had featured a vehicle that could travel on land, sea & air & Fireball XL5 featured a spaceship. The next logical step was a series about a submarine, although this presented a number of technical challenges.

Drums pound, building excitement; the music bursts into life with a cry of Stingray! Stingray! Who can resist? Especially when a dramatic voice announces, Anything can happen in the next half hour!. Stingray was the show Gerry Anderson made just before he really hit the big time with Thunderbirds , producing 39 episodes of the 21st-century adventures of Troy Tempest, tall, dark & handsome captain of the titular submarine. His mission: to protect the seas on behalf of WASP . With complex underwater model & puppet effects, this was ground-breaking television, especially as it was the first UK series to be made in colour, though for years it was only seen in black & white. Special effects director Derek Meddings later graduated to the James Bond movies, while Moneypenny herself voiced Atlanta Shore. Here, just as in the Bond movies, she played second fiddle in our heros affections, the mute Marina becoming Stingrays sex-goddess. The end-credits even featured a song in her honour, Aqua Maria, which became an international hit. As for the bad guys: half-man, half-fish Titan & his Terror Fish wage dastardly war against humanity & the peaceful underwater citizens of Pacifica. Four decades on the model & underwater sequences still impress, & surely much of the inspiration for the underwater city in The Phantom Menace came from locations in Stingray. Whether as bizarre 60s nostalgia, or winning a new generation of fans, Stingray remains eccentric cult family entertainment.

Ray Barrett is an Australian actor. Ray Barrett was one of the more popular leading men on British television in the 1960s, including an appearance in the Doctor Who serial The Rescue in 1965. He was on the series The Troubleshooters from 1965 to 1971 & did the voice of John Tracy on the Gerry Anderson marionette series Thunderbirds. It was only in the decades that followed that he emerged to big-screen stardom in his native country. He won the 2005 Australian Film Institute Awards Longford Life Achievement Award. In his youth he was fascinated by radio, then a marvellous new entertainment medium & won an on-air talent competition in 1939. Ray Barrett at the Internet Movie Database.

Editors Choice: Frenchmans Farm, Thunderbirds Are Go, Stingray, View DVDology

David Elliott is a British born curator & Gallery Director. After studying History at the University of Durham Elliott worked as an Exhibitions Officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain after which he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford from 1976 to 1996 & the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 1996 to 2001. Elliott is currently director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo - the largest privately endowed Modern Art Museum in the World.

Editors Choice: Thunderbirds, Volume 1, Stingray, View DVDology

John Kelly was a senior Irish politician. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann on his second attempt in 1973 as a Fine Gael TD. He retained his seat until his retirement from politics at the 1989 General Election. He served in the Government of Liam Cosgrave as Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach & subsequently as Attorney General. He served in the first Cabinet under Garret FitzGerald from 1981 until 1982. He was a distinguished academic lawyer & author of the standard work on the Irish Constitution. He died on January 24, 1991.

Editors Choice: Stingray, View DVDology

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