Thunderbirds Are ... Mallorcan

"FIVE ... FOUR ... THREE ... TWO ... ONE. Thunderbirds are ..." sitting around the lavishly appointed family finca doing very little.

One theory about Thunderbirds and the Tracys is that they were based on "Bonanza", and there is a certain amount of truth to this. Jeff was indeed modelled on Ben Cartwright while Hop Sing, the Chinese cook at the Ponderosa who provided much of the light relief, could well have been the inspiration for Kyrano. Where the theory falls down is the fact that the Tracy brothers sort of looked like each other, whereas Hoss and Little Joe were about as unalike as you could get, even accepting that they had different mothers, and Ben did have some seriously bad luck with wives dying on him.

I would like to think that Tracy Island was in fact a combination of Bonanza and Mallorca. Had Thunderbirds been made thirty years later, then there would be more grounds for thinking this, but let's not be too concerned with historical accuracies.

The meaning of bonanza is great wealth and prosperity, and one meaning of bonanza in Spanish is the same as the English. The days of the "bonanza" are often referred to as the boom times thanks to the growth of tourism. One of the consequences of the bonanza was that a number of Mallorcans acquired serious wealth through land sales and occasionally through working hard. A further consequence was that these rich Mallorcans had offspring who needed to be found something to do with their lives rather than lounging around the poolside, living off the paternal or maternal millions. So, this is where Tracy Island comes in. 

In my Thunderbirds Mallorcan parallel universe, Jeff, having become fabulously wealthy through the sale of land that he had dubious claims to in the first place and the acquisition of great chunks of shares in hotel companies, wondered how he was going to spend his time and, as importantly, what he was going to do with his five layabout sons who hadn't bothered with schooling as they were comfortable in the knowledge that papa would just keep on providing.

Jeff, therefore, came up with a mad scheme for a private international rescue service. Ostensibly funded with his millions, it wasn't to be. Instead, Jeff, together with Brains, presented the project as one for regional development to the powers-that-be in regional government and Europe (I know, there was no regional government or Europe in the 1960s, but I have already said that we shouldn't worry about accuracy). They duly handed over shedloads of public money to Jeff who then proceeded to build a dream home for him and his family and rip up whole loads of underground Mallorca, so destroying much of the water resource, on the pretext of building massive hangars for the pods for Thunderbird 2 and a launch pad for Thunderbird 1. And for good measure, several more million were spent on a retractable swimming-pool, heavy camouflage and gated security and palm trees that would fold down. Then, when they had finished with turning Mallorca into Tracy Island, a further massive tranche of public money was used to build a space station.

Of course, no one really ever believed that Jeff and his sons would ever actually do any rescuing. Or not very much anyway. And this was to prove to be the great flaw in Jeff's plan. His layabout sons were still layabouts, except once a week when some batty English socialite, Lady Penelope, would come on the extraordinarily expensive communications system (also paid for with public money) and insist that a cat up a tree needed rescuing or when Kyrano would suffer a bad case of neuralgia caused by his Chinese mafioso half-brother, The Hood, who was threatening the local Chinese shop owner over non-payment of protection money.

Apart from their once-a-week adventures, the Tracy boys did absolutely nothing. They still lounged around the pool, Virgil played the piano now and then and Alan tried to get off with Tin-Tin. Lord alone knows what John ever got up to on Thunderbird 5. It's probably best if we don't know. Even when they were doing a spot of rescue, they weren't all at it. Alan and Gordon were particularly idle in this regard.

Tracy Island was, therefore, a monument to Mallorcan waste, environmental destruction and parental indulgence. However, had there really been a Tracy Island, it would now be being converted into a giant theme park, one to which Parkers would come or would be employed to be at the service of enormously wealthy Russian tourists: "you rang, m'lady".

* Gerry Anderson, 14 April 1929 - 26 December 2012.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.