Thunderbirdery

You know, if Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds had managed to put out a few more episodes, would they have eventually had distant cousins called Yuri and Valentina working for International Rescue?

Here's the thing. The International Rescue boys Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon and John - pilots of Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively - were all named after early US Astronautic pioneers Scott Carpenter, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Alan Shepard, John Glenn and Gordon Cooper. Thunderbirds came out in 1968, the year before Apollo 11, so they had no idea what lay ahead.

The series was set in 2068, long after the problems of the Cold War prevalent in 1968. The world had survived, so clearly Gerry Anderson's vision was optimistic.

It stood to reason that, had the show continued to a second season in 1969, and a third season in 1970, they would have expanded the family to include distant cousins Neil (Armstrong), Buzz (Aldrin), Eugene (Cernan) and so on. I'd expect a Roger (Chaffee), Harrison (Schmitt), Jack (Swigert) and Fred (Haise) to turn up at some point as well, as the Tracy Family expanded to cover those daredevil US heroes.

But there were other astronautic legends, too. And it'd have been interesting had the series been able to expand to include Jeff Tracy's ancestral family back in The Old Country, with such honourable ancestors as Yuri (Gagarin) and Valentina (Tereshkova).

And had there been a reboot of Thunderbirds in the Eighties instead of Terrahawks, I've little doubt that the Tracy Clan could have included a Sally (Ride),a Story (Musgrave) and cousins called Michael (Smith), Dick (Scobee), Ronald (McNair), Ellison (Onizuka), Christa (McAuliffe), Gregory (Jarvis) and Judith (Resnik).

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, that's the weird thing. I had a bizarre dream about the Thunderbirds boys (the immediate family of Jeff Tracy from the TV show) earlier this morning, and it's the topic of tonight's Perchance To Dream post.