Thunderbird 6 - Production

Production

It was felt that we'd done the one with the hardware and that now we wanted to do something amusing. Out came this script with a Tiger Moth in it, which was as far removed from the hardware that was in Thunderbirds as anything I can think of.

Despite the unexpected failure of Thunderbirds Are Go on its release in December 1966, the United Artists distributors authorised a sequel, to be budgeted at £300,000. Major production credits were unchanged from the first film: while Gerry and Sylvia Anderson scripted the film in three months and returned as producers, David Lane filled the position of director.

The plot of the ill-fated Skyship One was intended to be more light-hearted than that of Zero-X in Thunderbirds Are Go, although at the earliest production stage the focus was to be a "Russo-American space project". From an idea of Desmond Saunders, a long-standing collaborator who had an interest in aviation, the Andersons based the plot on the destruction of the British R101 in 1930. Gerry Anderson researched airship history by reading books on the R101, the R100 and the Graf Zeppelin. The plot also emulates the Thunderbirds Series Two episode "Alias Mr. Hackenbacker", which stars another of Brains' pioneering aircraft, Skythrust.

Introducing a vintage de Havilland Tiger Moth as the new Thunderbird 6, in their script the Andersons allude to 1960s publicity for Esso, which advertised under the promotional banner of "Put a Tiger in Your Tank". A line from Virgil Tracy during the final rescue of the Skyship One occupants adapts this slogan to refer to the "Tiger" stored inside Thunderbird 2's Pod. However, no character dialogue explicitly refers to the aircraft by the full name "Tiger Moth".