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Thunderbirds

1965–1966ITVSci-Fi

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Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.

Thunderbirds opens with a main title sequence of 93 seconds.

At 93 seconds, it opens well above the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on ITV in 1965, when The Sooty Show, World of Sport and Ivor the Engine were also on the network.

1 sequence22nd most looked up of 99 in the 1960sIMDb ↗
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The opening titles

Season 1

93s

Posted by the official Gerry Anderson channel. The sequence is a mission briefing before there is a mission: each craft launches, each pilot is named, and the whole premise is delivered without a line of dialogue.

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The one that set the shape of every space-opera opening since: a ship crossing the frame, a captain narrating a mission statement, and a melody built to be hummed. Alexander Courage wrote it as a fanfare and a lounge tune at the same time.

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1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

Thunder, a Lotus Seven driven hard past Parliament, a resignation letter slammed onto a desk, and then gas under the door of a man's own flat. Two minutes that explain the entire premise without a narrator, and end with the only line the show ever needed: I am not a number.

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John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.

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Still from the opening titles of The Outer Limits1 sequence

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The control-voice narration that takes over your television set — a premise so effective that the sequence is better remembered than most of the episodes.

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A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.

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