23/08/2025
We are continuing to receive collections for our Rescuing the Past project to discover, recover and preserve production materials from the Supermarionation shows and Gerry & Sylvia’s other productions. This includes a forthcoming significant collection which we hope to announce soon. However, we need your help. Since last year when we recovered missing Thunderbirds scenes from a garden shed, we have been inundated with items. While photographs and documents are easy enough to duplicate, films require more care — and are much more expensive to inspect, scan, and archive. We are currently trying to raise an additional £5000 to aid with recent and forthcoming costs on top of the generous sums you’ve helped with already. If you would like to donate, please visit our GoFundMe page in the link in the comments.
Items recovered, and existing items copied for long term safety include:
— Thunderbirds: Pit of Peril (alternative edit and unseen scenes)
— Supercar: Jungle Hazard (unseen scene and alternative soundtrack)
— Thunderbirds: Terror in New York City (Long missing Barry Gray music master, including unheard music)
— Thunderbirds Are Go: 1960s promotional film
— Thunderbirds: Trapped in the Sky (original edit shown to Lew Grade in 1964 with alternative shots)
— Over 100 missing sound effects on 15 tapes recorded for the Supermarionation shows.
— Crossroads to Crime (missing used music takes)
— Space 1999: The Taybor (missing on set dialogue recording.
— UFO (Original trailers)
— Barry Gray music (improved sources from tapes made at his studio)
— Torchy the Battery Boy (Roberta Leigh’s personal print of the first episode)
— Four Feather Falls (Missing dialogue tracks for How it Began and Kidnapped including deleted scenes and actors’ chat)
— Space 1999 (Original negative elements for special effects)
— UFO (French title elements)
— Thunderbirds (master soundtrack elements)
— Photographs (assorted unseen and rare behind the scenes and publicity shots)
— Thunderbirds (special effects trims — including shots from lost from original half hour episodes)
— Four Feather Falls (original master elements for Ride ‘em Cowboy)
— The Secret Service (special effects outtake)
— Thunderbirds (special effects outtakes reel)
— Four Feather Falls (The Toughest Guy in the West dialogue track)
— Space: 1999 (missing Rules of Luton on-set audio)
— Thunderbirds Are Go Cutting Copy (preservation scan of private collector’s film, including shots deleted from the final film)
— Four Feather Falls (original master elements for Gunfight on Main Street)
— Four Feather Falls (Trouble at Yellow Gulch dialogue track)
— Supercar (long lost tape of Sylvia Anderson’s first ever dialogue recording session with Gerry Anderson directing)
— Four Feather Falls (Horse Thieves original dialogue track recording)
— Thunderbirds (Desperate Intruder — lost alternative soundtrack edit)
— Thunderbirds (25 studio production prints, including the very first prints made for several episodes, including the approval print for Atlantic Inferno)
— Space 1999 (On-set recording from Brian the Brain)
— Cast and crew interviews done over the last 20 years for Network Distributing: we have saved the rushes and acquired the rights giving the chance for the AP Films crew to tell their stories directly forever.
… and there’s more to come! Link to fundraiser in comments:
