Supercar: "The Lost City" (1961)

In Supercar’s second episode, “The Lost City,” Mitch, Jimmy, Dr. Beaker and Mike Mercury prepare for a visit to the South Pole.  En route, however, Supercar is unexpectedly pulled off-course. 

The amazing vehicle makes a course-adjustment for the Amazon Basin, and Mike notes that it “seems to have developed a mind of its own.”

Supercar lands in the ruins of an ancient city in the jungle. Before long, Beaker and Mercury are transported via hidden elevator into a subterranean lair belonging to a mad scientist, Dr. Watkins, and his robots.

Watkins hold the heroes captive as he launches an atomic missile at Washington D.C…

Well, it’s right into the action in “Lost City,” an early episode of the 1961 Supermarionation/Gerry Anderson series, Supercar.  This episode features lost cities, mad scientists, numbered robots armed with ray guns, and a nuclear weapon fired right at the heart of the United States.

The episode ends with real-life stock footage of a nuclear mushroom after Supercar trips the missile off its course, and then re-adjusts its aim for Dr. Watkins’ lost city.  So it’s sayonara to the good doctor, and his scientific wonderland of robots.

“Lost City” is pulpy good fun, and the episode hops from crisis to crisis with a sense of confidence and velocity. In fact, after a while one hardly notes that puppets are doing all the acting. The story -- through sheer acceleration -- keeps one engaged.

Supercar is old fashioned fun, for sure, but the operative word there is fun.

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Advert Artwork: Supercar Edition

Supercar: "Rescue" (1961)

A pilot named flies his brother Jimmy, and a pet monkey, Mitch, over the sea in a small plane.

Before long, however, the flight turns terrifying when the engines fail.  The plane goes down in the ocean, and the British navy attempts a rescue, but to no avail. 

Far away, in a secret laboratory, Mike Mercury waits impatiently as Professor Popkiss and Dr. Beaker run an experimental flying vehicle, Supercar, through its final tests.

Mike pushes them to allow a launch immediately, to effect a rescue at sea, but the scientists are reluctant to rush the process.

Finally, it is time to fly, and Mike launches Supercar into the skies. He effects a rescue of the crash survivors, now treading water in a tiny raft. Billy has a broken leg, but he and his family are otherwise well, and owe their survival to…Supercar!

Gerry Anderson’s Supercar series is introduced in “The Rescue,” a half-hour episode of relative simplicity, and a somewhat slow pace by today’s standards.

The star of the show is Supercar herself: a retro-futuristic flying plane/car/submarine combo. We watch in the episode as the rocket engines are tested, and Mike puts the vehicle through other paces too, including wing retraction and cockpit pressurization.  

Viewers are also introduced to the wonders of “clear view,” a kind of wide angle lens view of the terrain ahead of the vehicle.  This is useful when Supercar is racing through the sky at incredible speeds, but the pilot must still know what's in the flight path.

This series, much like other Gerry Anderson ventures, also presents a mix of puppetry (Supermarionation!) and complex miniatures, cross-cut with views of the real sea and sky.  The puppets move about on elaborate sets, and we get a good, lingering view at Supercar’s fantastic dashboard at one point.  It's all incredibly retro tech.

Similarly, Supercar’s launch is charted with elaborate, meticulous detail in "The Rescue."  The roof of the hanger opens, and Supercar utilizes “vertical take-off technology” (like a Harrier jet) to reach the sky.  It’s all impressively rendered, even if the quasi-comedic activities of the scientist begin to grate on the nerves after a while.

And does the series really need a monkey mascot?

Supercar itself was heralded in its theme song as “the wonder of the age,” and “The Rescue” doesn’t quite live up to that grandiose description. The vehicle is awesome, for certain, but the story is pretty run-of-the-mill: a simple rescue (just as the title promises...) without even a colorful villain to rush matters along.

Episode two -- “The Lost City” -- rectifies that problem, and immediately lands Supercar in all kinds of colorful sci-fi trouble.

Outré Intro: Supercar (1961)

Gerry Anderson's Supercar (1961) is part of that artist's rich legacy of inventive and adventurous genre entertainment. 

The series follows the adventures of pilot and hero Mike Mercury as he pilots "a marvel of the age," a flying rocket car. Importantly, Supercar was the Anderson series, late in its run, that first adopted the term "Supermarionation" regarding its highly-detailed puppets and their incredible miniature universe.

The real star of Supercar, however, is its amazing titular vehicle, an early sixties vision of the future that is still absolutely gorgeous in retro terms.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, the introductory montage serves a a heroic poem or ode...to the vehicle itself.

Supercar -- as the theme song informs us - is "as swift as can be," and it can "journey anywhere," even through the "Heavens' stormy rage."

The introductory montage commences with Supercar in stable flight, but then, suddenly turning upwards, rocketing higher into the atmosphere. 

The sudden up-turn and acceleration is symbolic of the series' action. We are being prepped for an up-turn into adventure!  The images convey to us the feeling of "up, up and away."  And in the montage, Supercar is never grounded, never still.  It is always in motion, and this is a promise of an action-oriented spectacle.

 

Next, after piercing the veil of clouds, Supercar pivots, and alters its course.  The theme song poem or ode describes the vehicle's amazing and futuristic capabilities, and the imagery goes along with them.  We find out that Supercar can head to space or "under the sea."  

In the following set of images, we actually see that last capability made manifest (in what seems an early version of UFO's Skydiver sub/plane).  Supercar heads down into the sea, and cruises with the fish.

And then Supercar takes off (again, think Skydiver), and resumes is amazing flight in the sky.  We are also introduced, in the following imagery, to Mike Mercury, Supercar's pilot.  

But make no mistake, it is the vehicle itself that is the star here.  Supercar can and will take kids of all ages to the heights of adventure, the depths of danger, and into the Heavens. 

Here's the intro in all its glory.