30 Minutes After Noon
| "30 Minutes After Noon" | |
|---|---|
| Thunderbirds episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 01 Episode 07 |
| Directed by | David Elliott |
| Written by | Alan Fennell |
| Cinematography by | Paddy Seale |
| Editing by | Harry Ledger |
| Production code | 18 |
| Original air date | 11 November 1965 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
|
Voices of: |
|
Voices of:
Sylvia Anderson as
Gladys Saltzman
Ray Barrett as
Southern
Hitch-hiker
Police Officer Flanagan
Peter Dyneley as
Dempsey
Police Officer Jones
Erdman Gang Operative
David Graham as
Kenyon
Sir William Frazer
Erdman Gang Leader
Police Commissioner Garfield
British Secret Service Aide
Sam Saltzman
Matt Zimmerman as
Thomas Prescott
Reporter Frank Forrester
Police Officer
"30 Minutes After Noon" is the seventh episode of the 1960s Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds. Written by Alan Fennell and directed by David Elliott, it first aired in the United Kingdom on ATV Midlands on 11 November 1965. In a plot incorporating visual allusions to 1960s spy thriller films, in particular the James Bond film franchise, "30 Minutes After Noon" sees the Tracy family attempt to rescue a British secret agent embroiled in the latest scheme of the Erdman Gang, a powerful crime syndicate.
Drawing inspiration from the 1965 spy thriller film The Ipcress File, a recent release at the time of shooting, Elliott decided to bring Fennell's script to life with the use of "quirky visuals". As such, Elliott and his camera operator, Alan Perry, experimented with original angles and techniques, electing to introduce one scene with a long tracking shot and filming the characters using a mixture of live-action close-up shots and forced perspective. The music, on the other hand, is recycled from earlier Thunderbirds episodes.
Commentators such as media historian Nicholas J. Cull have praised Elliott and Perry's cinematographic innovations for imitating the visual style of older espionage films. However, Stephen La Rivière, writer of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, argues that the pastiche is not evident throughout: asserting that the switch in narrative focus from the Hudson Building fire to the infiltration of the Erdman Gang essentially divides the episode into loosely connected halves, La Rivière suggests that the visual style of the first owes more to conventional filming techniques. "30 Minutes After Noon" was adapted for audio in the 1960s and serialised as a comic strip in the 1990s.
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