Tracy Island
| Tracy Island | |
|---|---|
| Thunderbirds location | |
| Created by | Gerry Anderson |
| Genre | Television |
| Type | Secret base |
| Notable locations | Tracy Villa Round House |
| Notable characters | Tracy family, Brains, Kyrano, Tin-Tin Kyrano |
| First appearance | "Trapped in the Sky" |
Tracy Island is the home of the Tracy family in the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson 1960s television series Thunderbirds. Located in the South Pacific Ocean, the heavily camouflaged island's ulterior function is to serve as the secret base of the International Rescue organisation.
Thunderbird 1 is launched from a hangar underneath the island's retractable swimming pool, at the foot of the main Tracy Villa. The entrance to the Thunderbird 2 hangar is concealed by a false rock-face and leads onto the island's runway. On exiting the hangar, the palm trees lining the runway swing outwards to accommodate the wingspan of Thunderbird 2. After taxiing along the runway, Thunderbird 2 takes off from a hydraulic launch platform. Thunderbird 3 is launched from underneath the Round House. Features such as the outside staircase descending to water, the large windows, and the prominent stone chimney, suggest that the design was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House. In the 2004 live-action film, a projection of the flightpath from Tracy Island to London clearly shows the former as being located in the Atlantic Ocean, whereas in the original TV series the island was located in the Pacific.
Although the security of the island is stated to be assured by jamming equipment, it proves to be somewhat vulnerable in the comic strips of TV Century 21 due to the machinations of The Hood. Learning everything about the island by brainwashing the technically minded Brains and extracting all of his knowledge concerning the island, the Hood launches his strongest attack yet on IR, destroying several Thunderbird craft and many of their hangars, with the exception of Thunderbirds 1 and 4. (The canonicity of the Thunderbirds comics adventures is open to interpretation.)
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