Tracy Island

Tracy Island
Thunderbirds location
Creator	Gerry Anderson
Genre	Supermarionation
Type	Island home of the Tracy family and secret base of International Rescue
Notable characters	Tracy family

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 island's true function as the secret base of the International Rescue organisation is heavily camouflaged.

Thunderbird 1 launches from a hangar underneath the island's retractable swimming pool, at the foot of the main house. Features such as the outside staircase descending to water, the large windows, and the prominent stone chimney suggest the design was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. The entrance to Thunderbird 2's hangar is concealed by a fake rock-face and leads onto the island's runway. On exiting the hangar, the palm trees lining the runway swing outwards to accommodate Thunderbird 2's wingspan. After taxiing along the runway, Thunderbird 2 takes off from a hydraulic launch platform. Thunderbird 3 launches from underneath the 'Round House'.

While secure jamming equipment preserve the island's security, it proves to be somewhat vulnerable in the pages of TV Century 21 due to the machinations of The Hood. Learning everything about the island by brainwashing the technically-minded Brains character and extracting all of his knowledge regarding the island, the Hood launches his greatest attack, destroying several Thunderbird craft and many of their hangars, with the exception of Thunderbirds One and Four. The canonicity of this storyline remains uncertain due to its roots in publication form only.

In the 2004 live action movie, North Island in the Seychelles island group (Indian Ocean) was the stand-in for Tracy island, with the buildings added using computer-generated imagery. In the film, the displayed plotted route from Tracy Island to London clearly shows the island as being located in the Atlantic Ocean, whereas in the original series it was located in the Pacific Ocean.

Merchandise and Blue Peter

A re-run of the show on BBC2 in 1992 led to a shortage of Tracy Island models in the run-up to Christmas. it became headline news and the example cited as the archetypal mistake to be avoided for the whole toy industry every Christmas since. At the time the British children's programme Blue Peter responded by demonstrating how to build a home-made version. The BBC was then, in its turn, overwhelmed by requests for copies of the instructions for making the model.

Popular culture

The titular island of the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach is said to be based on Tracy Island in a 'making of' documentary.

External links

• Blue Peter factsheet