Directed by David Elliott

Teleplay by Martin Crump

First Broadcast – 17th February 1966

If I was to tell you there was a Thunderbirds episode all about an old woman with a gambling addiction who decides to rent out a portrait to a New York businessman, and ends up being kidnapped and trapped under a burning building – you probably wouldn’t believe me. If I was to then tell you that in my opinion, it’s one of the best episodes of the entire series you would probably never listen to anything I said ever again. Well you can do that if you like, because The Duchess Assignment is a real episode of Thunderbirds and it is certainly up there as one of my favourites. In my opinion there is just so much that The Duchess Assignment does right to pull off this unconventional story. It has the right amount of comedy…

This is a new post for the 40th anniversary, although it contains some material previously published in the posts for ‘Aftermath’ and ‘The Way Back’.

It’s November 1983, and it’s raining outside.  And on a dining room window ledge overlooking the back garden is a copy of a magazine that my Mum and Dad have thought I might like.  It is the Radio Times 20th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who.  For this 5-year-old it was just full of pictures, and really captured my imagination.  In the days before I could get my hands on VHS cassette tapes of the series, it gave me both a sense of what I had never seen before, and an even greater sense that I was missing out on so much.  But the page I turned to again and again was the first double spread, containing screen shots of the title sequences featuring the first…