Upside Down

Upside Down
Season 3, Episode 19

Air date

January 4, 2020 (UK)

Written by

Lisa Kettle

Directed by

Ben Milsom and Tim Gaul

Episode Guide

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"Upside Down" is the 19th episode of Thunderbirds Are Go! season 3 and the premiere of the season's third and final part. It was broadcast on January 4th, 2020, in the United Kingdom.

Plot[]

Lady Penelope and Parker are testing their new luxury yacht - FAB 2 - when they receive a distress call from an incoming tanker. A tsunami has formed and is heading right for the stalled tanker's location. Can Penelope save the day?

Cast[]

Regular Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Stew - Sacha Dhawan
Captain Jax - Dian Perry
Engineer Elliott - Craig Stein

Quotes[]

Virgil: "Hope you weren't planning on taking it easy on your first trip back out."
Gordon: "I don't do easy."

Lady Penelope: "I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen tool used in a rescue operation before."

Stew: "Flipping the tanker, you think that'll actually work?"
Lady Penelope: "You've obviously never met International Rescue before."

International Rescue Equipment Used[]

Trivia[]

There are several references to Gordon's injuries and the destruction of Thunderbird 4, which all allude to the events of SOS Part 2.
- As such, this is the first episode to show Gordon fully recovered. He was previously seen partially recovered in the two-part episode Signals Part 1 and Signals Part 2.
- Additionally, this episode confirms that the events of SOS Part 2 saw the destruction of Thunderbird 4, and that an entirely new Thunderbird 4 was built sometime between SOS Part 2 and Signals Part 1.
Quite unusually, Thunderbird 2 doesn't deploy Module 4 onto the ocean; instead, it releases Thunderbird 4 directly from inside the module via the underside hatch.
This is the second time that Thunderbird 2 goes underwater; this time though, minus the module.
- This time, however, Thunderbird 2 took a dive into the water, rather than the controlled sinking action seen in Signals Part 2. Possibly as a result of this, Thunderbird 2 ran into difficulty much sooner than it did in the earlier episode.
When Thunderbird 2 encounters difficulty operating, Virgil executes the Jeff Tracy Fix, which was previously seen in Up from the Depths Part 1.
This episode bears similarity to the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, in which a tsunami overturns a cruise ship.
The fact that the tsunami is out in the open ocean is unrealistic, as tsunamis only form when the water pushed by the shockwave of an earthquake or other disturbance reaches shallow water, piling up on top of itself and creating a giant wave. In the open ocean, a tsunami is practically harmless, because the water that comprises the wave is spread out over many miles. A rogue wave, on the other hand, is a similar sized wave that does occur in open water. Very little is known about these freak waves, but they are believed to be caused by many smaller waves stacking on top of each other due to fluid dynamics in storm systems.
As executed, there was no kinematic reason for Thunderbird 2 to go underwater. Because the lines didn't go taut until Thunderbird 2 was above water and vertical, no force was exerted on the tanker until this point. Once the lines were attached, Thunderbird 2 could have simply flown up to the same vertical orientation and started pulling. What actually needed to happen - and what Virgil presumably calculated - is for the lines to be kept taut through the entire arc of Thunderbird 2's maneuver, in order to exert the necessary rotational force.