Talk: A21

Gerry Anderson Day 2023!

Should Gerry Anderson Day 2023! get a page of its own or is it one for the Related Stories section? Borisashton (talk) 23:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I had been putting any 4th-wall breaking stories and anything not firmly in-universe into the related stories section, until I realised that First on the Scene! probably also belongs in that section too (which I don't really want to do because it works nice as a full page). I think the whole way this Wiki deals with the A21 stories needs properly deciding, and I still flip-flop between whether they properly "count" or not. Also talking about things that may or may not count, Clements released a story set in the Thunderbirds: IR continuity exclusively over on Facebook just a few days ago that expands on the lighthouse rescue seen in the short (at the request of User:Max Rowe no less!). Defintely worth a note somewhere, but I wonder if it's too obscure for even the related stories section.
Guyus24Talk01:42, 27.4.2023

It's a difficult one.

I agree First on the Scene! should have a page. Even if it's a more parodic one it's primarily Thunderbirds-focused. Though a "primarily-TB" policy for A21 would also have us grant separate pages to Thunderbirds Are Gone! and The Hood Who Stole Christmas! so I don't know.

Even with the two GA Day stories, I kinda feel Gerry Anderson Day 2023! deserves coverage over Fleet Assembles for Gerry Anderson Day!. Sure, 2023! mentions someone called Gerry Anderson but a context is never specified. Unlike, Fleet Assembles I wouldn't consider it world-breaking. It also feels a lot more serious, taking the time to establish Matic's time machine as a way for the crossovers to happen and even going so far as to imply some interdimensional shenanigans as justification to include characters from both "Classic" Captain Scarlet and New Captain Scarlet. That being said, I'd probably use the rationale of this being primarily a Fireball XL5 story to exclude it from coverage but it's not clear-cut by any means.

I've not read this Facebook post and I don't profess to be an expert on the Thunderbirds: IR continuity but it seems to me this story does deserve a page. As the first and only(?) full story released in that continuity there's probably a wealth of behind-the-scenes details to discuss on the page, not to mention in-universe details about all its characters.

(Apologies for my sporadic activity here, by the way. I've been quite busy recently. I also picked up the Fireball 60th Anniversary Comic Anthology before it sold out so I was thinking I might try to draft something up for Interplanetary Rescue. Borisashton (talk) 23:01, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

A21 started out as plain 'passive' newspaper reports but somewhere along the way it switched over to 'active' prose fiction, which would be why the 2021 and 2023 stories are so different in tone. But there's definitely a level of meta-commentary in the 2021 version compared this year's, and I hadn't quite realised it but if you do remove that last paragraph then this year's works fine as an in-universe story. (Side note - do you think that the last paragraph is referencing "The Feast of Steven"?) I think it's a good thought exercise that if Thunderbirds makes a minor appearance in another property's A21 story, where would that live? I don't think that's actually happened before, which makes this choice harder. The only crossover outside of a special event as far as I know is the Seafire one, but I'd say that's a pretty 'even' crossover.

I don't know if you have Facebook or not and for the sake of anyone else reading this, here is a public link to that IR story. I think putting it in its own "A21 Special" bucket would work for it. Although trying to pass it off as 'official' in any sense is another challenge!

No need to apologise for inactivity! I saw you got your 365 badge (congratulations btw - something that has eluded me for the last 8 years! getting it in your first year is a huge feat) so any break is completely warranted and probably deserved. Great to hear that something for the anthology stories is on the way too.
Guyus24Talk01:09, 10.5.2023