In Review: Thunderbirds Are Go – Impact

Synopsis: International Rescue must stop a comet from colliding with Earth, and the space station between them.

Review: When Fischler latest get rich quick scheme puts a comet on collision course with the earth. International Rescue much do all they can to stop the comet and save a nearby space station from certain destruction.

Thunderbirds takes a little inspiration this week from the film Armageddon, but thankfully not the whole film. Just the central plan, which is to drill into the core of the comet using Thunderbird 3 and plant explosives to blow it up.

Fischler, who is a regular pain in the ass for International rescue doesn’t get to much focus and is made fairly redundant once Kayo plants a virus in his computers.

The main focus here is on John in Thunderbird 5 and Alan in Thunderbird 3 who is joined by Virgil who didn’t really seem to serve much purpose.

With this being a space set episode the options are limited as far as story telling goes. At least until they introduce aliens, which is pretty doubtful.

There is some really nice use of Thunderbird 5 in the sequence where it hooks onto the space station and essentially tows it out of the way of the comet. This was particularly cool to watch because for most part Thunderbird 5 just orbits the earth and rarely gets used as an actual rescue vessel.

The mission with Thunderbird 3 was tense and managed to keep me on the edge of my seat right to the very last moment.

The one thing the episode didn’t do well was Fischler. We last seen him in the episode ‘Skyhook’ and then much like now he was a nuisance and a danger to both himself and those around him. But this time out he didn’t seem to face any consequences for putting the whole of the earth in danger with his plan. Hopefully this loose plot thread will be picked up on in future. Because as Brains said on several occasions, “Something needs to be done about him.”