City of Fire (Thunderbirds)

The newly opened Thompson Tower skyscraper is a , 350-storey shopping complex and self-contained city which stocks every commercial item produced. Among its first visitors are the Carter family, comprising married couple Joe and Blanche and their young son, Tommy. Leaving their car in the basement car park, they look for a way up to the tower but get lost in a maze of corridors. As they try to get their bearings, a car crash in the car park causes a fire that consumes the basement and threatens the tower above it. In an attempt to contain the blaze, the tower's controllers close all the corridor bulkheads. Having inadvertently stepped into a video surveillance blind spot, the Carters are missed by the security cameras in their corridor and are sealed in before the controllers notice their presence. Despite the containment effort, the fire passes through the ceiling vents on each floor and engulfs the tower. Due to an electrical failure, the controllers cannot raise the bulkheads, trapping the Carters underground as their corridor fills with smoke. Firefighters are unable to bring the blaze under control, and although everyone above ground is evacuated, the tower is set to collapse. With no way to reach the Carters, the Tower Controller calls International Rescue for help. On Tracy Island, Scott and Virgil have been recovering from the side effects of Brains' new, faster-acting cutting gas. Informed of the tower's emergency call by John on Thunderbird 5, Jeff dispatches Scott and Virgil to the disaster zone in Thunderbirds 1 and 2, the latter carrying the Firefly and the Mole. By the time both brothers arrive, the tower has fallen and the basement roof is buckling under the weight of the wreckage. Scott and Virgil realise that the only way to reach the Carters in time is to cut through the fire doors with the oxyhydnite equipment, whatever the risks from the side effects. Virgil uses the Firefly to clear the burning remains of the Thompson Tower from the area. He then joins Scott in the Mole as they tunnel into the corridor system half a mile from the trapped family. The Tracys quickly cut their way through the numerous fire doors, with no ill effects from the oxyhydnite gas, and manage to rescue the Carters just as the corridor roof caves in. The underground corridors collapse, but the Tracys and the Carters escape to the surface in the Mole, to the relief of the Tower Controller. Back on Tracy Island, Brains realises that the extreme heat in the underground corridors negated the side effects of the oxyhydnite gas. With electrically heated tanks in place, the equipment will be safe to use in any conditions on future rescue operations. ==Regular voice cast==

"City of Fire" is one of several early episodes of Thunderbirds that were initially 25 minutes long, only being extended to 50 minutes after Lew Grade – APF's chairman, who had been highly impressed by the pilot version of the first episode, "Trapped in the Sky" – told Gerry Anderson to double the running time so that Thunderbirds could fill a one-hour timeslot. Originally filmed in 1964, "City of Fire" was lengthened in 1965 with new material including the appearance of the Firefly, scenes showing the aftermath of the tower collapse and the Tracy brothers off-duty at base, and the subplot about Brains' new cutting gas. In the 1964 script, the gas was not presented as experimental or dangerous, and Scott and Virgil had no reservations about using it to save the Carters. The additional scenes were filmed around the same time as the episodes "The Impostors" and "Cry Wolf". The episode is one of two to feature a rescue involving the Firefly, the other being "Terror in New York City". It is also the first episode in the production order to feature the hoverjets: flying platforms used by the Tracys to navigate unstable terrain. A variation on the "jetmobiles" of Fireball XL5 and "monocopters" of Stingray, these vehicles also appear in "Vault of Death", "Martian Invasion", "Cry Wolf" and "Attack of the Alligators!" The Tracy Island "auto-nurse" – a device which monitors the recuperating Scott and Virgil's vital functions – was adapted from a prop featured in Stingray. ==Broadcast and reception==

"City of Fire" was first broadcast on 6 January 1966 by the ATV Midlands franchise of the ITV network. Franchises which transmitted Thunderbirds episodes in two parts omitted a scene showing Thunderbird 1s arrival at the tower as well as some of the dialogue about the tower's evacuation and predicted collapse. Marcus Hearn notes that like the film, "City of Fire" is told mainly from the perspective of those trapped by the blaze – though whereas the film has an ensemble cast, "City of Fire" focuses on one family because of its limited budget. For Chris Bentley, "City of Fire" is a "tense and exciting instalment with well-drawn characters". He finds it very similar to "Pit of Peril", another Fennell script that sees characters trapped below ground and threatened by fire being rescued with the help of the Mole. The Star Observer calls the episode a "childhood favourite" and a "fabulous burning building potboiler", adding: "This one had almost everything." For Hearn, the tower serves as a "soulless and slightly sinister model of high-rise living" which betrays Thunderbirds "underlying pessimism" about technology. Hearn also writes that the woman driver's recklessness, combined with the tower authorities' inability to protect the Carters and the Tracys' obligation to use the cutting gas, results in a "cautionary tale of human fallibility". while according to Fryer, the driver is an object of old-fashioned "sexist stereotyping". ==References==