"30 Minutes After Noon" is the seventh episode of the 1960s Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds. Written by Alan Fennell and directed by David Elliott, it first aired in the United Kingdom on ATV Midlands on 11 November 1965. In a plot incorporating visual allusion to 1960s spy thriller films, in particular the James Bond film franchise, "30 Minutes After Noon" sees the Tracy family attempt to rescue a British secret agent caught up in the latest scheme of the Erdman Gang, a powerful international crime syndicate.
Drawing inspiration from the 1965 spy thriller film The Ipcress File, a recent cinema release at the time of production, Elliott decided to bring Fennell's script to life with the use of "quirky visuals". As such, Elliott and his camera operator, Alan Perry, experimented with less conventional angles and techniques, introducing one scene with a long tracking shot and presenting the characters depicted with a mixture of live-action close-up shots and forced perspective. The music, on the other hand, is recycled from earlier Thunderbirds episodes.
Commentators such as historian Nicholas J. Cull have praised Elliott and Perry's cinematographic innovation for imitating classic espionage film franchises. However, Supermarionation historian Stephen La Rivière regrets that its application throughout the episode is uneven: asserting that the switch in narrative focus from the fire to the infiltration of the Erdman Gang essentially splits the episode into loosely-connected halves, La Rivière remarks that the first part appears to have been filmed using conventional techniques. "30 Minutes After Noon" received an audio adaptation in the 1960s and a comic serialisation in the 1990s.
Read more about 30 Minutes After Noon: Plot, Production, Reception, Adaptations
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