Operation COVER UP: IR secrecy

[Matt Crowther]

For the first time in a couple of years and down to the new series, I've been re-running the original. In a way hence my return to the boards...my preamble aside, here goes.

I know you shouldn't pay close scrutiny to any kids show but the way my brain works for anything be it the worlds of Gerry Anderson to World War II and so on, this is how it goes. Aside from the scale of vehicles (ie Fireflash to the pod vehicles in the first ep), it's the secrecy aspects of International Rescue I ponder.

The base's location is secret of course, the network of agents like Lady Penelope and Jeremiah Tuttle are all scattered and unknown to everyone else but in a world presuambly of twenty-four news, internet and so on (I'm being slightly poetic here but looking at the broader image that puppets/SFX can't cover) how they've not been rumbled...just how secret are they?

I say this for in episodes like The Uninvited and Cry Wolf the boys are sometimes addressed as Tracy or as in the former episode, by their Christian name and indeed, to each other in front of Joe Public. You could argue they won't be traced but it can be plausible perhaps for say Scott to land someplace, introduce himself and either then or after he goes someone say: "Hey, I went to school with a Scott Tracy..." and gradually it falls into place (as the world of movies and TV tends to go.)
In the Impostors, the fake IR men say no photos of them never mind the craft, obviously the impostors wouldn't want to be caught being criminals but Scott always says about how the craft can't be photographed or traced.
In Terror In New York City you hear someone say to Jeff prior to TB4's launch something along the lines of: "We're only too glad to be of help, Mr Tracy, it's the least we could do"...so a contact of Jeff's or he's posing as a 'liason' between the World Navy and IR?

Sorry...this is more an essay than a question but I wonder. I know the show was done in the 60s and so on but imagine, with smartphones and so on, their faces would be all over the place. As Cry Wolf showed, they were famous enough to be imitated for kids games so you could imagine maybe posters of them somehow, 'underground' ones because they never hang around long enough.



(but something I've thought since a kid is how Scott was able to get all that equipment -even with help or sometimes alone-from TB1 to wherever it was put together to form the Mobile Unit...)