Thunderbirds Pit of Peril review

Here's what you need to know; things go very wrong during a US Army test when their new walking war machine known as the Sidewinder is seemingly swallowed by the Earth. With no means of recovering the Sidewinder themselves, the Army calls in International Rescue to save the stricken machine and it's crew.
This was for a long time my favourite episode of Thunderbirds, and it's almost certainly the reason the Mole one of my favourite International Rescue machines, so now, with my more critical eye, let's review Pit of Peril.

This episode starts off brilliantly, with stock footage of jungle animals running in terror from the Sidewinder, though the stock footage actually looks pretty comical now, it perfectly introduces the Sidewinder. Similar to Trapped in the Sky before it, you don't see the Thunderbirds for some time, and the first portion of the episode consists of the Army trying to save Sidewinder themselves, and just like Trapped in the Sky, time is spent with the crew of the Sidewinder, time to develop them and make you care about the situation. That said I do think the characters are less interesting here, meanwhile I was interested in the story, which is probably on par with Trapped in the Sky, the army angle adds a very interesting element to the episode, and the Sidewinder is awesome, again with the brilliant introduction. When International Rescue finally show up things get even cooler, even with the goofy 60's sci fi sounds the camera drone makes, it was the 60's, so that point is null. This episode's rescue is less intense than Fireflash's final approach, but the rescue itself is a more interesting, what with Brains along for some added sciency stuff. As I said the rescue is far less intense than Trapped in the Sky, and that does make it weaker, even if I was more interested here. The machines, as ever, were awesome, the recovery vehicles were cool little things, and then there's of course the Mole, looking back I don't actually know what attracted me so much about the Mole, but even now I love seeing it roll out of the transport pod and start drilling, for some reason it just never gets old. Speaking of shots, this episode has some really good ones, by far the best is the one I used for my taster image, it's great stuff, and the splosions, particularly the one when Sidewinder falls, are very meaty, as good as CG looks, old fashioned pyrotechnics will always be better in my opinion.

Pit of Peril may have become less awesome as I have grown, but this is still a very enjoyable episode, it has some awesome machines, a cool story, and some fun interesting stuff, and a brilliant introduction, plus splosions. This episode does however have less interesting characters and a rescue that, while more interesting, is a step down from Trapped in the Sky. It is still brilliant though, and it's absolutely a must watch.