Thunderbirds 2086

Thunderbirds 2086, originally known as Scientific Rescue Team TechnoVoyager (科学救助隊テクノボイジャー Kagaku Kyūjo Tai Tekunoboijā) is a Japanese anime series loosely inspired by Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation series Thunderbirds (1965).

Dubbing History
After TechnoVoyager failed in Japan, running only 18 of the 24 episodes, producer Banjiro Uemura looked toward getting the series adapted for international markets. Uemera happened to be in charge of the Japanese office of ITC, the licensing firm that owns Thunderbirds. With that, he sent the series to ITC's New York Office for English reversioning. Robert Mandell was placed in charge by ITC Entertainment to adapt the series for an international market. The team took advantage of the shows Thunderbirds influence, renaming it Thunderbirds 2086, out of hope that brand recognition might make for greater sales.

There was a fair amount of re-writing to the Japanese scripts. The placement of the series in 2086 was to give the impression this series takes place in the further future of the original Thunderbirds (which was set in 2065) and that this was a new generation of International Rescue. The ships were easily exploitable as they had "TB" painted on them, which originally stood for "TechnoBoyager" (the Japanese pronunciation of Technovoyager) so it was easy to pass it off as standing for "Thunderbird". Although deaths were present, they were often watered down (an example being when a monorail is caught in an avalanche in the episode "Snowbound" and it is stated in the dub that the drivers are unconscious, whereas they're killed in the original). Most of the characters received name changes, even though in the original, most of the characters already had Western-sounding names. The main characters were originally multinational, coming from Japan, England, America, Jamaica and France; In the dub they are all American.

The dub featured new CGI-animation for its opening credits, similar to the ones made for the various Gerry Anderson compilation films done in the 1980s by ITC New York. Alterations to the original scripts were not always achieved through the scripting, but by new animation commissioned from the original production company. Such an instance is the character Sakiko in the episode "Kudzilla", whereas she died in the original Japanese episode, she survives in the English dub via new animation. Other animation featured within include scenes of outer space that were previously made for the credits of the Anderson compilation film Captain Scarlet vs. the Mysterons.

Additional Cast

 * Maia Danziger
 * Laura Dean
 * Peter Fernandez
 * Keith Mandell
 * Alexander Marshall