Editing Supermarionation (section)

====Problem of puppet movement====
A major limitation of the marionettes was their inability to walk convincingly.<ref name="Thom"/><ref name="Lewis&Stempel"/><ref name="Peel16">Peel, p.&nbsp;16.</ref><ref name="O'Neill,13">O'Neill, p.&nbsp;13.</ref> This was due to their low weight and the fact that the legs of each puppet were controlled by only two strings, which made complex articulation impossible.<ref name="Peel19">Peel, p.&nbsp;19.</ref> According to Sylvia Anderson, the re-design exacerbated the puppets' core deficiencies: "The more realistic our puppets became, the more problems we had with them ... It was just possible to get away with the awkward moments in ''Thunderbirds'' because the proportions of the characters were still caricature. It was later when we had developed a more realistic approach ... that the still imperfect walk was [all] the more obvious."<ref>La Rivière 2009, p.&nbsp;153.</ref> To limit the need for leg movement, many scenes featuring walks were [[Medium shot|filmed from the waist up]], with motion implied by a puppeteer holding the legs out of shot and bobbing the marionette up and down while pushing it forward.<ref>Rogers et al., p.&nbsp;15.</ref><ref>La Rivière 2014, p.&nbsp;199.</ref> Other scenes showed puppets standing, sitting or driving vehicles.<ref name="Peel19"/> Tex Tucker, the hero of ''Four Feather Falls'', avoids walking by riding a horse called Rocky, while the characters of ''[[Fireball XL5]]'', ''[[Stingray (1964 TV series)|Stingray]]'' and ''Thunderbirds'' achieve the same through use of personal hovercraft.<ref>Sellers, pp.&nbsp;78; 84.</ref><ref>Holliss, p.&nbsp;47.</ref><ref>Peel, p.&nbsp;20.</ref> ''Supercar'' and ''Stingray''{{'}}s focus on their eponymous car and submarine, as well as ''Stingray''{{'}}s depiction of Commander Shore as a paralytic reliant on a futuristic "hoverchair", are examples of other devices used to overcome the puppets' lack of mobility.<ref name="Thom"/><ref name="Lewis&Stempel"/><ref name="Garland70"/><ref>La Rivière 2009, p.&nbsp;44.</ref>

{{Quotebox|quote=Because we had characters who couldn't stand properly without their knees sagging, and characters who had no expression, it was very difficult to play a love scene and impossible to have a fight. And so it seemed the way to go was anything that was fast-moving and had a lot of excitement, so it seemed that science fiction was the best option.|source=—&nbsp;[[Gerry Anderson]] on the need to make puppet series as science fiction (2006)<ref name="Sellers83">Sellers, p.&nbsp;83.</ref>|salign=right|width=25%}}

In a 1977 interview, Gerry Anderson said that the steps taken to make the puppets more lifelike were an attempt to "make the [puppet] medium respectable". On the preparations for ''Supercar'', APF's first science-fiction production, he remembered "[thinking] that if we set the story in the future, there would be [[moving walkway]]s and the puppets would be riding around in the car for much of the time, so it would be much easier to make them convincing." According to interviewer [[Kevin O'Neill (comics)|Kevin O'Neill]], this use of future settings for greater realism "almost accidentally" ensured that all of APF's subsequent series would be science fiction.<ref name="O'Neill,13"/> In 2006, Anderson stated that the transition to this genre "wasn't a conscious move at all", but rather a natural progression given the basic deficiencies of the puppets.<ref name="Sellers83"/> Sylvia said that the reasons were budgetary, due to the fact that APF could not yet afford to work with live actors: "... we were picking subjects that we could easily do in miniature scale."<ref name="Sellers83"/>

David Garland calls character movement Anderson's "[[Wikt:bête noire|bête noire]]" and states that the puppets' limited mobility resulted in "vehicle-heavy science fiction" becoming his "preferred genre".<ref name="Garland70"/> He considers the use of marionettes – the kind of puppet "perhaps most unsuited" to an action format – to be "one of the most striking paradoxes" of the Anderson productions.<ref>Garland, pp.&nbsp;70–71.</ref> Carolyn Percy of the ''[[Wales Arts Review]]'' comments that the inclusion of "futuristic vehicles" like ''Supercar'' allowed APF to devise "more exciting and imaginative scenarios" and "work around the limitations of the puppets ... to give their 'acting' the integrity to match the material."<ref name="Percy"/>

The final Supermarionation series, ''[[The Secret Service]]'', used footage of live actors to such an extent that the result according to [[Stephen La Rivière]] was "half-way between live action and Supermarionation". Its protagonist, Stanley Unwin, was modelled on the [[Stanley Unwin (comedian)|comedian of the same name]], who both voiced the puppet character and served as its human body double in [[long shot]]s and other scenes where the puppet was impractical to use. According to Anderson, this was another way of avoiding the problem of lack of mobility: "I came up with the idea of getting Stanley Unwin to do all the walking shots, and driving shots in this [[Ford Model T|Model Ford T]] [the character] had. If, for example, you had a sequence where Stanley Unwin would arrive at a building in his Model T, he would ... get out, walk down the path, and as soon as he opened the door, you'd cut to the reverse angle and that would be the ''puppet'' of Stanley Unwin ... I used Stanley Unwin, married to his own puppet, to enable him to do all the things that the puppet couldn't do."<ref>La Rivière 2009, pp.&nbsp;190–191.</ref>