#og ver had more salt about the shows' shortcomins and annoying fandom but I wanted this to be more a Celebration

[shinygoku]

If you are taking non-train characters, what are your answers for The Other Gordon 👀

For simplicity, or maybe for complexity, I’ll refer to Both the TOS and the TAG versions, though I’m much more thoroughly acquainted with his TAG ver.

There wasn’t a Gordon Tracy in the movie, so I can skip that entirely lmao

To signify which Gord I’m talking about, TOS will have Orange and TAG will have Yellow heart emojis.

First impression

🧡 (Was very young at the time and not much good at reading quickly) “Gordon Tracy.... Astronaut.” I always liked TB4 herself, but I don’t think I got to see the TOS eps where Gordon really shines, which is a pity u_u;

💛 I was a little taken aback but the redesign, but also intrigued! This time I was already an adult and didn’t have issue reading Aquanaut lmao, but also got in on the ground floor of the show, getting to see the soon-to-be beloved shine in the very first episode.

Impression now

🧡 Holy cow is this dude ever underrated! In the episodes where he’s allowed to play a part, he actually shines so brightly! Several of the Best eps have him prominent, like Terror in New York and Operation Crash Dive, but even the ones where he is sidelined, the short moments we get can still do a lot, like his jokes and being The Most Fashionable of them Tracy Boys. They sneakily wrote in a potential reason why he ain’t used more with the notorious Hydrofoil Accident, but then maybe they coulda mentioned it in the show proper instead of in supplementary lore books? Oh well, the fans go very hard for this plot :P

💛 Holy cow, this time he’s not underrated so much as victim to Shoddy Writing!!! By both the show and the fans! [Mario from Super Mario Sunshine when he’s on low health voice] YAH-HOooorrrugughghh

Ok, seriously, this lad is again such a wonderful character, when he’s allowed to be written well. But they leaned very deliberately into his lighthearted, joking side and that fine character note became the unfortunate handlebars for people to grip into that being all there is to him, or to spin off into more annoying and out of character behaviours, like Season 2′s stupid underwater city episode that I hate so much, I hate it so fucking much that they wrote a whole episode to dunk on him by not only making him fill TB4 with food wrappers, but he doesn’t even pilot her for most of the episode >:V

Uhm yeah, when allowed to be written as more than Token Comic Relief, he’s fantastic. There’s such a wide range to his knowledge, his experience and his emotions. David Menkin defo brings his A Game to voicing Gordon and he has a beautifully nuanced performance [better than Virgil’s, who seems to be pretty much in one mode all the time lol... it can’t be easy being a VA where the characters are in high stress situations a lot]

I also think his feelings for Lady Penelope were actually handled really, really well. That he’s obviously got a Thing for her but doesn’t bring it up every time they’re in proximity, or that he doesn’t spend hours angsting over it. But s1 and s3′s advancement of this subplot feels sooo goooood and natural and is a lot of my good faith for s3 as a whole, to be honest! 💕

Favourite moment

🧡 Times like this make me wanna get the OG Series on DVD...! Hmm, gonna hafta go with the mad lad boarding a plane, getting in a firefight with the guy who’d been causing them all to crash, shooting him in the back, then holding the severed wires back together with his bare hands, all from Operation Crash Dive. That whole ep is a jewel and he did more earlier on too, but this short sequence is the ultimate Chaotic Good, the likes of which one rarely sees outside of Shounen Anime.

💛 I’m not gonna be so mean as to say SOS Part 1 lol, though that ep was Transcendent. It’s hard to pick one, he excels in the lovely new TB4, but I think it’s less his skills there and more his resourcefulness and emotional intelligence in eps like Extraction that have me the fondest. Also lmao, the contrast in my pick from this compared to TOS...!

Honourable mention to Heavy Metal for an action pick, we see 4′s Demo Missiles solve the problem by blowing stuff up, all while dangled in mid air! Niiiiice~

Idea for a story

🧡 It’s not so much of an idea, but whenever I do make myself watch Thunderbirds Are Go (The 1966 Film), I feel like there’s a potential plot thread of him feeling disappointed to be left out of the happenings that clearly the Andersons didn’t mean to pick up on. But he’s so clearly saddened when Jeff stupidly says Gordon won’t be needed [note that the previous failed Zero-X hand the crew land in the ocean....!] to help guard the 2nd Zero-X [in the end, only Scott is slightly relevant, Lady Penelope and Parker carry that mission!], and we also see him looking out of the balcony as the others launch, like he’s wistful.

Unfortunately the film turns into a weird ass Alan centric soap and barely skates over the main plot, too, before oh shit it’s time for the big climatic rescue. Gordon is overjoyed to be give a token role in that, which amounts to shooting a grapple line. Goes with the lore of him being the Best Shot, but oof! That’s it?! RUBBISH

So yeah idk, a rewrite of that shitshow that actually uses him? Could be an idea lol. Maybe it could even be combined with the strange narrative choice of an Alan pity party, the two could discuss the ups and downs of the gig and feeling over/under worked.

💛 Uhhh harder to say as I’m consumed many, many TAG fics since 2015 and still come and go and come back again for more at times, I don’t think I have any pitches that haven’t already been done, for better and for worse lmao

Honestly, I still ain’t let go entirely of the desire to cross over TAG with CSatM, but I don’t think I can make it work as a long form story which it deserves, plus I’d hafta focus on non-Gordon characters too, so uhh.... yeah, at the mo I got nothing ^^;

Unpopular opinion

🧡 Nooo babe, don’t smoke!! Also anyone who claims he isn’t the most handsome of the Tracy clan is lying.

💛 For years, the TAG fandom copypasted the TOS backstory in, which is understandable, but only a few works/authors could get the balance right. Look, the dude is clearly in his 20′s and it’s more than a little unrealistic for him to have done all 3 of the Served in WASP, Got Olympic Gold Medal, Hydrofoil Incident happenings. Like, the same applies to TOS but you could wave that away as being 60′s writing, where Military service as a young thing [eww] was common and Gordon looks older in that.

This got de-emphasised after SOS part 1, natch, as that seems pretty heavily implied to be This Universe’s answer to the Hydrofoil. The WASP and Gold Medal do continue to pop up, but at least 2 massive life achievements before being ....~23?? ish??? is a bit easier to grasp than 3 ¬w¬;

Favourite relationship

🧡 Did Gordon really get to interact with anyone other than his family and the other Tracy Island residents? I’ve read fic which gives him and Tin-Tin some fantastic platonic closeness, but I suspect the show itself wasn’t that generous...!

💛 All too easily, Pen & Ink! That is, Lady Penelope and he!

As I’ve said before, the romantic interest he has is played refreshingly well, and they get several great scenes together with the casual flirting and working well as a team. The Deep Water -> SOS 1 -> Upside Down triple punch really seals the deal, but it was hinted as early as Ep 1 and made obvious on his end in Tunnels of Time. All soooo good~ 💗

Favourite headcanon

🧡 Gordon rules at chess. We see chessboards in the episodes and occasionally the characters are seated by one, and I saw the notion that Gordon’s shockingly good at it in a fic and would like to embrace that~

💛 First, before the show made it be Virgil, I was introduced to the notion that Gordon was the most qualified First Aider type. I still prefer this lmao

Even though the series holds out on us, I firmly believe he has more Uniform variants than his wetsuit, and more causal clothes [though I am fond of his 1 Hawaiian Shirt n Jeans combo] and can make pretty much anything Work. Also his hair naturally has the same style as TOS when it’s not gelled upwards lol

#Gordon Tracy #Thunderbirds #Thunderbirds are Go #Thunderbirds 1965 #Thunderbirds are Go 2015 #uhhh dunno what else to tag it as officially so here come the post script notes #I put this off for so long but this was real fun to actually write #og ver had more salt about the shows' shortcomins and annoying fandom but I wanted this to be more a Celebration #and this is still really long cause I'm double dipping with BOTH vers! #The movie had some guy with his name but none of his characteristics #I've got so much fonder of OG Gordon with time and also without lowering TAG him! Eyyy!! B3 #kinda long