Weta Workshop :: Thunderbirds Are Go Tour

Last updated on 8 January 2025

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On a trip to Wellington, my friends and I took a trip to the Weta Cave in Miramar. While the popular tour is The Lord of the Rings one, we headed off to have a guided tour of the Thunderbirds Are Go set. (We will go through the LOTR one next time I’m down.)

While I haven’t seen the new Thunderbirds seasons, I did see the old ones when they were on TV and on VHS. I remember my cousins the Tracey Island set, complete with the Thunderbird rockets and ships. We used to play with it when we visited them, so I was very familiar with the layout and the set.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Thunderbirds, the show used to be filmed with puppets, using sets made from everything and everything. One of the things our tour guide said was that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the creators, loved to use lemon squeezers in the sets, so you could often play a ‘find the lemon squeezer’ game in every episode.

While times have changed, and with it technology, for the new seasons of Thunderbirds (now called Thunderbirds Are Go) they have kept the idea of the sets the same – they’re all made of junk. Odds and ends and pieces of computers, of cars, of things found in the opshop, the miniature sets are still done in the old style. Everything you see on the TV, set wise, is actually made and is set up in the studios at Weta Workshop, Wellington.

The aspect that is different in the new series to the old one, and the element that they have modernized is the puppets. The characters in Thunderbirds used to be, as I mentioned, puppets, but now they are computer-generated. The sets are physical miniatures, some aspects made at different zooms for different shots, but the actual characters are animated.

It was so interesting to hear how they, considering this, filmed the show. After storyboards are made, and precise filming shots are decided, the whole episode is filmed on set without the characters (obviously, because they’re animated), with things like explosions and movements and only later are they filled with the animated characters who bring the story to life.

What I love about this concept – using actual miniature sets for setting, and animation for characters – is that they got really creative when it came to creating things like Tracy Island, and The Hood’s lair. You don’t have to take a very closely at the sets to find old circuit boards, lemon squeezers, bottle tops and general things that we could junk. It turns out that this show is pro at recycling and reusing.

You’re not allowed to take any photos (hence the lacking in this post, sorry – just the one in the photobooth ship that they have there, which is the first image in this post), but it means you’re really looking at all the incredible details. Totally worth it.

Have you been to the Thunderbirds Are Go Tour? Or perhaps to another Weta Workshop tour?