Welcome to our Stingray Deep Dives! As we surge towards the super-sub’s 60th anniversary, we asked you to pick your favourite episodes of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s classic 1964 sci-fi underwater series that should receive in-depth, analytical retrospectives. Based on your picks, we’ve collated a top 10 selection of Stingray’s greatest episodes to receive a review – as voted for by you!
We’re continuing our countdown of Stingray’s top 10 episodes with a character who causes more devastating chaos than the mighty Titan could ever hope to achieve – pop sensation Duke Dexter! The idol has come to Marineville to assist in the WASP’s latest recruitment drive, but the unsuspecting pop star soon finds an unwelcome fan when Titan turns his attentions to him…
“An ocean? So where do we come in?”
We’ve dived into some pretty thorough explorations at this point at the kind of varying tones, themes and genres that Stingray plays with at this stage in our Stingray Deep Dives. The WASP super-sub could adopt many different disguises and mostly pull them off to convincing and entertaining effect. We’ve examined
how witty, how self-referential, how resourceful, and how apocalyptic the series could be. But have you ever wondered just how… *strange* Stingray could be?
How eerily otherworldly Subterranean Sea matches this question with the series’ most extreme example of what happens when Stingray fully embraces its core identity of essentially serving as an underwater equivalent of Fireball XL5.
Duke Dexter brings Beatlemania hysteria into the world of Stingray!
We couldn’t have had a wilder juxtaposition of episode rankings so far throughout our Stingray Deep Dives. From the hauntingly tense and sternly-faced attitudes of The Ghost Ship, we swing with abandon into an episode that perhaps tears up the rulebook on how joyously ridiculous Stingray could be. Titan Goes Pop is an episode that trades in any menace or tension for pure laughs – and the resulting episode is one of Stingray‘s slyly ingenious affairs ever. Titan Goes Pop is a riotous send-up of the hollow, futile nature of celebrity worship. W.A.S.P. and Titanica characters are swept up by the mass hysteria that comes with the arrival of pop sensation Duke Dexter, who’s come to the World Aquanaut Security Patrol to aid in its recruitment efforts. Noticing the wildness that Dexter brings with him, Surface Agent X-20 deduces that this must be the most important person ever to visit Marineville, and sets about capturing the pop idol for Titan’s use.
Has there ever been an episode of Stingray that’s so transparently absent of any kind of encroaching danger or disaster for the WASPs to battle against? No unstoppable alien missiles, no mysterious subterranean seas. Instead, we take a break from such storytelling tactics and turn our attention to that other invasive force that was so prevalent throughout the 1960s – Beatlemania. Titan Goes Pop undoubtedly takes inspiration from the flourishing celebrity fandom that came with artists such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Movie star Johnny Swoonara from Stand By For Action is a similar parody of this stereotype, but the Beatlemania hysterics surrounding Duke Dexter capture a far more precise zeitgeist.
Celebrity Parodies
The episode’s highlights are bountiful. It’s not surprising to see that this is another comedic gem from regular ITC screenwriter Dennis Spooner, who was also responsible for Stand By for Action, Set Sail for Adventure, and The Loch Ness Monster. Hooper’s scripts have a natural flair for wit than Alan Fennell’s gung-ho focus on action and adventure.
The arrival of this overhyped pop sensation has everyone at Marineville scratching their heads. Nobody appears to understand the substance of Dexter’s arrival, because their isn’t any. Phones and Commander Shore’s inability to grasp Dexter’s significance is a wildly transparent commentary on the vapidness of celebrity culture, but it also speaks to a generational divide. Nobody above a certain age appreciates Dexter’s style of music, and it’s no secret that Marineville doesn’t exactly have many young teenagers working as part of the WASP cause! Dexter himself feels modelled more on the king of rock and roll, with his similar good looks to Mr. Presley and his warbling vocal prowess.
However, it’s Titan and X-20 who steal the show. Their own inability to understand who Duke Dexter is gives the episode some of its funniest moments. X-20’s faltered answer at Titan’s demands as to how he found out that the pop star was coming to Marineville is a witty performance from Robert Easton (“Well… I read it in the newspaper). Equally delightful is Ray Barret’s pause and the wonderfully nuanced puppetry as Titan’s response to this news is a delight (So, Duke Dexter’s coming to Marineville… Who *is* Duke Dexter?”).