Hi-Jack is the 30th produced, and broadcast, episode of the British television series Supercar.
Plot[]
Masterspy and Zarin plan to hi-jack the Interstate Airlines Boeing 707 airliner Speed Bird Able, piloted by Bill Gibson - and with Dr Beaker and Bill's brother Jimmy aboard. Bill is forced at gunpoint to head for the islands of Bastonga, where the aircraft will be handed over to President Gourmet, who is in the employment of Masterspy.
Dr. Beaker and Jimmy are able to radio Mike, back at the Nevada base - and tip him off to their plight with the words, "Hi-Jack!" Mike indeed gets the message - and takes off in Supercar, to foil the hi-jackers and rescue his friends...
Cast[]
Regular Cast[]
Mike Mercury
(Graydon Gould)
(Graydon Gould)
Jimmy Gibson
(Sylvia Anderson)
(Sylvia Anderson)
Dr. Horatio Beaker
(David Graham)
(David Graham)
Bill Gibson
(David Graham)
(David Graham)
Guest Cast[]
Trivia[]
- The (fictional) Bastonga islands are 300 miles west of Panama. The largest island in the group, Bantonga, is three miles in length, with a population of 4,339, the presidential palace and a small, muddy airfield. Another island in the group, Lokanga, has a large airport and is an hour’s flight from Bantonga by 1910’s tri-plane.
- Mike reveals that Gourmet’s tri-plane is over 50 years old, dating it back to between the late 1900s and early 1910s.
- The Boeing 707 airliner first flew in late 1957, and Pan American World Airways began regular 707 service the following year, 1958. Domestic US air carriers Trans World Airlines (TWA) and American Airlines also flew 707s during the 1960s.
- Gourmet states that Boeing 707s cost $60 million each. In 1962 (when this episode is set). In today's currency, that would be about $513 million (£413 million).
- Gourmet’s map shows that Eagle Field is near Dallas, Texas.
- Bill reveals that he's an astronaut when he states that working for Interstate Airlines “makes a change from space flight.”
- Rigged roulette tables appear again in the Thunderbirds (TV) episode The Duchess Assignment.
- And an in-flight hijacking would figure prominently in another Thunderbirds episode (Alias Mr. Hackenbacker).
- Music from the beginning of this episode was heard in Fireball XL5 episode The Doomed Planet, then it was heard in Stingray in the Blue Lagoon bar as heard in episodes Stand By For Action and An Echo of Danger.
- The music at the end of the episode was later heard at the end of the Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons episode Flight to Atlantica.