#flyboytracy

In TOS (which I haven’t seen for a while and my memories of how some of the episodes went down are super hazy - didn’t bring my DVDs to uni with me which is one huge Regret right now), it’s subtle for the most part, mainly because of the 1960s ideas of stoicism etc. heavily influencing the storytelling, but you do get the frequent worries when he’s stuck at Mobile Control and one of his brothers (normally Virgil, because TOS played really heavily on that duo) ending up in a pickle somewhere mid-rescue.  Honestly, the mental strength he has to be able to sit at Mobile Control and not jump in the moment something goes wrong with his brothers is incredible.

One thing that does really stick out for me, though, is Atlantic Inferno.  Now I have a few grumbles about this episode - mainly Jeff-related (I have a lot of grumbles about how Jeff treats Scott in general in TOS but that’s not big-brother feels so we’ll save that rant for another time) - but the thing I absolutely love is that his first instinct as soon as Jeff is gone is to call John.  And it kills me a little inside that John is confused by the call, as though he doesn’t get normal social calls from his family (more grumbles at TOS!Jeff here), but the fact is that the literal first thing Scott does with the entire command of IR is call his out-of-his-reach little brother to check in.  And I love that so much.  It’s a subtle thing, especially because it’s also shown as ‘Scott wanting to prove himself and find something to do’ so the big brothering aspect of that scene is kinda masked, but it’s there and for TOS it’s a pretty big deal.

Then, of course, we have Cry Wolf and Security Hazard (and to a lesser extent, Give or Take a Million), where we have literal children for Scott to interact with!  Cry Wolf, in particular, is heavy on the big brothering - multiple aspects of it, actually.  There’s the stern almost parental stuff at the start, where Scott tells them off for the false alarm, but then he does a 180 and seemingly rewards them by bringing them back to base, despite Operation Cover-Up and all that (and how he got that past Jeff I have no idea but you go, Scott!).  And of course there’s that iconic scene at the end where he agrees to use their emergency escape and ends up covered in hay after it goes vaguely wrong (but doesn’t actually seem mad at all).  And I just love this.  There’s a really good fic that I unfortunately do not remember the name nor author of that addresses how Scott dealt with the boys, but it basically boils down to Scott really wanting to look after them and let them have fun because they’re brothers with a dead mother and always-busy father and doesn’t that sound familiar?  The fact that he goes out of his way to play IR with them at the end, despite it being unprofessional and actually a little dangerous for him is one of the most openly big-brother things he does in TOS and I adore it.

And yes, I’m gonna poke at that 2004 movie, too, because despite it being terrible for any Tracy whose name isn’t Alan or Jeff (and full of so many plot holes - I may or may not be plotting an entire rewrite fic with about 300% more Tracy brothers and many less plot holes) we still have a few little bits of Big Brother Scott shining through!  There’s the obvious bits, like the showing off in TB1 at the start (ridiculous boy all too happy to see Alan coming home), and the brotherly banter at the dinner table, and even the way he’s running hell for leather when the alarm for TB5 goes off (compared to the other three, that boy is desperate).  And of course the whole time he’s on TB5, worrying about John, all of them when the station starts shutting down on them, Alan back on Earth.  Lots of panicking Scott in the movie (shame it’s all background because the scriptwriters decided Alan’s the only brother that deserves any real screentime, and maybe a liiiiiiittle John as plot device), but the thing I absolutely adore is the insinuation that gives me one of my biggest headcanons for the movie canon.

Alan knows the access code for TB1.  Alan knows how to pilot TB1 (albeit not perfectly).  There is really, only one conceivable way he knows these things when Jeff is adamant that he’s not allowed near the ‘birds, and that is a certain big brother going behind Dad’s back.  Was Scott training Alan behind Jeff’s back?  Well, no-one’s gonna persuade me he wasn’t, and honestly Scott blatantly disobeying Jeff to keep his littlest brother involved and vaguely pacified is the most big brother thing ever (would I do that for my little sister?  Have I disobeyed my parents to secretly help my sister with a thing?  Hell yeah).

It’s only a small thing, really, and yeah the other three brothers are definitely in on that as well (he knows how to use way too much of their gear for that not be true, and even Brains is probably in on it, otherwise keeping it from Jeff so completely successfully wouldn’t have been possible) but it’s something I latched onto and you can pry that from my cold, dead hands.

And TAG.  TAG, TAG, TAG, where they really brought Big Brother Scott to the fore.  And it starts off early.  Episode One, Ring of Fire Part 1 early.  I have said this before (maybe not on tumblr, perhaps, but definitely to all the friends I’ve ever forced to watch this ep which is quite a few that this point), but we get the perfect insight to Scott in this ep.  Grumpy, not particularly happy about TB1 being under maintenance and not ready for flight before being tested but stays back because yeah, okay, it’s an underwater rescue, TB1 isn’t really needed, he’ll just stay on comms and bother his brothers from home.  Then they lose contact with Gordon.

There is literally nothing Scott can do about this.  Hell, there’s nothing Virgil can do and he’s on the scene already.  But Scott’s first reaction is to jump in a high speed jet with a brand new, untested engine, and push it as fast as possible to get there anyway.  Because he’s scared about Gordon and entirely disregards his own safety to get there even though there’s nothing he can do.  The first time I saw that, I was fully expecting something to go wrong with TB1 with the amount they were bigging up how untested the new engines were, blah-blah-blah.  And honestly, that just set Scott’s character up so well.  Reckless flyboy who just gets worse the moment there’s a little brother in trouble.  (and yes, I know, they deliberately staggered the launches in the first two eps so we could independently see and appreciate all the cool launch scenes they’d created, but the way they did it with Scott was beautiful).

It gets hammered home a little more in Space Race.  That’s very much a John and Alan ep and I appreciate it, but Scott taking the time (that he absolutely did not have) to check in on Alan as soon as he found out things were getting ‘a little rough up there’ and fussed over how he looked stressed and generally smother-henned from a different rescue that was probably a lot worse at that point than Alan’s little game of tag with a mine judging by the background screaming and the way Scott had to duck out of the way of what was presumably a collapsing building halfway through the conversation is just so good.  It’s all of maybe 30 seconds in the ep but... I’m a Scott girl.  I latch onto these things.

It’s a little more dialled back for a while after that, but then there’s Runaway.  I love this episode, okay, and I keep seeing Scott getting a lot of flack over how he treats Brains in this ep and that bothers me.  Is Scott in the right with how he acted?  Maybe not, maybe there were other, better ways to handle the whole thing (I love Scott but I do know and accept that he can be an idiot and make mistakes... looks at Recharge oh boy that’s a fun one) but this is one of those eps where he does this thing I love where he tries to big brother someone older than him.  It doesn’t happen much, but he does it with Brains from time to time and this is one of them.  He knows Brains isn’t comfortable in Thunderbird One, and his response to that is to try and reassure him with a little bit of banter, a little bit of light-heartedness.  And if it was any of his brothers, or hell even the kids he rescues, it would probably have worked.  The fact that it doesn’t (and all the curveballs that rescue keeps throwing at them) does make Scott seem like a bit of a brat, maaaybe, but he’s trying, okay?  Give the boy some slack he wants everything to be okay.

EOS.  Honestly, I am surprised that he didn’t jump in TB3 himself the moment they realised “John” was fake.  I actually can’t imagine how terrified he was during and after that episode, because he’s John’s big brother.  Looking after his little brothers - even the one living in space - is his job and it’s a job he takes very seriously, so the fact that this AI managed to impersonate his little brother so well he never suspected a thing?  That shook him up, and shook him up bad.  There are many fics about Scott and EOS and how they probably didn’t get on at all for some time and they are fantastic because that’s something I wish we’d seen in the show and never did.  I actually poked at it with a headcanon of mine myself because the idea of the one thing getting Scott and EOS to bond is a shared worry over John is one I love.  Once he finally got used to EOS, knowing that there’s someone there to keep an eye on John full time would have been such a relief for our constantly-worrying favourite big brother.

Am I going to keep going ep by ep?  Probably not, because that is a lot to go through and this is already an entire essay, but I am going to tackle straight into Slingshot because worried big brothers?  Worried big brothers.  Lots of them.  Four, to be precise, but while we’ve got the obvious “Alan’s missing and we don’t have any idea what’s happening and [insert genera panic here]” there’s that little, blink and you’ll miss it, bit where the brother Scott is fussing over is John.  It’s common fanon that John and hugs are, for the most part, a no thanks, but the first time we ever see Scott and John physically in the same place, there’s an arm slung around his shoulder and he’s guiding him into the room - presumably all the way from the space elevator - because he can’t help Alan but he can help John.  One highly upset John who sent his baby brother off on that mission and now faces the very real fear that said baby brother isn’t coming back (and, yes, I suppose, Kayo as well.  I am not a Kayo fan in the slightest so don’t expect her to crop up too much - there’s a reason I skipped Fireflash in this even though he’s being a big brother to her in there).  It’s the small things that I really appreciate.

I’ve been writing for about an hour straight now (I did say I never shut up about Scott) so while I could pick apart all the episodes I’d be here for several more hours and I do, regrettably, have other things to do (including writing more fic!).  I’ll start summarising.  And probably going out of order but hey.  Things as I think of them now.

Heavy Metal.  One of my favourite episodes for many reasons (no Kayo, all the bros, the banter, TB4 “you do know Thunderbird Four is a Class C Submersible, right?  As in, she operates best Under Water?”) but that Scott and Alan moment?  Where Scott trusts Alan implicitly because he’s at a loss at what he can do and Alan has an answer and ooh boy this role reversal.  Part of being an older sibling is knowing when to let your younger siblings stand by themselves and here Scott does that so well.  There’s hesitation and fear but he does it and I might have watched that many times and had to stifle squeals every time.

I mentioned Recharge earlier and that’s not really big brother Scott so much as “breaking apart at the seams” Scott but it’s a powerful episode where we actually see the stress he’s under and that he is Not Coping (thank you Virgil for stepping into Big Brother role) so I can’t really not mention it at all.

Hop skip and a jump to season 2 because we have one of the biggest pieces of personal amusement for me in this season and I realised it when tallying up “Near Deaths At the Hands Of The Mechanic” out of curiosity (and some background research for Grounded).  We know that Virgil, Gordon and even Alan ended up in trouble a few times, and Scott not trusting the Mechanic in season 3 definitely stems from the whole ‘you worked with the Hood and almost killed my brothers several times’ thing, but after doing a count-up, the Tracy the Mechanic almost kills the most is actually Scott himself (it’s not even close.  It’s two or three times more than the next brother - Gordon, iirc).  Does Scott have any regards for his own personal safety when he can focus on his brothers instead?  Of course not.

Brandon.  Brandon ‘The Bear’ Berringer.  Who, by the way, I adore.  A mix of a mini Scott and Alan all bundled up into one X-Treme vlogger, he pushes all of Scott’s buttons delightfully and gives some of my favourite banter (“like two peas in a pod” “well this pea would like out of this pod”) and the whole time you can see Scott oh so slowly adopting this disaster child.  Unwillingly, but he just can’t help himself.  Brandon just radiates ‘out of control teenager in need of older sibling’ vibes and, well, Scott is powerless.  I love it, he hates it, Brandon is totally adopted by the end of High Strung, Scott just refuses to admit it (Virgil notices.  Virgil delights in playing the ‘annoying little brother’ card).  Scott and Brandon’s relationship is one of my favourites purely because this is the one child Scott doesn’t want to big brother but he does it anyway (okay so there’s Fuse in season 3 - yes, Fuse - but I will get to Fuse in a bit because that’s complicated and also ties in to my absolute favourite thing about Scott - yes, even above the big brothering).

Jumping forwards again because it’s been too long since I last saw S2 (DVDs at home why) and I’m tired.  And because I really want to talk about Firebreak, which I’m sure is what sparked this ask in the first place.  I love this episode.  (I love all of them but sshh.)  I love the Crablogger, I am delighted that got a TAG revamp, and I love the introduction of the Rescue Scouts (hello Chaos foreshadowing, that was sneaky).  I love Bee and her (mostly) cool, calm and collected attitude and I love Henry and his Small Child energy.  And this is also the most obviously blatant big brothering we get from Scott outside of his actual siblings in the entire series.  The fact that it is right before The Long Reach and comes hot on the heels of (or even in the midst of, really) that whole breakdown he’s been having ever since Signals just hits harder, because it’s such a wonderful contrast with the whole Must Be Responsible and What Would Dad Do and all those other things that’s been hitting him for the entirety of TAG and really slamming home in S3.2.  There’s no pressure on him here.  Just two small children, doing the exact things he did when he was their age and no doubt helped his own little brothers through.  I know the episode focuses on how Jeff taught Scott all those things, and is kinda paying that forward from Scott to Henry and Bee, but you can’t tell me John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan weren’t also Rescue Scouts and that Scott didn’t help them with their badges, too (especially Alan, who if he’s the age I think he is, is probably still a Rescue Scout!).  Scott’s calm, he’s having fun, and honestly this is what our overworked Commander needed.  The feels from this episode are strong.

Because I mentioned him earlier, I will just touch on the Fuse thing.  This is less big-brothering but Chain Reaction hits me really hard, because it comes right on the heels of SOS, with Gordon still hospitalised because of Fuse.  And then there’s Scott, who by all rights should hate Fuse for what he did, for hurting and coming so close to killing one of his little brothers, turning around and saving him.  Maybe he’s not big brothering Fuse but idk, I just love that.  And while we’re on the topic, Scott and Cameron?  This kid disguised as a GDF soldier is adorable and the fact that Scott lets him hide behind him when that’s really not something that should be encouraged in a soldier (as Marion snaps) makes me smile every time.  And the awkward hug.  And all Scott’s positive reinforcement.  I love it.

The Long Reach.  [pauses to scream].  So this finale is, for Scott, a lot to do with stepping back and being allowed to be just the big brother again.  It’s very clever how Scott’s very prominent in part 1 and then fades away in part 2, as Jeff comes back and takes over the whole head of the family thing, and really hits home how much Scott took on (do I have fics planned on them figuring out who is responsible for what and fumbling their way through this?  Hell yeah).  There’s that scene with Alan on the planetoid that I think made everyone cry a little because Scott’s there in reassuring big brother mode even though he’s falling apart himself and then there’s one of the biggest gut-punches for me in the whole show.  Which I think is best described in the fic I wrote immediately after it aired because ouch did the end of Part 1 hurt me.  That moment where Scott’s alone, when Alan’s gone back and he doesn’t have to be strong anymore because no-one can see him... when the Big Brother Mask vanishes and we’re just left with the broken son... [screams some more].  I’m never gonna be over that scene.  Never.

And the hug.  That damn hug that makes me cry because Scott please that’s your hug too.  The way Scott’s clinging to TB4 to keep himself still despite being zero-g trained, the way he hangs back so his brothers can get their hug with Dad and the fact that Jeff and John have to beckon him in and let him know it’s okay to have this.  The way that despite everything, despite finally getting his Dad back, he still gives that moment to his brothers and doesn’t even try to take anything for himself until he’s silently told too...

I love Scott.  I love him so much.  His heart is so big and he’ll big brother anyone who seems like they need it (irrespective of whether they actually do), and sometimes that’s what holds him together and sometimes that’s what breaks him and I just...  Scott’s so much of a big brother he can’t stop even when it’s hurting him, and he never wants to stop because his little brothers are his world and he’ll always, always put them first.

I’m gonna finish this with a line from Grounded, because I wrote it and then it punched me in the gut because it sums up my feelings about how when it comes to his siblings he’s too selfless, which is both one of his strongest character traits but also one of his fatal flaws.