situations. As such, it is rare that the Thunderbird vehicles cannot handle the rescues they are assigned. Brains has occasionally designed vehicles for organisations outside International Rescue as a freelance engineer. These include Skythrust (in the episode "Alias Mr. Hackenbacker") and Skyship One (in the film Thunderbird 6). Such commissions are built under strict security to maintain the secrecy of IR. The character's birth name is not revealed in the series; while working on external projects, Brains uses a pseudonym to protect his identity. For example, he uses the alias "Hiram K. Hackenbacker" while working on the Skythrust project, and the board that commissions Skyship One knows him only as "Mr X". Original series appearances "Trapped in the Sky" "Pit of Peril" "Terror in New York City" "Edge of Impact" "Day of Disaster" "30 Minutes After Noon" "Desperate Intruder" "End of the Road" "The Uninvited" "Sun Probe" "Operation Crash-Dive" "Vault of Death" "The Mighty Atom" "City of Fire" "The Man from MI.5" "Cry Wolf" "Danger at Ocean Deep" "Moveand You're Dead" "Brink of Disaster" "Attack of the Alligators!" "The Cham-Cham" "Security Hazard" "Atlantic Inferno" "Path of Destruction" "Alias Mr. Hackenbacker" "Lord Parker's 'Oliday" "Ricochet" "Give or Take a Million" Thunderbirds Are Go (film) Thunderbird 6 (film) Adaptations In the 2004 film, his actual name is Ray Hackenbacker. He is said to have met antagonist Transom at an international conference on nanotechnology. According to Alex Pang's Thunderbirds: X-Ray Cross Sections, Jeff recruited Brains to International Rescue after he invented the 'Gravitron' artificial gravity plate for use in NASA's spacecraft. He also designed the "Hackenbacker series 3000 fusion reactor" for use in all Thunderbird craft (sans Thunderbird 4), the "Hackenbacker VTOL engine" for use in Thunderbirds 1 and 2, and the "Hackenbacker inchworm engine", named after his favourite insect, for use in Thunderbird 4. Thunderbirds Are Go!, the 2015 reboot series, uses Hiram K. Hackenbacker as Brains's real name. Reception Brains is widely considered to be one of the best-known characters devised for an Anderson series, and is described by Daniel Sperling of the entertainment website Digital Spy as one of a few Thunderbirds characters to "have almost become as beloved as the show". Stephen La Rivière, writer of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, argues that Brains is the series' "third iconic character" after Lady Penelope and Parker, and is distinctive for his "big, blue-rimmed glasses and stuttering American