Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often shortened to Captain Scarlet, is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company Century 21 for ITC Entertainment. It is the sixth Anderson series to be filmed using a form of electronic marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation" combined with scale model special effects. Running to thirty-two 25-minute episodes, it was first broadcast on ITV regional franchises between 1967 and 1968 and has since aired in more than 40 other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Set in 2068, Captain Scarlet presents a "war of nerves" between Earth and the Mysterons, a race of Martians who possess partial control over matter. When a misunderstanding causes human astronauts to attack their city on Mars, the Mysterons swear revenge and launch reprisals against Earth. These are countered by Spectrum, a worldwide security organisation. In the first episode, Spectrum agent Captain Scarlet acquires the Mysterons' self-healing power of "retrometabolism" and is rendered "indestructible", being able to recover from injuries that would normally be fatal. Scarlet immediately becomes Spectrum's top asset in its fight against the Mysterons.
Captain Scarlet, the eighth of the Andersons' ten puppet series, was preceded by Thunderbirds and followed by Joe 90 and The Secret Service. In terms of visual aesthetic, it marked a departure from earlier series in its use of puppets that were sculpted to realistic body proportions. Repeated several times in the UK, it has generated tie-ins ranging from toy cars and action figures to audio plays and novels, as well as strips in the weekly children's comic TV Century 21.
Compared to earlier Anderson productions, Captain Scarlet is widely regarded as "darker" in tone and less suited to children because of its violent content, as well as its themes of alien aggression and interplanetary war. The change in puppet design has divided opinion and the decision to make the protagonist "indestructible" has been brought into question. The series has been praised for its use of a multinational, multiethnic puppet cast and depiction of a utopian future Earth. A computer-animated remake, New Captain Scarlet, first aired in 2005.
Plot
The series begins in 2068. In the first episode, the crew of the Zero-X spacecraft are investigating the surface of Mars after mysterious radio signals are found to be coming from the planet. The source is discovered to be an alien city, which the astronauts destroy in a missile attack after mistaking a surveillance device for a weapon. The city's inhabitants, the Mysterons, are a collective of sentient computers that possess partial control over matter and communicate in a deep, echoing voice. After using their power of "reversing matter" to rebuild their city, they vow revenge for humanity's unwarranted aggression and declare war on Earth.Reversing matter, also called "retrometabolism", enables the Mysterons to re-create people and objects as facsimiles that they can control. They use it to wage a "war of nerves" against Earth, issuing threats against specific targets and then destroying and reconstructing whatever instruments are needed to carry out their plans. The Mysterons' presence is indicated by twin circles of green light that they project onto scenes of destruction and reconstruction. Although the Mysterons are able to influence events from Mars, their actions on Earth are usually performed by their replicated intermediaries.
Zero-X mission leader Captain Black becomes the Mysterons' primary agent when they seize control of his mind. Prior to the events of the series, Black was an officer in Spectrum, a worldwide security organisation that mobilises all its resources to counter the Mysteron threat. Spectrum's senior agents hold military ranks and colour codenames. They are posted to the organisation's headquarters, Cloudbase—an airborne aircraft carrier stationed above the Earth's surface—where they answer to its commander-in-chief, Colonel White. Cloudbase is defended by Angel Interceptor fighters flown by an all-female team of pilots led by Destiny Angel. The base's computer systems are controlled by White's assistant, Lieutenant Green. Spectrum also incorporates a fleet of armoured Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles, which are hidden in secret locations around the world, as well as patrol cars, maximum-security transports, passenger jet aircraft and machine gun-equipped helicopters.
Captain Scarlet becomes Spectrum's top asset in its fight against the Mysterons following the events of the first episode, in which the Mysterons attempt to assassinate the World President as their first act of retaliation. The Mysterons engineer a road accident that kills the original Scarlet and replace him with a reconstruction. After being shot by Captain Blue and falling to its death from the top of a tower, the reconstruction returns to life with the consciousness of the original Scarlet restored, and is thereafter free of Mysteron control. With his new Mysteron body, Scarlet possesses two extraordinary abilities: he can sense other reconstructions nearby; and if he is injured or killed, his retrometabolism restores him to full health, making him virtually "indestructible". As hostilities with Mars continue, Scarlet repeatedly sacrifices himself to thwart the Mysterons, secure in the knowledge that he will return to face them again.
Over the course of the series, it is found that Mysteron reconstructions are particularly vulnerable to electricity and can be identified through X-rays, which cannot penetrate their alien biology. These discoveries allow Spectrum to develop two anti-Mysteron devices, the Mysteron Gun and Mysteron Detector. A three-episode story arc focuses on the discovery of a Mysteron outpost on the Moon, its destruction by Spectrum, and Spectrum's efforts to negotiate with the Mysterons after converting the base's power source into an interplanetary communication device. A failed attempt to survey Mars from space, aborted military conferences and the sabotaged construction of a new Earth space fleet prevent Spectrum from taking the fight to the Mysterons, and the organisation thrice fails to capture Captain Black. In the penultimate episode, the Mysterons destroy Cloudbase itself, but this is revealed to be a nightmare dreamt by one of the Angels. The final episode is a clip show that leaves the conflict between Earth and Mars unresolved.
Production
Development
When efforts to secure a US network broadcast of Thunderbirds fell through in July 1966, Lew Grade, the owner of AP Films, capped Thunderbirds Series Two at six episodes and cancelled the production. Having overseen APF's work since the making of Supercar in 1960, Grade was keen for Supermarionation to penetrate the lucrative American market and believed that a new concept would stand a better chance of landing a network sale than a second series of Thunderbirds.Gerry Anderson was therefore required to come up with an idea for a new series. He had once been inspired by the thought of creating a live-action police drama in which the hero is unexpectedly murdered partway through the series and replaced by a new lead character. Now returning to this idea, Anderson realised that a major selling point could be a character who is killed at the end of each episode and resurrected by the start of the next. This, coupled with contemporary theories about the possibility of life on Mars, led to the idea of an interplanetary war between Earth and its neighbour and a security organisation being called on to defend humanity. After further thought, Anderson decided that "Scarlet" would be a suitably unusual name for the organisation's "indestructible" top agent, while his partner could be called "Blue". From this, Anderson resolved that all the personnel would have colour codenames and the organisation would be called "Spectrum". Aware that white light is composed of—and can be broken down into—the colours of the spectrum, he named Spectrum's leader Colonel White.
Intrigued by the phrase "life as we know it", Anderson wanted to set his enemy aliens apart from the conventional extraterrestrials of 1960s TV and film. Therefore, while devising the Mysterons, he worked from a basis of "life as we don't know it", making the aliens a collective of sentient computers rather than organic life forms. The intention was that the original Mysterons were extragalactic beings that established a base on Mars in the distant past. In the early 20th century they abandoned the planet, leaving their computers behind.
Anderson's memories of the Second World War provided inspiration for a number of design aspects. For example, he remembered that during the Battle of Britain, RAF pilots had struggled to counter German attacks quickly, because having to take off from the ground meant that it took a long time to intercept the enemy. He therefore made Spectrum's headquarters, Cloudbase, an airborne aircraft carrier. According to Anderson, the Mysteron rings were inspired by a TV advertisement for wool that featured the Woolmark logo being projected onto a woman.
With "The Mysterons" as their working title, the Andersons wrote a pilot script in August 1966. This differed significantly from the completed first episode. It had been conceived that Scarlet's Mysteron reconstruction would be resurrected using an advanced computer, after which he would no longer be truly flesh and blood but a "mechanical man" akin to an android. Another plan, also dropped, was for each episode to feature a "guest star" puppet voiced by a famous actor: the World President, for example, was intended to be voiced by Patrick McGoohan.
With Gerry Anderson serving primarily as executive producer, most of the writing was done by Tony Barwick, who had written for Thunderbirds. Initially Captain Scarlets script editor, Barwick went on to author 18 episodes himself while substantially revising other writers' work. Discussing his writing in a 1986 interview, Barwick compared the premise and characters of Captain Scarlet to those of Thunderbirds—for example, likening Spectrum to International Rescue, and the character of Captain Black to recurring Thunderbirds villain the Hood.