The Premise:
Trigger-happy Human astronauts visiting Mars blow up the Mysteron city when
they accidentally mistake the inhabitants’ telescope for a gun. But the
unseen aliens, with the power to recreate matter, rebuild their city in an
instant and threaten slow reprisals against Mankind until all life on Earth is
extinguished. Clearly, the ‘peaceful’ Mysterons were just itching for
a fight…
Converting a few members of a
world police force called Spectrum into indestructible agents, the Mysterons
are a bit put out when one of them, Captain Scarlet, switches his allegiances
back to the good side after a crack on the head – following a fall from an
unfeasibly tall car park. He becomes the Humans’ best asset in their
defence against the Mysterons.
Background:
Money-man Lew Grade forced Thunderbirds creators Gerry and Sylvia
Anderson to abandon their worldwide hit after only two series in favour of a
darker show. Perfectly-proportioned puppets in a war story replaced the family
show about international rescues. The hardware was still impressive –
Cloudbase, the Angel interceptors, the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles and a myriad
magnificent machines soon sabotaged by the reactionary Mysterons – but the
series, trying so hard to be realistic, might just as well have employed live
actors. Anderson did so two years later with UFO.
First Run:
The first and only season began on September 29th 1967.
Number of Episodes: 32 half-hours. There may soon be
more. Gerry Anderson has produced a brief computer-generated pilot for a
proposed new series.
Red and Yellow and... :
…fortunately no pink, but we had Captains Magenta and Ochre. As there were
agents all over the world, Captains Lilac and Primrose weren’t entirely
out of the question. Snazzy uniforms all round, though…
Not Quite Black and White:
Captain Black represented the bad guy and Colonel White the leader of the good
guys. Political incorrectness aside, the Andersons happily made a black guy the
second-in-command, Lieutenant Green, and five women into the Angels, crack
pilots of the interceptor fighter jets. Spectrum’s Angels were first,
Charlie!
And
Isn’t That...
...the voice of Cary Grant as the indestructible Captain Scarlet? Not
exactly. It’s the voice of British actor Francis Matthews doing an
impression of Tony Curtis impersonating Cary Grant in Some Like it Hot.
The clipped humourless accent perfectly complemented the rigid puppets and the
serious scripts: this was, after all, a show about zombie Human facsimiles
wreaking destruction on behalf of a miffed alien civilization.
Dead Giveaways:
And the Mysterons might have succeeded more often if they had rebuilt and
re-used the destroyed matter instead of making copies and leaving the originals
lying about for our heroes to discover….
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