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Captain Scarlet

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Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often simply referred to as, Captain Scarlet, is a science fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions Television company of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson and Lew Grade and first shown in Britain (originally on ATV Midlands, but later the whole of the UK) between September 1967 and April 1968. It used puppetry (Supermarionation) and scale model special effects.

The series is one of several of popular science-fiction TV adventure series the Andersons produced in the 1960s, beginning with Supercar and followed by Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, and the little-seen The Secret Service. Scarlet was the first series made after the international success of Thunderbirds in 1964-66.

Contents

The story

The basic premise, played out over 32 episodes, is that a special International group, Spectrum, defends the Earth from the insidious plans of the alien Mysterons.

On a mission to Mars in 2068, a Mysteron installation is destroyed by Captain Black, leading the Mysterons to declare a "War of Nerves" on Earth. The Mysterons have the ability to replicate and then control any person or object they first kill or destroy, through their power of "retro-metabolism". They use this power to conduct a war of terror against Earth—primarily aimed at the world leaders, major cities, industrial and defence establishments, and, of course, "Spectrum" and its airborne Cloudbase headquarters. The Mysterons are never seen; their presence is indicated by two circles of light tracking across the scene. Their actions on Earth are always through their replicated intermediaries — with the possible exception of Captain Black whose death is never portrayed and who may simply have been "turned" as their first agent whilst still on Mars.

Captain Scarlet becomes Spectrum's principal weapon at the forefront of the battle with the Mysterons after the events of the first episode, "The Mysterons". In that episode, Scarlet (whose real name is Paul Metcalfe) is one of two Spectrum agents (the other being fellow Spectrum agent Captain Brown) killed by the Mysterons and then replaced with a duplicate under their control; for reasons never explained in or out of the series, however, when the duplicate falls 800 feet from a tower the personality of Paul Metcalfe reasserts itself in the duplicate, who is immune thereafter to Mysteron control. Not only that, but Scarlet's new body has two new powers: it allows him to sense the presence of other Mysteron duplicates nearby, and if he should be injured or even killed, retro-metabolism will re-create him as good as before. ('Self-repairing' might be a more accurate way to describe this than the 'indestructible' that the series uses, since it is established that Scarlet feels all the pain associated with any injuries he suffers.) For obvious reasons, this advantage is kept secret outside Spectrum, and even Captain Blue is often heard saying "But Captain, you'll be killed!" (Later in the series, the Mysteron duplicates are discovered to be vulnerable to high-voltage electricity, meaning that the same could permanently destroy Scarlet.)

Characters

Spectrum personnel have military ranks and colour based code names (hence Captain Scarlet), headed by Colonel White. Other characters include Captains Blue, Ochre, Grey, and Magenta, Lieutenant Green,"Lieutenant" is pronounced "leftenant", as is correct in this British programme. and the five female fighter pilots, who have a different collective codename—the Angels—and are individually Destiny, Symphony, Melody, Rhapsody, and Harmony.

Note: with the exception of Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue, none of the above real names were actually mentioned on screen. They originate from various licensed spin-off publications. As such, it is debatable whether these names are actually canon, but are generally accepted as such.

Puppets

The Captain Scarlet marionettes
Enlarge
The Captain Scarlet marionettes

Whether the puppets of the various Anderson series were modelled on real people, and who those real people were, is the subject of some question. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson have claimed that they asked the puppet designers to give the puppets rough resemblances to specific celebrities of the day. Some of the puppets, however, appear to be quite clearly modelled instead on the actors who provided their voices; chief puppet artist Mary Turner admitted that Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope was modelled after Sylvia, a revelation the latter claimed came as a surprise. On Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue and Colonel White were said to particularly resemble their voice actors, Ed Bishop and Donald Gray respectively. (Ironically, although many fans believe the resemblance of Captain Blue and Ed Bishop to be particularly strong, based on Ed Bishop's appearance in Anderson's live-action series UFO, the blonde hair that Bishop's UFO character Straker shares with Captain Blue is Bishop's brunette hair bleached blonde in the first episode, and a wig in subsequent episodes of the series.) The Captain Scarlet character has been said at various times to have been modelled on Cary Grant, Roger Moore, and on Scarlet's voice actor Francis Matthews; while no definite answer appears to be forthcoming, Matthews says that Gerry Anderson went to great lengths to get him to sign on to the production because of his skilled Cary Grant impression. Anderson, however, claims (in his biographyGerry Anderson: The Authorised Biography by Simon Archer and Stan Nicholls; ISBN 0-09-978141-7) that the impression was Matthews' choice at audition, and whilst it wasn't what had been intended for the character they chose to use it.

As in the Andersons' previous puppet series, the characters' eyes and mouths were operated electronically, but in Captain Scarlet the control mechanism was placed in the puppets' chests rather than their heads. This meant that the puppets no longer needed oversized heads to accommodate the mechanisms and could be built with normal proportions for the first time. In order to enhance the sense of realism further, the puppets were never seen walking, as it was impossible to make their legs move realistically. For this reason characters are often seen standing on moving walkways or even sitting at moving desks, and there are of course any number of futuristic land, sea, air, and space vehicles for them to ride in, such as the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (SPV), the bright-red Spectrum Patrol Car (also referred to as the Spectrum Saloon), the Spectrum Passenger Jet (SPJ), and the streamlined Angel Interceptor aircraft, armed with missile guns, all of them courtesy of special effects director Derek Meddings, his design assistant Michael Trim, and the miniatures unit.

SPVs were located around the world, hidden in public or commercial buildings. Upon meeting the staff of a building, a Spectrum agent would show his identification and the SPV would either be moved out for use, or the camouflage which had concealed it (a shack, or a goods container) would collapse to reveal it.

Episode list

Later productions

The rights of the show were sold to ITC Entertainment, Lew Grade's production company which co-produced all the Anderson shows from Thunderbirds onwards. In 1980 ITC combined several episodes of the original show to make two compilation movies, titled Captain Scarlet vs. the Mysterons and Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars. This second movie was later used for the second episode of the KTMA version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, shown on Thanksgiving Day (24 November) 1988 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet

A new version of the series, entitled Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, began broadcast on ITV on 12 February 2005. The series, produced by Anderson and backed by Sony Pictures Television, uses computer-generated imagery (CGI) instead of puppetry, although as a nod to Supermarionation, the show is promoted as being produced in "Hypermarionation".

Original novels

Several novels based upon the series were published in the late 1960s:

In 1993, Corgi Books published four episode novelizations for young readers based upon the episodes "The Mysterons", "Noose of Ice", "Lunarville 7", and "The Launching".

Trivia

The mid-1980s musical duo Scarlett & Black took their name from the characters of Captain Scarlet and Captain Black.

The Zero-X mission seen and referred to in the pilot episode ("The Mysterons") involved the same spacecraft seen in the feature film "Thunderbirds Are Go". This is allegedly due to a Japanese model manufacturer paying a sizeable license fee for the Zero-X ship, and expressed great concern that it was only to appear in the one film.

The oft-repeated expression "S.I.G." in the series stands for "Spectrum is Green"; i.e. affirmative, understood, or an indication of a safe and stable situation depending on context. The corresponding "S.I.R." ("Spectrum is Red"), meaning the reverse, is rarely heard. These catch phrases are a common Anderson-ism, similar to the Thunderbirds' "F.A.B." or Stingray's "P.W.O.R."

As with many puppets in the Andersons' series, four of the Angels are all allegedly based in appearance on contemporary celebrities:

Footnotes

External links


>

Gerry Anderson
Television
The Adventures of Twizzle > Torchy the Battery Boy | Four Feather Falls | Supercar | Fireball XL5 | Stingray | Thunderbirds | Captain Scarlet | Joe 90 | The Secret Service | UFO | The Protectors | | Terrahawks | Dick Spanner, P.I. | Space Precinct | Lavender Castle | New Captain Scarlet
Feature Films
Thunderbirds Are GO | Thunderbird 6 | Doppelgänger
Companies/Techniques
AP Films > Century 21 Productions | Supermarionation
Notable Collaborators
Sylvia Anderson > David Lane | Barry Gray | Reg Hill | Derek Meddings | John Read

 

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