Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons

1 9 6 7 - 1 9 6 8 (UK)
32 x 25 minute episodes

In the late Sixties I collected Captain Scarlet vehicles from packets of Sugar Smacks breakfast cereal in England. The vehicles came as little model kits on a single sprue and required very little construction. From memory the kits simply snapped together and were approximately 1/72 scale. My favourite was Captain Scarlet's Red Spectrum Patrol Car (SPC). 

Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons is set in the year 2068. The real name of the titular hero is Paul Metcalfe but we know him as Captain Scarlet. He is well hard! In fact he is indestructible. He has a very sexy red uniform but his lips don't move much (even when he's saying "S.I.G").

The Mysterons (evil bastards from Mars!) have a power called retrometabolism which enables them to destroy people and then create exact duplicates which are then under their control. Captain Scarlet was killed by the Mysterons and duplicated. Fortunately an accident broke the Mysterons control over the duplicate Captain Scarlet, leaving him with the original's personality and the Mysteron ability to recover from fatal wounds. Thus, Captain Scarlet became an indestructible soldier of Spectrum in the war against the Mysterons

Cloudbase is the HQ of Spectrum. It hangs around 40,000 feet up in the air (at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere) under the command of Colonel White (The Spectrum gaffer!). And it's mainly babes up here! When you're fighting Mysterons and all the hard blokes are down on Earth driving around in flash cars, you simply can not have enough sexy birds in white leather jumpsuits piloting supersonic fighter planes. (My kind of outfit, Spectrum).

The five Angels were Destiny, Symphony, Harmony, Rhapsody and Melody. They flew a mean Angel Interceptor. These baby's could clock 3,000 MPH! The chicks were a bit like The Spice Girls but with a  lot more attitude! They also said "S.I.G" a lot!

What travels at 200 MPH with the driver sitting backwards, is amphibious and toasts Mysterons? An SPV (Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle) That's what! I don't think it has ever been satisfactorily explained why the driver faced backwards! Something to do with impact I suppose. 

One thing puzzled me though - If this beast was really so  technologically advanced (with periscope and video cameras etc) why did Captain Scarlet have to keep stopping it and sliding out of a hatch on a slidey seat thing to survey the immediate surrounds with a pair of binoculars? - A bit low-tech don't you think?

Anyway, these things were scattered around all over the bloody place. They were usually hidden inside a disguised lorry or haystack or something. It seemed whenever you needed a SPV, there was always one handy not too far away. They were fast, sexy and almost as indestructible as the good Captain himself.

Captain Scarlet featured the voices of Francis Matthews, Donald Gray, Paul Maxwell, Ed Bishop (of UFO fame), Jeremy Wilkin, Gary Files, Cy Grant, Charles "Bud" Tingwell (Australia's own), Sylvia Anderson, Janna Hill, Lian-Shin and Liz Morgan. Of all the Gerry Anderson productions from the Sixties, this has to be my favourite. This is "Supermarionation" at it's very best. It was one of the few shows that could tear me away from my train set!  If you get the chance to see this on TV or video, I strongly suggest you do.

Clips from several of the TV episodes were cobbled together in 1981 to make a movie (available on video) called Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars. It will never win any Academy awards and suffers from some continuity problems but it's a damn good viewing if (like me) you grew up waiting to see which Spectrum model fell out of the cereal packet next!

NB: If anyone has any of those plastic models from the breakfast cereal packs, please contact us at your earliest convenience.

EPISODES
These are the 32 episodes of Captain Scarlet in the order they originally screened.

The Mysterons  Winged Assassin  Big Ben strikes again  Manhunt   Avalanche  White as snow The trap  Operation Time Spectrum strike back Special Assignment  The heart of New York Lunarville 7  Point 783  Model spy  Seek & destroy Renegade rocket

Crater 101  Shadow of fear  Dangerous rendezvous  Fire at rig 15  Treble cross  Flight 104  Place of Angels  Noose of ice  Expo 2068  The launching  Codename Europa  Inferno  Traitor  Flight to Atlantica  Attack on Cloudbase  The Inquisition

Century 21 Television Production in Association with ATV
for ITC World-Wide Distribution ©1967 Century 21 and ATV