Indestructible

A selection of end credit art from 'Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons'. As a normal, healthy, bloodthirsty child these would always cause me to scurry away to my pencils and paper, eager to recreate these perilous situations, as well as inventing my own, usually involving crocodiles. I was always running out of red pens for some reason. 

Spectrum Is Green

'Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons' featured even more stylish hardware than its predecessor 'Thunderbirds', all absolutely integral to the plot and ready to be die cast by Corgi and sold to kids in their millions.

Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons

As you might expect from a programme about an interplanetary terrorist war where both of the main protagonists are dead, ‘Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons’ is a dark and nihilistic show, full of violence and mayhem, and with an absolutely enormous body count.

The first Gerry Anderson show to feature ‘realistic’ puppets rather than the big head caricatures of previous work (technology had moved on meaning that the lip sync devices could now be placed in the marionettes chests rather than their outsized bonces), ‘Scarlet’ is glossy, sexy and full of merchandising opportunities, but is somehow much less charming than ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Stingray’, not least because it is slow, somber and utterly devoid of humour. It's also fussy, too eager to create a puppet world comparable to the real one (interestingly, 'UFO' not only expanded on the theme of war between planets, but does the odd thing of having a live cast directed as if they were marionettes). That said, it's an amazing achievement and, as a kid, I found it unbelievably exciting.  

The Mysterons are great villains, sentient computers abandoned by the race who invented them – disembodied voices and artificial minds stretching their dread hands across the universe to wage endless war against the Earth – utterly malign, totally focused, tireless, ruthless and deadly and, happily for us, quite easily outwitted.

Their biggest mistake, I suppose, was in killing Captain Scarlet in the first place. It's never quite explained how his reanimated corpse retains the indestructibility of a Mysteron agent but the loyalty of a SPECTRUM officer but, in the end analysis, it doesn’t really matter - as long as Captain Scarlet keeps sacrificing himself to save the world and his twisted and broken or burned and disintegrated body keeps putting itself together to continue the war, we’ll be alright.   

Captain Pyjamas

Scarlet is a cool colour, isn't it? In fact, as long as you're not Captain Shit, sorry, Ochre, or Captain Magenta, all SPECTRUM uniforms are really cool, especially if you accessorise with a pair of hip sunglasses. So, yep, Captain Scarlet is cool. Really cool. Until he gets ready for bed, then he just looks like a twat.

I don't care if you're dead, a clone or merely recovering after being shot and falling a thousand foot from some fancy car park, there is no excuse for those pj's. Happily, as they seem to be made out of 100% flammable nylon, I'm pretty sure they're destructible.

The Secret Service - or - Garry Andersold Falollops Over

‘The Secret Service’ is not the first title that springs to mind when thinking of Gerry Anderson’s oeuvre, but that’s not surprising, really, as only thirteen episodes were made, it was only shown in some TV regions, and it is seldom repeated. Generally considered a failure, it has some intriguing moments and an interesting premise, but, ultimately, it’s rather half baked, an uneasy transition between Supermarionation and the live action shows that Anderson had his eye on making. 

Father Stanley Unwin is a vicar and an agent for B.I.S.H.O.P (British Intelligence Service Headquarters: Operation Priest). He works with Matthew, a fellow agent, who is posing as his gardener. When national security is threatened, they use a ‘Minimiser’ to shrink Matthew to a fraction of his normal size, allowing him to access otherwise inaccessible areas. Father Unwin, who is played by Professor Stanley Unwin AND a Stanley Unwin puppet, uses his patented brand of goobledegook (‘Unwinese’) to confuse and confound anyone who gets too close to their secret.

It’s a really odd show, borne out of Anderson’s desire to work with Unwin, who he found hilarious. Lew Grade was less impressed, cancelling the series after watching the pilot, seeing Unwin do his stuff and shouting ‘the Americans will never understand him!’ When Anderson said, well, that’s sort of the point, Grade clarified by saying ‘the British like to be confused, they think it’s fun; the Americans hate it, they just find it confusing’, and that was that.

An interesting curio, but neither as good as ‘Joe 90’ which preceded it, or ‘UFO’ which followed it, and enjoyment of the show very much depends on just how funny you find Stanley Unwin. If like me, it’s ‘quite – now and again’, this may not be the show for you.