Before There Was a 'War On Terror' There Was a 'War Of Nerves': Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967)

(Cover of A&E's 2002 DVD set.) In 1967, British producers Gerry & Sylvia Anderson (UFO; Space:1999), still smarting over the cancellation of their Supermarionation series Thunderbirds , devised another Science Fiction series with puppet characters that was much more mature in subject matter than their previous shows: Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Set in the future of 2068 AD, the series postulated that the Earth, now run by one big united goverment, also has it's own international para-military security organization, the aptly named "Spectrum", whose agents all have the names of colors for code names & rank (like Captain Blue, Lt. Green, etc.). (Captain Blue and Captain Scarlet.) (The Mysterons: Always heard, but never seen save as two circles of light.) When a Spectrum mission to Mars led by Captain Black goes awry, causing the crew to accidentally fire on and destroy the city of the Martian race called the Mysterons, the natives don't take Black's apology very well. Vowing to wage a "War of Nerves" against the Earth, and using a process called "retro-matabolism", by which they can replicate and person or object destroyed by them, the Mysterons begin a wave of terror directed at Earth's goverments and defense installations, including Spectrum. (Mysteron agent Captain Black.) With the assistance of the now-replicated Captain Black, the Mysterons, in the first episode, attempt to use their replica of Captain Scarlet to assassinate the President of Earth. Things backfire however, when Captain Blue foils the attenpt. (Captain Black escapes capture and becomes the series' recurring archfoe.) However, freed from the Mysterons' control and having the retro-metabolic ability to survive any fatal injury, Captain Scarlet becomes Spectrum's most important defence against the Mysterons. (Scarlet -real name Paul Metcalfe and voiced by British actor Francis Matthews , also has the abilty to "sense" whether or not a Mysteron duplicate was in the immediate area.) Subsequent episodes have Scarlet, Blue & their fellow Spectrum agents try to stop the Mysterons from doing such fun things as setting off a nuclear bomb in New York City and blowing up a nuclear power plant in a populated area. Believe it or not, some episodes actually end with the Mysterons succeeding and our heroes (especially Captain Scarlet, who, although he could heal quickly, still got the raw end of things) bloodied but unbowed! For a show I watched as a kid after coming home from school every afternoon in 1968-69, this was powerful stuff for a seven-year-old! Even though the Andersons and their crack production team (which included future James Bond special effects master Derek Meddings and,as the voice of Captain Blue, future UFO star Ed Bishop) had a lot of neat looking vehicles and space ships to dazzle the eye, the overwhelming sense of impending doom the series projected couldn't be ignored. The Mysterons were so nasty they even wiped out a train full of passengers just to "replicate" two fashion models/Spectrum agents! (The Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle AKA the SPV.) (Cloudbase; Spectrum's headquarters.) All 32 half hour episodes were put out by A&E in 2002. Watching them today, in these post 9/11 days, it's uncanny how prescient the show seems. Like the radical terrorists of today, the Mysterons are hell bent in their belief to punish the Earth for their transgression on Mars. The Mysteron's plots suddently don't seem all that far fetched. (Spectrum's all-female fighter pilots, the Angels.) An episode guide can be found here . Yep, Greenwich Library carries the set! -Ed Related links: The 2005 Revival's Episode Guide (which hasn't been shown in the US yet); Spectrum Headquarters fan site And here's a YouTube video of the first few minutes of episode 3