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Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as simply Captain Scarlet, is a science fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions Television company of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson and Reg Hill. It was first shown in the United Kingdom (originally on ATV Midlands, but later the whole of the UK) between September 1967 and May 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 and the Mysterons, Joe 90, and the little-seen The Secret Service. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons was the first series made after the international success of Thunderbirds in 1964-66.
On a mission to Mars in 2068, a Mysteron installation is attacked and destroyed by a team of three Earth explorers, including 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. Although this distinction is never made in the series, the accompanying book states that Black was killed and revitalised by the Mysterons in much the same way as their other victims throughout the series.
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 in a rigged car crash 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.) 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, implying that the same could permanently destroy Scarlet. |
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