I'm back to watching more Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Supermarionation. This time Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons is up for view. The show only lasted one series of 32 episodes. They package the series on 4 discs and I'm going to watch the first one today. The episodes are back down to 26 minutes yet they still feel a bit padded. The DVDs have the shows in a different order than the broadcast order, the production order and the recommended order. I really don't care that much. It's too much trouble to shift the discs about to run them in some other order.
There's still a fair bit of vehicle footage but not as much as on Thunderbirds. That's one of the Spectrum vehicles their agents drive. That vehicle makes me think someone had been studying the sports cars of the period and didn't get much past that.
The show is highly colorful and all the agents of Spectrum have color coded names. That's Colonel White up there at his control desk. It spins around so you know it's cool.
There's also plenty of explosions. Spectrum has it's HQ in the sky.
I know we watched the series when it was new and the memory I have is that I thought it was OK but not as good as Thunderbirds and the shows that came before. I'm still of the opinion that Supercar is my favorite Supermarionation show.
01 The Mysterons - After Spectrum's Captain Black destroys their base on Mars the Mysterons vow vengeance. They take over Captain Black and turn him into their agent. What a dick that Captain Black is, he had no real reason to attack the base other than they were aiming something that looked like a cannon at his vehicle.
The Mysterons also take over Captain Scarlet's body and turn him into an indestructible double agent. That back fires and Spectrum use the Captain as their own weapon. He does some daring feat each episode, crashes his vehicle , dies and returns to life. We don't ever see much of the Mysterons, that glowing ball thing is the best we see so far.
02 Winged Assassin - The Mysterons attack another world leader in their continued war on the human race. Captain Scarlet dies once again when he crashes his SPV into the big fat plane that is trying to take off. How can that even get into the air. Those vehicles kind of remind me of the things I used to draw in school when I was a tyke. Maybe a bit less lumpy.
03 Big Ben Strikes Again - The Mysterons want to destroy the city of London with a stolen nuclear device. The device is in the truck and when Big Ben strikes midnight...BOOM! Don't worry Captain Scarlet dies to save the day.
04 Renegade Rocket - The Mysterons launch an experimental rocket to drop on the city.
05 Point 783 - Spectrum foils another assassination attempt.
06 Manhunt - Captain Black is radioactive enough to detect and the manhunt is on.
07 Operation Time - Dr Magnus is a Mysterons plant and he kills Captain Scarlet when he thought he was killing an army general.
08 White As Snow - The Mysterons use a manned satellite to attack Spectrum's flying HQ and kill Colonel Snow. He orders the satellite destroyed and Captain Scarlet doesn't like that very much.
When I was done with the disc I wasn't that impressed. There's a commentary by Gerry Anderson on the first episode and a 13:29 minute short on the directors of the show. They changed the puppets and made their heads smaller. They look slightly more human than the previous puppets. Since I bought this set I'll be getting back to it until it's done.