Now before I go any further, yes I know it was a children’s programme and yes it has lived in the shadow of the hugely popular Thunderbirds but then again, Captain Scarlet has been hugely successful over the past 40 years and is my favourite of the Gerry Anderson Supermarionation series of the 1960s and 1970s. When I was 5 I had every episode on video, the costume and the action figures so that I could act out my favourite episodes. This normally meant acting out a fight between two characters and throwing one out of my bedroom window to his death, or a car crash with the SPV and a Batmobile.
For those of you who have never seen this series, I’ll give you the story. In 2068 a Martian exploration vehicle for the World Security organization Spectrum discovers an alien city on the surface of Mars. Captain Black, who is in charge of the operation, misunderstands the situation when the peaceful and invisible Mysterons try to take a closer look of the men from Earth, opens fire on the city, destroying it completely. However, it turns out that the Mysterons have discovered the secret of reversing matter and the city rebuilds to the amazement of the men from Spectrum. From here on in they declare a war of nerves on the Earth and set about by killing Captain Black and turning him into their agent.
In the very same episode Captain Scarlet and Captain Brown, on their way to protect the World President whose life is being threatened by the Mysterons, die in an horrific car accident and are resurrected by their new masters. Captain Brown attempts to kill the President when it is revealed that he is a suicide bomber and Captain Scarlet is also killed by his friend Captain Blue and falls 800 feet from the Car-Vu, which is where the climactic battle is played out. Scarlet survives, and is no longer under the control of the Mysterons making him Spectrum’s prize asset in the war. This also means that he can be killed off every week and brought back fine and dandy in the next installment.
Now what I have just described to you is just the opening half hour of this colourful series. We have had suicide bombings, mass destruction and cold-blooded murder. If puppets didn’t act it out how would Captain Scarlet ever have been made? Considering just how the press went mad when Jerry Springer the Musical was transmitted and the fall out from the brilliant Brass Eye Pedophile Special, which lampooned the media’s own reaction to such controversial topics, it interests me how a children’s show which includes death and violence so often was never complained about.
Even though you clearly see these violent moments they are very graphic and did scare me a little when I was a child. In one scene Captain Black murdered a car mechanic by crushing him in the car that he was working on. Strong stuff! Fast-forward thirty years and when the BBC spy series Spooks first aired it had something very shocking in just its first episode. The character who was being billed as the female lead is tortured by terrorists in the now infamous scene in question. As her counterpart is beaten for information on the floor of a kitchen, her hand is forced into the bubbling deep fat frier by one of the madmen. Horrible I know, especially when you see her scarred arm pulled out of the fat.
Yet there was worse to come. What happens next truly shocked and sickened the viewing audience. Her head is forced into the frier, and although you don’t see her head go in, your brain fills in the gaps with something so terrifying and disturbing that it creates pictures that haunt you long after the show ends. She is eventually murdered after getting shot in the head after this, all watched by her fellow spy. One for therapy methinks! It was a publicity stunt of course and one which worked, the shows viewing figures shot up and it got people talking about it.
However, even a programme like Captain Scarlet hasn’t escaped some form of a media backlash, even if it is a surprising one. In 1993, when millions of new young fans such as myself saw the programme for the first time, a tabloid newspaper claimed that the show was racist and sexist. One of the points was that the Captain who was evil was called Black and the Colonel who was good was White!
Clearly the reporter hadn’t noticed that when it was made in 1967, it was one of the first shows to have females in a position equal to their male counterparts. The Angels, a group of female fighter pilots protect Spectrum’s headquarters Cloudbase and carry out as many dangerous missions and the Spectrum Captains. Also, the main communications officer Lieutenant Green was of ethnic origin, so Gerry Anderson should be commended not condemned for such a flawed accusation.
The other time was down to very bad timing. The show was about to enjoy another successful repeat run on BBC2 in Autumn 2001 when the events of September 11th resulted in two episodes being banned from transmission. The episodes in question were based around a hijacked passenger jet and a nuclear bomb that had been hidden in London. Despite this, Gerry Anderson remade the series as a CGI reboot, which was considerably toned down in content and in my opinion suffered as a consequence.
I missed the explosions and impressive stunts, which were accomplished by the same team that went on to supervise the stunts and special effects on films in the James Bond series. Were the incidents in real world events responsible for Anderson’s vision of the show changing? If so, it does prove the point that the incarnation of Captain Scarlet that was first transmitted in 1967 would not have been aired in this day and age. Which is a pity, because I still think that for all its gritty realism and over the top set pieces it is still something that brings back happy memories of my childhood, and something I would love to watch someday with my kids like my Dad did with me.
Spectrum Is Green!
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