Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons

This is the future, our future:

With the curtains drawn, french windows open and the low hum of a lawnmower cutting through the spring calm, I was transported every Saturday morning to my future, our future.

The year is 2068… A team of Zero-X astronauts are investigating the surface of Mars after unidentified radio signals emanating from the planet are detected on Earth. The source is discovered to be an extraterrestrial base, which is attacked and destroyed when the explorers mistake a harmless sensor device for a weapon. The inhabitants of the settlement, the Mysterons, are sentient computers that form a collective consciousness. They are the remnants of the original Mysteron race, extraterrestrial life forms that originated in a galaxy other than the Milky Way and maintained their colony on Mars for 3,500 years before understandably abandoning the planet at the turn of the 20th century. Possessing a rather handy partial control over matter, the Mysteron computers draw on their power of "reversing matter" to rebuild the complex before vowing revenge for the unwarranted aggression.

Reversing matter, also described as "retro-metabolism", allows the Mysterons to re-create the likeness of a person or object in the form of a facsimile that is under their control. This ability is used to conduct a "war of nerves" against Earth, in which the Mysterons issue threats against specific targets (from world leaders and military installations to whole cities and continents) and then destroy and reconstruct whatever instruments are required (whether human or machine) to execute their plans. The presence of the Mysterons is indicated by two circles of green light (the "Mysteron rings") that trail across scenes of destruction and reconstruction. Although the Mysterons are able to manipulate events from Mars, their actions on Earth are usually performed by their replicated intermediaries.

The leading Mysteron agent is of course Zero-X mission leader Captain Black. He is killed and reconstructed during the incident on Mars. Previously, Black had held the rank of senior officer in Spectrum, an international security organisation inaugurated in 2067 that mobilises all its personnel, vehicles and other resources in response to the Mysteron threat. Spectrum is led from Cloudbase, an airborne headquarters positioned at a height of 40,000 feet above the Earth's surface, and has outposts in all major cities. The organisation employs operatives of many nationalities, of whom the most senior hold military ranks and colour-based codenames, are stationed on Cloudbase, and answer directly to the commander-in-chief of Spectrum, Colonel White. Cloudbase is defended by the Angels, an interceptor aircraft squadron, and the organisation boasts a fleet of Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (SPV) hidden in secret locations across the world.

Captain Scarlet becomes Spectrum's foremost weapon in its fight against the Mysterons after the battle on Mars, in which the Mysterons threaten to assassinate the World President as their first act of retaliation. The original Scarlet is killed in a car accident engineered by the Mysterons and replaced with a Mysteron reconstruction. However, when the Scarlet duplicate is shot by Spectrum officer Captain Blue and falls to his death from a tall structure, it returns to life with the consciousness of its human template restored, and is thereafter free from Mysteron control. Scarlet's ex-Mysteron body possesses two remarkable abilities: he is able to sense the presence of other Mysteron duplicates in his vicinity, and if he is injured or killed, retro-metabolism restores him to a state of top health. Now able to deploy suicidally reckless tactics to thwart Mysteron threats, Scarlet repeatedly braves the pain of death in the knowledge that he will recover to face the Mysterons once more. (As an aside it should be noted that the existential horror of perpetual life was never explored in too much detail…)

While Scarlet and Spectrum defend Earth against the threat from Mars, it is found that Mysteron reconstructions are particularly vulnerable to electricity and that they are detectable on X-rays, to which their biology is impervious. Consequently, two anti-Mysteron devices, the "Mysteron Gun" and the "Mysteron Detector," are developed to aid Spectrum. A three-episode story arc charts the uncovering of a second Mysteron complex under construction on the Moon, its destruction by Spectrum, and efforts to negotiate with the Mysterons on Mars via a crystal power source, salvaged from the complex, which is converted into an interplanetary communication device. A failed attempt at satellite surveillance of the Martian surface, aborted military conferences and the sabotaged construction of a new space fleet hinder Spectrum's plans to return to Mars, and the organisation is unsuccessful on two occasions in apprehending Captain Black. The penultimate episode of the series depicts a Mysteron assault on Cloudbase with the use of armed spacecraft, which is ultimately revealed to be a nightmare dreamt by one of the Angel pilots. The finale is a flashback episode that ends inconclusively with regards to the war between Earth and Mars and the fate of Spectrum and the Mysterons.

The real names of the Spectrum officers who gave their all to protect us from the Mysteron threat…

Codename, Real name, Nationality
Captain Scarlet, Paul Metcalfe, British
Captain Blue, Adam Svenson, American
Colonel White, Charles Gray, British
Captain Black, Conrad Turner, British
Lieutenant Green,Seymour Griffiths, Trinidadian
Captain Ochre, Richard Fraser, American
Captain Magenta, Patrick Donaghue, Irish
Captain Grey, Bradley Holden, American
Doctor Fawn, Edward Wilkie, Australian
Destiny Angel, Juliette Pontoin, French
Symphony Angel, Karen Wainwright, American
Rhapsody Angel, Dianne Simms, British
Melody Angel, Magnolia Jones, American
Harmony Angel, Chan Kwan, Japanese