Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often shortened to Captain Scarlet, is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company Century 21 for ITC Entertainment. It is the sixth Anderson series to be filmed using a form of electronic marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation" combined with scale model special effects. Running to thirty-two 25-minute episodes, it was first broadcast on ITV regional franchises between 1967 and 1968 and has since aired in more than 40 other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Set in 2068, Captain Scarlet presents a "war of nerves" between Earth and the Mysterons, a race of Martians who possess partial control over matter. When a misunderstanding causes human astronauts to attack their city on Mars, the Mysterons swear revenge and launch reprisals against Earth. These are countered by Spectrum, a worldwide security organisation. In the first episode, Spectrum agent Captain Scarlet acquires the Mysterons' self-healing power of "retrometabolism" and is rendered "indestructible", being able to recover from injuries that would normally be fatal. Scarlet immediately becomes Spectrum's top asset in its fight against the Mysterons.

Captain Scarlet, the eighth of the Andersons' ten puppet series, was preceded by Thunderbirds and followed by Joe 90 and The Secret Service. In terms of visual aesthetic, it marked a departure from earlier series in its use of puppets that were sculpted to realistic body proportions. Repeated several times in the UK, it has generated tie-ins ranging from toy cars and action figures to audio plays and novels, as well as strips in the weekly children's comic TV Century 21.

Compared to earlier Anderson productions, Captain Scarlet is widely regarded as "darker" in tone and less suited to children because of its violent content, as well as its themes of alien aggression and interplanetary war. The series has been praised for its use of a multinational, multiethnic puppet cast and depiction of a utopian future Earth. The source is discovered to be an alien city, which the astronauts destroy in a missile attack after mistaking a surveillance device for a weapon. They use it to wage a "war of nerves" against Earth, issuing threats against specific targets (from world leaders and military installations to whole cities and continents) and then destroying and reconstructing whatever instruments are needed (whether humans or objects) to carry out their plans. The Mysterons' presence is indicated by twin circles of green light that they project onto scenes of destruction and reconstruction. Although the Mysterons are able to influence events from Mars, their actions on Earth are usually performed by their replicated intermediaries.

Zero-X mission leader Captain Black becomes the Mysterons' primary agent when they seize control of his mind. Prior to the events of the series, Black was an officer in Spectrum, a worldwide security organisation that mobilises all its resources to counter the Mysteron threat. Spectrum's senior agents hold military ranks and colour codenames. They are posted to the organisation's headquarters, Cloudbase—an airborne aircraft carrier stationed above the Earth's surface—where they answer to its commander-in-chief, Colonel White. Cloudbase is defended by Angel Interceptor fighters flown by an all-female team of pilots led by Destiny Angel. The base's computer systems are controlled by White's assistant, Lieutenant Green. Spectrum also incorporates a fleet of armoured Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (SPVs), which are hidden in secret locations around the world, as well as patrol cars, maximum-security transports, passenger jet aircraft and machine gun-equipped helicopters.

Captain Scarlet becomes Spectrum's top asset in its fight against the Mysterons following the events of the first episode, in which the Mysterons attempt to assassinate the World President as their first act of retaliation. The Mysterons engineer a road accident that kills the original Scarlet and replace him with a reconstruction. These discoveries allow Spectrum to develop two anti-Mysteron devices, the Mysteron Gun and Mysteron Detector. A three-episode story arc focuses on the discovery of a Mysteron outpost on the Moon, its destruction by Spectrum, and Spectrum's efforts to negotiate with the Mysterons after converting the base's power source into an interplanetary communication device. A failed attempt to survey Mars from space, aborted military conferences and the sabotaged construction of a new Earth space fleet prevent Spectrum from taking the fight to the Mysterons, and the organisation thrice fails to capture Captain Black. In the penultimate episode, the Mysterons destroy Cloudbase itself, but this is revealed to be a nightmare dreamt by one of the Angels. The final episode is a clip show that leaves the conflict between Earth and Mars unresolved.

Production

Development

When efforts to secure a US network broadcast of Thunderbirds fell through in July 1966, Lew Grade, the owner of AP Films (APF), capped Thunderbirds Series Two at six episodes and cancelled the production. Having overseen APF's work since the making of Supercar in 1960, Grade was keen for Supermarionation to penetrate the lucrative American market and believed that a new concept would stand a better chance of landing a network sale than a second series of Thunderbirds. Now returning to this idea, Anderson realised that a major selling point could be a character who is killed at the end of each episode and resurrected by the start of the next. This, coupled with contemporary theories about the possibility of life on Mars, led to the idea of an interplanetary war between Earth and its neighbour and a security organisation being called on to defend humanity. After further thought, Anderson decided that "Scarlet" would be a suitably unusual name for the organisation's "indestructible" top agent, while his partner could be called "Blue". From this, Anderson resolved that all the personnel would have colour codenames and the organisation would be called "Spectrum". Aware that white light is composed of—and can be broken down into—the colours of the spectrum, he named Spectrum's leader Colonel White.

thumb|left|Anderson in 2009|alt=The photograph depicts an elderly man, whose gaze is directed to the right of the camera.

Intrigued by the phrase "life as we know it", Anderson wanted to set his enemy aliens apart from the conventional extraterrestrials of 1960s TV and film. Therefore, while devising the Mysterons, he worked from a basis of "life as we don't know it", making the aliens a collective of sentient computers rather than organic life forms (though their exact nature is not explicitly stated in the series itself). The intention was that the original Mysterons were extragalactic beings that established a base on Mars in the distant past. In the early 20th century they abandoned the planet, leaving their computers behind.

Anderson's memories of the Second World War provided inspiration for a number of design aspects. For example, he remembered that during the Battle of Britain, RAF pilots had struggled to counter German attacks quickly, because having to take off from the ground meant that it took a long time to intercept the enemy. He therefore made Spectrum's headquarters, Cloudbase, an airborne aircraft carrier. According to Anderson, the Mysteron rings were inspired by a TV advertisement for wool that featured the Woolmark logo being projected onto a woman. This differed significantly from the completed first episode. It had been conceived that Scarlet's Mysteron reconstruction would be resurrected using an advanced computer, after which he would no longer be truly flesh and blood but a "mechanical man" akin to an android. Another plan, also dropped, was for each episode to feature a "guest star" puppet voiced by a famous actor: the World President, for example, was intended to be voiced by Patrick McGoohan.

With Gerry Anderson serving primarily as executive producer, most of the writing was done by Tony Barwick, who had written for Thunderbirds. Initially Captain Scarlets script editor, Barwick went on to author 18 episodes himself while substantially revising other writers' work.||Nationality||Voiced by

|Captain Scarlet||Paul Metcalfe||British||Francis Matthews

|Captain Blue||Adam Svenson||American||Ed Bishop

|Colonel White||Charles Gray||British||Donald Gray

|Lieutenant Green||Seymour Griffiths||Trinidadian||Cy Grant

|Captain Black||Conrad Turner||British||Donald Gray

|Captain Ochre||Richard Fraser||American||Jeremy Wilkin

|Captain Magenta||Patrick Donaghue||Irish||Gary Files

|Captain Grey||Bradley Holden||American||Paul Maxwell

|Doctor Fawn||Edward Wilkie||Australian||Bud Tingwell

|Destiny Angel||Juliette Pontoin||French||Liz Morgan

|Symphony Angel||Karen Wainwright||American||Janna Hill

|Rhapsody Angel||Dianne Simms||British||Liz Morgan

|Melody Angel||Magnolia Jones||American||Sylvia Anderson

|Harmony Angel||Chan Kwan||Japanese ||Liz Morgan <br/> Lian-Shin

Captain Scarlet had the largest regular character voice cast of any Supermarionation production. Its use of a British protagonist was a departure from earlier series like Thunderbirds, whose lead characters had been written as Americans to increase their appeal to the profitable US market. Stephen La Rivière suggests that the producers had been encouraged to give greater prominence to British characters following the transatlantic success of UK series like The Avengers, The Baron and The Saint, which had made it "altogether more acceptable to have English lead characters". Chris Drake and Graeme Bassett argue that the voice acting in Captain Scarlet was less exaggerated than before, relating this to the puppets' transition to realistic proportions. According to Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, the proliferation of British accents from Thunderbirds to Captain Scarlet changed the sound of Supermarionation and its impression on the viewer.

Francis Matthews, who supplied the voice of Captain Scarlet, had turned down offers to voice characters in Thunderbirds. According to Matthews, Gerry Anderson went to great lengths to cast him after being impressed by his imitation of Cary Grant in a radio programme, and the actor did indeed model the voice of Scarlet on Grant's Anglo-American accent. Anderson, however, stated in his biography that the Grant impression was Matthews' choice at audition, and while it was not the kind of voice he had in mind, he was happy for Matthews to use it.

Matthews' co-star in the film Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) had been Bud Tingwell, who was chosen to voice Cloudbase medical officer Dr Fawn. Tingwell, who had provided voices for Thunderbirds Series Two and Thunderbirds Are Go, had been recommended by fellow Australian Ray Barrett, a regular voice artist on Stingray and Thunderbirds. Due to theatre commitments, Tingwell left the series following the completion of the first 12 episodes. The casting of Grant led to that of Ed Bishop as Captain Blue. Bishop, who was working in theatre and had the same agent as Grant, recalled in an interview: "And [my agent's representative] said, 'Oh, by the way, Mr Anderson, we've just taken on a new, young American actor'—shows you how long ago it was—'a new American actor, name of Edward Bishop. And we know how much you like American voices. Would you like to meet him as well?'"

Donald Gray, who had been typecast after playing Detective Mark Saber in The Vise, was resorting to voice work to sustain his acting career. He had three regular roles in Captain Scarlet: Colonel White, the Mysterons and Captain Black (who, after being taken over by the Mysterons, speaks in their voice). The deep, echoing tones of Black and the Mysterons were created by recording Gray's lines at high speed and then playing them back at normal speed. However, this was not always applied consistently, causing the pitch of the Mysteron voice to differ in some episodes.

The voice of Captain Ochre was provided by Jeremy Wilkin, who had voiced Virgil Tracy in Thunderbirds Series Two. Captain Magenta was voiced by Gary Files, who had played supporting voices in Thunderbird 6. Liz Morgan, who was new to the Anderson productions, voiced Destiny and Rhapsody Angels. Sylvia Anderson, the voice of Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds, took the role of Melody Angel, while Canadian actress Janna Hill voiced Symphony. Morgan was additionally cast as Harmony Angel and voiced the character in five episodes. About a third of the way through the dialogue recording sessions, the role was transferred to Chinese actress Lian-Shin, who voiced the character in only one episode ("The Launching") but was credited for 20 episodes.

Supporting character voices were performed by Anderson, Files, Hill, Maxwell, Morgan, Tingwell and Wilkin. Completing the credited cast were David Healy and Martin King. Shane Rimmer, previously heard as Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds, made several uncredited voice contributions in addition to writing for the series. Neil McCallum voiced guest characters in four episodes but was also uncredited. After Captain Scarlet, six members of the voice cast continued their association with the Andersons. Healy voiced Shane Weston in Joe 90 and Files voiced Matthew Harding in The Secret Service. Wilkin, Morgan and King all had various supporting roles in these two series. Bishop later played Commander Ed Straker in UFO, the Andersons' first live-action series.

Character dialogue was recorded once a fortnight, with the cast working through up to four episodes per session, at the Anvil Films Recording Studio (now Denham Film Studios) in Buckinghamshire. Each actor was paid 15 guineas (15 pounds and 15 shillings; ) per episode, plus repeat fees, no matter how many lines he or she spoke. As the actors were not given the opportunity to tour the puppet studios until their work was finished, they had no visualisation of their characters during the dialogue recording. One of the series' technical innovations was that the noses of miniature vehicles would now "dip" as they came to a stop, to imitate the sudden application of brakes on a life-sized vehicle. The vehicles were designed by Meddings or his assistant Mike Trim. The former created Cloudbase, the SPV and the Angel fighter (the last of these during a flight to New York), while the latter produced many of the series' minor vehicles. The Cloudbase filming model proved too heavy to be suspended on wires, so was mounted on a pole instead. Some of Trim's creations, such as the Spectrum Patrol Car, were originally meant to appear in only one episode, but proved to be so popular with the producers that they became regular features. As production continued, Trim's responsibilities grew as Meddings devoted more of his time to Thunderbird 6.

Puppet design

[[File:CaptainScarletPuppets.ogg|thumb|thumbtime=30|alt=Video clip from "Attack on Cloudbase" demonstrating the difficulties in inducing realistic movement in the puppet characters of "Captain Scarlet". Whenever a character is required to move, the camera assumes a close-up shot to conceal the hand of the operator manipulating the puppet. The shot is interrupted when Captains Scarlet and Blue pass through a doorway as it was impossible to film this kind of manoeuvre in a single action.|The changes to the puppets' design made their movements more stilted. The oversized heads gave the puppets a caricatured look that frustrated Gerry Anderson, who wanted the design to use natural body proportions.

After being sculpted in Plasticine, the puppet heads were moulded on a silicone rubber base and finished in fibreglass. At heights ranging from (approximately one-third life size), the new generation of puppets were the same height as previous ones. As in earlier series, the main characters were given interchangeable heads with a range of expressions; these included "smiler", "frowner" and "blinker" heads. The costumes were designed by Sylvia Anderson, who drew inspiration from the work of Pierre Cardin (in particular, his 1966 "Cosmonaut" collection) when devising the Spectrum uniforms.

Despite their realistic form, the new puppets were even harder to animate on set, ironically making the design less life-like than Gerry Anderson had intended. The switch to accurate proportions upset the puppets' weight distribution. When standing, they often had to be held in place with clamps and tape to prevent them from wobbling. The smaller heads made it harder to obtain close-ups. Additionally, as most of the wires were headmounted, the smaller head size reduced the puppeteers' control, making movements jerkier. To limit the amount of movement required, characters were often shown sitting at moving desks or standing on moving walkways. For example, Colonel White has a rotating desk and Lieutenant Green operates the Cloudbase computer from a sliding chair. Puppeteer Jan King commented:

The "under-controlled" puppets described by King had no wires and were manipulated from the waist. One advantage of this method was that a puppet could pass through a doorway without necessitating a break in the shot. For scenes with characters sitting in aircraft cockpits, the crew built variations on the under-controlled design that comprised only a head and torso. These were operated using levers and wires located underneath the set.

Scarlet's appearance has been compared to that of his voice actor, Francis Matthews, as well as Roger Moore. Lieutenant Green was modelled on Cy Grant, who voiced the character; Rhapsody Angel on Jean Shrimpton; Melody Angel on Eartha Kitt; and Harmony Angel on Tsai Chin.

On earlier series, guest characters had been sculpted and re-sculpted in clay episode by episode. For Captain Scarlet, these roles were played by a "repertory company" of over 50 permanent puppets that were made to the same standards of workmanship as the main characters.

Response to puppets

The redesigned puppets have attracted a mixed response from crew members and commentators. Some of the crew believed that the new marionettes lacked the charm of the previous generation due to the accurate proportions that were now being used. Curtis recalls:

All episodes, except the first, have two title sequences. The first of these, incorporating the title card and principal production credits, is set in a run-down alleyway and presented from the point of view of an unseen gunman. Turning a corner, he comes face to face with Captain Scarlet and opens fire, only to be shot dead by a single round from Scarlet's handgun. The words "Captain Scarlet" appear letter by letter in time with the seven strikes of the series' signature drumbeat composed by Barry Gray. This sequence is intended to demonstrate Scarlet's indestructibility, the bullets from the assassin's machine gun having no effect on the captain. The sequence is accompanied by a voiceover from Ed Bishop stating:

A number of variations have been used. In the first episode, the voiceover runs: Later prints feature an additional voiceover by Donald Gray, warning the audience: "Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Remember this. Do not try to imitate him." This served to establish the background to the series and warn younger viewers not to put themselves at risk by copying Scarlet's actions. It was used either on its own or following the "One man ..." voiceover. In 2005, the Animation Art Gallery in London released limited-edition prints of the paintings signed by Francis Matthews.

In Japan, the original opening titles were replaced with a montage of action clips from various episodes accompanied by an upbeat song performed by children. This version is included in the special features of the Captain Scarlet DVD box set.

Filming

The first episode, "The Mysterons", began filming on 2 January 1967 after two months' pre-production. The budget for the series was set at £1.5 million (about £ million in ). At an average cost of £46,000 per episode, or £2,000 per minute, it was the most expensive Anderson production to date. Other directors were recruited from outside the company; one of them was Robert Lynn, who had been an assistant director on feature films.

Captain Scarlet was filmed in a set of converted factory units on the Slough Trading Estate, which had served as Century 21's studios since the making of Stingray in 1964. Continuing a practice begun on earlier series, episodes were filmed in pairs on separate stages to speed up production. Filming overlapped with the Thunderbird 6 shoot, which was being conducted on a different stage. The Mysteron rings were created by panning a transparency of two green circles using a slide projector, a technique suggested by producer Reg Hill. The puppet footage for each episode usually took two weeks, or 11 working days, to shoot. Although filming of the series was scheduled to take eight months, the demands of the Thunderbird 6 shoot caused it to overrun, finally concluding in November 1967. Gerry Anderson, who had intended this to be more like a traditional fanfare, said of his initial response: "I thought, 'Christ, is this all he could produce?' Looking back on it, however, I can see that what he came up with worked very well." The drumbeat had two other functions: to cut from one scene to another, with the shot alternating between the previous scene and the next in time with each beat; and to cut into and out of each episode's midpoint advert break, where it was accompanied by a zooming image of the Spectrum logo.

Two versions of the ending theme—"Captain Scarlet"—were recorded. The first version, used on the first 14 episodes, is entirely instrumental except for the lyrics "Captain Scarlet!", repeated at intervals by a vocalist ensemble including Ken Barrie. Each instance is followed by a vocoded repetition supplied by Gray himself, the final two forming a ternary with the word "Indestructible!". The instrumental was later reworked as a song with lyrics performed by The Spectrum, a London boy band who shared their name with the fictional organisation. Formed in 1960 and signed to RCA Victor, the group were being promoted as a British imitation of The Monkees. They were brought to the Andersons' attention by Gerry's chauffeur, who had heard them on the radio, and signed a contract with Century 21 worth £100,000. At their early concerts in 1977, Siouxsie and the Banshees performed a spoof of the ending theme with extra lyrics mocking Scarlet.

Between March and December 1967, Gray also recorded incidental music for 18 episodes. The remaining 14 re-used these scores, supplemented by cues produced for earlier Anderson series.

In their notes on the CD release, Ralph Titterton and Tim Mallett write that the Captain Scarlet soundtrack has a "military feel" that favours percussion, brass and wind instruments, in contrast with the full orchestral sound of Thunderbirds. Gray preferred traditional instruments for much of the action, limiting electronic music to scenes set in outer space and an echoing four-note motif that serves to identify the Mysterons. Gray performed some of the series' electronic music himself. The soundtrack has since had two CD releases: the first by Silva Screen Records; the second by Fanderson, the official Gerry Anderson fan club. Fanderson's version was available exclusively to club members and contained music from every episode except "The Heart of New York" and "Treble Cross" (which contain no original music) and "Traitor" (whose cue recordings are lost). The tracks from each release are listed below.

Silva Screen release (2003)

Comparing it to Thunderbirds, John Peel summarises Captain Scarlet as "better puppets, bigger action and a huge step backwards in stories", arguing that the superior special effects were to the detriment of the writing. He compares this to the relative failure of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom following the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark: "[Gerry] Anderson made the same mistake that George Lucas made, assuming that if the effects were praised in Thunderbirds, the public wanted a show with more effects."

Considered a cult classic by some, Captain Scarlet came 33rd in a 2007 Radio Times poll for best science fiction series of all time. It was ranked 51st in Channel 4's list show 100 Greatest Kids' TV Shows (2001). Cornell, Day and Topping suggest that the series could be Gerry Anderson's best production.

Race, gender and symbolism

Captain Scarlet has received comment both positive and negative for its use of female and ethnic minority characters. This is an aspect which, according to O'Brien, gives the series a "more cosmopolitan" feel than Thunderbirds. Rejecting claims of racist stereotyping, Anderson pointed out that the series features heroic non-whites in the form of Lieutenant Green, Melody Angel and Harmony Angel.

For Sellers, the inclusion of Green and especially Melody Angel, a black female character, shows that Captain Scarlet was "actually ahead of its time in respect to race relations". He regards the Angels' all-female composition as significant from the perspective of women's emancipation. O'Brien is less complimentary on the Angels, arguing that while they were progressive for the 1960s, to newer audiences they come across as a "conventionally sexist male fantasy". Bould praises the "beautiful, multiethnic, female Angel fighter pilots" and "secondary roles played by capable women".

Cy Grant, the voice of Green, believed that Captain Scarlet had both positive multicultural value and an allegorical nature. He argued that religious symbolism was implied, with Colonel White serving as an analogue for God, Captain Black as the Devil and Scarlet as the Son of God. The allegory extended to Cloudbase, which represented Heaven and was guarded by a fleet of fighters called "Angels". On dualism, he wrote: "The 'darkness' of the Mysterons is most easily seen as the psychological rift—the struggle of 'good' and 'evil'—of the Western world as personified by Colonel White and his team. Dark and light are but aspects of each other. Incidentally, green is the colour of nature that can heal that rift."

Since its first run, the series has been supplemented by merchandise ranging from toy action figures to video games. Among the early tie-ins were a series of five audio plays published by Century 21 Records in 1967. Released on EP record, each play was approximately 21 minutes long and featured the voice cast from the TV series. Angus P. Allan wrote the first play, Introducing Captain Scarlet (set during the denouement of the first TV episode) as well as Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Captain Scarlet of Spectrum.

During the 1960s, Century 21 granted more than 60 licences for Captain Scarlet products and released a range of friction-drive model vehicles through its subsidiary Century 21 Toys. Meccano Ltd manufactured Captain Scarlet Dinky Toys to great success: its SPV was its best-selling die-cast toy of all time and continued to be manufactured until 1976. Waddingtons released a Captain Scarlet board game based on snakes and ladders. In 1993, Vivid Imaginations launched a new toy range to coincide with the BBC2 repeats.

Books and comics

Between 1967 and 1968, Armada Books published three Captain Scarlet children's novels by John William Jennison (who wrote under the pseudonym "John Theydon"): Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Captain Scarlet and the Silent Saboteur and The Angels and the Creeping Enemy. As implied by its title, the third novel features the Spectrum Angels as the main characters. In 1993, Young Corgi Books released children's novelisations of "The Mysterons", "Lunarville 7", "Noose of Ice" and "The Launching".

From September 1967, comic strips based on the series were printed in TV Century 21 (later TV21), published by City Magazines in association with Century 21. After the TV series finished its original run, the comic continued the story of Spectrum and the Mysterons, with later adventures showing the Mysterons deactivating their city on Mars and relinquishing their control over Black. Scarlet, meanwhile, leaves Spectrum to combat Earth-bound threats. The Mysterons eventually reawaken, prompting Scarlet and Spectrum to resume their struggle. In September 1969, it was dropped from TV21.

The series' TV21 debut had been preceded by spin-off adventures in the sister comics Lady Penelope and Solo. In January 1967, Lady Penelope launched a comic strip about the Angel pilots; this introduced no elements of the Spectrum Organisation until August 1967. It eventually ran until May 1968. Solo printed two strips: the first from June to September 1967; the second, following a merger with City's TV Tornado, from September 1967 to February 1968. The first, The Mark of the Mysterons, bore little relation to the series besides featuring the Mysterons as villains; it was set in the 1960s and the presentation was similar to that of The Invaders. The second, simply titled The Mysterons, had the aliens travel to the Andromeda Galaxy on a campaign of conquest.

After the series' discontinuation in Century 21 and City titles, Polystyle Publications printed further strips in Countdown comic and annuals in 1971 and 1972. From 1993 to 1994, Fleetway Editions published a Captain Scarlet comic to coincide with the series' first run on BBC2. New annuals were published by Grandreams in 1993 and 1994 and by Carlton Books in 2001. A separate adaptation was published in Shōnen Book from January to August 1968.

Video games

Between 2002 and 2006, three Captain Scarlet video games were released. A further game was cancelled.

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-size: 87%"

! Title

! Platform

! Genre

! Studio(s)

! Notes

! UK release date

| Captain Scarlet: In the Shadow of Fear

| PC

| Action

| Europress

| Released both separately and as a double pack with Thunderbirds: Operation Volcano

| 31 May 2002

| Captain Scarlet Activity Pack

| PC

| Action

| Digital Workshop

| 5 July 2002

| Captain Scarlet: Retaliation

| PC

| Strategy

Batfish Studios
Digital Workshop

| Scheduled for 2003; cancelled due to closure of Batfish Studios the same year

| Cancelled

| Captain Scarlet

| PlayStation 2

| Vehicular combat

Blast! Entertainment
Brain in a Jar

| 5 December 2006

Later productions

Since the 1980s, the rights to the ITC catalogue have changed hands several times. They were acquired first by PolyGram Entertainment, and then, following a partial sale to the BBC, by Carlton International. Following Carlton's 2004 merger with Granada to form ITV plc, Released on British VHS in January 1982, Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars was Captain Scarlets UK home video debut. In November 1988, it aired as the second episode of the movie-mocking series Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Minnesota TV station KTMA.

Plans for a live-action film adaptation, announced by Gerry Anderson in 2000 and 2002, remain undeveloped.

Remake

In 1999, Anderson supervised the production of a computer-animated test film, Captain Scarlet and the Return of the Mysterons, to explore the possibility of updating some of his 1960s puppet series for a 21st-century audience. Produced by the Moving Picture Company under the working title Captain ScarletThe New Millennium, the four-minute film was made using a combination of Maya animation software and motion capture technology. Francis Matthews and Ed Bishop reprised the voices of Captains Scarlet and Blue. Set a few years after the Mysterons end hostilities against Earth, the film features the return of Captain Black, setting the stage for a revival of the war with Mars. The film was screened at a Fanderson convention in 2000 and a science lecture in 2001.

Plans for a full computer-animated Captain Scarlet series eventually resulted in New Captain Scarlet. A reboot of the original, this was first broadcast on the ITV children's show Ministry of Mayhem in 2005. In a nod to Supermarionation, the animation used to make the series was promoted as "Hypermarionation". New Captain Scarlet was the last TV series to be produced by Anderson, who died in 2012.

Notes

References

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Works cited

Captain Scarlet volume originally published separately as:

Production locations

External links

The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History – "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: TV21, 1967–68"