Joe 90 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 follows the exploits of nine-year-old schoolboy Joe McClaine, who becomes a spy after his adoptive father invents a device capable of recording expert knowledge and experience and transferring it to another human brain. Armed with the skills of the world's top academic and military minds, Joe is recruited by the World Intelligence Network (WIN) as its "Most Special Agent".
First broadcast on the ITV regional franchises between 1968 and 1969, the 30-episode series was the final Anderson production to be made primarily using Supermarionation, a form of electronic marionette puppetry. The following series, The Secret Service, included extensive footage of live actors. As in the preceding series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, the puppets of Joe 90 are of natural body proportions rather than the caricatured design used in Thunderbirds and its precursors.
Though not as successful as Century 21's earlier productions, Joe 90 has been praised for the characterisation of its main puppet cast and the quality of its scale model sets and special effects. Commentators have interpreted the spy-fi theme and use of a boy protagonist as both a "kids-play-Bond" concept and an enshrinement of children's imagination. The series has drawn some criticism for its lack of female characters, especially compared to the Andersons' earlier series.
Century 21 produced tie-ins from comic strips to toy cars. The series was syndicated in the United States in 1969, repeated in the UK in the 1990s and released on DVD in the 2000s. A live-action film adaptation has been proposed more than once but remains undeveloped.
Premise
Joe 90 is widely believed to be set in 2012 and 2013. The episode "The Unorthodox Shepherd" is implied to be set in 2013. As long as he wears a pair of special glasses, which contain electrodes that store the transferred brain patterns, he is able to carry out all manner of assignments—from piloting fighter aircraft to performing neurosurgery to playing the piano. Known as WIN's "Most Special Agent", The series ends with a clip show episode set on Joe's 10th birthday, in which a number of his missions are recalled as flashbacks during a surprise party.
Like earlier Supermarionation series, Joe 90 features secret organisations, rescue missions, global security threats and advanced technology: the last exemplified by the "Jet Air Car", a land-sea-air vehicle invented by Mac as the primary means of transport for him and Joe. Like the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) in Stingray, the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is a global organisation referred to by an acronym. In the fictional world of Joe 90, the Cold War—significant when the series was first broadcast, due to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—has ended and a world government has been formed. WIN is the successor to MI6, the Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB, which all merged to form the new global spy network. Hostile entities include the Eastern Alliance, which dominates Asia and appears in the episodes "Attack of the Tiger" and "Mission X-41". In contrast, "Big Fish" portrays nuclear technology as a force for good: in this episode, Joe pilots a damaged nuclear submarine out of the territorial waters of a Latin American police state.
Voice cast
thumb|alt=Three men and a boy stand in a palatial setting. A desert landscape is visible from a balcony in the background. One man on the far left is grey-haired and wears a grey suit and tie, the man to the right of him dark-haired and in deep navy blue. Both men are orientated in the direction of the (blond-haired) boy, who is also formally attired in grey. The third man, also blond but wearing a cream-shaded suit, stands directly behind him.|Four of the regular characters: (left to right) Sam Loover, Shane Weston, Mac and (in front of Mac) Joe
Compared to Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 features a smaller cast of just five regular characters. Instead, Joe 90 focuses on the strong American supporting characters of Sam Loover and Shane Weston.
- Len Jones as Joe McClaine. While child characters in earlier Supermarionation series had been voiced by grown actresses, Joe was voiced by a child actor to give the new series greater realism. Gerry Anderson commented that having a woman voice a boy "always sounded rather odd to me. It never sounded like a real little boy ... With Joe 90, I suggested finding a British kid and making him repeat the lines parrot fashion." He described Jones' performance as "only adequate, but at least it sounded authentic."
- Rupert Davies as Professor Ian "Mac" McClaine. At the time of production, Davies was well known for playing Maigret in the TV series of the same name, a role that had left him typecast.
- David Healy as Shane Weston. Healy, an American expatriate actor, had voiced guest characters in Captain Scarlet and often played transatlantic characters in British television. Files said that he was "tickled pink" to be working with Davies, commenting: "I hated the way that so many so-called producers wouldn't meet his eye. He was Maigret forever, you see, in their eyes." On her one role in Joe 90, Morgan said: "They needed a voice, they called around and everyone else was out shopping. So they called me in." According to Gerry Anderson, "The show majored on its characters, which I thought were all very good. The puppets had become so lifelike, I now strongly believed that they could carry the action without the usual massive assistance from futuristic hardware."
When it came to devising the series, Anderson was inspired by his early work as an assistant editor on films such as The Wicked Lady (1945), for which he handled recording tape on a daily basis. While reflecting on the uses of the tape, Anderson made an association with the workings of the human brain:
Writing and filming
The series was commissioned by Lew Grade in the autumn of 1967. Principal photography ran from 13 November 1967 to mid-August 1968 on the two puppet stages at Century 21's studios on the Slough Trading Estate. Each episode took an average of two weeks to film. Before they devised WIN, Joe was to have become the "Most Special Agent" of the CIA.
Occupied by Thunderbird 6 and his live-action film Doppelgänger, Gerry Anderson was unable to serve as producer as he had on Captain Scarlet. The role was assumed by Reg Hill and David Lane.
Production design
thumb|alt=Two very different vehicles are parked at the side of a street in front of the entrance to a grey concrete building. The vehicle on the left is viridian green and of an eccentric design, with a turbine engine positioned behind a cockpit to seat the driver and passengers. The vehicle on the right is a car of a more standard appearance and grey in colour, although it is fitted with tail fins at the rear.|Examples of model work for Joe 90: Professor McClaine's Jet Air Car (left) and Sam Loover's car (right), both at scale, parked in front of WIN Headquarters. Loover's car was made open-top to accommodate the puppets' head wires. In the end, shots inside the car used "under-control" versions of the puppets that were operated from beneath the set.
The Supermarionation puppets of Joe 90 were the naturally proportioned kind that had been introduced for Captain Scarlet. The drive for increased realism in all design aspects that had begun with the preceding series continued in Joe 90. Except for Captains Scarlet and Blue, all of the main character puppets from Captain Scarlet were re-used. Few new puppets were made, the only notable exceptions being Mac (who was sculpted on "bouncing bomb" designer Barnes Wallis), Joe and Mrs Harris. The puppets of Sam Loover and Shane Weston had each made several guest appearances in Captain Scarlet. For their regular roles in Joe 90 they were given a range of alternative "mood" heads, including "smilers", "frowners" and "blinkers". Many of Century 21's "revamp puppets", which had played supporting characters in Captain Scarlet, were copied in darker skin colours to portray a range of ethnicities. As two stages were being used for filming, the "expressionless" main character puppets were also duplicated. Anderson remembered being pleased with the cottage set: "The interior, with its beams and lovely soft furnishings, was really beautiful." and was responsible for making the gadget props that appear in the series.
Though busy with Thunderbird 6 and Doppelgänger, Derek Meddings briefly reprised his role as special effects director to construct Mac's Jet Air Car. While the concepts for these images were photographic, the final versions were augmented with airbrush artwork. This music was recorded between 18 January and 27 September 1968, beginning with the titles and the first episode tracks in a session at the Olympic Sound Studios in London and ending with the music for "See You Down There" at CTS Studios. Gray's compositions occasionally required guest talent. The piano music in the episode "International Concerto" was performed by Robert Docker, while the child's hands seen in the close-up shots of Joe playing belonged to Gray's son, Simon. "Lone-Handed 90" features a recurring harmonica played by Tommy Reilly.
Silva Screen Records released a Joe 90 soundtrack CD in 2006. Rating the CD three-and-a-half stars out of five, AllMusic reviewer William Ruhlmann comments that while the music is "not great writing" it remains "perfectly adequate, if not inspired." Earlier releases include a 45 rpm gramophone record, Title Theme from the ATV Series Joe 90, which also featured various incidental music.