Fans of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America World Police (2004) likely fell into two categories: those who watched it because it was by the creators of South Park and those who got the joke and watched it because of their familiarity with marionette serials of their childhood (or adulthood depending on when they discovered them). For those of you in the first group I suggest that you go to the search engine of your choice and look up either Gerry Anderson or Captain Scarlet. You may be pleased with what you’ll find!

    Gerry Anderson is the creator of many popular 1960’s era sci-fi genre marionette shows such as Fireball XL5 (1962), Thunderbirds (1964-66), and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68). Anderson also created several live action shows that still have a loyal following such as UFO (1969-70) and probably his biggest hit, Space: 1999 (1973-76). While the early puppet shows have their innocent childhood appeal and the later live action shows run into the inevitable quality comparisons to the 70’s Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, the show that I feel captured the best that Anderson had to offer in the genre was Captain Scarlet.

    As with almost all of Anderson’s shows, Captain Scarlet takes place in the future in the year 2068, about 100 years from the show’s original air date. Peace on Earth is maintained by a pseudo military organization called Spectrum, its agents’ identities protected by the assignment of rank and color code names, such as Captain Scarlet and Lieutenant Green (the organization is led by Colonel White). Spectrum is headquartered in Cloudbase, a large craft maintained in low Earth orbit where it can dispatch attack jets piloted by the Angels, female agents with musical code names (Harmony, Symphony, Melody, Rhapsody, and the oddly misnamed Destiny. I guess ‘Jingle’ or ‘Tune’ wouldn’t fit the pattern).

    In the first episode Earth explorers seeking the source of alien transmissions on Mars find and mistakenly destroy an outpost, triggering a retaliatory response from the Mysterons, the race that built it. Waging a ‘war of nerves’ against Earth, the Mysterons have the ability to recreate and control people, vehicles, and other inanimate objects, which they use on attacks led by Captain Black, a former member of the Spectrum organization that led the team that originally destroyed the outpost and was subsequently ‘reanimated’ to act as a covert agent against Earth and Spectrum. Assigned to protect the World President, the titular Captain Scarlet is killed in a car crash on his way to his assignment and is also reanimated to work for the Mysterons only to die again when trying to kidnap the president. For reasons not explained, this second death brings the original Captain Scarlet’s personality back to life as he regenerates from his wounds, making him ‘indestructible’ and subsequently a valuable weapon against the Mysterons.

    Those of you familiar with Anderson’s earlier puppet shows may remember them as being rather lighthearted and humorous at times, more appropriate for the younger audience that watched them. Captain Scarlet deviated from this formula by being serious and dark; the ‘war of nerves’ theme was prescient in describing today’s fear of terrorism. At the time I’m sure they were thinking more of the effects of communism as it was relatively fresh back in the 60’s, however the similarities to the present day ‘war on terror’ can be easily made. Added to this ‘realistic’ feel was a change in the design of the puppets themselves. In previous shows such as Thunderbirds the puppets sported disproportionately larger heads. The reason for this was the mechanics behind lip-syncing the dialog to the puppets: a solenoid mechanism was built into their heads to enable dialog to be recorded separately and played back through a device that generated lip movement in concert with the words. By the late 60’s the device was miniaturized enough to fit into the chest cavity of the puppet, so the Captain Scarlet puppets were the first to be built to the actual scale of real people, in this case 1:3. Life-sized models were also made for close-up shots using real hands whenever needed. While the properly proportioned puppets added to the ‘realism’, it made maneuvering them harder, hence none of the characters were ever really seen walking or running instead relying on moving walkways, vehicles and chairs to give the characters ‘action’.

    The Mysterons themselves were only represented by a set of glowing rings that would pan the scenery. Anderson explained later that they didn’t want to try and predict what a Martian would look like in case there was life found on Mars and they got it wrong!

    Unlike the typical self-contained episodes of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet was a continuing story line of the conflicts between Earth and the Mysterons. However, much like its predecessors there was a significant attention to artistic design, particularly with its vehicles and technology, such as the backwards driven Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (SPVs) and the communication devices built into the character’s hats and shoulder epaulets. And, like it’s live action counterpart Star Trek, Anderson was ahead of the curve in race and sex relations with multi-cultural agents such as the black Lieutenant Green and the female Angel pilots.

    While the episode plots are rather simple and, in many cases, naïve, they were nonetheless entertaining as many of the concepts provided hinted at larger grander ideas that needed to be reigned in for the after-school audience. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons lasted only 32 episodes between 1967 and 1968, but a new series, Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet debuted in 2005 using computer-generated animation (or ‘Hypermarionation’ in honor of the earlier ‘Supermarionation’ puppet shows). Freed from the constraints of the marionettes, this series provides significantly greater action and follows closely the storyline from the original series updated for modern times.

    Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons is available as a boxed set in the U.S. The New Captain Scarlet is currently available as Region 2 DVDs. If that isn’t enough for you, branch out and discover the other offerings from Gerry Anderson or read about his shows from the many sites that cover his catalog. You may find a new world worth exploring!

Labels: film/tv