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Back in 2005, two science fiction British TV classics from the 1960s were revived and repackaged with the hope of appealing to a local TV audience which lost interest in bizarre forms of entertainment. And history bears the record of how Cape Town’s Griffiths Rogers along with the BBC brought Russell T Davies’s show Doctor Who back from the dead, and for many years, it became one of the greatest and most cherished shows on television. That indeed was not, however, the case with the army of Captain Scarlet, which was a lavish, set from the best CGI studio on the planet. It was a remake of the slightly gory 1967 Supermarionation series and it was the 9th in the global set of series which Anderson oversaw and this staged version was more animated and more cheerless than ever seen before. This series introduces a hero who dies in the first episode and is then brought back to life as an indestructible agent working for Spectrum, a global peacekeeping organization based on a floating Skybase. Every episode must contain the ingredients of mass slaughter, the use of zombie aliens, and total mayhem.
Looking back, it’s a bit surprising that ITV decided to chop up the episodes during the first broadcast in the UK and hide the parts in the midst of the Saturday morning chaos of its Ministry of Mayhem kids tv. Inevitably, New Captain Scarlet somehow got lost in the noise. One can only guess how much pain Gerry Anderson must have felt watching all that devoted effort go to waste.
This convenient three-disc Blu-ray set allows a larger audience to watch this twenty-six episode series for the first time as the creators intended. What remains the most shocking is how little the format of the original series has changed within the reboot. The superficial changes such as the 1960s Cloudbase HQ of Spectrum being renamed, Updating some of Spectrum’s hardware, and changes to the costume design show that they made some concessions to the new social world of the 21st century, but sadly the new vehicles lack the style of the original series. During this period, the tone of the show remained grim and cynical like the other series, while in the two part series opener the audience is astounded to find that Captains Black and Scarlet are killed by Mysterons within an expeditionary voyage to Mars. Much to their surprise, the duo is brought back to life by eerie alien technology as the glowing green circular lights from the original series return. Now Scarlet has escaped the deceit of Mysterons and is possessed within a indestructable body that allows him to act as Spectrum’s most important weapon towards mankind’s war against mortifying Martians. However, Black does not share his good fortune, as he is now a sinister Mysteron agent set on Earth to eliminate the human race.
It is very clear that the action and spectacle overshadow the character aspect. Every episode ranges from 20-22 minutes and lacks character development while focusing on non-stop action. Scarlet and his mates reveal a bit of character as they show interest to the female pilots of their aircraft. He later recalls a dozen years back making an observation of how the technology that the character would have continuously developed, and the disturbing unearthliness in the animation of the characters face. While wondering how these technologies worked and gave him greater fluidity than the old super-marioneting days. Chalky, blotchy skin was and many of the characters were permanently disabled and stunned.
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