Captain Scarlet

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons was first shown on British TV from 1967-1968. The Captain and his colleagues from the Spectrum International Agency were the creation of Gerry Anderson, a master of supermarionation technology (puppetry and scale model special effects combined) and the creator of other famous puppets, including Thunderbirds. Anderson’s puppets’ lips responded to the taped dialogue with incredible precision since a special electronic device, a sensor, placed inside their heads would activate every time the sound of the dialogue came on. These sensors soon became smaller and more sophisticated. By the time Captain Scarlet was created, the sensors were small enough to be placed inside the puppets’ chests, allowing Anderson to give his puppets human proportions.

Unlike the Thunderbirds, who were an international rescue group, Captain Scarlet and the other Spectrum members were intelligence agents that fought against a group of extraterrestrials known as the Mysterons. With great foresight, Anderson made the Mysterons invisible (they are represented by two circles of light) so that, if life were ever to be discovered on Mars, his aliens would not look wrong. Spectrum agents, led by Colonel White, used colour-related names to communicate by code.

The Mysterons, who had the power of regeneration, infiltrated Spectrum by murdering and duplicating victims, who were then under their control. They duplicated Captain Scarlet but, when he fell from a tower, his real personality of Paul Metcalfe reasserted itself so that he was no longer in their control. The experience, however, left him able to detect Mysteron duplicates and gave him powers of regeneration too, making him indestructible.