The Indestructible Captain Scarlet!.....

One of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's most famous series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons revolved around the exploits of Captain Scarlet,Spectrum's top agent who was killed by the Mysterons, replaced by a double which they could control and who subsequently fell off a tall building which broke the Mysterons control. Luckily, this meant that he was now indestructible — the Mysterons power of retrometabolism meant he couldn't be killed unless every atom in his body was dispersed.

(Captain Scarlet & Colonel Green)

Unusually for a children's series, the body count in the show was high — the very first episode started with Captain Black opening fire on aMysteron city and destroying it. Needless to say, the Mysterons didn't take kindly to this and, after re-creating their city, killed him and made a duplicate. Unlike the replicated version of Captain Scarlet, he had a deathly-palour and was firmly on the side of the Mysterons.

Produced directly after the immensely successful Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet ran for a series of thirty-two episodes although, unlike it's more famous sibling, it was only thirty-minutes in length. One major advance in the series was the introduction of heads on the puppets that were for the first time in propoprtion to the bodies — the solenoids used to operate the mouth having been moved down into the body

As with all the Supermarionation series, Captain Scarlet was heavily merchandised with items ranging from die-cast toys through to comics, board games and, obviously, tie-in novels. The books were released byArmada Paperbacks with three titles being issued in the space of two years. Repeats of the series in the 1990s on BBC2 led to a revived interest in the series and a number of new novelisations were produced under theYoung Corgi imprint, all of which were written by Dave Morris.

Literature

Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons: Number 1 Spectrum file - published in 1967.

Captain Scarlet finds himself locked in a battle of nerves with his deadliest enemies, the Mysterons

who have discovered the key to controlling the worlds weather! Unless Captain Scarlet can stop

them, the Mysterons will achieve their ultimate ambition - the earth's total destruction.

This novel was first published back in 1969.

After a landing on Mars by a Spectrum exploration vehicle, Earth is under attack from the Mysterons.

As Captain Scarlet and the other Spectrum agents prepare to defend the Earth against this terrible threat, they know that anything could happen. For the Mysterons have powers beyond the understanding of man — and they are determined to destroy all life on Earth! Captain Black becomes the Mysterons' pawn, and Captain Scarlet take on a vital job, escorting the World President on a dangerous journey. But can Scarlet resist the deadly power of the mysterons?