Though Harmony Angel is seen taking off, that’s only in a piece of stock footage and she doesn’t appear again so that doesn’t count. So there. In fact I don’t know why the Angels bother to take to the air in this episode as the whole affair takes place inside underground sites and car parks…

"Our next act of retaliation will be to destroy the city of London. D’ya hear, Earthmen? We will destroy the city of London!" I’m not sure if he’s gloating or just plain irate…

The Mysterons steal a transporter containing an atomic device and secrete it inside an industrial car park with the countdown running to the obliteration of London. How will Spectrum find it and save England’s capital, and how on Earth is it that Big Ben can strike thirteen times?

For the first time, the Mysterons don’t destroy and duplicate something; instead, Captain Black simply uses his powers to drive the transporter from a distance and directs it inside a secret interior car park, whereupon they start the countdown. In fact you could write out the Mysterons and just have some crooks blackjacking the driver and nicking the thing that way and this episode would have made an ordinary crime/suspense thriller. That’s probably more a job for Father Stanley Unwin from The Secret Service to sort out, though (the last Gerry Anderson puppet series, about evil schemes being quashed by a vicar and his shrinking gardener; y’know, I’ll probably leave Kinggodzillak to cover that one…)

Kills himself in a lift this time. Still, he feels well enough to go out for dinner a few hours later.

Spectrum don’t actually cause any cock-ups in this one, so fair play. However, I have to question Colonel White’s response once the transporter driver, Masey, is interviewed, which is to have his officers listening to the tape over and over again for even the vaguest hint of a clue as to where the bomb is, as opposed to, oh, organising an immediate search of every car park in London. I don’t care if there are over 2000 of them and they only have 3 hours; surely a concerted attempt is better than nothing at all? If it weren’t for Captain Blue’s Science GCSE, London would be a radioactive rubble by the end of the episode.

A resounding success for Spectrum, this one, seeing as London doesn’t explode after all.

Spectrum: 2 Mysterons: 1

"Some job that driver’s got; shipping atomic bombs around."

"It’s not a bomb; it’s a nuclear device for civil use."

Sigh.

___

BLUE: "Now let’s assume Masey counted correctly, and heard Big Ben strike thirteen. What’s the only explanation?"

WHITE: "I’m with you, Captain…"

Oh you lying bastard. You’re obviously just as clueless about the situation as the audience is.

___

So, what’s the whole "Big Ben strikes thirteen" thing about? Well, fortunately Captain Blue is here to patronise us and his friends for a couple of minutes in order to tell us:

BLUE: "… Now, Masey was in the car park, which is a few yards down the street from this restaurant. He was sure he heard thirteen, and this could only happen at a distance of around 1500 yards from Big Ben."

SCARLET: "Right, but I still don’t see how he heard thirteen!"

Ah, the suspense, eh?

BLUE: "We’re sitting about a mile away from Big Ben and the chimes are taking approximately four and a half seconds to reach us… Well, Masey said he turned on his radio. Remember?... Let’s do the same!... Now, we’re hearing the chimes instantaneously over this radio. The radio’s here, Big Ben’s over there… Now, sound travels at 760 miles per hour… That’s seven [strikes] over the radio, but only six live from Big Ben! But Big Ben is 1500 yards away, so it’s four and a half seconds behind the radio."

Ah ha! Of course! So the radio was one chime ahead, and the last must have come live from Big Ben!

MELODY: "The radio is one chime ahead!"

BLUE: "That last chime came live from Big Ben!"

I’m a clever old Bus, eh?

Says Scarlet, "I’ll blow the door." Why? It’s not hot.

"I can’t hold it! I JUST CAN’T HOLD IT!"

"Come on! Get down there!" and "Brace yourself for the impact!" might raise a smirk or two.

More suspense is created when Scarlet needs to drive the transporter to an empty underground excavation site so that the bomb can detonate without causing harm to anybody… but his path is blocked by a posh lady in a stuttering car. Ha ha, those wacky women drivers, eh? Ho ho ho. Oh look, Captain Blue’s smacked her out of the way with the SPV! What a laugh! That’ll teach that damn female libertine.

And, following Blue’s long explanation of his own cleverness, Scarlet quips "Thirteen – I’ll make that my lucky number." I bet he won’t.

No closing morale speech here. Instead, Captains Blue and Scarlet take out Angels Destiny and Melody to dinner (and Melody has gone back to being black) and Colonel White isn’t invited. Awww. Poor Colonel.

"We’ve lost contact with the transporter!" yells the policeman into his mic back to base, neglecting to tell them that the reason for that is because his counterpart drove their car into a department store.

___

Colonel White seems unsure of himself in the briefing scene. "I want that transporter… or the driver… or both… found! And fast!" Then he takes a quick turn for the pissed-off whilst waiting for the Angels to get to their aircraft. "This is a red alert, not a stroll around the deck! MOVE!" Bloody Hell. Especially so as the Angels can’t do anything anyway. And don’t.

___

SCARLET: "The computer tells us that there are about two-thousand car parks in London which fit Masey’s description."

WHITE: "I don’t care if there are two-million!"

Um, I bet you do.

___

And a cheer for the series’ first "I’ll explain later!" courtesy of a rather smug Captain Blue.

Captain Ochre investigates one of the two possible car parks, though we only hear him telling Blue about it on the radio.

The Mysteron-influenced transporter smashes into several police cars, giving us some nice vehicular homicide (to use Lady Levesque’s wonderful phrase). It also smashes up a few shops and road islands along the way, which didn’t kill anyone but presumably must have irritated somebody, somewhere.

Spectrum are doing rather well in this one: they don’t lose anything! In fact the most they destroy in general is the underground excavation site, which was due to be blown up anyway, and Scarlet knocks down a single traffic light.

Two car crashes, but no cliff edges. Well, this is London.

Only two actual explosions, as the atomic device finally goes off.

Nope. In fact I’m rather hoping somebody uses somebody else’s Christian name at some point soon, or it looks rather silly even having this section in the guide…

See above. Ahem. That Colonel White sure is a miserable git. Though if his officers are going to go out with the Angels and leave him behind I don’t blame him.

Interesting pacing in this one – it’s well over a quarter of the episode until we cut to Spectrum, and it’s past the half way point until Captain Scarlet even appears (looking very swish in his snazzy saloon car, and just in time to meet up with the bedraggled and bedazzled transporter driver).

There’s a bizarre bit where a tense, suspenseful trek around the car park looking for Mysterons is accompanied by lounge piano music.

By the way the Mysterons open up the transporter, start the countdown and knock out the driver, it’s inferred that they are in fact tangible, invisible beings. The precise nature of them is never actually revealed during the series.

The Mysterons, once the bomb countdown begins, leave the unconscious body of the driver outside on the streets. Um, why? Aren’t they risking the guy waking up, rushing off to find the authorities and spoiling their entire plan? As in fact he does?

In fact, that driver shows a lot of strength in being able to cope with everything that happens to him in this episode. He starts off with having his vehicle taken over by a malign alien force, cracks his head on the dashboard when it grinds to a halt in the parking complex, is trapped for a fair amount of time, gets spooked by hearing Big Ben going off thirteen times, gets knocked out again, and then wakes up on the streets just in time to get bundled into Captain Scarlet’s car and taken to Cloudbase to be grilled by the Colonel. And his wounds are still evident in the interview; the Colonel doesn’t even let him see a doctor until after he’s told them everything he knows!

Spectrum records its interviews onto tapes, played back on machines which have big buttons labelled "Inter", "Play Back", "Re Wind" and "Stop". Bwa ha ha. What, no "Fast Forward"? And on a similar note, radio stations of the year 2068 will apparently still have stiff-upper-lipped male RP radio announcers in their mid-40s who say, "It only remains for me to say goodnight. Goodnight everybody!"

An OK episode, with a certain degree of topicality now, though one somewhat lacking in incident with very few deaths, explosions and gratuitous puppet violence. The bizarre "thirteen strikes" mystery is a novel spin but one that baffles the viewer more than anything else.

It’s just for civil use, y’know

"Oh, stop honking, back there! It’s not the end of the world."