Some prolonged "You started the shock wave!" accusations give you cause to think that the Mysterons haven’t bothered themselves to think up a specific plan this week, but then our friendly mysterious voice quickly tosses in "We intend to kill one of the Spectrum Angels!" at the end there. "Spectrum Angels, one of you will die!" Only one? Wouldn’t it be more villainous to kill all of them? Puh! Martian pansies…

A warehouse containing some Spectrum Angel Interceptor jets recently delivered by Fairfield’s Engines is burnt to the ground by Captain Black, and the Mysterons reduplicate the jets in an attempt to assassinate Destiny Angel in Paris. Captains Scarlet and Blue are sent to Destiny’s aid but it is left to the Angels themselves to try and save the day when they engage in thrilling mid-air combat with the Mysterons. So thrilling, you must be there…

The Mysterons don’t do anything particularly new but Scarlet once again gets nauseous when the enemy is near, alerting Blue and Destiny to vacate their car shortly before the Mysteron Interceptors attack it.

Aside from giving the warning detailed above, and mooching about a Parisian café, Scarlet does absolutely nothing in this episode that even approaches the need for dangerous heroics. They might as well have sent Captain Ochre out for a spell and let Scarlet put his feet up at Cloudbase for once.

Whereas Harmony and Rhapsody shoot down Mysteron planes quite sensibly, allowing them to crash harmlessly into some empty fields, Melody for no reason at all decides to force the third jet into a dive towards the ground – allowing the plane to crash into, and completely decimate, somebody’s house. Well thanks for that. Civilian lives possibly wiped out, but – by Jove! – at least it looked good! Ha ha! Silly cow.

Well, the assassins are repelled and the Angels are all alive by the end of it, so I suppose it’s:

Spectrum: 12 Mysterons: 3

DRIVER: "You say these crates contain millions of dollars worth of equipment, and I just drive them out and dump them miles from anywhere!"

"Mr. Fairfield, you’re so craaaaaaaa-zah!"

BLACK: "Good, Jackson. I like a man who can keep a secret…"

I bet you do.

And shortly after saying that he shoots poor Jackson in the groin. Not sure if a statement is being made there…

__

RHAPSODY: "Bandit on your tail, Melody!"

I hear that all the time down the dockyard.

BLUE: "Well, if I know Destiny, she’s probably out shopping!"

Ha ha. Women, eh?

___

BLUE: "It’s a long walk to Cloudbase!"

Said whilst accompanied by a shot of the smoking saloon car and your actual "wah wah wahhh" sound effect. Oh dear. To add insult to injury, it ends the episode.

The Colonel gives a rousing speech to the Angels going into battle, telling them how he knows they’d rather fight their battles out than sit tight at Cloudbase, and that he’s totally confident in their abilities, and that he’s so proud that daddy’s little angels are growing up etc. etc. Captain Blue’s little witticism above robs him of the chance to make a victory speech at the end, though.

WHITE: "Well, gentlemen, you’ve heard the latest Mysteron threat. They intend to try and kill one of the Angels."

SCARLET: "Yes, Colonel, we’ve heard."

"We’re not senile like you are…"

___

WHITE: "Destiny Angel must be escorted back to the comparative safety of Cloudbase!"

The comparative safety?! Accuracy before patriotism, eh Colonel?

___

SCARLET: "There she is!"

BLUE: "I’ll call up Cloudbase. The Colonel will be relieved."

He’s going to get sacked?

___

GREEN: "The three Angel aircraft and the warehouse were completely destroyed."

WHITE: "There’s no doubt?"

"Oh, crikey, sorry, I mean they were only slightly destroyed!"

Prat.

___

Spectrum personnel are put through rigorous training procedures, prior to being allowed into the organisation, to assess stamina, reflexes and tactical intelligence:

SCARLET: "Get out of the car and take cover!"

DESTINY: "I don’t understand."

Rigorous indeed.

___

WHITE: "The Mysterons have taken over three Angel aircraft and these are now flying booby traps!"

Well, no, they’re not. Surely a "booby trap" is either a) a tight brassiere or b) a trap that springs when you stumble across it unknowingly, like an explosive attached to a tripwire or something? Whereas the three Mysteron Interceptors are whacking great planes hunting down their target and firing wildly at it.

___

And at one point, Destiny says "Bonne chance, mes enfants," which translates to "Good luck, my children." That’s just a very weird thing to say.

Colonel White instantly calls upon Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue to go out and find Destiny Angel, probably because they were sitting at his desk and wasting his time. When it turns out that not even the indestructible Captain Scarlet can tackle three enemies several miles above his head, Melody, Harmony and Rhapsody Angels are flown out to deal with the Mysteron menace.

The guy who delivers the Interceptors to the warehouse, Jackson, attempts to peep inside the crates before having three bullets pumped into him by Captain Black who followed him rather suspiciously in a small car. Black then takes the liberty of cremating the body when he sets the warehouse ablaze and leaves the episode.

3 x unfinished Interceptor jets (destroyed in the warehouse fire)

1 x fully functional Angel Interceptor jet (shot down by the Mysterons)

1 x saloon car (blown to pieces by the Mysteron jets to little effect)

A car is lost but there aren’t any cliff edges in this one.

Four small explosions and ten rather large ones.

And if you’re interested in who does what in the plane fight: Harmony shoots down one Mysteron before being shot down herself; Rhapsody destroys the second Mysteron; and Melody gets the third after procrastinating for an obscenely long amount of time just so that she can drum up some suspense for the audience. "They’re diving too fast! They’re not going to pull out!" Oh save it.

No first names.

The Colonel seems more than usually kind to everybody in this episode but it’s not too notable.

Some new Spectrum info: Angel Interceptor planes are made progressively at several companies so that no one organisation has a complete set of plans (sort of like how Brains assembled the parts to make the Thunderbirds). Fairfield’s company, seen in this episode, makes and fits the engines for the jets.

The equipment transporter that carries the Angel planes early on looks extremely impractical, taking up both sides of a duel carriageway.

The first shot of Captain Black is quite funky, with him being framed in the hanger entrance, obscured by sunlight and wearing an Eccleston-style leather jacket and pair of snazzy shades. And the way he casually tosses a match onto a puddle of oil to start the inferno is deeply cool.

And as an immediate counterpoint to the very snappily dressed Captain Black, Destiny Angel is first seen moping at a Parisian café dressed in a massive red furry turban thing and matching scarf which makes her look like a walking novelty ballpoint pen. "Now I feel like an Angel!" Yeah, you keep deluding yourself, mon cher…

There’s a strange bit where the American-accented fire chief describes the contents of the gutted warehouse as a "complete write off," which has always struck me as more of a British colloquialism.

The Mysteron circles, which seem to do the retromatabolising most of the time, this time glower over the already replicated jets whilst they’re zipping through the air, a long time after the act of replication itself. This sort of thing occurs infrequently throughout the series and it always strikes me as odd.

Also, interestingly, the Mysteron Interceptors are just as terrible shots as the Angels are – it takes them two rounds before they finally blow up Scarlet’s completely stationary car. Also, the car merely looks a bit blackened and dented when we keep cutting back to it during the fight itself, but at the end we cut to it and it’s suddenly a huge heap of twisted metal. What gives?

Harmony Angel gets her first significant lines of dialogue in this one. If you can’t remember who she is then she’s the Japanese one voiced so badly it’s actually offensive. Upon being hit by the Mysterons, she says, "I have been hit. I am going to… eject." Just like that. There’s no trace of emotion at all; I’ve heard people more upset over losing a ball bearing. In fact I only recall her getting proper dialogue in one other episode where she threatens to judo-chop somebody into submission on an airfield. At least she seemed to find the idea quite fun and proved to us that she wasn’t an Auton.

The first real dud of the series with everything geared towards an uninterrupted fighter jet battle that lasts at least ten minutes. It just doesn’t have any substance to it and absolutely nothing happens. The first half has Black mucking about in the warehouse, Scarlet and Blue being told to find Destiny Angel, and Scarlet and Blue actually finding Destiny Angel within one minute of landing in Paris. The second half is devoted to that bloody fight which, whilst technically competent (with a nice shot of Melody Angel achieving a 360° vertical spin), drags on and on until you’ve forgotten what it’s all in aid of anyway. There aren’t many truly bad episodes of Captain Scarlet but this is one of them.

It occurs to me that I haven’t really shown any pictures of the Angel Interceptors before. So here’s one now.

A nice shot of the rarely used Rhapsody Angel.

Destiny Angel, popular trend-setter for the clinically unfashionable. I don’t like the look of that waiter, either.

"So… so… bored…" I’m sorry, Scarlet. Still, you get to go to Australia next week. You’ll look forward to that, won’t you, eh? And I hope that goes for all of you at home as well.