"We are going to launch one of your own incendiary rockets and you will have no way of knowing its target."

Gasp!

"We have not forgotten."

Well I'm glad that the Mysterons themselves know what the target is…

Military rocket expert Major Reeves is killed and duplicated by the Mysterons, who use him to get into Base Concord and launch a variable geometry rocket. The rocket is protected from being destroyed via manual control by a codeword - Reeves chooses "ZERO" - and Reeves steals the flight program computer, escaping the base by jet. Without the computer there is a) no way of being able to detonate the rocket, and b) no way of knowing where the rocket is aimed to strike! Spectrum is informed and Colonel White dispatches the Angels to hunt Major Reeves and retrieve the computer with its codeword; should they fail then the military will have to try every one of the 10,000 possible codewords on a replacement unit to try and detonate the rocket before it hits its target… whatever it is. And, once Captains Scarlet and Blue are sent to the base to do precisely nothing at all, it transpires that the target is Base Concord itself!

Captain Black appears to be channelling the Mysteron influence over distance in order to take out Major Reeves on his ship in what must be the funniest Mysteron murder so far. We find out that one of the Mysteron methods of attack is to seemingly make the recipient feel a bit ill - Reeves suddenly starts swaying and mumbling "Need... need some air…" When Reeves then wanders out onto deck and leans on a long chain overlooking the sea, the Mysterons use their awesome, mystical powers to… unbuckle the chain so that Reeve falls in. "Aaaargh!" Well, no point in stretching yourself if you don't have to. Lucky for them that Reeves drowns within three seconds, too.

At the end of the episode Captain Scarlet disobeys Colonel White's orders to evacuate the base, choosing instead to remain behind to try to find out the rocket codeword. This in itself is an instance of Scarlet throwing himself into another suicidal situation but, for once, he doesn't kill himself in the process. Mind you, he doesn't achieve anything either.

Spectrum's absolutely useless in this one. Five members of personnel are dispatched during the course of the episode and not one of them succeeds at doing anything useful: Major Reeves evades the Angels by crashing his plane and Scarlet and Blue at the base were never really in a position to aid the situation at all. And through serendipitous circumstances it's Colonel White who saves the day completely by accident! (More on this in "Additional Notes")

They didn't deserve it but it's another notch up for bloody Spectrum.

Spectrum: 14 Mysterons: 3

The Angels are using "high powered radar." Stop me if I'm getting too technical for you.

The variable geometry rocket is "specifically designed to overcome any form of defence and reach its target." We're told a lot about the VGR, like how it turns into a conventional jet before attack and that it usually travels beneath radar to avoid detection; in fact, we're told everything about it besides what a variable geometry rocket actually is.

Through reasoning and natural intellect I’ve deduced that it’s probably a rocket with some form of variable geometry. Blow me if I know what that means, though.

No naughty bits to smirk at in this one. Even the rocket doesn't look particularly phallic. Spoilsports.

The newly duplicated Major Reeves displays a rare flash of that cunning Mysteron wit:

HELMSMAN: "Feeling better, sir?"

MAJOR REEVES: "Better? Oh yes. I… feel a new man."

Ha ha! Actually I'm pretty gobsmacked that they’ve waited this long to use that gag.

__

And a pretty funny bit from the final scene:

WHITE: "Well you must be feeling very pleased with yourselves."

SCARLET: "Well, yes, sir. We did save the base."

WHITE: "You did not save the base! Naval frogmen found the flight program unit near the wreckage of Reeve's jet at the bottom of the sea. The codeword was ZERO. Where were you up to?"

SCARLET: "Um…"

BLUE: "AMEN, sir."

WHITE: "Very appropriate."

I like that bit.

The Colonel goes off his head at the end of this one. Begins with ranting about Scarlet and Blue's disobedience - fair enough - and threatening court-martials and the like. But once he's left alone with Lieutenant Green:

GREEN: "Will they be court-martialled, sir?"

WHITE: "No. But one more question like that, Lieutenant, and you will be!"

Er, um, what?

WHITE: "They are brave men and Spectrum needs brave men in our continuing fight against the Mysterons!"

Oh, right then. So I suppose it was just another example of the Colonel's ribtickling good humour. Ha ha! Ha….

Colonel White describes Cloudbase as "the most efficient base ever built by man."

The mind boggles.

___

REEVES: "I'm Major Reeves."

CONTROLLER: "Oh yes. They told us you were arriving, Major."

REEVES: "You're alone?"

CONTROLLER: "Yes, sir… But I can call the rest of the crew…"

"… you scare me…"

___

SOLDIER: "The only person that entered the control room was the new rocket expert, Major Reeves!"

COMMANDER: "Impossible! He was assigned directly from Cloudbase and they can confirm it!"

Oh, a great mark of security, that. Spectrum is an organisation that actually hired Captain Magenta, and whose second leading officer almost caused an insurrection in Australia in the last episode. And whose leader comes up with an explanation like this:

COMMANDER: "[Major Reeves] was the only person to enter the control room."

WHITE: "Could the Controller have launched the VGR and then shot himself?"

Brilliant.

___

Colonel White searches for Major Reeves via a big scanner screen:

WHITE: "He should be somewhere in this area…"

… which then appears to cut to a diagram of the Sun.

___

HARMONY: "We - are- right - behind you - Melody."

God, I hate Harmony Angel. Bloody soft-spoken stereotype. She gets about five lines in this one and she always sounds bloody awful.

As usual when Colonel White panics about something, Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue are sent out to supposedly deal with the situation. To his credit, though, the Colonel does the sensible thing and launches the Angels first. Still, we haven’t seen much of the other Spectrum officers for a while, have we? It’s been a disappointing run of Simply Scarlet episodes lately. A gander at the records reveals that Captain Magenta was last seen in episode 12, Captain Ochre in episode 11, and poor Captain Grey last made an appearance all the way back in episode 8! Heaven knows what’s happened to Dr Fawn; wasn’t even worth me putting his picture up in the main cast gallery. I know Magenta and Ochre crop up again later on but whether Captain Grey ever gets a chance to glimmer again only time will tell. Not that you lot care. Heartless, that’s what you are. I hate you all.

The real Major Reeves is of course drowned so that he can be duplicated. Then the Mysteron Reeves takes a minute or so to badger the controller into launching the rocket before he shoots the poor bastard and does it himself.

And, amazingly, Reeves can shoot his gun without pulling the trigger. The pitfalls of puppets, eh? The dead controller moves his head about as well.

And I don’t really hate you all. Sorry I snapped at you.

1 x Angel Interceptor (Melody's, shot down by Reeves)

No vehicle mishaps at all. In fact we only see one van during the course of the episode, trundling away from Base Concord during the evacuation. Unfortunately for us it doesn’t crash and explode but I suppose that’d be a bit mean-spirited.

3 small and 2 large. Even the large ones aren’t overly satisfying, to be honest.

No first names used.

The real Major Reeves was a friend of the Colonel's (though hurriedly dismisses Green’s suggestion that he was a "close friend" – the Colonel doth protest too much), so we can understand if the Colonel is a bit upset. He puts personal feelings out of the way immediately, however, trying to concentrate on tracking down the Mysteron. It’s not healthy to bottle up your grief like that, Colonel. That’s why you took it out on Lieutenant Green, isn’t it? I know, I know. Oh, come on, give us a hug, you big ape… There there…

Did you know that we’re exactly halfway through the series now? ‘Cos we are.

If the rocket is going straight up and straight down again, why does it launch – and later on attack the base – at an angle?

Unusually, Scarlet and Blue don't appear till 10 minutes in.

The soldier trying to get into the locked computer room to apprehend Reeves doesn't use the emergency detonator, which blasts open the doors instantly, until explicitly told to do so by a superior officer. Until that point he’s been banging on the thick iron door with his fists. Why are the military forces in Captain Scarlet always pitiful? The Mysterons fully deserve to wipe us out, I reckon.

The way that Colonel White replies to the Commander's assertions that they don't know where the rocket is with a highly strained "Whaaaat?!" always makes me laugh. The stolen flight program unit is also reported to the Colonel twice within the same conversation, but he reacts with surprise the second time. Does he even listen to anybody that isn’t… y’know… him? Probably not: when Harmony Angel reports in to base he cuts off communication with her with some ferocity. Then again, I can understand that. I’d not be keen on poorly-voiced stereotypes in my organisation either.

At the beginning of Scarlet and Blue’s first scene at Base Concord, the Commander suddenly turns round to exclaim "Glad to have you with us!" whereupon we pan to the Spectrum officers positioned nonchalantly by a wall, as if they’ve been standing there for ten minutes and the Commander’s only just noticed them.

The Angel shenanigans here – placed into a side-plot – are far more entertaining than those of Seek and Destroy a few episodes earlier, probably because they’re not stretched out and we only get to see the exciting bits.

It beggars belief that the Commander of the base, in charge of everything and fully knowledgeable of the situation, is informed that the rocket has finally come into scanner range and responds excitedly with "Right! Try for the air destruct!" completely forgetting the fact that they don't have the codeword to do it. This little fact annoys him quite intensely.

The way they go through the codewords isn't very quick at all, either. You’d think they’d just have one guy sitting at the replacement unit, one hand gripping the list of possible codewords and the other hurriedly tapping them into the keyboard. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. Instead the procedure appears to involve two men: one to spell out the codeword very slowly – "A… B… L…E… Able," – and the other to tap it into the unit once the other guy has finished dictating. Why not do it as he’s reading the letters out? As it is a task that ought to take five seconds takes fifteen every time.

Codewords attempted during the episode: ABLE, ABLY, ABUT (abut?!), ACHE, ALLY, ALMS, ALPS, ALSO, ALTO, AMEN.

When Reeves goes into a dive, the Angels and the clouds tip over as well, making it painfully obvious that the camera's simply been rolled over. Added to that, why would the Angels get stuck in a dive as well anyway? They don't have to follow him.

One thing I will say about this episode is the good sense of a gradually escalating disaster. For a start we’ve got a rocket launched that has an unknown target and no codeword to manually detonate it. First they have to wait for the replacement unit to arrive and then have to go through 10,000 possible words to try and blow up the rocket, which of course they haven’t the time to do. Meanwhile, the only hope they have – capturing Major Reeves and getting the stolen unit off him – evaporates when Reeves decides to commit suicide by hurtling his jet into the sea. Even though the flight program unit isn’t destroyed in the explosion – an unlikely coincidence – it’s still sitting on the seabed where nobody can get to it…

Unfortunately, this all goes for a Burton when we are given probably the worst resolution to a Captain Scarlet episode ever. Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue are still in the base trying out various codewords and not getting very far as the rocket is on target to destroy the base and them inside it. The Colonel is trying to speak to them over their communicator wavelengths but they remove their communicators and throw them on the floor so that they can’t hear him. So, in various tightly edited shots, we have Scarlet and Blue working on the unit, the rocket flying towards the base, the old flight program unit on the seabed and still fully functional (?), and Colonel White giving a countdown to destruction over a Spectrum wavelength. And it’s the Colonel’s countdown that saves the base! "Three… two… one… zero!" On that last word, the unit hundreds of miles away at the bottom of the sea activates (?!) and the rocket explodes! What?! For a start, everybody else has to enter in the instructions manually by pressing buttons; since when was the unit voice controlled? But, far more blatantly, how on Earth does the Colonel’s message on Cloudbase affect the unit on the seabed??? It’s like if you stood up at home and announced "Operate!" and a computer somewhere in Budapest suddenly switched itself on. It makes absolutely no sense at all. Plus, as if to add insult to injury, the Colonel’s countdown doesn’t match the rocket’s distance at all; at "zero" the rocket is still at least ten seconds away from the base. Besides, shouldn’t "zero" mean impact anyway? Shouldn’t the rocket have already hit the base before it could be destroyed by manual control? Arse! Arse, I say, ARSE!!!

For the first twenty minutes this is a pretty gripping episode of Captain Scarlet with a seemingly dire situation with two plots running parallel to each other very nicely. The Angel scenes are very well done in particular. However, one problem is that there aren’t any stakes to the episode. There’s no lives at risk as Base Concord has been evacuated and it’s only a space research / military base anyway; if Colonel White didn’t care about one of the major banks of New York getting blown to smithereens, why should we care about another bog-standard military base? It’s a nice bit of characterisation when Scarlet and Blue disregard the Colonel’s orders to carry on attempting to salvage Base Concord but it rings meaningless as you can’t imagine that there’d be much lost if they didn’t make a run for it like the Colonel suggests. Added to that the absolutely appalling conclusion as explained above and you’ve got an episode that starts off brilliantly but ends up diving almost as fatally as Reeves’s jet. Despite all this I’d still give it a four-star rating because it was quite a good one up till the end but it’s only just scraped that fourth star by the edge of its SPV.

This is Harmony Angel. I don’t like her.

"Yes… that’s right… take it off… hur hur hur…"

In other news, man reaches salacious ecstasy upon discovery of the world’s largest chessboard. We’ll be interviewing him soon but until then here’s a weather report. What’s it like on the Moon, Gary?