Captain Grey and Captain Magenta attend one of the Colonel’s briefings but only Captain Ochre gets any lines.

"The conference at Lake Toma will be sabotaged. We know what you are trying to do but you will not succeed."

I’m glad they know because we never find out. Something to do with a planned return to Mars but the specifics are never given and we don’t find out what Dr Conrad’s importance to it is either. Presumably other people are attending the conference that he’s being taken to but nobody else is getting an escort!

Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue are assigned to looking after Dr Conrad – the world’s leading astrophysicist – but arouse the suspicion of two reporters also staying at the Adelph Hotel. Frustrated by their defeated attempt at getting photos of Conrad’s bodyguards, the reporters follow the small entourage to an airport where Conrad and the two Captains are due to catch Flight 104 to Geneva, Switzerland, and end up boarding the same flight. However, disaster looms when it appears that the plane is in the hands of the Mysterons and Colonel White must attempt to warn Scarlet in time before the aircraft makes a deadly dive into the Alps…

There’s some good continuity here; when one of the pressmen photographs Scarlet, the resulting picture just shows a silhouette in Scarlet’s place, recalling the fact that Mysterons cannot be photographed.

The Mysterons fly the plane from a distance, as per usual, manipulating the controls through the Mysteron influence. However, usually they can only do this to vehicles they’ve blown up and replicated, so we’d have to assume that that’s already happened off-screen. But if that’s the case, how did they know which plane Scarlet was eventually going to get? And if the plane got replicated earlier what happened to its crew and passengers?

The plane eventually loses its Mysteron influence when it flies over a Swiss electrical power station. It appears that, as well as being deadly to Mysterons, high voltage electricity can also negate Mysteron influences.

Without a working undercarriage, Captain Scarlet opts to land the plane himself; he is of course "killed" when the aircraft slides along the runway and crashes into a building. Why the building is at the end of the runway and why it’s made of common house bricks I don’t know.

We’re told that when one of the reporters attempted to photograph Dr Conrad, Captain Blue knocked the camera out of his hand; not a great way to avoid suspicion, Captain. However, both Captains show remarkable competency in being able to recognise the photographer straight away and to detect that he was taking photos of Scarlet with a camera hidden in his watch, so we’ll let that earlier moment of random aggression slide.

The undercarriage of the plane won’t work because one of Captain Blue’s bullets broke through a vital circuit when he shot through the lock of the cabin. Idiot.

Dr Conrad is saved and presumably the conference continues as planned. We never find out what it actually achieves, though.

Spectrum: 19 Mysterons: 4

No dodgy exposition going on here. In fact the dialogue in this one is generally of a far higher quality than it usually is.

SCARLET: "Well you certainly get around… for a waiter…"

Captain Scarlet’s cheeky pick-up line to the photographer is given a suitably salacious tone by Francis Matthews.

This episode opens with Captain Blue singing classical music off-screen in the shower. Well, I assume he’s in the shower; he leans around the door in a bathrobe a few moments later. However we don’t hear any running water, so it seems as if Captain Blue just has these sudden compulsions to sing operatic tracks and always has to excuse himself to do so.

___

BLUE: "What’s on the menu?"

SCARLET: "Steak."

BLUE: "Great. I could eat a horse!"

SCARLET: "No chance of that here, I’m glad to say!"

Ho ho ho! What banter! Ha ha!

Honestly, after the first scene the dialogue does get better.

Captain Blue takes over the stoic patriotism this time round:

"Say, what’s the name of the guy at the controls?"

"Just say he’s a man. A man doing a job. A great job…"

Strangely, despite the fact that the plane crashed and anybody sitting in the cabin would surely have been killed, the reporter takes Captain Blue’s word that Scarlet’s all right.

A few moments after saying that the importance of the conference between the President and Dr Conrad cannot be overemphasised, the Colonel says, "I’m not too concerned about the Doctor." It’s this sort of lackadaisical reasoning that gives Spectrum a bad name, you know. He of course goes on to say that "I know he’s in safe hands," but given that said hands belong to Scarlet and Blue I certainly wouldn’t label myself as "unconcerned" if I were in the Colonel’s shoes.

___

SECURITY CHIEF: "Colonel White, something’s happened which I just don’t understand."

Good God, if you don’t understand it then there’s more chance of Hell freezing over than the Colonel knowing what’s going on…

___

WHITE: "Without their Spectrum caps, we can’t contact Captain Scarlet or Captain Blue on Spectrum wavebands. We’ll have to find another way to contact them…"

"… and I’ve bred a carrier pigeon for just search an event!"

Captains Grey, Ochre and Magenta are all despatched to Switzerland… but we never see them arrive, nor do we see what happens once they’re there.

To warn Scarlet onboard the plane, Destiny Angel flies by pouring out red smoke to alert him to the danger. This works rather well as Scarlet catches on quickly as to what’s going on. He really does seem to have regained the brain cells usually denied him in most other episodes.

Captain Black sneaks into the aircrews’ quarters and it’s later revealed that he somehow drugged them and locked them all into a storage room. That’s not particularly evil, really. And wouldn’t someone have gone to check on the crewmen before the flight anyway? Doesn’t the pilot need to chat to Air Traffic Control in the cabin before the plane can take off?

One thing that’s interesting about this episode is that Spectrum actually finds out that Captain Black was somehow involved; in most episodes, though Black is usually around, he’s rarely seen or reported by Spectrum personnel.

The Spectrum budget gets wasted on at least thirty plane seats that they didn’t need but nothing valuable is lost.

No car crashes.

Only one moderate explosion when the plane crashes.

No first names.

And the Colonel’s not in a silly mood either. Spectrum seems to have pulled itself together for once.

Captain Scarlet orders two steaks, medium-rare with all the trimmings. Not important at all but I thought you might like to know his preferred choice of meal.

One thing I’ve noticed is that everybody’s tie appears to have an absurdly small knot, each one no larger than a 50 pence piece.

Why does Dr Conrad sleep with his suit on, to the extent that all of his jacket buttons are done up and his tie is still immaculately worn?

I can understand that the strange movements of the world’s greatest astrophysicist might prove interesting material for a pair of desperate reporters but I hardly think whatever’s happening constitutes "front page material" as one of them seems to think. I mean, what are they going to say? "Dr Conrad, one of the world’s leading scientific minds, was seen staying in a hotel the other day. He ate a steak and then caught a plane to… somewhere. Quite possibly a Communist state. He also wore a tie."

We are introduced to the chap in charge of airport security who, as is par for the course in this series, is sitting behind a minute desk in a whacking great room. Why does everybody in Captain Scarlet have an office about ten times larger than they actually need? I mean, this one’s got a big sofa placed about seven feet away on a horizontal angle to the desk; why’s it there?! Who’s going to use it?

A sloppy voice mishap means that in one scene Destiny Angel – speaking in fluent comedy French tones a few moments beforehand – starts talking in the broad Chelsea accent of Rhapsody Angel (who doesn’t even appear in the episode). It’s particularly noticeable as it’s on a long line of important dialogue.

As if using stock footage from its own series wasn’t enough, this episode also uses some obvious stock footage from Thunderbirds of the ambulance and fire engine "crash tenders", seen in most of the airport episodes from that particular series. It’s quite nostalgic to see them crop up. A lot of the music in this one is taken from the exploits of International Rescue as well.

Captain Scarlet says that every seat on Flight 104 has been bought by Spectrum under different names so that they have the plane to themselves; it’s been done this way to avoid suspicion. But the airport chief of security says, "You’re the only passengers…" which indicates that obviously he’s in on their plan. So why did they bother buying all the tickets if they were going to inform the authorities anyway? Why not just ask for a private plane? When Dr Conrad quite intelligently asks if the staff will question all the empty seats, the security chief just replies "This is the slack season. Flights are often three-quarters empty," (!). That’s as maybe but I still think they might be suspicious when there’s more staff on the plane than passengers; the plan was to have only three people aboard! And if that accounts for 25% of the regular bookings than that airport must be situated in the most boring place on the planet if no sod uses it.

And why don’t Scarlet and Blue think of simply parachuting from the plane with Dr Conrad as opposed to trying to land the thing?

A fairly forgettable episode… which is a shame as, despite the very slight plot and some unanswered questions, this is a pretty good instalment. The dialogue in particularly is mostly razor sharp with a good attention to detail on the smaller issues, like the practicalities of the flight and the reporter’s attempt to disguise himself as a waiter to get pictures of Scarlet (he tells of getting the suit by telling the real waiter it was for a joke, slipping him some money at the same time; nothing mindblowing but it’s nice it gets mentioned). A shame, however, that ultimately the reporters’ subplot has no bearing on the main plot anyway; there’s absolutely no reason for them to be there at all.

Dr Conrad: leading astrophysicist and snappy dresser. Can’t afford to splash out on some sleeping togs, though, can he?

It’s one of those ACME cartoons where Daffy Duck runs straight through a wall. Except this time Francis Matthews is doing it instead.

Notice how Grey and Ochre are sat as far away from Magenta as possible. Poor man. Even his workmates snub him. Either that or he’s farted.