"Disaster will strike the Atlantic seaboard of North America. We will deal a heavy blow to the prestige of the world."

The prestige of the world?! In relation to what? What passing alien creature is going to travel by, stop and smirk "Ha ha ha, those puny humans are minus an oceanic seaboard! They have gone down in my estimation! Ha ha ha!" Really, what sense does the comment make? How does desecrating a beach bring devastating misery to the nations of the globe? Good grief.

In fact, we never do find out what exactly the Mysterons wanted to do or what they wanted to destroy. This is the first of many of this episode’s problems.

A nuclear reactor in transit to the Manicougan power complex is stolen by the Mysterons when they destroy and duplicate the transporter vehicle and driver. Before security forces and Spectrum can trace the transporter, the Mysteron driver transfers the reactor to a Seneca construction company automated helicopter, controlled by a Seneca employee held hostage by Captain Black, and the thermic safety valve of the reactor is removed. Without it, the reactor will slowly overheat and then explode. Whilst the reactor is secretly taken towards the Expo 2068 construction area, Spectrum gives chase to the original – and of course now empty – transporter, unaware that they are on a fool’s errand and that the time wasted brings the safety of the (sigh) Atlantic seaboard closer to jeopardy…

I won’t be able to tell you how the story is resolved as I don’t actually know. The episode is so hideously confusing that very little of it makes any kind of sense.

We’re seven episodes away from the end of the series yet we’re privy to yet another Mysteron power. As well as being able to teleport themselves out of dire situations if need be – or perhaps it is only Captain Black that can do this – at the beginning of this episode we see that they can teleport ordinary everyday objects as well. Captain Black drives up to a road diversion, stares at it for a while and then the roadblock disappears, reappearing on an opposite road. Cunning, if slightly pointless. Also makes us consider how many other times in the past random transmigration of objects might have been useful to the Mysterons.

Also, the Mysteron driver is seemingly killed in a road accident. Where this nonsense about electricity being the Mysteron weakness came from I have no idea. It strikes me that back in episode 8, when it first happened, a Mysteron was simply killed by electricity and the Colonel leapt on that as the single key Mysteron weakness, ignoring all contrary evidence that Mysteron agents seem to be as easy to kill as everybody else.

Captain Scarlet daringly flies up to the helicopter transporter, cuts into the wooden crate being held by it, gets inside, approaches the reactor core and begins the shut-down procedures… following which the reactor rolls forward and crushes him to death against the side of the crate. He fortunately has enough life left to cut the reactor circuits before he can die of his injuries.

Well, actually, he doesn’t die of his injuries, but rather dies when the helicopter – nuclear device onboard – veers into a tower and explodes in flames. Now that’s pure bad luck. When we see his body, however, it’s not blackened or crushed or burnt or anything. In fact all he has is a bit of a nasty gash on his left cheek.

Spectrum falls for the Mysteron decoy transporter and everybody takes their time in attempting to work out where the reactor’s got to. I’m also not totally sure if Spectrum wins at the end or not.

Well this is difficult. Y’see, I’m not quite sure what happens at the end. Captain Scarlet does carry out the shut down procedures on the reactor but only cuts the last one just as the reactor is a half-second away from going critical. The helicopter holding the reactor then crashes into a tower and explodes. Now, it doesn’t look as if it causes a nuclear explosion – which is what the Mysterons wanted to achieve – but then again nuclear devices have blown up in this series before without causing much of a fuss (Big Ben Strikes Again and Treble Cross). And if a reactor is on the very, very verge of going critical and then is subjected to an extra dosage of immense heat I’d be sure it’d be enough to send the thing haywire and cause a nuclear explosion.

However, nobody at the end comments on what’s happened, with neither a statement being made that Scarlet’s saved the day again or that the Mysterons have succeeded. Owing to the stupid way the Mysterons phrased their threat, which didn’t give a specific target, I don’t know what the Mysterons wanted to do and so I can’t tell whether things went to their plan or not. It would generally hinge on whether a nuclear explosion did or did not occur but we’re never told. We do see, however, Captain Blue flying a helicopter around the place having picked up Scarlet’s body so I think we’re meant to infer that Scarlet did save the day after all and that this fact was simply fudged by the inclusion of a silly helicopter explosion. I’ll give Spectrum the point as I reckon it was meant to be clear that the Mysterons had failed again. I couldn’t be 100% certain of it, though.

Spectrum: 22 Mysterons: 4

There’s expository dialogue throughout but it’s all necessary. In fact, what we really needed was more of the stuff to make sense of the plot.

No double entendres.

No jokes.

No final speech, either. Captain Blue takes off in a helicopter with Captain Scarlet’s body onboard, contacts Cloudbase to let them know what he’s doing and that’s it.

WHITE: "Check Ground Security and see if there’s anything that could be the target for this Mysteron threat!"

An ice cream van, maybe?

It’s a seashore. A seashore, for Heaven’s sake. That’s what a "seaboard" is. Are the Mysterons going to go down and persuade the hermit crabs to take over the continent?

___

WHITE: "The only things moving in there are a couple of supply helicopters for a construction company building Expo 2068."

SCARLET: "Helicopters?!"

WHITE: "Yes, Captain. The Seneca company have them under remote control."

SCARLET: "Seneca?!"

He catches on quick, this boy.

Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. A truly jaw-dropping moment of sheer unadulterated "My God, they’re so thick!" brilliance.

SCARLET: "Colonel, how big a cargo can they carry?"

WHITE: "Pretty big."

Short pause. Sound of Colonel choking.

WHITE: "Wait a MINUTE!"

Oh well done, Colonel, well done. You’ve finally worked out what’s going on with the limited evidence at your disposal – that evidence being that the reactor’s been transferred to another vehicle and that the only other vehicles in a five mile radius are helicopters. He even enunciates each word of "Wait a minute!" in an over-the-top comedy fashion, making him sound as if he has the mental age of a 6-year-old. I do love the Colonel, I really do, but it’s more the love one has for a stuffed teddy bear than for a competent, reasoning member of the human race.

Again it’s a Scarlet and Blue solo mission, though Destiny Angel flies about and spots the decoy transporter.

The nuclear reactor transporter is detoured so as to go over an unfinished bridge by Captain Black and the driver is killed and duplicated (along with the transporter itself). Fortunately for the Mysterons, neither the vehicle nor the reactor explode, which strikes me as hugely unlikely. The scientists may have neutralised the reactor but they certainly didn’t neutralise the escort vehicle, and if that had exploded then the reactor ought to have gone up with it. Black then goes to the power complex itself later and starts bullying the stuff about with a pistol.

Later there’s a strange bit where the Mysteron driver, having transferred the reactor to the helicopter, shoots a bearded woodcutter lurking about in the bushes. We don’t usually witness such collateral damage, and it gives the Mysterons a nastier side than usual. We even see blood when the character clutches at his punctured chest. The woodcutter eventually serves a plot function: to give Scarlet and Blue a completely baffling clue that doesn’t help them at all. Well thanks for that. It turns out later that he was trying to say "Seneca!", the name of the construction company, but by the time Scarlet works it all out it’s ceased to have any relevance.

Oh, and we also now know what happened to that scary monkey-faced bastard who was last seen roving around the surface of the Moon about seven episodes back: he’s now working for the Seneca construction company, controlling the "flow of helicopters". He finally meets his fate when Captain Black makes him his bitch for a while vis-à-vis reactor stealing, whereupon, his usefulness at an end, he gets shot for his troubles.

Presumably Scarlet’s jetpack, consumed in a fiery explosion, is now a bit knackered.

As mentioned above, the transporter drives off a broken, uncompleted bridge, though doesn’t explode, robbing the moment of all majesty. I also wonder why the end of the bridge wasn’t clearly marked by lots of signs and barriers aside from the one detour barrier placed a mile up the road from it; it’s not really marked at all. It’s just there. You’re driving along and then – whoops – you’ve gone off a cliff. Good council planning, there.

The vehicle itself must be a bad omen, as it drives through a barrier and off the road again when Scarlet chases it. And again it doesn’t explode. What gives?

Despite the transporter’s reluctance to explode, the helicopter at the end gives us one quite large bang, which is nice to watch, even if it does make the story unintelligible.

No forenames.

More of a dunce than usual.

An interesting fact is that this episode was written by Shane Rimmer, better known as the voice of Scott Tracy from Thunderbirds (he was also in Doctor Who: The Gunfighters along with David Graham, the voice of Brains, Parker and Gordon Tracy). Shane also wrote episode 5 of this series, Avalanche, but I didn’t notice at the time, and co-wrote a third episode which I’ll be reviewing soon: Inferno. He also wrote a number of episodes of Joe 90.

The back section of the reactor transporter, and the reactor itself, look like the same props (possibly repainted) used back in Big Ben Strikes Again, episode 3, where the Mysterons also nicked a transporter and its nuclear device. The Mysterons must be getting bored if they’re resorting to old, failed plans to sort out the world.

The Mysteron driver, upon noticing that Scarlet’s SPV is closing in on the transporter, cries "Spectrum!" in an angry and surprised way. However, at this point – with the reactor transferred to another vehicle – he’s purposefully acting as a decoy anyway, so why he should be annoyed that he’s successfully deceived the people he was hoping to deceive I haven’t the foggiest notion.

The ad-break cliffhanger is Scarlet and Blue discovering that the transporter is empty and that the nuclear reactor must have been switched to another vehicle, something the viewer has been made fully aware of five minutes ago.

There are a number of unexplained questions in this one, most of which come simply from a lack of clarity in the script. For a start, what is Expo 2068? A tower being built has the name on it, but does it refer to the tower, to the company or to something else entirely? Why is it important? I’m also not sure if the Manicougan power complex and the construction site are meant to be two different locations or the same one, nor why, if the former, the reactor is taken to the construction site by the Mysterons. What do the Mysterons wish to achieve? If they want to damage the Atlantic seaboard why don’t they explode the reactor as soon as they get their hands on it? Why do they need to take it to the construction site at all? What was the reactor originally for? Does it blow up at the end of the episode or doesn’t it? Why do we not even see the Atlantic seaboard at any point so we know what’s at stake? I’m used to episodes with plotholes but when the basic fundamentals of the story – what the baddies want to do and how the goodies stop them – are left unexplained I get a bit irked.

A complete mess of an episode that doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing and, even then, is derivative of a number of other Captain Scarlet episodes anyway. The bloodthirsty nature of the Mysterons is an interesting touch but that only accounts for a couple of scenes, and the brief appearance of Monkey Bastard doesn’t perk things up either. The fact that I must have seen this about three times already but this morning couldn’t remember anything about it when I came to do the review says a lot.

I don’t think Monkey Bastard is happy with my episode rating. I’m almost tempted to change it to ensure my survival.

What I need is a Nelson laugh from The Simpsons here.

"Oh, er, sorry, I’m looking for a grandma and her little red granddaughter. Last seen in the company of a slathering wolf. Possibly Freudian. Have you seen them?"