No Strings Attached

As seems to happen at the end of the year, a few notable folk have shuffled off their coils. Notably, Jack Klugman threw a seven only days after I'd written about him on this here blog. James Roday may want to feel nervous about now.

However, it was the death of Gerry Anderson that touched me most. Kids today may find it hard to believe, but even in the early 1980s, a TV show featuring a bunch of puppets could still bring a sense of awe from a youngster.

Thunderbirds is the one most people remember, and it was ace, as was Stingray. I did think Joe 90 was a load of tosh. But the best by some distance was always Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. It was totally fantastic and even today, if by chance it happens to be on somewhere, I'll make an effort to see it.

For one thing, it had a heavy sci-fi element, which has always had a sway over me. To whit: at some point in the future, humanity has managed to jaunt over to Mars. Seeing alien buildings, the idiot astros panic and open fire, somewhat understandably pissing off the locals to the degree they declare war on Earth and take one of the hapless humans as their unwilling slave.

The trick the Martians (only ever seen as glowing rings of light and a deep voice) have mastered is being able to identically duplicate anything - but first, as the introduction states - they must DESTROY. Thus, they quickly knock off top SPECTRUM agent Captain Scarlet, recreate him as a slave and send him off to assassinate the World Prez. However, the plot is foiled and the Cap somehow regains his human consciousness, surprisingly being welcomed back into the fold by Colonel White as our main weapon in the war against the Mysterons - mainly because he has now become "virtually indestructible", an ability that would see him meet and brush off various grisly fates.

What we never got a sense of was how Scarlet felt about all this. After all, it seemed clear to me that he was nothing but a duplicate of somebody who has been killed - an idea later revived (ho ho) in Red Dwarf with the character of Rimmer. Yet never once did we get any sense of existential despair from knowing that his memories weren't actually his.

Perhaps it's reading too much into it. In any case, the show looked great and had some top storylines. A lot of these featuring around the man the Mysterons gang-pressed into their service: Captain Black. Always dressed in dark clothes, eyes that looked like he hadn't slept in weeks - if they ever make a film version of the series, then I would humbly suggest myself for the role.

I was born for the part!

On top of all this, it always had a superb theme tune. Check it out and sing along at home:

"They crash him, and his body may burn

They smash him, but they know he'll return -

TO LIVE AGAIN!"