Captain Scarlet DVD: Review By stevegibbs

Puppet-meister and Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson followed up his wildly successful kids adventure with this unusual 32-part series. Focused on the title character, Captain Scarlet follows the exploits of a top military organization known as Spectrum. Their mission: to protect earth from attack by the Mysterons; an invisible alien race who have declared war on humanity.

In each of the 25-minute episodes, Captain Scarlet and the Spectrum gang attempt either to foil another Mysteron terrorist attack or to broker some kind of peace treaty. The complete 14 or so hours includes bomb threats, presidential assassinations, biological warfare, and so on. Not exactly your normal kiddy fare, it is more like a juvenile futuristic 24!

The features on this 4-disk set are either in the form of photo galleries or pages of written material, since the series was produced in the days before behind the scenes doc*mentaries.

Introduction to Captain Scarlet

Several pages setting the background for the world of Captain Scarlet and the formation of the Spectrum organization.

Commentary on two episodes by creator Gerry Anderson

One of the most interesting features, since Anderson explains some of the thinking and philosophy behind the show and its production techniques.

Gerry Anderson bio and filmography

Character biographies

Probably more than you'd want to know about the major characters - unless you happen to be a rabidly obsessed fan.

Vehicle guides

Basic information on the various ships and vehicles used in the show. If you've seen them in action, then much of this will be redundant.

Photos and production stills

The closest you get to a sneak peek behind the scenes. These collections of color and black and white photos show both stills from the show, and a number of the tricks used to pull off the various complex model and puppet sequences.

The full screen format show appears to have been cleaned up for this DVD release. The colors are back to their original psychedelic brightness, while the picture is about as sharp as possible for a transfer from 1960's film stock. Captain Scarlet now looks about as good as I ever remember seeing it years ago.

You can still listen in glorious old-fashioned mono, or switch to the newly remastered 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround. To be honest, the 5.1 track doesn't add that much to the show, since much of the sound originates onscreen and feeds through the front speakers anyway. However, the show's signature timpani scene changes are made much more dramatic - a nice touch.

When Captain Scarlet debuted in 1967 it proved to be much darker, more serious than any of Anderson's previous shows, and consequently, less popular. But for those of us who grew up on it, the series hasn't lost an any of its excitement after all these years. The marionette puppetry, while rather goofy, is still a lot of fun to watch; and who could forget the cool retro-futuristic costumes, ships and gadgets.

One of the best features of the show (in my humble opinion) is that there is never any guarantee that Spectrum will succeed every time. On occasion their missions fail, and sometimes success hangs only on a stroke of luck. above all, you have to hand it to a show that manages to kill off its main character in the very first episode (talk about childhood trauma)! I'm not going to tell you how he returns - you'll just have to find out for yourself.

Rumor has it that Anderson is currently working on an all CGI version of Captain Scarlet, to be released in either 2004 or 2005. I would definitely recommend watching the original first.