The Worst Episodes of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Every episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons!
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, often referred to as Captain Scarlet, is a 1960s British science-fiction television series produced by the Century 21 Productions company of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, John Read and Reg Hill. First broadcast on ATV Midlands from September 1967 to May 1968, it has since been transmitted in more than 40 other countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Characters are presented as marionette puppets alongside scale model sets and special effects in a filming technique that the Andersons termed "Supermarionation". This technology incorporated solenoid motors as a means of synchronising the puppet's lip movements with pre-recorded dialogue. Set in 2068, Captain Scarlet presents the hostilities between Earth and a race of Martians known as the Mysterons. After human astronauts attack their city on Mars, the vengeful Mysterons declare war on Earth, initiating a series of reprisals that are countered by Spectrum, a worldwide security organisation. Spectrum boasts the extraordinary abilities of its primary agent, Captain Scarlet. During the events of the pilot episode, Scarlet acquires the Mysteron healing power of "retro-metabolism" and is thereafter considered to be virtually "indestructible", being able to recover fully from injuries that would normally be fatal.
Lowest Rated Episodes Summary
The worst episode of "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons" is "The Inquisition", rated 6.5/10 from 60 user votes. It was directed by Ken Turner and written by Tony Barwick. "The Inquisition" aired on 5/14/1968 and is rated 0.4 point(s) lower than the second lowest rated, "Renegade Rocket".
6.5/10 60 votes#1 - The Inquisition
Season 1 Episode 32 - Aired 5/14/1968
While relaxing at a smart countryside restaurant during a late evening, Captain Blue, accompanied by Captain Scarlet, starts to feel strange after drinking a cup of black coffee. When Scarlet goes to fetch their coats, Blue instantaneously disappears, and when awakening, finds himself sitting in Lieutenant Green's chair back on Cloudbase, with a Spectrum Intelligence agent, who calls himself Colgan, sitting in Colonel White's chair. He explains that Blue has been absent without leave for three months, and must prove his identity by disclosing top-security information; the Spectrum cipher codes, before he can return to active duty. Without having to do this, Captain Blue instead story-tells three Spectrum assignments involving the Mysterons: the nuclear attack on London, the mission of destroying the Mysteron complex in Crater 101, and the prevention of a Mysteronised Commodore and his aid from slaughtering the Supreme Command of the World Air Force at the Scottish Glen Garry
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Tony Barwick
6.9/10 69 votes#2 - Renegade Rocket
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/19/1968
A Variable Geometry Rocket is hi-jacked by a Space Major Reeves, an old accomplice of Colonel White's, who launches the space-plane and makes a quick departure in a fighter jet with the rocket's flight programme unit, which only he knows the 4-letter self-destruct code, to obliterate the rocket before it knocks out an essential target, which happens to be Base Concord, the state-of-the-art airbase where the rocket originally left from. Captains Scarlet and Blue are assigned to self-destruct the rocket, before it reaches Base Concord, but to accomplish this, they have to check 10,000 possible 4-lettered code-words, starting from 'ABLE', and they don't even know that Reeves has set the destruct code-word as 'ZERO'.
Director: Brian Burgess
Writer: N/A
7.2/10 65 votes#3 - Model Spy
Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 12/29/1967
Two models, eager to make their names publicised and internationally-known in France, are killed in a dramatic staged monorail-train crash, while en route to the countries' capital Paris, and are rebuilt by the Mysterons, in a bid to assassinate Andre Verdain, owner of the ""House of Verdain"", a top modelling & fashion design company, which keeps his real occupation as the controller of the European Area Intelligence Service a confidential secret. Captains Scarlet and Blue, along with angels Symphony and Destiny are assigned to act as French newspaper photographers and stunning, attractive models, in order to guard Verdain from any Mysteron attacks, but they are absolutely oblivious of the presence of the two female model doppelgangers.
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Bill Hedley
7.2/10 57 votes#4 - Traitor
Season 1 Episode 29 - Aired 4/23/1968
The Australian Spectrum Hovercraft Centre, Koala Base, the university-style academy where several trainees are sent to brush up their skills and sit their practical and mental exams to become Spectrum hovercraft pilots, is the most likely place for Captains Scarlet and Blue to investigate, where several explosive sabotages have been made upon Koala's state-of-the-art hovercrafts, hence why the Mysterons latest threat states that there is a traitor within the world-security organisation, and that it threatens to tear it apart from within. Already settling on a few probable suspects, including the cadet leader, their suspicions rise even further when their room is set ablaze when sleeping. But when attending a routine test-run the next day, with one of their selected suspects, the duo discover that there isn't any traitors within Spectrum at all.
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.3/10 77 votes#5 - Spectrum Strikes Back
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 11/24/1967
A divulged, top-secret meeting with the World President and two Spectrum Intelligence Agency officers, one of which is a general, the other a science doctor, who has created a new Mysteron electrical gun & detector following the inexplicable events with the late Doctor Magnus who attempted to kill General Tiempo, takes place in the shooting grounds of an African private game reserve. Colonel White and Captains Scarlet and Blue find themselves in a treacherous hunting sport, when the Mysterons helplessly attempt to prevent Spectrum from conducting the usage of their two brand new and innovative mobile weapons where one can kill a Mysteronised person with a strong electricity voltage, the other can distinguish and identify Mysteron characteristics within a person using normal X-Ray systems. But, unbeknown to the group of men, there security officer-in-charge, Captain Indigo, has been murdered in cold-blood by Captain Black.
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.4/10 81 votes#6 - The Trap
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 11/10/1967
A World Air Force plane, carrying Commodore Goddard and his right-hand man, and being escorted by Melody Angel, is struck by a shocking clash of thunder and lightning, and crashes, directly becoming the object to be reconstructed by the Mysterons. The force broadcasts it's current threat, that they aim to kill all 10 of the worlds' top air-chiefs, who make up the executive Supreme Command of the World Air Force, who want to discuss a plan to dissolve the war of nerves between Earth and the hostile force. They plan on doing so, by holding an International Air Conference at the loneliest location in Europe and the UK; Glen Garry Castle, in Scotland, which the Mysteronised Goddard has chosen to hold the conference to be. This is however unknown to Colonel White, who is awaiting the approval from Captain Scarlet, that the castle's security is set up and approved. After she brings the delegates to the castle, to start the conference, Symphony Angel is taken prisoner, as is Captain Scarlet,
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: Alan Pattillo
7.4/10 75 votes#7 - Point 783
Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 12/22/1967
A modern generation kind of tank, the Unitron – a deadly computer-assisted vehicle, is seized by the Mysterons to destroy the Supreme Commander of the Earth Forces, when he is escorted by Captain Blue to the tanks' testing range field in the Sahara desert. Two of the Commander's highest-ranking officers, Colonel Storm and Major Brooks, while en route to the SHEF headquarters, are killed in an explosive collision in a mountain-integrated tunnel, involving their car and a gasoline tanker truck, and consequently revived back to life with Mysteronised bodies. Both men are used as composers to complete the Mysteron's threat, with Major Brooks' attempt becoming unsuccessful, but Colonel Storm's turning into a life-threatening situation when accompanying the Supreme Commander to Point 783, the acting command post where the two test co-ordinators are carrying out final tests with the Unitron, but little do they know that the Mysterons have programmed the mighty formidable weapon to seek and de
Director: Robert Lynn
Writer: David Williams, Peter Curran
7.4/10 58 votes#8 - Expo 2068
Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 3/26/1968
A newly produced core reactor is being transported to the Manicougan Power Complex, which is near enough found near the Atlantic Seaboard of North America, which the Mysterons have announced that they will submit a ""heavy blow to the prestige of the world."" While conducting security checks within the designated area, it becomes aware that a missing, off-route Transporter 43, which has already inadvertently crashed over the edge of a demolished bridge, thanks to Captain Black's deliberate diversion of the planned route, is what the Mysterons are using to smuggle the reactor. With the core reactor already being aerially ferried in a shipping helicopter, and with the controller at the Expo 2068 construction site looking down at the barrel of Captain Black's hand-gun, Spectrum are back to square one before they can investigate the reactor situation. It becomes apparent however, that the copter's target is the Expo 2068 site, and evidence confirms that the thermal safety valve has been remo
Director: Leo Eaton
Writer: Shane Rimmer
7.5/10 67 votes#9 - Seek and Destroy
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 1/5/1968
The Mysterons present to Spectrum their new act of avenge; to kill one of the Angel pilots, and with Destiny on vacation, she is their apparent target, so Captains Scarlet and Blue fly to Paris to pick her up and accompany her back to Cloudbase. On the way back, 3 brand new, un-painted Angel Interceptors, reconstructed from those that were subsequently destroyed in a scorching warehouse fire, open fire upon the Spectrum personnel, but a daring dynamic and enthralling aerial dogfight between the Mysteron aircraft and the real Spectrum Angels ensures, testing Melody's Rhapsody's and Harmony's outstanding skills and training to the maximum.
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: David Williams, Peter Curran
7.5/10 69 votes#10 - Shadow of Fear
Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 2/2/1968
Captains Scarlet and Blue travel to the Himalayas to supervise and administrate Spectrum's new phase to monitor signals from a space satellite that has been launched into the orbit surrounding Mars, and to snap-shot high resolution detailed pictures of the planet, which will be relayed and received by the large mountain satellite station that the probe was launched from. The second satellite, with the first acting as a decoy, successfully lands on Mars, and sets to have Spectrum successfully completing the code-named ""Project Sword"" operation, but the whole carefully-planned out arrangement is placed under threat when one of the participating technicians ostensibly falls dead and is brought back to life by the Mysterons, with one instruction: to sabotage the observatory and to interrupt the satellites' transmission, before Earth comes to learn every single detail about the force, and prevent them from continuing the war of nerves and retaliation against the planet.
Director: Robert Lynn
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.5/10 62 votes#11 - Fire at Rig 15
Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 2/16/1968
A flaming 1000-feet inferno at a deliberately impaired oil-drilling rig, Rig Number 15, attracts the attention of Spectrum when the Mysterons explain their new threat to ""immobilize"" the international-security organisation, which would render all their aerial, sea and land vehicles from there daily used purposes. With the ultra-sonic oil wells or Spectrum's main oil refinery at Bensheba, not so far from Rig 15, as possible & potential targets, explosive specialist Jason Smith, is hired to extinguish the fire with his vast range of high explosive charges. Approaching the blazing rubble, Smith falls down in front of his tractor, and is reconstructed by the Mysterons when the tractor is forced forwards, burying the real Smith under the debris, but extinguishing the fire. The next day, the doppelganger Smith departs early from the site, leaving his original body near the downed rig, alerting Captain Scarlet that the Mysteron is on his way to the Bensheba oil refinery to annihilate it's ent
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Bryan Cooper
7.5/10 58 votes#12 - Inferno
Season 1 Episode 28 - Aired 4/16/1968
An SKR-4 recovery vehicle is sent by the Euro-Space Tracker Station to destroy a live rocket, containing a malfunctioning destruct system, but ends being blown out of orbit and completely destroyed, when it collides with a considerably large meteorite. Re-produced and controlled by the Mysterons, it becomes the bombing weapon, which will accomplish the forces' newest target: the Najama Complex, a vital colossal desalination plant, situated by the foothills of the Andes mountains. Its purpose is to process seawater from the Pacific Ocean, and irrigate the interior, and without it, hundreds of square miles would regress to waste land. The complex is automated and requires very few personnel to administer the process, however it consists of vulnerable tanks, each containing liquid oxygen which would turn the whole valley into a ""blazing inferno"" if attacked with strong force. While the complex personnel are evacuated, Captains Scarlet, Blue, Magenta and Ochre are sent to set-up surveillan
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: Shane Rimmer, Tony Barwick
7.5/10 62 votes#13 - Flight to Atlantica
Season 1 Episode 30 - Aired 4/30/1968
The Spectrum Cloudbase officers host a non-permitted party, excluding the ultimately strict Colonel White, to celebrate the 1st anniversary of the world-security organisation, with the assistance of an anonymous well wisher supplying the champagne, which has in fact been spiked with an organic compound which causes sporadic amnesia and general irresponsibility. After being severely cautioned by the Colonel, whom discovers the party and becomes very angry at his personnel for not receiving official permission to celebrate the anniversary, the Mysterons announce their intentions to destroy the World Navy Base of Atlantica, an invulnerable underwater complex protected by sea-to-air rockets and offensively-equipped submarines. Captains Blue and Ochre are handed the assignment to disband a wreckage which is being carried by heavy currents towards the Atlantica base, but the champagne has already taken control over them, turning them into juvenile rebelists. Captain Black manages to changeov
Director: Leo Eaton
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.6/10 92 votes#14 - Manhunt
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 10/20/1967
At the Culver Atomic Centre, located in Yorkshire, England, Captain Black accidentally exposes himself to a short-term radioactive isotope, when detected by the security guards, causing his hesitation. Although the isotope is physically harmless, it makes him a straight-forward target when using radiation-tracking systems during Spectrum's full-scale manhunt, to uncover and apprehend the Mysteron agent. But when the organisation is decoyed, Black manages to kidnap Symphony Angel, who disobeys direct orders from Colonel White. Instead of maintaining her aerial surveillance mission, she finds herself on death-row, in a radiation chamber, and Black in absolute control, with the judgment of killing her, or letting her go free.
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.6/10 80 votes#15 - Operation Time
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 11/17/1967
General J.F. Tiempo, the Commander of the Western Regional World Defence Government, is submitted to the Mysteron's next punishment target, and the doctor who will perform a major and much-required operation on Tiempo is eradicated during a dramatic car crash involving Captain Black, and reconstructed by the Mysterons. Spectrum are still befuddled on how the force have declared their act of retaliation as to ""kill time"", but Captain Magenta eventually cracks the dilemma and an elaborate game is underway by the Spectrum personnel, in order to trap the person who will take the life of the General, but two advantaging surprises are about to be opened by the Spectrum officers, which will undoubtedly assist them immensely in their contemporary battle with the Mysterons. But, what they don't realise, is that the doctor who will pefrom the neurosurgery operation on the General is a Mysteron killer.
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Stephen J. Mattick, Richard Conway
7.6/10 69 votes#16 - Special Assignment
Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 12/1/1967
Spectrum Intelligence impart Captain Scarlet with a ""special assignment"" which is to consciously loose inadequately at a casino, and to place himself on their debt owners list for 5,000 credits. When this is reported to Spectrum Headquarters, Colonel White fires Scarlet on the spot, for improper use of the organisations' code of conduct, and his occupation taken away from him. Living in a inexpensive, shabby hotel room temporarily, a pair of Mysteron agents, posing as sought after gangsters, formulate a deal with the now Paul Metcalfe, with his I.O.U. for 5,000 credits, in return for a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, which will be utilized to brake into the Nevada Nuclear City Complex, with an atomic incendiary device, which will obliterate the whole of North America.
Director: Robert Lynn
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.7/10 83 votes#17 - Avalanche
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 10/27/1967
The Frost Line Outer Defence Base Network, is endangered by the Mysterons when they destroy a maintenance truck, murdering it's engineer/driver in the process, as a cover to infiltrate the defence bases sited in Northern Canada, where the Mysteronised engineer intends to proceed in removing all oxygen from the bases' self-contained atmosphere. With bases' ""Red Deer"" and ""Carriboo"" already taken down, the next base in the ring, ""Big Bear"", is the Mysterons' final target, but if the base is attacked also, the commander-in-chief of the defence network plans to commence a vengeful missile strike on Mars, where the main Mysteron complexes are established. Colonel White desperately wants to prevent this from happening, and so, he assigns Lieutenant Green to his first off-base, ""in-the-field"" assignment, along with Captain Scarlet, to evaluate just how the bases are being cut off, and stop the maintenance engineer from triggering off a global disaster.
Director: Brian Burgess
Writer: Shane Rimmer
7.7/10 76 votes#18 - The Heart of New York
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 12/8/1967
A professional vault break-in duo seek out a minor Spectrum Security Vault, near the coast of New York, where ""useless"" documentation is taken, which proves quite valuable to the lawbreakers. Along with another gang member, they simulate a fake play-act for a forest lookout warden, just on the outskirts of tthe American capital, as hopeless, potentially dangerous drunks. They set-up their car with fake look alike puppets to deceive the warden into thinking that the 3 drunken men that he just warned, has helplessy crashed off the high mountaineous road, and exploded into a fireball. The gang then take care of the warden and, deliberately posing as Mysteronised humans, they announce the force's latest peril to destroy the Second National Bank of New York, however the real Mysterons have yet to announce this at all, except for stating that they will destroy ""The Heart of New York"", but Colonel White understands that the bank is more than vital to full-fill the threat, as it stocks the en
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.7/10 63 votes#19 - Dangerous Rendezvous
Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 2/9/1968
Concluding from where Crater 101 left of, Spectrum take a chance by commencing a maximum security operation to bodyguard radio communications expert, Doctor Kurnitz, from the Nash Institute of Technologies, up to Cloudbase to send a broadcasted voice message by Colonel White to the Mysterons base on Mars, in an effort to solve their differences, and to end the raging war of nerves between them. But the Mysteron pulsator stolen by Captain Scarlet during the expedition at Crater 101 is used as an explosive charge, to start a chain reaction on-board Cloudbase, which will no doubt utterly destroy the aerial base, and with Scarlet drawn away by Captain Black to prevent him from saving his fellow officers, the world-security organisation known as Spectrum, is condemned to be crippled.
Director: Brian Burgess
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.7/10 57 votes#20 - Flight 104
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 3/1/1968
Spectrum are involved with the safe, quiet transportation of escorting the world's leading astrophysicist, Doctor Congrad, to a Switzerland-located conference with the World President at Lake Toma. After boarding their mysteriously-empty flight, which could possibly be due to it being the ""slack"" season, with planes flying usually 3/4 empty, but with no hostesses around, Captains Scarlet and Blue become suspicious, and realise that they are trapped on-board the airliner, along with two tagging-along, & over-confident news-reporters, when learning there isn't any pilots flying the machine, immediately suspecting the Mysterons are controlling it. But that's not the least of their worries when the plane starts to descend rapidly, and its nose pointing straight in the direction of the French Alps.
Director: Alan Perry, Robert Lynn
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.7/10 58 votes#21 - The Launching
Season 1 Episode 26 - Aired 4/2/1968
Mervin Brand, a reporter for The Tribune newspaper, is killed in his jet by thunder-lightening while en route to the press conference with President Roberts. When reconstructed promptly by the Mysterons, so Tribune Control don't suspect that the real Mervin Brand has crashed and died, the Mysteron Brand continues his flight to the press conference, but is stopped in his tracks by the Angels, who have strict instructions to attack & destroy any aircraft violating the restricted airspace over the President's residence, due to his life being under siege by the Mysterons. His arrogance and egotism doesn't assist matters, as he believes the enemy foes preparing to kill him will not achieve their latest ploy of revenge, and ignores the fact that the Mysterons killed the Director-General of the United Asian Republic. Spectrum continue to secure his residence, but when the President reveals the new atomic-liner ship, built by the Trans-Pacific Shipping Corporation, is being named after him and
Director: Brian Burgess
Writer: David Williams, Peter Curran
7.7/10 57 votes#22 - Codename Europa
Season 1 Episode 27 - Aired 4/9/1968
Professor Gabriel Carney, an awarded scientist for designing original electronics, is assassinated at his own gadgets-fulfilled home by Captain Black, in order for the Mysterons to use his skills and knowledge of the hi-tech subject to kill the three joint presidents of the Congress of Europe, additionally recognised as The Triumvirate of Europe. The names of those three men are: Conrad Olafson, John L. Henderson and Joseph Meccini, and this specific trio of men are apparently dubbed the most powerful figures on Earth, after the World President. The Mysterons elect Conrad Olafson as the first to be killed, whom is located in an underground suite, 40-feet underground Vandon Base, a maximum-security centre where plentiful Spectrum security personnel are scattered over, and in addition, the Angels commencing repeated aerial patrols over the area and Captain Ochre acting as the officer in charge of security. Their attention is diverted instantly by a realistically audible incoming military
Director: Alan Perry
Writer: David Lee
7.7/10 71 votes#23 - Attack on Cloudbase
Season 1 Episode 31 - Aired 5/7/1968
The threat that Spectrum have been awaiting for had to come, and Cloudbase being the principal headquarters of the organisation makes it an obvious target which would make seizing control over Earth a lot more easier for the Mysterons in order for them to complete their raging war of nerves, so the ""aircraft-carrier in the sky"" is targeted for destruction. With Symphony Angel stranded in the desert due to an unknown explosion on her Angel Interceptor, forcing her to eject, Captain Blue especially becomes agitated, for obvious romantic reasons, at the fact that she could die. With instructions for any aircraft entering a 100-mile radius of the airbase to be destroyed, and itself sealed from all external contact, the Mysterons themselves decide to visit Earth to obliterate Cloudbase personally, making this threat the most vengeful of all their past avengements.
Director: Ken Turner
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.8/10 106 votes#24 - Winged Assassin
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 10/6/1967
A Mysteron sniper performs an unsuccessful attempt on the forces' new target: The Director General of the United Asian Republic, with Captain Grey arriving in the nick of time, and succeeding in disposing of the eavesdropping gunman. From there on, all personnel from Cloudbase and Spectrum H.Q. – London, along with the recovering Captain Scarlet, and his original partner Captain Blue, are dispatched to protect the Director General at all costs, whom has made arrangements to return to his home country. But the Spectrum officers are completely unaware of the inbound Mysteron-reconstructed civilian Stratojet airliner, the enemies' tool to fix and complete their assassination upon the important international foreign figure.
Director: David Lane
Writer: Tony Barwick
7.8/10 96 votes#25 - Big Ben Strikes Again
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 10/13/1967
In the centre of London, the capital of England, a double police-escorted transporter, carrying a nuclear explosive device, built for civilian use, seemingly goes out of control, shaking of its' motor guards and its driver regaining conscience in a back alley. The transporter, now in the remote-controlled possession of the Mysterons, has been hidden in an under construction car park. Captains Scarlet and Blue are assigned to investigate the drivers' mysterious discovery, that the famous Big Ben clock struck 13 times, which may be a clue to finding the transporter, before it destroys the whole of Central London. However, the driver's founding's are more than unreliable due to his perplexed state of memory.
Director: Brian Burgess
Writer: Tony Barwick