New Captain Scarlet's Greatest Episodes: Touch of the Reaper

In celebration of New Captain Scarlet's 20th anniversary and its definitive Blu-ray release, we're examining some of our all-time favourite episodes of Gerry Anderson's last television series. In Touch of the Reaper, Captain Scarlet must prevent the world's most powerful leader from succumbing to a devastating virus while grappling with his own broken sense of humanity!

Much as the classic 1967 series is held in the highest regard as the 'superior' version of Captain Scarlet, the series only ever made modest attempts to grapple with its heady, often terrifying thematic questions. The physical and mental distinctions between a human being and a Mysteron agent are rarely analysed in the original series, making episodes like Touch of the Reaper all the more valuable. The opening episode of New Captain Scarlet's second batch of 26 episodes presents the series with a visually grim depiction of biological warfare, balanced with nuanced questioning of just how secure Paul Metcalfe feels in his human skin - and how easily that security can be demolished.

However, this deconstruction of Paul's sense of humanity isn't the core of the episode. Instead, it's a nagging element utilised to bookend an otherwise confidently swift-paced biological thriller. Touch of the Reaper opens with what is surely New Captain Scarlet's visually grotesque Mysteronisation sequences; Doctor Michael King and assistant Dayna Parish are deliberately exposed to Razers Disease by the Mysterons, triggering the Mysteron replication process. The sharp close-up of the decomposing hazmat suits deflating as the human bodies perish is supremely unnerving; not just for the audience, but also for the members of Spectrum.

Halfway through the series' 26-episode run, security footage captured at the laboratory allows Spectrum to finally witness a Mysteron reconstruction take place. It's these scenes that provokes Paul into grappling with the blurred boundaries of his own biological make-up. It's a pointed moment coming off after The Achilles Messenger, which confirmed that Paul is neither fully human or Mysteron, but a hybrid of both. Probing at this breakdown injects a questioning quality between Mysterons and humanity that elevates New Captain Scarlet over the original.

Within the 22-minute confines of each episode of New Captain Scarlet, the series understandably struggles to balance too much introspection when the series' more reliably propulsive sense of action and adventure demands screentime. Touch of the Reaper is slickly geared throughout as a riveting entry in the series that pushes new methods of attack from the Mysterons. Without any acquisitions of gargantuan or otherwise world-ending technologies seen in Enigma or Best of Enemies, it's the Mysterons agents themselves who are the weapons - or rather, they're merely the carriers, passing on the lethal virus with a single touch. The virus itself being human-made feels like a commentary on humanity's own self-destructive causes when bacteria is used for malicious means. and is an idea exploited further in Proteus.   

New Captain Scarlet always knows how to move with an editorial sharpness in its pacing as we surge across varying locations enabled by the nimble flow of the script. From biological research centres to isolated woodland cabins to packed night-time highways, Touch of the Reaper deftly carries us through Scarlet and Blue's hunt for the Mysteronised carriers without feeling aggressively breathless. Indeed, the Mysterons remaining one step ahead of Spectrum by employing two carriers may feel redundant to their overall aims of assassinating the U.S. President, but it's in-keeping with that war of nerves mentality to keep Spectrum guessing. For all of its reliance as a tactic to arguably stretch episodes out, it's a move that rarely outstays its welcome in maintaining the psychologically damaging factor induced by the Mysterons' warmongering tactics.

Conversely, Spectrum aren't left in the cold in quickly deducing that insufferable TV journalist Dan Lloyd, boyfriend to Dayna, is the real carrier intended to carry out the Mysterons' threat. Once more, we're perhaps highlighting the confines of a 22-minute script, but it's always pleasing to see Spectrum treated as having the stoic and intelligence not to be overly rattled by the Mysterons' mind games. Them being the cause of this war of nerves while simultaneously being the only ones to go toe-to-toe against the Mysterons makes a neat juxtaposition.

Touch of the Reaper boasts one of New Captain Scarlet's most visually dazzling and violently delivered climaxes with Scarlet's maniacal boarding of Air Force One to stop the Mysteronised Dan Lloyd from assassinating the President. Scarlet's boarding itself is rammed with frenetically edited shots, brilliantly capturing the chaotic energy of the scene. In a final deadly twist that highlights just how much onscreen brutalism New Captain Scarlet gets away with, Scarlet himself only manages to defeat Lloyd after he's been infected by the virus. 

Touch of the Reaper delights in its subtle advancements of the War of Nerves. From Spectrum's first-hand view of the Mysterons' reconstruction to the Mysteronised's Michael King's freakishly disembodied transmission of the Mysterons directly addressing Colonel White, it's an episode that adds some welcome gravitas to Spectrum's ongoing efforts in preventing the Mysterons from total victory. For an episode with such intense levels of murder in its eyes, we end on the sweetly reassuring note of Captain Blue's reassurance to the recovering Paul that he's still very much human.

Biological warfare used to murder the Earth's most powerful leader signals New Captain Scarlet's hyper-futuristic world is still rooted in very real and contemporary methods of attack, bolstered by how effortless the series makes its larger-than-life action set pieces appear within that streamlined 22-minute format. Yet for all of this visual bluster, thematic bleakness, and physical violence, ending on a gentle reminder of Paul and Adam's friendship subtly alerts us to just how effortless New Captain Scarlet makes its integration of varying emotions feel.

Experience the War of Nerves like never before with the New Captain Scarlet Collectors Edition Blu-Ray, available now!

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