New Captain Scarlet's Greatest Episodes: Enigma

In celebration of New Captain Scarlet's 20th anniversary and the forthcoming release of its definitive Blu-ray release, we're counting down some of our all-time favourite episodes of Gerry Anderson's last television series. In Enigma, Spectrum experience surely its most surreal encounter with the Mysterons...

So much discourse surrounding New Captain Scarlet is anchored by its relationship with the classic series; how the 2005 CGI remake improves, or at least differs, from the 1967 Supermarionation series. Enigma however sees New Captain Scarlet heartily embrace its own bleakly intense flavour to its most fully realised in its depiction of the War of Nerves. If both incarnations of Captain Scarlet may be defined as a cosmic Cold War, then Enigma ramps up the Martian strangeness to its most extreme. Enigma captures New Captain Scarlet at its most captivatingly surreal, questioning our understanding of the already opaque Mysterons, while confirming that the Mysterons know precisely how to execute a crushing blow against Spectrum, a rare opportunity in this remake.

In Enigma, Spectrum scrambles into action when a colossal Mysteron flying saucer inexplicably arrives on Earth. Without any warning or premonition, the episode's full-bloodied opening scenes rattle with disdain for the methodical pacing of the original series - and how the Mysterons communicated their threats in advance to Spectrum, a narrative technique which New Captain Scarlet abandons.

The unprecedented arrival of the Mysteron craft recalls Attack on Cloudbase with the apparent proactiveness of the Mysterons to abruptly arrive on Earth itself to annihilate Spectrum. Instead, the strange appeal of this otherworldly behemoth is enough to lure Spectrum into a psychological maze that defines logic but galvanizes paranoia. The chilling sight of the awesome craft seemingly touched down after an erratic descent through the Earth's atmosphere is enough for Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, Captain Ochre and the rarely seen Captain Grey to embark on a journey into the unknown by venturing inside the saucer to investigate.

The design of the Mysteron craft itself, interior and exterior, is a monstrous wonder of production design that subjects its prisoners to intense psychological damage. The visual flavour of electrically pulsating black-and-green is such an evocative extension of the Mysterons' aesthetic as they're depicted in New Captain Scarlet. Countering this mechanical marauding is Spectrum's own vehicular action in the episode's opening scenes. New Captain Scarlet's hardware is always thrillingly realistic when deployed to dramatic effect. Witnessing the Falcon Interceptors in aerial dogfight against the Mysteron craft, their eventual reloading, and the subsequent loading up of the Albatross transporter craft to investigate the saucer's location are all a testament to the lasting hardware appeal of Anderson's worlds.

From here, the episode subsides into a tense rhythm as Spectrum's investigations into the labyrinthian craft morph into less of a nightmare and more of a permanent psychological unease. The terror presented here is never overcooked, instead perfectly serving to lure Spectrum, and the audience, into its unpredictable horror. The time-loop that ensnares Captain Ochre when she becomes separated from the gang is quietly haunting, but it's a shame that that underused Captain Grey doesn't get his own spotlight.  

Instead, it's Captain Scarlet who's subjected to the most intense psycho-bombing. Indeed, it's Scarlet himself who acknowledges the oddity of the situation early on - why are the Mysterons dispatching a spacecraft when they lack physical bodies? 

The answers to all of these mysteries spirals into reality in the episode's final devastating moments. Subjected to a mentally stupefying reality of Conrad and Simone playing happy families before surging into a replaying of Conrad's attack on Mars that triggered the war into life, Paul finds himself powerless to stop the war of nerves a second time. Teased with the idea that he can stop Black's actions, the episode's climactic moments reveal that the timeslip, the Mysteron craft were all fragmented realities designed to trick Spectrum while the real Mysteron attack took place elsewhere offscreen.

The components of these mental attack are satisfyingly savvy in their subtlety. Captain Scarlet was the ultimate target of the Mysterons here, but only as a taunting distraction. Knowing full well that the chance to not simply halt but reverse the war of nerves would be far too enticing for Spectrum, this mind-bending assault on Scarlet gifts the Mysterons with a sure-fire ability to target 30% of the world's oil reserves. The idea of ensnaring Scarlet is in-keeping with the level of interest the Mysterons keep in their lost warrior in this remake compared to the classic series, even if Scarlet's desire to regain his humanity feels a tad toothless. While we see something of the trauma of Scarlet's half-human/half-Mysteron biological make-up rear its head in Touch of the Reaper, it's rarely acknowledged elsewhere throughout the series. 

Still, the acknowledgement of the events of The Achilles Messenger, in which separate factions of the Mysterons desire a peaceful end to the war, bridges a sense of escalation for the series. Even though the Mysterons could easily wipe out Spectrum in a single blow, they aren't reliant on murderous tactics against the outfit. Instead, Enigma demonstrates the cruel trickster methods the Mysterons employ to wear Spectrum down psychologically, allowing a very tangible attack to succeed elsewhere. 

Enigma emboldens the paranoias felt by the members of Spectrum in fighting an enemy that can't possibly be defined by human understanding. It's an exercise in witnessing how cruelly depraved the Mysterons can be in subjecting Spectrum to the most harmful blows without ever laying a tangible finger upon them. Easily one of New Captain Scarlet's most weirdly powerful episodes.

Prepare to experience the War of Nerves like never before with the forthcoming release of our New Captain Scarlet Collectors Edition Blu-ray, available to pre-order now!

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