Happy Captain Scarlet Day, Anderfans! July 10th is the day we celebrate all things indestructible. This date, not to be confused with the actual anniversary date of the classic 1967 Supermarionation series, September 30th, holds odd significance within the events of the series. July 10th is a date that reoccurs throughout several episodes. The reason? It was the birthday of Captain Scarlet's script editor and head writer, Tony Barwick!

This year's Captain Scarlet Day is extra special, as it coincides with the 20th anniversary of New Captain Scarlet. With these combined occasions in mind, let's celebrate this year's Captain Scarlet Day by examining which series told the better version of the War of Nerves. Could it be that the classically regarded original series remains the superior take? Or is it going to be the more refined and sophisticated reinvention? Let's find out!

"This is the voice of the Mysterons..."

It's perhaps odd to define New Captain Scarlet as a total remake of the original series. Both incarnations maintain the same basic premise, sharing a similar grim tonal attitude that depicts death, destruction and violence as an everyday occurrence for Spectrum. Similarly, the Mysterons maintain their elusive nature in both puppet and CGI versions - surreal alien entities from the planet Mars, supposedly a collective consciousness, boasting the abilities of retrometabolism, able to reconstruct a person or an object. But first, they must destroy...

The Mysterons maintain their terrifyingly unseen qualities in both versions of Captain Scarlet, their invisible nature rooted in Gerry Anderson's concept of avoiding giving the Mysterons a physical form in an effort to futureproof his depiction of alien menaces, just in case life was ever found on Mars for real, and he therefore couldn't be proved wrong in his assumptions as to what they might be like. The Mysterons' deadly powers seemingly have no tangible endpoint, something apparent in both series, but it's the execution of these menacing ideas that differentiate each variation's depiction of the War of Nerves.

"We know that you can hear us, Earthmen..."

The manner in which the war starts is notably different between the two series. In the classic series, the war starts accidentally, with Captain Black mistakenly attacking the newly discovered Mysteron city on Mars and provoking their anger, triggering the War of Nerves into life. In New Captain Scarlet, Captain Black is also the one to unwittingly start the conflict, but the Mysterons are already hostile, seemingly robbing New Captain Scarlet of the nuanced portrayal of the Mysterons that the original series explicitly has. However, the Mysterons still openly declare that they've always possessed a burning contempt for humanity's violent ways. The unfortunate relevance of New Captain Scarlet, produced 40 years after the original series, is that humanity may never disengage from its destructive instincts.

"The Mysterons have powers we cannot hope to understand," quickly becomes a motto in the original series for describing just what the Mysterons are capable of. An inspired tactic of eliciting fear and awe, or a narratively convenient get-out clause for gifting the Mysterons with whatever powers are needed to wrap up the script as swiftly as possible? Teleportation and object control are shown to be within the Mysterons' grasp, which rather begs the questions of why does any Mysteron agent need vehicles to get around, and why need agents at all if the Mysterons can control objects and machinery remotely? New Captain Scarlet avoids these nagging inconsistencies, and adding to the sense of refinement is the fact that the Mysterons in New Captain Scarlet neatly dispose of human corpses when their doppelgangers are born. Human bodies litter the world of the original series, but sometimes to its advantage whenever Spectrum need to deduce whether some unfortunate person has fallen into the Mysterons' grasp.

New Captain Scarlet is content to portray the Mysterons' powers as mostly restricted to replication. When the series does showcase the Mysterons' other powers, it does so with terrifying aplomb, best exampled in the psychological warfare seen in Enigma. In New Captain Scarlet, the Mysterons exploit humanity's fear of unknowable terror to become a dangerous weapon, whereas in the original series, the 'unknown' qualities of the Mysterons bear some similar degree of palpable terror, but ultimately rather comes off as matter of convenience in whatever the script demands the Mysterons can or cannot do to resolve the storyline.

Elsewhere, the Mysterons delight in taunting Spectrum with cryptic or otherwise explicit announcements of their latest destructive campaigns in the classic series. This yields a thrilling race-against-time motif to episodes, depicting Spectrum forced to unravel a deadly mystery before they can successfully neutralise the Mysterons' latest threat. The passage of time hasn't been entirely kind to this narrative technique, as it arguably gives away the Mysterons' dangers all too easily. However, the Mysterons gain a decent number of victories against Spectrum over the course of the series, lending a grim gravitas to the fact that this is very much a war of equal forces. New Captain Scarlet forgoes the weekly Mysteron threat and instead frames Spectrum as mostly emerging the victor throughout each episode.

"You will pay for your act of aggression"

In terms of portraying the Mysterons, New Captain Scarlet appears to have the winning edge over the original series. However, Captain Scarlet bears its own uniquely winning aspects over its remake. The classic series boasts a far more serialised nature than previous Supermarionation series. Unlike the mostly episodic Thunderbirds or Stingray, it's essential that you watch Captain Scarlet from the beginning to understand the context of events that unfold. The classic series boasts an engaging variety of strong story threads spread across multiple episodes. A key example is the two-part Operation Time and Spectrum Strikes Back, in which Spectrum's unintended discovery of a pair of weaknesses on the part of the Mysterons (electricity and x-rays) allows the outfit to produce new weaponry and gadgets to trace and dispose of Mysteron agents. 

This narrative technique reaches its peak with the Lunarville trilogy, in which Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue and Lieutenant Green uncover a shocking conspiracy among the Lunarville moon complexes that the Mysterons very nearly have the Moon in their grip. This revelation gives way to a possible ceasefire of the War of Nerves, with Spectrum willing to trust the Mysterons in agreeing to a laying down of arms. A further but looser two-parter can be found within the events of Noose of Ice and Flight 104, depicting the Mysterons undermining Spectrum's attempts to return to Mars, lending weight to the idea that the hands of friendship extended in Dangerous Rendezvous were resoundingly rejected and that more aggressive tactics on Spectrum's part are justified.

By comparison, New Captain Scarlet doesn't boast as many interconnected strands, but the rare instances of it having such strands elevates the series' take on the Mysterons to greatly nuanced levels. The closest we come to advancing the War of Nerves occurs in The Achilles Messenger, which exploits the Mysterons' collective conscious in intelligent ways the original series never really explored. It's bold of New Captain Scarlet to acknowledge that discontent is not only possible but thriving within the remake's take on the  Mysterons and that not all of the Martians agree with the War of Nerves. The episodic nature of New Captain Scarlet forbids any further exploration of this startling idea that the Mysterons' existence is not a harmonious one.

This acknowledgement of the Mysterons' vulnerability finds itself most eloquently expressed in the series' depiction of Conrad Lefkon. New Captain Scarlet's take on Captain Black is devastatingly tragic, depicting a former close friend of Captain Scarlet ensnared by a malevolent alien influence. In classic and remake, it's Captain Black who is the greatest tragedy. Over several episodes, the man behind the Mysterons' control attempts to break through, suggesting that even the powers of the Mysterons can be overcome, enhancing the rebellious ideas seen in The Achilles Messenger. This take on Conrad reaches its peak in the series finale, Dominion, bringing the series' events full circle by having Scarlet and a seemingly freed Black return to Mars to put an end to the War of Nerves once and for all. 

Captain Scarlet's dramatic value of the War of Nerves is found in its storytelling across numerous interconnected episodes, the end result being that the War of Nerves feels like a genuinely progressive series of victories and losses for both sides. New Captain Scarlet finds its own value in its heartfelt characterisations of Spectrum and Mysterons alike, emphasising the emotional toll the War of Nerves takes on both sides. Summarising the efforts of both series in this way, it becomes rather tricky to determine which series paints a more compelling picture of the War of Nerves. Both Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and New Captain Scarlet capture excitingly dangerous and terrifyingly surreal avenues to the war's genesis, ensuing fallout and deadliest moments.

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