Gerry Anderson programmes often feature similar premises, vehicles, characters and wider thematic ideas at work. Quite often, it falls to each series’ pilot episode to introduce each of these key elements to the audience. But just how similar are these ideas? Does one series execute these shared themes better than the other?
We’re pitting two similar Anderson pilots against each other to determine which one stands as the best viewing experience. In this instalment, we’re facing off Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Terrahawks!
Invaders from Mars
In previous instalments of our Pilots in Parallel series, we’ve compared quite similar opening episodes from closely related Anderson series. There’s an abundance of connective tissue between Fireball XL5 and Stingray, along with UFO and Space: 1999. However, for this latest offering, let’s switch things up a gear. Captain Scarlet and Terrahawks isn’t the most obvious pairing of series from Gerry Anderson’s long-lasting and eclectic filmography. On close inspection, their shared DNA rather becomes more apparent than you may think, and is something we’ve previously explored.
Both series deal with a secretive global security outfit battling against mysterious, enemy aliens residing on the planet Mars, who dispense regular one-off threats against the Earth to bring the planet to its knees. Both of these organisations are led by a protagonist with decidedly superhero-esque qualities in their physical abilities to overcome physical trauma that other characters would surely succumb to.
Disparities between the two remain intact. One of these series is regarded as Gerry Anderson’s finest hour, whilst the other, to put it diplomatically, isn’t! Captain Scarlet sees Century 21 Productions operating at something close to the peak of its creative/filmmaking powers, while Terrahawks‘ freewheeling mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, and horror remains controversial for many Anderfans.
Yet both of these series begin in intriguingly close fashion. In the events of The Mysterons and Expect the Unexpected, we see each of their respective heroes leaping into action as a newfound terror from Mars threatens the peaceful stability of the Earth as we know it. Also similarly, Captain Scarlet and Terrahawks provide rare instances of their opening episodes being crucial to understanding the wider story at play in both series.
Spectrum is Green
Despite the shared mechanics in stories and characters, let’s avoid beating about the Martian bushes too much – when it comes down to the individual quality of these episodes, The Mysterons is the obvious winner in this comparison. Captain Scarlet‘s opening episode establishes such a firm and gripping tone for the series. There’s the argument to be made that Captain Scarlet spends much of the rest of the series attempting to match the tonal intensity that’s so confidently thrown down to the audience by this first episode.
Despite reverting from the 50-minute episode formula embraced by Thunderbirds and back to the 25-minutes-per-episode nature of earlier series, Captain Scarlet doesn’t feel like a regression. Instead, The Mysterons carries a breathless pace through its razor-sharp editing, unhurried direction, and suspenseful atmosphere. As an example of the standards that Century 21 Productions were setting for themselves as filmmakers, The Mysterons is uncompromisingly slick. Desmond Saunders’ direction and Julien Lurgin’s cinematography embeds an enthralling energy into the convincingly crafted retrofuture 21st century world of the series, chiefly designed by Derek Meddings and Mike Trim.
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s script, with additional input from series’ script editor Tony Barwick, had numerous alterations before the cameras rolled, including the idea of making the Mysteronised Captain Scarlet a far more mechanical creation instead of the episode’s eventual straight-forward doppelganger. However, what remains intact is the unnervingly alien vision that the Andersons had for Captain Scarlet compared to past efforts. In the unexpected wake of Thunderbirds failing to become a sustained success for Century 21 Productions, their next venture demanded bigger and bolder ideas.
The Mysterons trades in the heroic optimism of Thunderbirds for something closer to sci-horror. In the far-flung future of 2068, global security organisation Spectrum unintentionally triggers a psychological war of nerves between themselves and a newly discovered race of aliens on the planet Mars – the Mysterons. In retaliation for the accidental destruction of their city, the Mysterons use their powers of retrometabolism to, firstly, reconstruct themselves, before launching an assassination attack on the World President. Spectrum agent Captain Scarlet is caught in the crossfire, killed and replicated by the Mysterons to be in their service, climaxing in a desperate shootout atop the colossal London Car-Vu between himself and former friend Captain Blue, with the World President as hostage.
So much aggressive thematic material is embedded into The Mysterons, culminating in the palpable terror of witnessing Captain Scarlet loose the gunfight and fall to his apparent death. This victory for Spectrum yields another unexpected win when Scarlet himself regains his former human personality, but retains the Mysterons’ indestructible capabilities, ensuring he now becomes Spectrum’s top operative in this bizarre war. The Mysterons remains one of Gerry Anderson’s most darkly effective opening episodes to any of his many TV series, and a prime example of how far his puppet-making empire had come at this point.
Flaming Thunderbolts
Expect the Unexpected carries such an oddly similar attitude to The Mysterons. Both security outfits scramble to respond to an otherworldly force with powers they cannot hope to understand, yet ultimately succeed in saving the day. Also like The Mysterons, Expect the Unexpected is slickly enjoyable in establishing the functionality of the Terrahawk organisation. From the outer space defence of Spacehawk to the rapid response strike attack of Hawkwing and the heavy duty action of the Battlehawk, many classic Anderson mecha tropes are on confident display in this two-parter.
Terrahawks may be notorious and often ridiculed for its surreal comedic tone, yet these earlier episodes, which are mostly devoid of the series’ characteristic humour, aren’t exactly superior. One lagging element of Terrahawks compared to Captain Scarlet is that the series takes its time to find its thematic legs, that finely tuned balance of humour, action, and severity. To understand the dryness of Expect the Unexpected, we have to place it into some contextual history.
Terrahawks marks Gerry Anderson’s television comeback after several years of personal and professional upheaval whereby he struggled to get various projects off the ground following the end of Space: 1999 in 1977. Terrahawks has its roots in Thunderhawks, one of Gerry’s TV/film concepts from the late 1970s. Going by preliminary concept material, Gerry seems to have envisioned Thunderhawks as being closer in structure and tone to UFO or Space: 1999, compared to the child-centric audience that Terrahawks would focus its efforts on appealing to. Having not made other TV shows for so long, it’s forgivable that Terrahawks‘ earlier episodes should feel so tonally tethered to Gerry’s past live-action efforts.
Intriguingly, Expect the Unexpected is only a realisation of the second half of Gerry’s initial opening story for Thunderhawks, provisionally titled Invaders from Space. That embryonic story’s first half goes into greater detail, showcasing the discovery of the oncoming alien invaders before they settle on Mars and the ensuing formation of the Thunderhawk outfit to counter the threat. Without that expositional baggage, Expect the Unexpected rattles along at a pace designed to capture the imaginations of a new and younger generation of Anderson fans. In Expect the Unexpected, the newly formed Terrahawk organisation engages in its first assault against the alien android Zelda, who claims Mars for herself by destroying a NASA geological expedition base. Zelda’s surreal powers deal several heavy blows against the Terrahawks’ efforts, but Doctor Tiger Ninestein, leader of the Terrahawks, has a few tricks of his own up his sleeves…
With its ambitious production design that clearly cherry-picks at Anderson tropes (secretive headquarters, freakish alien antagonists, and multi-purpose land, air, and space machines with elaborate launch sequences), Expect the Unexpected performs a commendable task of reminding viewers of the action-adventure readiness that Gerry Anderson series could blast off with. It’s lack of humour that would come to define Terrahawks is offset by its bustling, action-propelled nature of establishing the status quo for the series.
Spectrum’s Greatest Asset
As established earlier on, The Mysterons is the runaway winner here, but the inevitable runner-up position for Expect the Unexpected is a sympathetic one. Expect the Unexpected is the work of a man leading a team made up of new and familiar faces, re-establishing his creative momentum for a new generation. By comparison, The Mysterons is the work of a team perhaps shaken by Thunderbirds‘ sudden uncertain future and conjuring up something entirely new to match that previous series’ hype. You wouldn’t have guessed that uncertainty from the finished results.
Much stronger episodes of Terrahawks would be on the horizon, but the way that Expect the Unexpected grapples with its unpredictable alien menace, whilst injecting some vitality into the storytelling, still lacks the sharply focused intensity of The Mysterons. Everything about Captain Scarlet‘s debut episode functions to perfected levels, where nothing feels overblown or underserved. As forgiving as we may be towards Expect the Unexpected, it’s The Mysterons that packs the greater punch.
Which Anderson pilot do you prefer – Supermarionation or Supermacromation? Let us know in the comments below! Discover more about the making of Terrahawks through the official series biography Flaming Thunderbolts: The Definitive Story of Terrahawks.
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