I Watch TV: New Captain Scarlet

 

New Captain Scarlet

Detecting strange signals from Mars, SPECTRUM, a world-wide peacekeeping organisation, sends two of their agents Captain Scarlet and Captain Black to investigate. Mistaking the strange city’s reaction to them as an attack* Captain Black launches his own attack. The city is momentarily destroyed before being recreated. Black and Scarlet return to Earth, but they are in fact copies of their original selves, manufactured by the Mysterons, the alien inhabitants of the city. The Mysteron’s control of Scarlet is broken and he is revealed to be indestructible. Meanwhile Black continues to act as a Mysteron agent, the Mysterons declaring a “war of nerves” – attempts to destabilise Earth governments and wreck their ability to fight back.

This is the set up for Captain Scarlet, both original and new. The original was made with puppets and physical models, which was often charming in the limitations – to avoid the awkwardness of walking the puppets were often shot from waist up, on conveyor belts, or moved between camera shots. The action was more often with the vehicles, driving fast on scale model sets, blowing up, crashing etc.

This new one is CGI, with human motion capture. This lets them not only walk and run convincingly** but jump, fall, and even fight. Similarly the vehicles are more flexible in their use, and can be shot with more dynamic movement, especially of the camera. Sadly this does not greatly improve the show, in many cases revealing where some restraint or restrictions might have offered some opportunity for creativity.

Efforts to give the characters more, well, character stumble up against the 22 minute episode length. Still, they manage to sketch in Destiny Angel’s prior relationship with Black, and her ambivalence to a burgeoning closeness with Scarlet. This fits in with any moment between them inevitably being interrupted by an attack, one or other of them being thought dead, or another attempt to infiltrate the Skybase.

Freed from having to be actually built, the interior of the Skybase is good. The robot flight deck controller (which recreates the actions of the human controller, safe inside) is a fun touch. All the vehicles are pretty good in fact, though in many cases they’re directly inspired by the models in the original. Yet if we’re looking for CGI vehicles and mo-cap action, the only things that make this stand out is the Mysterons. They’re explained slightly more, though no more coherently, and on the occasions when we enter in actual Mysteron spaces it’s kind of weird which is good, though in a half-formed CGI set way, which is less so.

Watch This: Serious, sometimes exciting kid’s adventure
Don’t Watch This: Unwanted continuation of silly puppet show

* Or possibly not. Later the Mysterons appear to be able to see events through time, one faction wanting to prevent the war starting, another wanting to see it through. Yet the nature of the Mysterons and the experience Captain Scarlet goes through means it is unclear if these factions exist, or if the time viewing/travel is real.

** Or at least as convincingly as the rest of the setting