Captain Scarlet!
Nov. 6th, 2006 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWell, I've just watched the first five episodes of The New Captain Scarlet. It's an amazingly good show so far. For all that it's supposedly a "children's" show, it doesn't feel like one. There's no half-assed "we can't kill anyone or even show dead bodies" stuff like you see on American TV. In fact, I doubt this could even be shown on American TV as a "kiddie show" at all. It's spooky, ominous, and the alien Mysterons have a real sense of menace about them. It simply doesn't feel like a children's show at all. I'll probably do a longer review for next week's RDF Underground podcast, but here's a capsule.
The premise of the show is that Captain Scarlet is part of Spectrum, a paramilitary organization that protects the world against alien threat. While investigating a strange alien signal on Mars, Captain Scarlet and Captain Black fire in self-defense and destroy or severely damage an alien city, the city of the Mysterons. The Mysterons in turn kill and duplicate them, using the replicants to infiltrate Spectrum's base—but Scarlet's replicant somehow breaks his programming to fight on the side of humanity. The Mysterons have the ability to duplicate anyone they can kill, and also to take over advanced computer equipment. This makes for a very creepy, ominous, and dark show, as literally anyone could be a Mysteron agent.
The original Captain Scarlet, as the youtube link in my prior post shows, was a 1960s Supermarionation show, and could be considered a predecessor to Anderson's later live-action show UFO, which spawned the semi-sequel Space: 1999. Interestingly enough, UFO later inspired a turn-based strategy computer game, UFO: Enemy Unknown. When that game was brought over to America, it was renamed X-Com.
The new Captain Scarlet is motion-capture CGI, and quite good. It's called "Hypermarionation," as a sort of homage to the original. The first two episodes actually have considerably higher quality CGI than the ones that follow, as they changed production companies at that point (and perhaps their budget took a hit, too).
I hope this comes out on American DVD at some point. I gather it's in 5.1 surround on the DVDs.
Edit: Just putting this link here so I don't lose track of it for my review later on.
The premise of the show is that Captain Scarlet is part of Spectrum, a paramilitary organization that protects the world against alien threat. While investigating a strange alien signal on Mars, Captain Scarlet and Captain Black fire in self-defense and destroy or severely damage an alien city, the city of the Mysterons. The Mysterons in turn kill and duplicate them, using the replicants to infiltrate Spectrum's base—but Scarlet's replicant somehow breaks his programming to fight on the side of humanity. The Mysterons have the ability to duplicate anyone they can kill, and also to take over advanced computer equipment. This makes for a very creepy, ominous, and dark show, as literally anyone could be a Mysteron agent.
The original Captain Scarlet, as the youtube link in my prior post shows, was a 1960s Supermarionation show, and could be considered a predecessor to Anderson's later live-action show UFO, which spawned the semi-sequel Space: 1999. Interestingly enough, UFO later inspired a turn-based strategy computer game, UFO: Enemy Unknown. When that game was brought over to America, it was renamed X-Com.
The new Captain Scarlet is motion-capture CGI, and quite good. It's called "Hypermarionation," as a sort of homage to the original. The first two episodes actually have considerably higher quality CGI than the ones that follow, as they changed production companies at that point (and perhaps their budget took a hit, too).
I hope this comes out on American DVD at some point. I gather it's in 5.1 surround on the DVDs.
Edit: Just putting this link here so I don't lose track of it for my review later on.
