Shades of grey…

The world of black and white seemed so much simpler somehow. Of course it suited some programmes; Coronation Street was all the more real for the stark black and white treatment, All Our Yesterdays suited shades of grey, and as for The Black and White Minstrel Show - well, need I say more?

Of course there were some programmes where black and white broadcasting didn’t quite deliver; football matches were hard to follow (stripy kits worked, but twenty-two men in grey on a grey pitch somehow didn’t), the legendary Pot Black (obviously) and then there was... Captain Scarlet.

Yes, this is the voice of the Mysterons and at times Captain Scarlet really was a mystery. It wasn’t the story lines - basically a single story about miffed Martians (The Mysterons) initiating a succession of reprisal attacks against Earth and being countered by Spectrum, an international security organisation. No, the plots were simple enough; it was the characters that were the problem. You see, each character was named after a colour – hence Spectrum – and wore a uniform to match his name… well, sort of.

The main character, Captain Scarlet - or Captain Very Dark Grey as he appeared on our black and white television screen - was just one of many Captains and it could get very confusing.

It wasn’t too hard to spot Captain Blue (or very light grey) as he had blonde hair. But the rest; Captain Ochre (not quite as a light grey as blue), Magenta (a bit darker than Ochre), Brown (almost as dark as Scarlet), and Grey (sorry, they were all grey to me) all had black hair and looked very similar - especially from behind. Lieutenant Green (I always wondered why he didn't make Captain) was tonally much the same as Magenta and Brown, and even the evil Captain Black (who was dead and the puppet of not only Gerry Anderson but also the Mysterons) was the only one who was on occasion pretty easy to distinguish; except in shadow (which was where he usually skulked) unless his eyes were glowing of course.

Colonel White, Doctor Fawn and of course Destiny, Symphony, Melody, Rhapsody and Harmony (who were girls, unimportant and interchangeable to my boyish mind) were easy to spot… but the rest? It really was a guessing game and made Pot Black (which was actually one black, one white and twenty grey balls on a grey table) look easy to fathom.

Just the same, I watched all thirty-two very confusing episodes of Captain VDG.

A few years later, when we became the proud owners of a colour television, I watched a few of the episodes again. Captain Magenta was actually Captain Pink, Captain Blue’s blue uniform was the colour of a boy baby’s romper suit and Captain Ochre was dressed in a suit that looked like it had be coloured with the contents of the same baby’s nappy. It really made me question the manliness, or rather marionetteliness, of the characters. I also discovered that Captain Black looked a little green around the gills and that the five female Angels were actually a lot more interesting that I’d previously thought.

Back then I’d sometimes wish that I had the Mysteron healing power of "retro-metabolism" (the ability to return to life, even after suffering fatal injuries) like Captain Scarlet did. I even think that I bought the comic (TV Century 21) for a while. Well, there wasn’t much else on TV in those days, we only had three channels and one of those was BBC2. It was still better viewing than today though, even though we are in the real 21^st century now.

Oh well, cue the moving O lights... 
This is the voice of the Mysterons…
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