Renegade Rocket

"Renegade Rocket"
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons episode
Episode no. Episode 16
Directed by Brian Burgess
Written by Ralph Hart
Cinematography by Paddy Seale
Editing by Bob Dearberg
Production code 7
Original air date 19 January 1968
Guest appearance(s)

Voices of:
Gary Files (uncredited) as
Space Major Reeves
Martin King (uncredited) as
Sergeant
Airstrip Controller
Paul Maxwell as
Base Concord Commander
Charles Tingwell as
Launch Controller
Jeremy Wilkin as
Yacht Captain
Security Guard

"Renegade Rocket" is the 16th episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, a 1960s British Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by their company Century 21 Productions. Written by Ralph Hart and directed by Brian Burgess, it was first broadcast on 19 January 1968 on ATV Midlands.

In this episode, Spectrum fights to stop a hi-jacked incendiary rocket from destroying an unknown target.

Plot

Space Major Reeves, a rocket expert and friend of Colonel White (voiced by Donald Gray), leaves Cloudbase after completing a tour of the facility. He departs in a motor yacht for the island military installation Base Concord, unaware that Captain Black is watching from the shore. Black uses the Mysterons' powers to induce nausea in Reeves, who falls overboard and drowns in the yacht's slipstream.[1][2]

A Mysteron reconstruction of Reeves arrives at Base Concord, shoots the control room officer and launches an incendiary variable-geometry rocket (VGR) under the control code "ZERO". He then escapes in a J17 fighter carrying the flight program unit, leaving the base personnel no way of knowing the VGR's target or which of the 10,000 approved codes they must enter to remote-trigger its self-destruct. In addition, for reasons unknown the VGR is not appearing on radar. The commander alerts Spectrum and White dispatches Captains Scarlet and Blue (voiced by Francis Matthews and Ed Bishop) to Base Concord. Meanwhile, the Angel squadron are launched to track down Reeves and recover the unit. Reeves is soon intercepted but refuses to surrender, crippling Melody's (voiced by Sylvia Anderson) aircraft with the J17's machine gun and forcing her to eject before she crashes into the ocean.

Scarlet, Blue and the base personnel realise that the VGR would be invisible to radar only if it were travelling upwards, and that because its descent would be equally vertical the only plausible target is Base Concord itself. A replacement unit is installed and the personnel start inputting codes one after the other in a desperate attempt to find the one used by Reeves. In the air, Reeves ignores Rhapsody's (voiced by Liz Morgan) order to surrender and deliberately crashes his aircraft, sending the original unit to the seabed.

Minutes before impact, and with Base Concord fully evacuated except for Scarlet and Blue, White radios his officers and instructs them to leave. However, in a last-ditch effort to save the base, Scarlet and Blue disobey the order and carry on inputting codes. "AMEN" is rejected, but at the same time the sunken unit is knocked over by an underwater current and the shock causes it to re-transmit "ZERO", triggering the VGR's self-destruct.[2]

Scarlet and Blue return to Cloudbase believing that they miraculously found the correct code. When the true cause of the VGR's destruction is discovered, White reprimands the officers for their insubordination but stops short of court-martialling them, recognising the value of bravery in the fight against the Mysterons.

Music

The incidental music for "Renegade Rocket" was recorded during a four-and-a-half-hour studio session conducted by series composer Barry Gray on 14 May 1967 with an ensemble of 12 instrumentalists.[3] The music for "Operation Time" was recorded during the same session.

Reception

Anthony Clark of sci-fi-online.com describes "Renegade Rocket" as "just about average" and "about as dull as [Captain Scarlet] gets". He considers the episode an example of the series' "patchy" quality and questions Scarlet and Blue's motivation for disobeying Colonel White given their impossibly low chances of finding the correct control code.[4]

In a review for the Andersonic website, Vincent Law argues that the episode is one of many Anderson productions to focus on the dangers of "runaway machinery". Noting that the Mysteron reconstruction of Reeves effectively pulls rank on a fellow officer to launch the VGR, he compares the character to a Cold War double agent and the episode as a whole to the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove. Law comments negatively on the dialogue and characterisation – questioning, for example, White's lack of emotional response to the death of his friend Reeves. Despite praising the episode's visuals, he sums up "Renegade Rocket" as "a forerunner of effects-led films like Independence Day and its ilk — flashy, nice to look at but insubstantial and ultimately unfulfilling."[5]

References

  1. ↑ Bentley, Chris (2008) [2001]. The Complete Gerry Anderson: The Authorised Episode Guide (4th ed.). London, UK: Reynolds & Hearn. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-905287-74-1.
  2. 1 2 Bentley, Chris (2001). The Complete Book of Captain Scarlet. London, UK: Carlton Books. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-84222-405-2.
  3. ↑ de Klerk, Theo (25 December 2003). "Complete Studio-Recording List of Barry Gray". tvcentury21.com. Archived from the original on 13 December 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2010.
  4. ↑ Clark, Anthony. "Captain Scarlet: Volume 5 – Video Review". sci-fi-online.com. Archived from the original on 13 October 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  5. ↑ Law, Vincent. "'Renegade Rocket': What Goes Up ..." Andersonic. Archived from the original on 12 January 2010. Retrieved 23 January 2010.
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