A Captain Scarlet’s spoof
By AgProv (Paul Catlow)
This is a nod to Gerry Anderson’s great puppet show
sci-fi, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons,
a staple of my childhood TV watching. Ah, those amazingly good models, sets and
special effects… graced by those puppets with the visible strings, and their
“don’t come near me, matey, I’m pissed as a rat and I think I’ve just shat
myself” walk…
For those who’ve never seen a Century 21 puppet sci-fi
and are far too young to have been ten or under in the 1960’s (dear vanished
pre-Thatcher age when a different Britain was fleetingly possible), think of the
South Park boys’ film, with puppets,
Team America, which is both homage to and parody of Gerry and Sylvia
Anderson’s 1960’s vision…
These are a series of not-necessarily-related glimpses
of life in post-Mysteron Britain. Some looking back on the
best time of their lives; others looking forward to an uncertain post-war
future.
1) Collyhurst, Manchester, November 2083.
Some
things hadn’t changed in 2083, he thought, staggering blearily out of the pub
into a back street strewn with what he hoped was only litter and dead leaves .
There’s still a mean back street part of town, looking pretty much as it did in
1983 or maybe even in 1883, kept tidily away from the eyes of the rich people
who are going places in the world, nowhere near the brushed concrete multi-level
motorways and the sleek futuristic buildings and the cars and vehicles to die
for. And they call it Collyhurst. Particles of breakfast adhered stubbornly to
six –or-seven-day stubble on his chin, and to his shabby stained clothing, and
he hadn’t washed or changed underwear for two or three days. Paul Metcalfe was a
war veteran. Right now he was a semi-capable drunk.
Paul
Metcalfe was also a total freaked-up mess.
Bloody White. Bloody, bloody, supercilious stuck-up sodding bloody bastard White.
And the sodding politicians. Gutless
bastards in suits.
He
heard a cat screech, and a little bit of him pricked up to full alertness. He
saw two of them in front of him, holding knives, and sensed a third, behind.
Just for now, it paid to maintain the drunken lurch. But he grinned, inwardly.
Situations like this made him feel alive again, in a way he’d rarely felt since
White had sacked him from the Organisation.
“Money. Valuables. Give.” He heard a voice say. He pretended to
fumble in his pocket, gauging the situation. He felt the prick of a knife in his
back.
“Hurry it up.” A coarse voice urged. Well… they said it…
Metcalfe kicked out hard, feeling five years’ of frustration and putting it into
the kick. One of the muggers doubled up hard with a groan, falling back into the
dustbins which some ancient bylaw said must be a feature of every sleazy back
alley. His balled fist pivoted up on his elbow, driving nasal cartilage into the
brain tissue of the mugger standing behind him. He winced as he felt the knife
go in, but it didn’t impede him from taking the third by the lapels and
delivering a shattering head-butt. And then a second, because
Metcalfe was feeling mean.
He
paused to regard the three attackers, two of whom were still and one was feebly
groaning. He felt a twinge in his back, went tcchh! and
reached round to pull the knife out. By the feel of it, it had split a kidney in
two. Ah well, it’ll mend. It always bloody well does.
“Look at it!” he said, conversationally. “This might not be the best jacket in
the world, but you’ve just put a three-inch rip in it. Do you know what
invisible mending costs these days?”
His
voice was well-modulated upper-middle-class English, suggesting time spent at
Sandhurst and in the forces. It sounded incongruous, coming out of one who was
only a few more maladjustments to civvy street away
from being a tramp.
The
terrified mugger tried to dig his way into the street with his shoulder blades.
Metcalfe laid him out with a kick to the head – he didn’t have to do that, but
it gave vent to his feelings - then methodically searched their bodies for cash,
drugs and other valuables. He left them in the street, and walked away
materially richer and a little bit happier, his shattered kidney already
beginning to re-knit itself.
“Dum-DUM; dum-dum-dum-di-dum…” he hummed.
2) Cassell’s European History, 2085 edition.
After the unfortunate incident on Mars in 2068, where Captain Conrad Black had
ordered the mysterious alien installations be lasered and nuked out of
existence, a ten year war erupted between Earth and the alien entities we know
as the Mysterons. Black should have been court-martialled for his actions, as he
not only exceeded his authority and precipitated a war,
he was acting in defiance of the Yellow Card rules for First Contact with an
alien species. They had not, and we now know would not have, shot at us: Black’s
xenophobia got the better of him, and war ensued.
While Black himself was the first victim of the Mysterons’ revenge, they did not
stop here…
3). The thoughts of Colonel White (Spectrum,
retired)
Extract from interview tapes, made for the
autobiography of Charles Gray, R.N. and Spectrum, The
Gandalf of Cloudbase: From Gray to White. (Hodder and Staunton, 2091)
(Ed. Note:
These tapes were made by Gray’s autobiographer during interviews carried
out in the St. Cecelia Sunset Home For Terminally
Bewildered Military Men, in the twilight of Gray’s life)
It
was never envisaged that there should only be one Cloudbase: the original
defence submission stipulated that there should be a chain of five, allowing
unbroken cover in the lower atmosphere and inner space of our planet.
Fortunately, Cloudbase One was already in place by 2066, shortly before the war
broke out, but defence cuts perpetrated by our friends in the Civil Service, who
of course always know best, did for the rest until the Shadowfax came on stream
in 2076, shortly before the end of the War.
No, a far bigger threat to us, and one that might
perhaps have been anticipated from the start, involved recruitment.
Naturally, only the crème de la crème, the very best, the outstanding and
excellent, those who had proved themselves several times over, were invited to
join Spectrum.
There was no lack of candidates, and our additional screening and selection
processes, far more stringent than those of the SAS or Delta Force, weeded out
those who were not quite good enough to make it to the top.
The
embarrassing thing was that as Spectrum evolved, we began to run out of colour
names for our operatives. While this administrative issue was being sorted out,
it necessarily put recruitment on hold, or slowed it to a trickle, and some of
the later recruits were necessarily saddled with names they might not have
chosen for themselves and which were a bit of a mouthful for radio
communication.
At
first it was simple: as all colours resolve in White – the Gandalf principle,
d’you see, when he overcame Saruman and asserted leadership over the Istari –
the commanding officer and director of operations would necessarily become
White, the place where all colours resolve. Disappointingly for me, this only
attracted the comparatively lowly rank of colonel, and not, as I pressed, at
least Brigadier. This meant I had to be, in public, second fiddle to those
rather self-satisfied people at UNIT, even though my relationship with Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart was never less than cordial. In public,
anyway.
At
immediately lower levels, assignation of colours was not a problem. My seven
subordinate Majors, for instance, became Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue,
Indigo and Violet. Bad luck for Wayne Violet, who was a large American from the
Midwest who was always somewhat sensitive about his designation, but there you
go. Never got on with Captain Pink (Very Special Operations), as I recall, and
in fact Gavin Pink made some rather unwise presumptions at a Mess Night once.
And
you had to have a Captain Black – the total absence of colour – as we thought at
the time that was essential. Bit of a colourless personality, Conrad Turner.
Time showed this was something of a mistake, but his record was spotless and
checked out. Came from Manchester too, so a bit of an oik,
ghastly Northerner. Where was I?
Oh
yes. Colours.
Once
you’re past the basic seven, it starts to get tricky.
Lieutenant Beige, Captain Brown, Captain Lavender – he
joined Pink in Very Special Ops – Second Lieutenant Ivory, and so on. Then we
had to resort to synonyms and alternates, which is how we got Captain Scarlet,
although at the same time we recruited Captain Vermilion, Lieutenant
Haemoglobin, Ensign Maroon, Sergeant-Major Cherry, and one or two others.
Similarly, with a Major Blue then on the payroll, when we got the chappie who
stepped up into his name later, that American Svenson, he started out as
Lieutenant Sky Blue. Same thing with Green: until the original Major Green got
the chop, Seymour Griffiths was originally Second Lieutenant Dark Jungle Green,
although he did raise an objection to that. Caused a hell of a
fuss with the Race Relations Board.
Well, one way or the other we got it up to about eighty and we were well pleased
with that. Although with Vermilion, Scarlet and Red being so close,
chromatically speaking, there could be mistaken identity issues on parade.
Those dam’ silly uniforms we were issued, you see, that had to be bespoke
to each individual. Do you realise how much of our annual budget went on
tailoring? Armies issue uniforms for good reason, one of which is cost, dress
everyone the same and it keeps cost down. And they could have been better cut
and styled, for the money.
So
this was a continual source of contention between Spectrum and the bean-counters
back at the Ministry. I was all for changing the situation and making it more
anonymous – I mean, we’re a top-secret trans-national military operation who
need to maintain secrecy and discretion. And then you send a field officer into
a tricky secret situation in a bright red tabard and tight trousers, so
everyone, including the bloody Mysterons, knows Captain Scarlet’s on the case.
Not exactly discreet insertion, is it?
But
no, they’d come up with the notion of Spectrum, some very senior politician, or
maybe his wife, thought up the idea that it would be holistic and pretty and
nice if everything were suitably colour-co-ordinated, and that was it. We had to
live with it. My adjutant Captain Damson had some inspired ideas, though, and
the day he head-hunted Captains Gold and Silberman from the MOSSAD to start our
in-house tailoring shop, the uniforms budget actually began to look less
frightening and even started to turn a profit.
So
where was I? Oh yes, the Mysteron war. This called for massive expansion of the
force, and there just weren’t enough colour names to go around, I’m afraid. Oh,
attrition was helpful, as when the original Green and Blue bought it, we could
step others forward into their shoes. Quite helpful, really, as this was, in the
end, how promotion went. Forget the official lieutenant, captain, major,
structure. The nearer you got to a primary colour, the higher you were in the
system. Therefore there could only ever be one Captain Green, but there were
positively oodles of hues and sub-tones and DCC’s underneath him. Once we
realised this, recruitment rocketed, and we could really work to settle those
damn’ Mysterons’ hash.
All
changed now, so I hear. Ceasefire, détente, and some of the
bloody smoke-rings even being offered Government work.
Well, we tried everything. A regional French bureau, for
instance, offering Capitan Rouge, Sous-Lieutenant-Bleu, Vert, Jaune, Purpure,
and so on.
But then the Frogs demanded autonomy, you know what they’re like, and it got to
be a bit of a liability.
One
of our chaps came back with the Games Workshop model paints catalogue, but there
was objection to being called Captain Vermin Brown, Lieutenant Orc-Snot Green,
and so on, and damn’ right too, silly names. Silly.
Old
traditional oil-paints worked better – we got Captain Ochre that way, as well as
Captain Burnt Sienna, Captain Dark Umber, Captain Titanium-White, Sub-Lieutenant
Ultramarine, and so on.
But back in the day. Damson went
back to Earth to get his house redecorated – Mrs Damson was insisting, you know
what women are like – and, sterling chap, he had a brainwave in the local
hardware store when he saw the rack of DCC’s. Snaffled the lot as a matter of
state security, and sent ‘em up to me. They revolutionised recruiting!
Oh,
the DCC’s? Dulux Colour Chips. Those clever little
cards you pick up, when your missus isn’t sure which of seventeen virtually
identical shades of beige she wants the kitchen walls to be. All of a sudden,
our naming difficulty was solved. We could start a sprog officer out as
Lieutenant White With A Hint of Peach, and if he made the grade and normal
attrition prevailed, he might expect to progress up the ladder through titles
like Lieutenant Magnolia-Peach and Captain Apricot until he was in a position to
have a crack at Captain Orange. Or indeed, peach being a subtly variegated range
of hues, comprising hints of modulated Yellows or Reds, that
it held open all three career tracks. Well… maybe not red, as such. Captain
Scarlet being what he was, the normal rules of combat attrition didn’t apply.
There was quite a lot of career congestion on the Red track. Didn’t make Metcalfe popular at all, as he was already thought of as
a Flash Harry and a bit showy. Sorry to hear he’s had a hard time
re-adjusting to Civvie Street, but it’s always hard for men of action when a war
ends. If he’s in difficulties, he can always apply to the Spectrum Benevolent
Fund and the relevant Mysteron War Charities.
Gold
and Silberman in the tailoring shop were forever kvetching about getting the
colour-matching precisely right, but nothing we couldn’t put right by sending a
regular bus down to the schmatter-shops in London and Manchester.
As I
recall, Polly had the same sort of operational difficulties too….
4). Reminiscences of Air Vice-Marshal Dame Polyhymnia Angel, GC, DSO, DBE
Oh,
golly, the sort of gels who wanted to become Angels, you wouldn’t believe! We
got the thick ones, the dopey ones. The ones who thought the naming sequence ran
Rhapsody, Harmony, Sunsilk, Timotei, Herbal
Essentials. I mean, brains like that, she was just asking to become Leading
Aircraftswoman (Second Class) Timotei Angel, i/c sweeping the hangar floor!
Well, there aren’t all that many simple musical terms suitable for adaptation
into names, there’s the problem. Fortissima Angel, she was from Liverpool. A bit
loud and brassy, one thought, more your sergeant-pilot, really, not one of the
officer classes. Diminuenda Angel, hmm, quiet little thing, needed
encouragement. Innuenda Angel, lowered the tone a bit, we had to whip her
off-base jolly quickly, let me tell you!
Aubade Angel and Nocturne Angel.
Whoever had the idea of those two flying as a section should have been shot.
Just couldn’t co-ordinate it at all, poor gels. One would be up there as the
Dawn Patrol or the Evening Show and she’d only see her wingmate fleetingly for
five minutes, before the other one pushed off back to Cloudbase to get her head
down.
Let’s see. I’ve got some squadron rolls here…Concerta Angel, Cantabile Angel,
Cappella Angel, Capricia Angel, Celeste Angel… tons of “C”’s, no problem there.
Serenade Angel, Stretta Angel – apparently that’s a convention for two voices
singing harmony in opera – but after the obvious, you start running into trouble
and you have to wing it a bit. Ein kleine Nachtmuzik Angel –
German girl. Linear descendent of von Richtofen, by all
accounts, and a dam’ good shot. Sibelius’ Karelia Suite Angel –
“Sweetie”, for short.
Then
it got silly. Boyzone Angel, Westlife Angel, East-Seventeen Angel, Hannah
Montana Angel… at least you could set them on support flights, Transport
Command, taxi jobs, that sort of thing, out of the public eye.
Butch Angel and Femme Angel – well, I had to have them both transferred to Very
Special Ops after a while, as it was getting embarrassing.
Ah,
great days, great days.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5). Collyhurst, Manchester. Later in November, 2083
Paul
Metcalfe walked into his usual pub. He’d cleaned up, shaved, even run some of
his meagre clothing stock round to the laundry. Getting a few weeks worth of
stuntman work on that new TV series was a precarious and insecure way of making
a living, but it paid well and should, with care, keep body and soul together
for a few months. Although it was a Hell of an effort not to
punch that precious little luvvie who was playing Captain Scarlet.
Metcalfe laughed, somewhat cynically, at the irony. Nobody had asked him what he
used to do for a living or what he’d done during the Mysteron War. Here, he was
just the stuntman whilst that little Captain Pink of an actor got to play him…
although, a realist, it had taken real self-discipline not to shout out That’s
bollocks! Captain Scarlet would never have said anything like that! In response to a particularly fatuous piece of dialogue. At
worst it could have got him thrown off set. At best the director might have
asked Oh yeah? How do you know, then? There was only one particular reply he
could have made, and he didn’t think, without proof, it would have gone down too
well.
Metcalfe had spent his time in between scenes reading Moving Pictures, by Terry
Pratchett, a wry satire on the movie business. He found the character of the dog
Gaspode to be oddly comforting.
But
here, he needed a drink.
He
nodded down the bar to a figure half-hidden in shadow, who, taking it to be an
invitation, shuffled his stool up to join Metcalfe.
“Hi, Conrad. How’s life?”
“Bleedin’ awful, mate!” Conrad Turner
answered.
Metcalfe winced. Since Captain Black, like himself, had been thrown on the
demobilisation scrapheap at the end of the Mysteron War, his life had also seen
more downs than ups. He’d also reverted to one of those street-Mancunian accents
that could strip old paint from a stubborn door at fifty paces.
We
tried to bomb, burn, explode, dismember, reincorporate and generally maim each
other for eight years, reflected Metcalfe. Which, given that
we’re both practically immortal, was a total waste of bloody time if ever there
was one. Still, no hard feelings.
Feeling a kind of kinship towards his old adversary, and looking into a sort of
mirror-image of his own face, Metcalfe signalled for both glasses to be
recharged.
“Sorted!” said Captain Black, lifting his glass in tribute. “You were always a
good bloke, our Paul!”
“Seen Brown lately?” Metcalfe inquired. Captain Brown was the third Spectrum
agent who’d been cursed with indestructibility.
Black snorted, derisively.
“Brown-Noser? Bastard got
himself a cushy number in Diplomatic Protection, didn’e. They reckon he can take
the blast of a bullet or a bomb, regenerate, and be back at work the next
morning. With a tidy bonus in used notes. Bastard!”
Metcalfe sighed.
“Listen up, Conrad. If you can swallow your pride, and Gods know I had to,
SKY-TV are doing a dramatisation of the Mysteron Wars, over at the
old Granada studios at Quay Street. I’m on the stunt team covering for that
little shit who’s playing me… that is, Captain Scarlet.
I happen to know they’re having problems with hiring a stunt double for their
Captain Black. You up for it, if I whisper a word in the right
ear?”
“I
dunno… who’s playing Black?”
Metcalfe told him. Black spluttered with rage.
“That little wanker?”
“It’s not easy, I know, But guaranteed cash. And
bonuses.”
“Welll….” Conrad Turner said, and deflated.
“OK,
then. Funny how these things work out, isn’t it? White makes you redundant to
operational needs. The bleedin’ Mysterons kicked me off the team when they
signed that flamin’ peace treaty. No thank you, no pension, no nothing. Bastards!”
“Bastards” agreed Metcalfe, and called for new drinks.
6) From the personal notes and diaries of Sir Bernard Wooley, KCGB, head
of the Home Civil Service of Great Britain just after the Mysteron War.
Well, the War, like any war, really, was bad for business, with so much of our
economy being directed into military technology and what with our still having
an unemployment problem among the uneducated underclasses. Of, we directed as
many of ‘em into low-level work as we could, naturally, but the fact remained it
was still a damn sight cheaper to have the serious kit like Angel Interceptors
manufactured in the Far East, shipped back, and merely assembled by a
semi-skilled British workforce.
And
of course the Daily Mail and the other newspapers were still screaming at the
politicians to slam down hard on the workshy, who of course by definition were
all benefit scroungers. And when politicians get panicky about votes and
profiles and good publicity, they start chasing short-term policy objectives,
which of course makes more work for us.
Ever
since the Welfare State first came in, in 1945, no government has grasped the
nettle of dismantling it altogether, although some, like the Blair-Brown
administration of 1997-2010 have come very close.
We
of the Civil Service have always blocked that, naturally, as maintaining the
Welfare State in its current form keeps thirty-odd thousand civil servants in
worthwhile work. We’ve always pursued objectives that allow the politicians to
be seen as hammering the undeserving poor, whilst not reducing
the number of civil servants nor harming their working conditions in any
way. It’s our first duty in the Welfare State – preserving the working
livelihoods of our members and looking after the rights of the civil servants.
Well, look at the pittance any individual benefit claimant actually gets.
Pitiful, isn’t it? You’d have to have seriously low expectations if you think
you can avoid working for the rest of your life by living off the State. No, we
take the view that some people have to do well out of the unemployment benefit
system, so they might as well be working civil servants. Always have done. The
ideal is the maximum number of civil servants and the smallest possible number
of claimants. So we can demonstrate real savings in overall cost whilst leaving
the structure intact. Therefore, we collaborate with the party in government to
make the experience of claiming benefit as thoroughly hideous and unpleasant and
bureaucratically impenetrable as we possibly can, so as to deter people from
claiming.
Therefore, at the end of the Mysteron war, where the Martians offered their
services in reparation for damage caused to Planet earth in a new, sincere,
spirit of mutual understanding, we leapt at the chance of getting them to work
in Unemployment Benefits where their not inconsiderable skills would be of
value, especially in the area of deterring, detecting and prosecuting fraudulent
claims. (1)
Of
course, there was discontent. Easy to brush off from the claimants themselves,
always has been. The few politicians with sympathy for them have long since been
weeded out by the party selection and whipping machines, and they’re powerless.
The ideal target. But we started to get protests and rumblings from
employees about having to work in the Benefits Fraud Investigation System
alongside a bunch of soul-less, mechanical, robotic aliens with all the
compassion of black widow spiders and the blood-lust of Komodo dragons.
Of
course, we told the Mysterons that we sympathised, we find our human employees
hard work too, but unfortunately they were stuck with them. No exceptions.
Now
the Galaxy is open for trade, we’ve made first contact with a race called the
Vogons who specialise in civil service work and have some excitingly radical
ideas about further social security reforms. All in all it promises to be a
jolly exciting century!
(1) An
advert on British television warning about the dangers of benefit fraud used
moving circles of light, very much like the portrayal of Mysterons on Captain
Scarlet, to pick out fraudulent claimants in a crowd, warning the viewer that
retribution may be closer than you think. This led to their benefits
investigation teams getting the nickname of The Mysterons….
YOU CAN READ PAUL CATLOW’S DISCWORLD FICTIONS ON
LSPACE.ORG
AND OTHER STORIES UNDER THE PENNAME OF A.A. PESSIMAL ON FANFICTION.NET
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