ESSAY
Previously
presented on the
RED ALERT!
website
Published on the
Spectrum Headquarters
website
with the gracious
permission of
Mike Adamson
RETROMETABOLISM
AND THE WAR OF NERVES
By
Mike Adamson
Retrometabolism.
The creation of a duplicate of either an inanimate object or a living
being... Fantasy? A highly fanciful piece of science fiction? Every fan of
Captain Scarlet has had such thoughts at some time on the subject; for the
purpose it did not require a feasible explanation of how it worked, it was
enough simply that it did.
But
it is far, far from magic. Scientific speculation can indeed hint at what
it is and how it might be made to work.
From
the very first episode it was shown that the Mysterons killed or destroyed
the 'original' and manufactured an almost perfect copy which was under
their direct control and was, ultimately, expendable. From what was the
copy made and how was it caused to spontaneously assemble?
For
the answer to both questions one need look no further that the time-tested
Science Fiction standby, the 'matter transmitter', a machine which
disassembles an object, transmits its component particles at the speed of
light to a point far removed and, often with the help of a receiver
station, reassembles them in their proper order. Star Trek's
temperamental 'transporter' is the key example, a delicate and critical
piece of equipment which has itself been responsible for no few headaches
over the show's currently five incarnations. The duplication (sound close
to home?) of Captain Kirk in the first-season show The Enemy Within
is a point in question — the duplicate was diametrically opposed,
fanatical, ruthless, brutal, maniacally driven, without human feeling or
the strength of convictions. The moral point, that humans must live with
both their good and bad sides, is to this discussion less important than
the manner of the duplication. A transporter imbalance brought about a
malfunction in which the machine delivered two copies of the same object
where there had been one moments before, both alive and both the same
person.
Let
us consider the mechanism. Every last particle in the object to be
transmitted must be known to the controlling computers, a precise record
of them and the order in which they go must be held so they may be
reassembled upon arrival. The object is rendered to its component atoms,
squirted down a superconductor of some sort — a laser or radio beam
would do — and the record, or 'matrix' is used as the 'mould', as it
were, to put all the atoms back together into an object. The exact
mechanical equipment, the electronics and field generators are at present
technically infeasible but that does not prevent us from understanding its
theoretical principle. Indeed, late in 2002, at a major Australian
university, the precise structure of a laser beam was broken down,
transmitted the width of a table and reassembled, the first acknowledged
instance of transmission. Not "matter" transmission, but the
first stirrings of the technology.
Suppose
that we have just the matrix. Scan an object, record its structure,
but do not break it down. Now mangle the object beyond recognition. Take
said pulp and dematerialise it, use the matrix taken before it was damaged
as the guide and reassemble it. All the individual atoms are present no
matter how broken the thing may be. When reconstructed it is whole,
perfect: no hint of damage.
But
suppose a part is lost, gone forever. The 'plans' of are still contained
in the matrix but the particles to reassemble it are no longer present.
The matrix could be read, every required particle obtained from elsewhere
and fed into the particle-broth as raw materials ... And once again the
object is whole.
The
time has come to take the reasoning one step further: no 'original' object
at all, just the plans. Feed it all raw materials... It will no difference
to the system or principle if the particles are originals or substitutes,
it will assemble them in exactly the same way. The outcome is still an
accurate copy. This system was demonstrated in the ,I>Blake's Seven
third-season show Moloch, in which an alien race depended almost
entirely on such scanner-constructor machines for all their needs from
food to housing. Just feed in the plans and the raw materials and out
comes the object. From 1987, with the advent of Star Trek: The Next
Generation, we encounter "replicator" technology, the
practical application of this principle to everyday needs.
One
wonders, in fact if it was not the concepts expressed in The Enemy
Within, way back in 1966, that inspired Captain Scarlet itself.
The idea of a duplicate, outwardly indistinguishable yet dedicated, even
indirectly, to the service of evil, is a classic format that was begging
for a show to be constructed about it, and the Supermarionation series
remains its most perfect, fleshed-out realisation. After Retrometabolism,
what more is there to express within the subject?
But
the Mysterons leapt beyond basic duplication. Over and over they were seen
to utilise the retrometabolic process for other duties, such as the simple
teleportation of Captain Black about the world from the scene of one
offensive to the next, even to snatch him from pursuing Spectrum men. Yet
the greatest, unfathomable part of the process is the alien's ability to
break-down and reassemble objects at incredible range. Enterprise,'s
transporter could do this at ranges of thousands of miles, yet the
Mysteron city controls the process over tens of millions. Still, in the Classic
Star Trek episode Gary Seven it was theorised to be possible
over light-years, which really stretches the credulity, unless a
dimensional engineering factor is considered.
But
what of the Mysterons' habit of constructing an all-new object as opposed
to utilising the original as a source of raw materials? There is no simple
answer to this, as it seems obvious that the copy, if destroyed, could
point of it ... until the discovery that high-voltage electricity stopped
them in their tracks. Perhaps the original was left intact for a very
obscure reason — it could certainly be rendered down and rebuilt without
difficulty if such was desired — and I can only conjecture that it was
less a limitation in the system than a deliberate, intellectual decision
on the part of the aliens.
It
is made clear to the viewer from the delivery of the threat onward that
the Mysterons play to a set of rules that are inviolable. They give
humankind a chance to win, whereas they could retrometabolise nuclear
devices in every city in the world and end it in one stroke. They only
need one such device to copy; once they have the matrix, unlimited
duplication would hardly be unreasonable. From this I assume the aliens
are not committed to Total War; they are playing with us, limiting the
nature of their offensives to something we can meet and fight. It is like
an interstellar chess game in which the opponents never meet each other,
merely see the effects of the moves.
Where
does Scarlet fit? This is bound up in another question — is the process
perfect or not? The answer is no. The copy is not exact. The 'Mysteron
detector' must have something to measure and that quantity would be the
difference between the original and the copy (manifest in the replicated
matter's imperviousness to x-rays). So we can assume that the process has
certain minor flaws, trivial perhaps, but flaws all the same. Such a flaw
might be considered the spontaneous reassembly of Scarlet at the moment of
his injury or death, over which the Mysterons seem to have no control
whatever; unless we are also to assume that they 'gave' Scarlet the power
as a trump card dealt to mankind for their own amusement. Though this goes
somewhat against the accepted grain of the series, it is fascinating to
envision an ancient, staid, superbly efficient yet temperamental race on
some distant world, amusing themselves through endless vaults of time,
playing with the lives of others as if they were gods. The Mysterons have
at least something in common with Star Trek's "Q" in that
sense.
Endless
time? Perhaps. If the reconstructions are only ever produced in accordance
with the original matrix the organism will be realised at exactly the age
when the scan was taken (unlike the Trek transporter which rescans
the object every time it is operated). Exact gene structure, glandular
secretions, the clothes the person wore and the contents of his or her
stomach. To live forever all the organism must do is continue to
retrometabolise. The process may work endlessly, the tiniest damage that
alters the organism from the shape laid down in the matrix might be
repaired at once. Cellular degeneration could never occur.
Functional
immortality, then. For Scarlet, for Black (if he really is
retrometabolised: he may be a "zombie," a human under total
control...), for the Mysteron race. Not a clawing fight to hang on to life
but the inability to die even should it be desired... Without resort to
the electrode gun.
How could it be that an electrical current could undo this almost
miraculous principle? Again, if we suppose the system to be flawed, it is
possible that the matrix is impressed upon the copy and that should the
matrix contained within the copy be lost there is no plan by which to
rebuild the object. Electrical current could rearrange, influence, a field
effect holding the particles in place. Without the plans the object would
fall apart.
There
remains, however, the question of persona. When Scarlet was duplicated his
mind was replaced by the Mysteron imperatives, he was simply a living
robot controlled by the aliens, the archetype of all such retrometabolised
souls, synonymous with Black. Yet, upon his 'liberation' from the Mysteron
grasp, by what malfunction of the system it is hard to visualise, his mind
was still present in full. He was not the vegetable one might have
expected. This leads one to assume that the mind of the original is not
lost, it is 'transplanted' into the copy and remains thus, buried under
the iron constraints of alien programming.
What
must it be like to be imprisoned in one's own mind? Held at the bottom of
a pit of submission as one's body goes about the bidding of faceless,
unknowable beings? This terrible prospect, which would continue as long as
the body was maintained, is what Captain Black, Conrad Turner, would have
endured since the moment he committed the lethal error of ordering the
Spectrum Mars expedition to open fire. A fitting punishment, the aliens
may consider it, for the one who initiated the conflict, the one who gave
them the veritable excuse to play with fire on the world of a conceptually
lesser galactic being.
A
feature on the subject of retrometabolism, penned supposedly by Captain
Blue, appeared in the 1969 Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds Annual,
and it dealt in an abbreviated form with the basic principals of the
'transporter effect', though the conclusion that ultrasonics could be used
to dematerialise an object is somewhat dubious; however, the likely
assumption was reached that any dematerialisation process that acts in a
purely physical manner- living organism, and that any reconstruction of
it, while physically more or less intact, would almost certainly be dead.
(The expression Schroedinger's Cat is a well known left-wing
whisper in physics.) But the axiom that the secret of retrometabolism is a
thousand years ahead of present science is a little exaggerated. A hundred
years seems more likely. One century ago the airship and the submarine
were the cutting edge of technology, and the internal combustion engine
was still comparatively new. Once a theory is realised, application cannot
be far behind.
This
brings us to a fascinating piece of unsubstantiated scuttlebutt. As much
as thirty years ago it was rumoured that the British Post Office had
actually investigated matter transposition as a means of eliminating
conventional mall delivery, and that certain results had been obtained.
Whatever these experiments were, fact, or fantasy on the part of gullible
or hopeful people, nothing ever came of them. There is no information
available and it is doubtful that they were performed at more than a
think-tank level.
So
where does this leave us? A system very far indeed from a magical snap of
the fingers: an understandable sequence of events that conclude with the
duplication of living matter by non-biological means. It does not require
the killing of the original — this is simply the Mysteron way, an
ingrained custom and assumption of the war. The Ed Bishop read-over on the
main title intimates a necessity but it could be read as a deliberation, a
preference in the etiquette of the conflict.
The
Rulebook of the War of Nerves is strict. We have a chance if we're smart
enough to see the signs, take the right risks and make the right
decisions. It is as if the Mysterons are an elder race teaching a young
one the ways of logic and life like a harsh parent. Failure means
suffering for someone, somewhere, victory is rewarded with life and the
Mysteron concession of incidental defeat. But another threat lies around
the corner, the next step in the endless, painful lesson that will temper
humankind's rash vanity that its own power is superior to anything it may
meet in space.
In
the classic Letts TV21 Diary of 1971 it is recorded that the War
was brought to a close by peaceful negotiation, a treaty signed by human
and extraterrestrial in Unity City on the 9th of November, 2077. If this
off-screen information is to be considered a part of the whole mythos of Captain
Scarlet and the interconnected, overlapping TV-21 Gerry
Anderson worlds, then the human race paid for ten years for one mistake
made by one man in a moment of panic. But that moment was First Contact,
the one in which cultures met and tested each other, and we came off worst
because of a dangerous assumption based on insufficient knowledge and
unchecked emotion, coupled with the paranoid fear generated when
militaristic powers exist, locked in one another's inexorable grip.
Looking
back on the show it is apparent that humanity was a victim of its own
fear, that Xenophobia was the trigger for the outrage of the ability to
kill without contact, to create life and death, to reap minds, exact
terrible justice for a critical mistake in the history of a planet. Ten
years of the terror of the indestructible, the invisible, the
retrometabolised, scarred Earth and those who knew the whole truth. It
would surely be a lesson the human race would never allow itself to
forget.
READ OTHER TEXTS FROM MIKE ADAMSON