Personal history

The only daughter of a successful and wealthy family of Chinese entrepreneurs, Chan Kwan was born in Tokyo, Edo Province, on the Island of Honshu, Japan, whilst her mother accompanied her father on official business.  The Peking Taxi Corps was a very lucrative flying-taxi business and had offices both in Peking and Tokyo. Chan grew up in a world of jet-planes and high speed aircraft, and her love for flying most certainly came from there.  In order to receive a high school education in Tokyo, she stayed with relatives of her mother, while traveling between China and Japan for the holidays.

Chan went to London, England, until she was seventeen, to complete her education.  Mostly influenced by her family background, Chan realised that flying was the only career she would ever want.  However, she gave in to her father’s request, and went to Tokyo University to take degree level courses in aerodynamics, physics, and electro-mechanics.  Her love of flying was so great that, despite the demands of her university studies, Chan spent all the spare time she had taking flying lessons with her friends of the Tokyo Flying Club. 

Chan left the university in 2062, at age 20, having gained grade-1 degrees in her subjects. Although having graduated with honours, her only ambition now was to prove that she could pilot a small jet-engined aircraft single-handedly around the world.  She prepared herself for the next two years (2062 to 2064), perfecting her flying skills.  Her father, apparently believing in her project, set up a fund for her, and with the money, she was able to purchased an old second-hand, single-seater, flight-trainer jet.  In the three months that followed, using her family’s flying taxi company workshops, she enhanced the craft to meet her own personal requirements for the project ahead.

It was on March 2, 2064 that Chan Kwan set off on her solo flight around the world.  However, this first attempt failed; after only thirty-six hours she answered to a distress call while flying over the Pacific Ocean and found helpless men stranded aboard a blazing fuel tanker.  Without a second thought, Chan successfully landed her small craft on the deck of the burning ship to rescue the three men.  Knowing that her craft would now be too heavy with the four of them, she stripped the fuselage down to the bare essentials, and flew it back to land, to safety.  With this daring rescue, Chan Kwan was acclaimed as a hero all over the world.  However, her ambitious project was not forgotten, although she had to wait a further six months to finally start her round the world solo flight all over again.  This time, she was successful, and she broke all previous records.

When Chan’s father died in September of 2065, she inherited full command of Peking Taxi Corps. In the following year, the firm became one of the swiftest freight and flying taxi services in the East, under her direction.

In the middle of 2066, Chan Kwan’s dedication to her cause and her astonishing flying abilities attracted the attention of the Spectrum selection committee, who unanimously decided that she should become one of the organization’s Angel pilots.  She accepted the honour, and was given the code name of Harmony Angel.

Personality profile

Fully committed to her cause, and to any project she engages with, Harmony is devoted to Spectrum.  She is generally regarded as their best pilot, a point the Angels all agree on.  Off duty, she is full of mysterious eastern charm and femininity, and very quiet, but she also likes to indulge in sports, particularly martial arts.  A 4^th belt Black belt in judo – a skill she had taught her father – she spends time in the gym, practicing and teaching karate and judo to other agents – especially the Angels.

In fan fiction, Harmony is generally depicted as a reserved, quiet character, always ready to help her fellow officers, and willingly replacing the other Angel pilots during their shifts on holidays, such as Christmas.  She has a kind heart, as is demonstrated on various occasions, but can also be totally ruthless and even lethal on occasions when those she loves, and has sworn to protect, are threatened (both cases seen in ‘Rock-a-bye Angel’, by Chris Bishop and Marion Woods). She is shown to be tough and resourceful in ‘This Other Eden’ by Marion Woods, whereas the gentler side of her nature is depicted in ‘Sayonara, Captain Black’ by Caroline Smith.

Harmony's family

Little more is known of Harmony’s family and personal life, apart from what has already been said in her personal background. Her parents remain unnamed.  In one of the Lady Penelope magazine’s Angels strips, she has an uncle, Tai Kwan, living in Tokyo, who’s kidnapped by a criminal in search of the engineering secrets of the Angel craft.  

Nothing is said about what happened to her father's company, when she left it, after being recruited by Spectrum, either if it had been taken over by someone else, or if it had gone under.  Considering that Harmony, according to her official profile is fully committed to Spectrum, it is unlikely that she continues to run the family business from afar.

Thus far, fan fiction writers have barely elaborated on Harmony’s personal life, although Chris Bishop theorised that she was half-Chinese, and half-Japanese, stipulating that her mother was from Japan, based on the confused background that describes her as either Chinese or Japanese (born in Tokyo but having a decidedly Chinese name).  This would also explain the information that Chan lived with relatives in Tokyo when she attended school there, thus making these relatives from her mother’s side.  Other writers have followed the same idea, but aside from this bit of information, nothing else supports this theory.  Harmony would have learned origami from her mother at a tender age, would know about the ‘Tanabata’ Japanese festival (both from ‘A White Christmas Carol’, by Chris Bishop, Mary J. Rudy and Sue Stanhope), and would perform tea ceremony on Cloudbase with other crew members of Japanese origins (‘Sayonara, Captain Black’, by Caroline Smith).  In a few stories (such as the multiverse ‘Chan Kwan, Bounty Hunter’, by Ono) there’s a hinted attraction between Harmony and Captain Grey, without argument the quieter members of Spectrum, but nothing from the TV series, or official background supports this theory.

The many faces of Harmony Angel

Elizabeth Morgan

Lian-Shin

Tsai Chin

Harmony Angel’s face was allegedly modelled on Chinese-born actress, living in England, Tsai-Chin, who’s known for such role as Ling in James Bond’s ‘You Only Live Twice’ (the girl who's in bed with Bond in the pre-credits openings), the evil daughter of Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu, and more recently, as Helen Rubenstein in the American series ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, and in movies such as 'Memoirs of a Geisha', and 'Casino Royale'.

In the first episodes, Elizabeth Morgan performed Harmony Angel’s voice, then Lian-Shin was hired and voiced Harmony for the rest of the series.

Harmony Angel appeared in 17 of the 32 episodes of the ‘Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons’ series, but didn’t have a prominent role in any of them.  Her most noticeable appearance was in the episode ‘The Launching’, in which she escorted the apparently wayward pilot Mervin Brand out of a security flight zone, to then confront him on the ground.  Her forthright replies to Brand, who shows himself unimpressed to be facing ‘a girl’, gives one of the most memorable scenes of the show.

Harmony was fairly well used in the comic strips – especially ‘The Angels’ one, from the Lady Penelope magazine, where, in many stories, she shares an equal spotlight with her fellow Angel pilots, and at least two other stories feature her prominently:  the first one where she has to rescue her uncle from the claws of a criminal known as Mako, and the second one where a young Japanese girl, named Toshi, decides to become an Angel pilot (despite Colonel White’s opinion on the subject).  

On a few occasions, Harmony also featured in the Captain Scarlet comic strips (being kidnapped by Captain Black in the story ‘De-Mysteronised’) and accompanies Captain Scarlet to Spectrum’s training ‘Camp Sahara’, in the more recent story ‘The Spider Web’, which appeared in Fleetway’s 1993 Captain Scarlet comic magazine.  The same Fleetway magazine reproduced a portrait of Harmony Angel, drawn by Lynn Simpson for her series of colour ‘Spectrum portraits’.  In addition to this, Harmony, like all the other Angels, was featured in the novel ‘The Angels and the Creeping Enemy’, written by John Theydon, and shared and adventure with Symphony Angel in the second story in 'The Angels' hard cover story book.

Other interesting facts

Harmony Angel was a revolutionary character for the time.  She is one of several characters in ‘Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons’ who come from ‘minority’ racial groups to appear as a regular character in a TV series.   In 'The Launching', she demonstrates quite categorically that she can surpass male counterparts by stating that her judo prowess is even greater that her father's – to whom she had taught it. She portrays a strong female character, showing herself more than capable of holding her own; this was perhaps a nod towards the feminist movements of that era, and was certainly a refreshing change from the weepy 'damsels in distress' that populated other contemporary shows and previous Anderson series.

There is some question as to which is Chan Kwan's given name, and which is her family name. Chinese names are frequently given as family name first, given name second, but this is not always the case with Japanese names. The existence in one comic strip story of her uncle Tai Kwan seems to indicate that 'Kwan' would be her family name, but since this information comes from a comic strip story, it can also be easily dismissed, as some of these stories don't always follow the established 'canon' of the Captain Scarlet's universe. 

With Destiny Angel, Harmony Angel is the only other Angel to have been created as an action figure by Chinese company Vivid Imaginations in 1994, with helmet and pistol.

The CGI Harmony Angel

When the ‘New Captain Scarlet’ TV series was aired in 2005, there was also, of course, a Harmony Angel character, but this one was definitely different from the one of the original series.  This Harmony is no longer of Asian origins (this role being held by Symphony Angel).  Named Rebecca Drake, the new Harmony is a red-haired, blue-eyed character, who sounded Southern American, and who has a propensity to get into trouble (‘Trap for a Rhino’, ‘Fallen Angels’).

Second-in-command to pack leader Destiny Angel, she’s very charismatic, at least according to fans’ reactions; this character took a little more space in the series than her original Chinese/Japanese counterpart, effectively taking the place held by the original Symphony as ‘second most popular Angel’, or even possibly being preferred by fans over Destiny herself.  The new Harmony Angel was one of the 'New Captain Scarlet' series' nicest surprises.