Instrument of Destruction-Parts 1 & 2

[Serena Lewis]

Wow...first two year episode review...
Thanks again to Shadokp, for letting me start the threads and stuff. I owe you one! Call it in any time you like!
I never really liked these two episodes, and my opinions on them haven't changed much over two years. I thought the OCS starting episode was better, though, far as I can remember, it did have a few inconsistencies. Any who, on with my review...

IoD Pt 1

Pros

1. The first episode in a series that would quickly become my favourite!
2. A lot of kicking/punching/acting like thugs that OCS couldn't have managed (The puppets might have gotten their strings in a tangle).
3. I loved the New Green instantly!
4. Burial Scene. Just the whole thing with a collection of personnel...groovy stuff...
5. Mysteron City. Big improvement on the first Lego one...
6. Black 'swimming' through the air in the space shuttle at the start. Nice animation.

Cons

1. Destiny. Looked like a bimbo, acted like a bimbo...just...I don't want to start another argument so I'll leave it there...
2. The hair of the characters. I just thought it was weird. Greens sort of stuck up from her head, Destinys looked like a nest, the blokes all had weird thick spike things...
3. The way Scarlet was de-Mysteronized. Didn't really make sense.
4. Scarlets strange face-pulling when he's on the exercise bike at the start of the episode. I know this is incredibly minor, but just struck me as odd. And it was the first time you saw him, so not a very good scene for him.
5. Destinys picture. Be truthful...anyone fancy that??
6. Hank McGills suit. Bulky and odd.

Bloopers

1. When Scarlet and Blue are fighting in the Brig, there's a quick shot of Blue and his hair is the wrong colour (black).
2. When the Colonel asks Green if there's any word from Mars, and she answers, his shoulder pips disappear.
3. In the grave scene, Captains Magenta and...err...male maybe Ochre haven't got logos on their hats.

Little Things

1. The sign that Blues deflected missile blows up says 'Anderson Orchard'
2. The signpost Blue looks at says 'St. Saviours Church' on one bit, and on the other...'Pinewood'!
3. Spot the Gerry cameo?

Rating: 5/10

IoD Pt 2

Pros

1. Blues initial mis-trust of Scarlet. Makes him more human.
2. The 'cutbacks' line...
3. Destiny getting annoyed at the General.
4. Destiny getting beaten up...
5. Those Russian blokes discussing Skybase 'babes'. Just made me laugh...
6. Blacks' leather coat. I really, really want one now...

Cons

1. Destiny not actually leaving. Boo...
2. Harmony is a mousy haired woman in this. What happened to that? Must have dyed it. Actually, going from the really bright un-natural look in episodes to follow, she has. Definitely.
3. Blue being so macho-cheesy...
4. Hank McGill just...doesn't do anything...you never hear what happened to him. Is he still out there?

Bloopers

1. The Angel who gives Destiny the thumbs up is bald...I think it's Harmony.
2. I think Blue loses his eyebrows a few times in this episode...

Little Things

1. Belgium has two screens in the U.N. Summit thing.

5/10

Of course I admire the effort put into all the episodes, but I just didn't like these ones story much. Anyway...
Phew! That's long...sorry people...please post soon!

xx

[gojohnniegogo]

Pt. 1 - I really enjoyed this episode, which I was what made me carry on watching. As we know these two episodes were done by a different studio, so we'll have to give some leeway[sp?] for the rough edges etc.

There were some excellent touches in the episode, such as the car headlights passing over Black's face to reveal him as the Limo driver. I preferred the fact that more than one of the crew members of the exploration vehicle were Captains, something I'd have liked better in the original (surely at the time as there was no threat we'd have had a number of Captains sat on their backsides?) Going off backgrounds, perhaps for OCS and sticking with the three-man crew, accompanying Black should have been Lt. Green as electronics expert, and either Cpt. Brown or Scarlet as the other crew member? (just a suggestion). That's going off the fact Brown was in charge of the operation of protecting the World President, btw!

I also agree with Serena Lewis on the funeral scene - a lovely touch despite our very own Richard Fraser appearing as Captain Ochre and again in the conference room later! The seemingly mysterious Captain Orange who goes missing for the rest of the series (this could only be the work of the Mysterons!) Certainly one of my favourite episodes in the series. I was gutted it ended on such a cliffhanger! 9/10

Pt. 2 - Not quite as good as part one for me, but highlight scenes for me were Black looking up at the UN building, agree again with Serena on the 'Cutbacks' line! Black trying to deceive Destiny, The dogfight between the Angel jets and vampire squaron was pretty cool, but not as good as Seek & Destroy, oh no! And Scarlet smashing through the glass to take the bullet aimed at Colonel White. I also wondered what happened to McGill - guess he became a little irrelevant when a whole set of Vampire pilots were taken over! 6/10

[shadokp]

The Story - I think the entire set up in episode 1 was perfect. There was enough character developement and back story to set the premise. Part 2 sort of takes on too much. The Vampire fighters could have been one entire story. The missing McGill and choppy plotlines around the nuclear explosives is the weakest part of the story. The pacing was very good throughout with the right amount of action and story telling. Despite all the criticism, I think Destiny is pretty good in this one - although that's one Falcon Interceptor destroyed (why did she fly along side the ENEMY Vampire like that? Not the brightest Angel in the sky .).

The Animation - Despite the doll like hair and bad mouth animation, the rest of the face work is actually pretty detailed and I believe some of that is lost in the rest of the series - still a good pay off for improving the hair. The movements are not that great as I beleive they may have not started using motion capture until the 3rd episode - I think. The vehicle animation is superb and was the one thing that really captivated me at first. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is when Scarlet's Cheetah is rounding the corner and Blue's Cycle is gliding in to land.

Other Points - The entire Mysteron plan has always been an enigma and in this story, they want to destroy Earth but given their powers, there probably is an easier way to do this. This will be an ongoing issue in the series as their powers and plans seem to jump all over the place. If they can make machinery malfunction then why not do this in the next episode and if they can kill people using their green lights, why make people die in accidents first, etc.

The Ongoing Tally (if anyone has any numbers that differ from these feel free to post)

Destiny losing plane - 1
Someone falling of ledge or cliff - 1 (Scarlet in engine room)
On screen Death Count -

Instrument of Destruction 1 - 3 (Black, Scarlet & McGill)

Instrument of Destruction 2 - At least 7 (Russian General, six Russian pilots) - there were probably numerous McGill workers killed as well as a guard or two at the factory that Black destroyed. There may have been a driver of the Vampire squad killed in that attack.

KP

[Skybase Girl]

Here goes...

All the characters appearances improved in later episodes, most notably Scarlet and Destiny. In the beginning, all the Angels seemed to have the same hair ( at least what was visible under the helmets.) Made me wonder whether they were supposed to be wigs, as part of the uniform ( remember UFO ? ) and then the producers changed their minds. Destiny's 'do certainly seemed to have been created by someone who hadn't been near a fashion magazine in a few generations.

Although it's assumed that Black makes a mistake in firing on the alien city, I wonder about that. He's reacting as a soldier would to a very credible threat. You could even say that Scarlet's reactions were too slow. It's not clear whether the Mysteron object is a scanner or a missile, and neither of them had presumably seen anything like it before.

I'm really puzzled about the mysteronisation process, although this is something I'm exploring in a fanfic story, so I won't bore you with my theories here. It's not clear exactly what happened to either Scarlet, or Black. The tumble down the ravine didn't kill them, so the green rings appeared to finish them off, although it wasn't clear how.

Scarlet awakes, apparently normal and not under Mysteron control at that point. No-one explains how he gets back to Earth with Black's body and the time-scale isn't clear either. He seems to be on the side of the good guys at Black's funeral - how far down the line does he start to bat for the other side ? Days, weeks, months ?

Why. if he's a replicant, is he not a Mysteron straight away? This doesn't seem to happen to anyone mysteronised in later episodes, although there is a suggestion in Touch of the Reaper, that they can be sort of turned on and off at will.

How Black travels around the world, apparently without money or documentation, is never explained either. Do his clothes retrometabilise too ? The CGI for him, is fabulous, by the way. They got him right from the start. He's really sexy, in a sinister kind of way. I am really beginning to see what Destiny saw in him !

I think the events in the second part took place a while after the first. Although she's momentarily confused when she meets Black at the UN, Destiny seems to have accepted that he's not the person he was. Her grieving ( such as it was ! ) seems to be over. I agree, though, that all this talk about leaving and not doing her duty,does make her sound like a complete nincompoop.

Dr Gold never comes right out and says that Scarlet has been replicated, although he does admit that he's not the man who went to Mars. Who is he, then ? Scarlet's reaction to the news that he's acquired some dodgy DNA seems quite muted, although that might be because he's dizzy from being spun round on the big ball. Anyone got any theories on what the point of that was ? If it's a device to get people to "confess" their crimes, I would have thought they'd be too busy throwing up to talk.

The first two episodes are probably the ones with the biggest plot loopholes of all. No doubt there'll be lots of discussion to come !

[shadokp]

Although it's assumed that Black makes a mistake in firing on the alien city, I wonder about that. He's reacting as a soldier would to a very credible threat. You could even say that Scarlet's reactions were too slow. It's not clear whether the Mysteron object is a scanner or a missile, and neither of them had presumably seen anything like it before.

It is apparent in OCS that the Mysterons were curious and just taking a look but in this one it is uncertain. Of course the thing that comes out of the city initially looks just like the thing that comes out of the city and attacks them.

If the Mysterons can regenerate their city at will and they are pissed off so easily by this puny human attack then they were probably always going to be enemies anyhow. They appear to be a malicious race (both OCS and NCS) and things would never have ended well for the first encounter.

KP

[luvmylops]

Being on OCS fan and learning only 6 mnths ago that there was a New CS using computer animation, needless to say I was very, very excited. I will admit an initial disappointment that the storyline and characters did not follow along the OCS lines.

Even though I dearly loved OCS, I enjoyed the initial 2 episodes. I was very much impressed with the computer animation (though I do agree that McGills suit definitely needed work!), especially on the vehicles. (I keep telling my kids to get me a Bison!)

By reading the IoD books that were issued, I learned that the "ball" Captain Scarlet was being spun around in, is in fact an interrogation device (and I also agree I would be too busy throwing up to answer any questions)!

I liked the character development, even though Captain Blue seems to me to be a much more pushy, angry person than in OCS.
Colonel White's character seems to have remained basically the same and I like the new Lt Green.

[Skybase Girl]

It gets better, Luvmylops, especially in Series 2 !

So does Capt Blue's attitude....... sometimes.

[Aegis]

Let's comment on a few of these... uh... comments

Serena Lewis:

Instrument of Destruction Pt.1

Pros
1. I'm glad you're still enjoying the show!

2. We had a lot of martial arts motion capture for IOD - unfortunately it's pretty expensive to get that sort of thing (you have to pay for experts, it has to be carefully staged etc.) so Instrument of Destruction Pts 1 & 2 were really the only episodes to feature those kind of moves (I think we may have been a little worried about the censors too - justifiably so as the fights were cut when IOD aired on TV in the UK).

3. Obviously

4. That was a good scene - you'll note though that the lighting and look of the characters seems very different to the rest of the episodes - there was little attempt to be consistent while we worked on IOD as we were up against an incredibly tough deadline. In addition, some of IOD is composed of older shots rendered in Pixar's 'Renderman' whilst the majority of the show was rendered using NewTek's LightWave 3D.

5. One of the very last things to get rendered on IOD! One day we had an unlit model, the next (after a lot of hard work on the part of the artists responsible) - Mysteron city!

6. I like the zero-gravity scenes - really nicely done - shame the characters weren't the better ones from later on in the series.

Cons
1. Yeah - Destiny definitely needed (and got some) work - I always thought her character was a little weak as well - It's a shame the Angels didn't get some tougher, more independent roles in the show.

2. *shudders* The hair was a nightmare - one of the advantages of switching to LightWave to get the show done was the fast throughput on scenes - work could be turned out much more efficiently than using the Maya/Renderman pipeline that was in place before the switch. The BIG disadvantage is the LightWave only had one hair tool back then - a third-party program called 'Sasquatch' - now, Sasquatch can be incredibly realistic in the hands of people that know its quirks but sadly, many of the artists on NCS had never used it before.

I actually fought to keep it as I believed we could turn out much better results than the ones we got in IOD 1+2 (there are some shots where the hair looks really good but many where it just looks odd) sadly, the decision was made to go a simpler route which I think was a shame.

Funnily enough, just as we were finishing up on NCS, Simon Hodgkiss (one of the character texture artists and Head of Characters near the end of the show) started using it again for several characters and got some pretty good results - see the bikers in Greyskulls as an example (one of them even had armpit hair!).

3. Yeah - I'm a stickler for consistency and I hate plot holes - suffice to say I got extremely frustrated working on some episodes.

4. Zero-G does strange things to ya...

5. I think Curtis Randall (Scarlet Team Lighting TD, later Blue Team Leader), the guy that made up that photo made a similar comment

6. All of Hank's shots were modelled, animated, lit and rendered in Maya and Renderman - Hank was done before I came on board so I don't really know what went wrong with him (besides us running out of time) - lucky he doesn't appear much eh?

Bloopers
1. A good workman never blames his tools but...

2. There's probably tons of glitches like in the show - that kind of stuff happens when you've been up for 48 hours straight fuelled only by Red Bull and nicotine...

Little Things
3. That farmer character wasn't actually supposed to be a likeness of Gerry but you're not the first person to point out the similarity - he turned up in a few episodes which annoyed Gerry no end when he found out - he didn't like us re-using stuff in the show (that or he wasn't keen on making so many 'guest' appearances ).

My rating? 10/10 for the hard work everyone involved put into it - if we hadn't have gotten this one finished on time there wouldn't have been a show at all! Shame we never got a chance to work it over and fix some of the issues with it though.


Instrument of Destruction Pt.2

Pros
1. Yeah - that worked well - I like the idea of conflict between people that used to trust each other - John Carpenter's 'The Thing' did it incredibly well.

2. That one got a smile out of me too...

3. The very stereotypical Russian general but at least Destiny got to show a little personality.

4. I lit that scene and remodelled most of the environment - it was a lot of fun to work on but I was wondering when I did it how much would get cut from the show when it aired...

5. Heh! They're all meatheads - I thought they died quite well in classic Gerry Anderson style!

6. I have one just like that

Cons
1. Yeah - too much angst, not enough action - that's Destiny all over...

2. Gerry saw a picture of Jennifer Garner in 'Alias' in the character department (they always had lots of pictures of actors and actresses on the walls for reference) and decided he wanted one of the Angels to have red hair just like hers - hence Harmony's nuclear-red barnet was born - it changes colour a lot in the episodes - sometime it looks pretty cool, other times it's just crazy pillar-box red...

3. We had a lot of fun with Blue's camping it up throughout the series - dunno exactly WHY he came out the way he did - he just did One of the animators dressed him up in a leopardskin Spectrum uniform and matching pimp hat once - I wish I had a copy of that to show here - it was awesome!

4. Hank was Mysteronized in order to liquidate all his companies and place all his resources at Black's disposal - If I recall, there's a bit of that in the show but yeah - he just kinda vanishes - I hate loose ends too...

Bloopers
1. I bet the artist that did that thought they could get away with it

2. When we were getting the original Maya models into LightWave, they were broken down into a ridiculous amount of pieces (a character like Blue was made of maybe 20-30 parts) this made it incredibly easy to lose things - that coupled with tight deadlines meant that it's a miracle this sort of thing didn't happen more often (at least in the first few eps anyway).

Little Things
1. Many of the UN representatives were repeated in the original 3D scene files - Curtis Randall worked on this too and (being a Canadian) made sure Canada outnumbered all the other delegates...

Thanks to everyone for posting their thoughts on the show - it's great to think that thanks to you people, all the hard work we put into the show it still appreciated and critiqued - keep 'em coming and when I can stop by and post any other interesting bits of trivia I will

[Aegis]

shadokp:

I actually came up with a plot for what was supposed to be the official NCS video game for Gerry Anderson Productions - the game was going to be called Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet: Endgame and the storyline was an attempt on my part to fill in a great many of the plot holes and to provide a definitive conclusion to the story - the game would have begun around 6 months after Dominion and revealed exactly what the Mysterons were up to.

It has to be said, it's not 'official' in as much that Gerry and the original writers of NCS weren't involved but if we'd gone ahead with it, it would have been as official an ending as the series was likely to get. Sadly, GAP ran out of money and the project never took off - I hope to write up the story at some point and share it with the members of Spectrum-Headquarters.

[shadokp]

Aegis,

Not to change the subject too much but it appears that Gerry Anderson Productions has run out of money like you say. Any word on what he will do now and what was being worked on? We had heard about a new series Lightspeed and you were kind enough to share some cool looks at what you had been working on - what was that going to be? A Thunderbirds series? Game?

Thanks again for your continued support in the series and us fans.

KP

[Aegis]

Hi shadokp!

At little explaining is needed I think

Gerry Anderson Productions (GAP) wasn't actually Gerry's company - The Indestructible Production Company was the one Gerry worked for as Executive Producer and also the company that made NCS. GAP on the other hand was (I believe) the finance side of the production. After NCS finished, GAP hired a few people from Indestructible (myself included) to work on the marketing materials (such as they were) for NCS and also on concepts to exploit the NCS intellectual property (hence the video game) and new projects (Thunderbirds) - they went under some time ago now - a year and a half maybe?

In the meantime, from what I hear, Gerry has been trying to get LightSpeed (and possibly other ideas) made but things seem pretty quiet at the moment (not that I'm on the inside track but I do hear stuff from time-to-time).

[shadokp]

Okay thanks for the info - sorry that all that fell through.

KP

[Serena Lewis]

My rating? 10/10 for the hard work everyone involved put into it

Oh, yes, I do think every episode deserves 10/10 for all the hardwork! You guys did excellent!
But I judge episodes based on how much I enjoy them...
(Things that add to my enjoyment; More of Green, more of Ochre, more of Blue and Green [If you catch my drift], Destiny getting hurt or appearing less...)
I don't really judge light effects and things unfortunately...

6. I have one just like that

Really? Oh, I envy you...

3. We had a lot of fun with Blue's camping it up throughout the series - dunno exactly WHY he came out the way he did - he just did One of the animators dressed him up in a leopardskin Spectrum uniform and matching pimp hat once - I wish I had a copy of that to show here - it was awesome!

I simply cannot get that image out of my head! It's hilarious!

I can stop by and post any other interesting bits of trivia I will

Please do!

xx

[James. C]

Aegis, thankyou for your comments, I find all you bits of trivia facinating!

[gojohnniegogo]

Hi shadokp!

At little explaining is needed I think

Gerry Anderson Productions (GAP) wasn't actually Gerry's company - The Indestructible Production Company was the one Gerry worked for as Executive Producer and also the company that made NCS. GAP on the other hand was (I believe) the finance side of the production. After NCS finished, GAP hired a few people from Indestructible (myself included) to work on the marketing materials (such as they were) for NCS and also on concepts to exploit the NCS intellectual property (hence the video game) and new projects (Thunderbirds) - they went under some time ago now - a year and a half maybe?

In the meantime, from what I hear, Gerry has been trying to get LightSpeed (and possibly other ideas) made but things seem pretty quiet at the moment (not that I'm on the inside track but I do hear stuff from time-to-time).

It's excellent to think we have people like yourself and Dom Lavery being posters on the site, just so we can have some insight into what actually goes on, I'm particularly interested in that as an ex-media student! Thanks for your input!