Mysteron Threats

[Marion]

I think I am right in saying it is Captain Blue who explains to the associate of a threatened human target, (the SCEF?) that when the Mysterons fail to achieve their stated aim, they leave the person alone and go after a fresh target.
No doubt Blue believed it, and so did I.
Then today I was re-watching - with particular attention to detail - 'The Mysterons' and 'Winged Assassin' (episodes 1 and 2 of OCS) and it occured to me that the Mysterons don't do that - at least not to start with.
They threaten to assassinate the World President in the pilot episode, and they carefully set up a scenario where Scarlet and Brown are killed, and both reconstructed, then, when Brown tries to kill the World President, he succeeds in blowing up the Maximum Security Building in New York, but the President escapes.
Strike one to the Mysterons - agreed? So why do they then have Scarlet try to kidnap him? They don't issue a new threat and they're still after the same target...
Come to that, why do they reconstruct Scarlet at all? Brown is their instrument of destruction (to coin a phrase) and Scarlet is therefore really rather superfluous to requirments at that stage.
In 'Winged Assassin' - someone takes a pot shot at the Asian Director General while he's in his hotel - as this is BEFORE the Mysterons make their threat, maybe it isn't one of their people, and therefore doesn't count? Maybe the Asian D-G just isn't a nice person and there are loads of people out to get him.. but if it is supposed to be a Mysteron assassin, they do make a second attempt - which succeeds.
Was Blue talking through his cap, or is there a logical explanation?
Other than that I should stop paying attention whilst actually watching the stories?

[Gun-wielding Lombax]

But if the first assassination attempt on the Director General was NOT The Mysterons...then why was Captain Grey there to save him? I thought that ever since the disastrous Zero-X mission, Spectrum's sole purpose was to counteract The Mysterons?

Another thing that bothers me about Captain Blue's dialogue was that he is making a dangerous assumption, how does he know for sure that The Mysterons won't make a third attempt on the Supreme Commander's life? It's true that in their previous assassination attempts they never attacked more than twice, but that's not a gurantee of anything. Perhaps this time The Mysterons would kill him in a suprise third attack and punish Spectrum for being complacent.

Regarding the World President, the only theory I can offer is that perhaps the initial threat was one of those cunning ones that shouldn't be taken literally (such as when they intended to "kill time") . In other words, they DID intend to kill Younger, but they didn't reveal the fact that they then intended to turn him into a Mysteron duplicate. Imagine the havoc the world's most powerful man could do when under alien influence. If his activities were subtle he might never be exposed, so long as he avoided having an X-Ray. This could explain why Scarlet and Black needed to get away with him alive, because this scheme would not work if someone witnessed the president being killed and then duplicated. Though this theory of mine only works if The Mysterons thought up this scheme somewhat late into the episode, because if their intial attempt on his life had succeeded, they couldn't go through with it. Nobody would believe the president had survived that explosion and the Mysteron Younger would be exposed instantly.

[Marion]

That's a good point - well they all are. Captain Grey's presence at the hotel is rather a surprise...
I wonder if Blue was just trying to calm things down when he said the Mysterons don't bother if they fail with a target? But then as you say, that could lead to complacency and Spectrum would surely be held responsible if the SCEF was killed soon afterwards.
The Myserons change tack with their intended fate for a victim twice - they threaten to kill and then they kidnap the World President AND Andre Verdain - and there's no explanation as to why in either case.
Maybe they are just making it up as they go along, although in the case of Verdain Spectrum know he's been kidnapped by Black and by then they have the Mysteron detectors, so I expect that Verdain would (discreetly) have been checked over after his rescue. After all, very few people fall head first from a moving car and don't hurt themselves...
Plot bunny... what if Verdain was a Mysteron after all...

[chrisbishop]

As far as "Winged Assassin" goes - I always took the Mysterons threat we heard at the start of the episode as something that had occured before the first assassination attempt on the Director General. Like, they show us the attempt scene, and then we hear the threat, but in a way that explained to us why Grey was there in the first place. A flashback sequence, if you will?

[Mary]

Remember that "Winged Assassin" was set shortly after the Car-Vu incident, as Scarlet is getting his final clearance from Fawn before being allowed back on active duty. It's still early days as far as the Mysterons are concerned, so at that time Spectrum was still going to be primarily involved with world security, anti-terrorism or whatever its specific mission profile was at the time.

It isn't made clear at the beginning of the second episode who the first would-be assassin was, human or Mysteron, so it is quite possible that Spectrum had already been assigned to his protection and Grey was just in the right place at the right time.

[Intensity Angel]

It's understandable that Spectrum would send an officer to protect the guy. Don't forget that despite dealing with the Mysterons, Spectrum might deal with non related issues.

OR maybe an informant tipped Spectrum off of a potential Mysteron strike and Spectrum took action on it.

[doc gold]

I always woundered that on NCS. When Black kept failing, why did they keep him??