What did the Mysterons want with President Younger?

[chrisbishop]

Originally posted on MSN Forum 17/06/2004

I had this discussion with a couple of our forum members a few days ago concerning a question that I remembered had been discussed in the last, defunct forum - before it fell victim to a devious Mysteron attack. Well, obviously, the discussion was lost, but I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to resurrect the thread. Maybe you already posted an answer back then, but we'll be glad to hear it again.

In the first episode 'The Mysterons' - for their first act of retaliation, the Mysterons vow they will assassinate World President Younger. There was a first, failed attempt by Captain Brown. And yet, when Captain Scarlet kidnapped the Word President afterward for the Mysterons, he receives instructions from Captain Black that 'the Mysterons want him alive'. Why did they change plans - especially when we're lead to believe, afterward, that they don't do that often?

I have my own answer, but I will wait a little to see what yours will be before answering that.

[DocBrown]

Here's another view of the problem, as well as several other related ones that we've tackled on and off in the past, plus some suggested answers: this is a link to Geoff Willmetts' article entitled "The Mysteron Menace", which considers the question of just how Mysteronised was Captain Black:

http://www.computercrowsnest.com/sfnews/newsc0102.htm

It probably raises at least as many questions as it attempts to answer - but then, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
DocBrown

[Marion W]

Perhaps - having failed to blow President Younger up - the Mysterons decided he was more use alive. If he had supreme authority over Spectrum, they may have intended him to order them to surrender - if they disobeyed it would make Spectrum's officers rebels and forfeit their position of trust with the World Government. Causing in-fighting is always a good way to disrupt your enemies concerted attack against you.

The alternative is that it made for a better storyline and allowed Scarlet to be tracked down and (eventually) shot... but that would be stretching things a bit - don't you think?

Marion W

[DocBrown]

We’ve got this central question of why they would try to capture him when they could have just as easily (in fact, rather more easily) killed and duplicated him – and thereby caused the total destruction of the Earth – which was their stated aim - in one fell swoop. After all, nobody knew about the X-ray thing at the time: all the Mysterons had to do was send the World President’s construct back to work and wait for him to get his finger on the nuclear trigger for a few seconds.

But then… that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it - “our retaliation will be slow, but nonetheless effective” and all that. So maybe there’s a reason for prolonging the process. Perhaps they’d realised by that time that their plan for revenge was just too easy. Better to alert the security forces of the Earth to the true magnitude of the threat to them first – and what better way to do that than to arrange for the President to escape by the skin of his teeth? Doing that would cause a cataclysmic shift in World Government thinking of the same order of magnitude as if al Qaeda had managed to kidnap George Bush, only to have the plan thwarted by a bizarre twist of fate at the last minute. The practical effect would be to put the Earth on a war footing as close to instantly as physically possible: zero to ninety in five seconds, as it were. The problem we’ve got to solve therefore is why the Mysterons would apparently want to produce that effect. Was it a mistake? Or was it the first move in a very carefully thought-out long-term strategy?

I favour the idea that it’s part of a long-term strategy – precisely because of the contradiction between the explicit threat and Black’s reiteration of a set of instructions to Scarlet that were clearly at odds with it. (It’s a while since I’ve seen the episode, but I seem to recall that Black says “Remember, we need the World President alive”, suggesting that this wasn’t a last-minute change of plan, but part of the pre-programming that Scarlet’s duplicate received when he was originally created.) It seems to me that we come back again to the notion that the long-term aim of the Mysterons is not to destroy all life on Earth at all – because if that’s what they really wanted to do, they could have done it without difficulty using any of a number of scenarios that we’ve come up with in the past.

So what actually is the long-term strategy? To scare the living daylights out of the human race? That’s certainly one of the effects, but as a long-term goal per se it doesn’t make sense to me, any more than it makes sense to assume that the object of any Earthbound terrorist campaign is simply to cause civilian panic. You have to look deeper than that – and if you look at other such campaigns in Earth’s past, you’d surely have to conclude that the long-term goal is a change of government somewhere, i.e. the elimination of one power structure and its replacement by another one. Is that what the Mysterons are really up to?

If so, it suggests that the long-term plan was formulated between Captain Brown’s attempt on the World President’s life and his kidnapping by Scarlet: after all, the Mysterons did try to assassinate him – unless we accept that they knew about the security measure that saved President Younger in advance, and I have difficulty believing that one. Alternative suggestion – are the Mysterons not quite as single-minded about how they are conducting this campaign as we’ve hitherto believed? We’ve always regarded them as a single consciousness with a single purpose, but maybe that’s not the case. Perhaps by assimilating Captain Black they introduced something akin to a split personality into their collective psyche. Or perhaps a parallel consciousness was always there – after all, they evidently found it necessary to talk to themselves* before deciding to “take a closer look” at the MEV that had just appeared on the periphery of their complex. Any comments?

[* Of course, it might be argued that for dramatic reasons they had to explain their actions at that point to the audience, but let’s not complicate the issue with such mundane practicalities!]
DocBrown

[DocDenim]

Yes, indeed, an interesting question about why the Mysterons decided NOT to kill President Younger when they had the chance. (and they had more than just one crack at it, too.)

However, I have already covered this at length under the Origin of the Mysterons thread, and it's a bit too long to copy and paste, so I'll just direct everyone there if they want to review the Siobhan-blather about why I think it's an important point and what led me to those particular long-winded conclusions.(And while I'm thinking about it, I will take the opportunity to amend the "Gary" Younger, WP to "James T." Younger, WP, because I apparently have his name wrong.)

But I really don't think that this question can be answered properly without having at least some idea what the Mysterons themselves are all about - and by that, I mean, are they living, thinking beings with a free-will/volition of their own, or are they a machine intelligence with or without self volition? Are they something else altogether? How 'alien' are their thought processes? They seem to share some attributes in common with us from time to time, and to be utterly beyond comprehension at others.

So depending on just how any fan would answer that question may well lead to a different answer to the first.....

Hope to see some interesting other theories for discussion out there!

Doc Denim

[Scarlet Lady]

Oh! I had this conversation with my brother (Captain Tourmaline) a while ago. We came to the conclusion that Black meant to hold President Younger for ransom, so he could use the money to buy more clothes (he only seemed to have his Spectrum uniform!)

[FlicCity]

There is something that no one seems to remember - the President was to be taken to an island somewhere. (Please don't tell me I'm wrong about that!) That suggests that the Mysterons had some kind of base on Earth... or it would, if it had ever been mentioned again.
Perhaps the Mysterons tried to assassinate the President because they weren't sure that the island was secure at that time, and by the time Scarlet was kidnapping him, they were. If they took him to a secret location, Mysteronised him, and then the copy told everyone a story about his having escaped... wait, no, they could have had Scarlet kill him secretly if they wanted to replace him.
Maybe the Mysterons just have short attention spans. After all, they give up each of their schemes quite easily...

[chrisbishop]

I think the island base was actually mentioned in Model Spy. Don't have any reference books or the DVDs on hand at the moment to verify that. So please, correct me if I'm wrong, someone!

As for my own answer to the riddle... Well, it was pretty early in the war, and it has not yet been a long time since Captain Black had been taken over by the Mysterons - is it possible that these instructions he gave to Scarlet were actually a manifestation of him trying to resist the orders given by the Mysterons? Maybe a way to save some time?

[Marion]

Without recourse to the episodes again right now, I would say that it is Andre Verdain and not President Younger who they intend to 'take to the island' - according to what Captain Black says to his sidekick - the model, Helga.
It does still suggest that the Mysterons have a 'secret base' somewhere and that is maybe where Helga goes... after all she is never seen again.... but then with the Mysterons you never know what they might get up to.
Maybe she's in a nice little cottage somewhere secluded, keeping Conrad's slippers warm by the fireside for him?

[FlicCity]

Yeah, Marion. Thanks so much for that image...
I really will have to watch the episode again. I could have sworn that Captain Black said something to Scarlet about the helicopter taking him to an island But you're right, it was definitely mentioned in Model Spy.
Still doesn't answer the question of why it never came up again, though...

[Devon]

That island seems to get on everyones nerve at one point or another. Anyone ever think that since this is after Thunderbirds in the time line that the island might be deserted and that's where they are talking the WP to? It had a lot of state of the art toys in it's day. Since they couldn't track the TB's maybe its still thought of as non-existant. (( Knows hes gonna get whapped for even expressing the idea))

[Clya Brown]

Black's reminding Scarlet in the pilot episode that they wanted the World President alive - in which case they'd presumably need to take him somewhere to get him out of circulation - coupled with that island to which references were made in "Model Spy", suggest the existence of an isolated base on Earth. And almost four years ago (can it really be that long?), Devon here made the startling suggestion that this base could just conceivably be a deserted Tracy Island. All right... suppose Tracy Island was a Mysteron outpost on Earth? Suppose that prior to its discovery and acquisition by the Tracy family, it was inhabited by two human brothers of extraordinary mental capabilities, who during their psychic forays into the astral plane had encountered and befriended the Mysterons: the older one a kind, gentle man who recognised the incalculable benefits that the extraterrestrial race could bring to Mankind, but the younger one a shadowy figure with superhuman abilities, limitless personal ambition, and glowing eyes....

Slowly, the Mysterons began to realise the mistake they'd made in placing their trust in the younger brother - but too late. With the mental powers he'd been given by his alien allies, aligned with his own innate cunning and ruthless determination, he was more than a match for his older sibling, whom he almost succeeded in killing in a massive underground explosion deep in the bowels of the island... and indeed would certainly have done so had it not been for the timely intervention of an American ex-astronaut who was exploring the caves underneath the apparently deserted island at the time. Forced to flee by the arrival of the astronaut's family whom he'd summoned to help them both escape from the underground complex, the younger brother sought refuge in the jungles of Malaya, fired with a burning hatred of Westerners in general and an implacable determination to retrieve what he considered to be his rightful inheritance. Meanwhile, ignorant of the fate of his kin, the older brother befriended his rescuer, pledging himself to serve him faithfully always, and to place at his disposal what remained of the alien technology lying buried in the depths of the caves. Technology that the American had already realised could benefit the whole of Mankind...

Many years after the fabulous organisation that sprang from that chance encounter had saved countless human lives, the older brother at last died. Without the psychic powers of his extraterrestrial mentors to protect the lives of his adopted family, things started to go wrong. Communication failures caused by interference by increasingly powerful alien signals from deep space became commonplace as unbeknown to the Tracys the Mysterons tried in vain to regain contact with their human friend, and vital rescue equipment began to develop inexplicable faults: faults that not even the organisation's brilliant engineer could rectify. With heavy hearts all round, it was recognised that the sun was setting on the futuristic organisation. One by one the sons left the island to raise families of their own; meanwhile to ensure that what was left never fell into the wrong hands, the existing rescue craft were placed in the hands of the fledgling World Government, the entrances to the underground caverns containing the remaining alien artefacts were blown up, and the island was abandoned. When the surviving younger brother returned at last to retrieve his birthright, it was a hollow victory that awaited him. But surveying the ruins, he swore not to rest until the alien artefacts that he knew lay behind the dynamited entrances to the caves were in his hands once more.

Five long years that task took, but his determination never wavered. And one day - by a strange twist of fate the very day that men first gazed upon the home of the Mysterons - his patience was rewarded as the last stone was blasted away, and he gained entry to the chamber containing the alien power source deep within the cave complex - and died horribly as it inexplicably burst into malevolent life once more before his very eyes. The island's original tenants had returned...

Will it do?

[Doc Denim]

Doc Brown!

I think that's FABulous! I don't necessarily agree with it - my own feeling is that TB's are contemporary with OCS, but that's only because once upon a time I didn't know any differently - but I certainly can't fault this plotline-of-reasoning at all.

In fact, you should probably write up the crossover fan-fic ASAP. Please don't forget to include scattered sons and offspring!

Doc-in-awe-Denim

[Kambei]

Here's my four pennys worth, for what it's worth:

Bereznik was well established in the comic by the time captain Scarlet aired on television. Let's assume for a minute that it could have been brought into the series. One possibility is that the 'island' was off the coast of Bereznik and within its territories. Think of the political upheavel and turmoil that would have arisen within the World Government if a Mysteronised Scarlet had managed to hand over the World President to them. It would have been a major blow for Spectrum, as it would have looked as if he had defected and taken President Younger with him.

[Intensity Angel]

To be honest I believe that the Mysterons were just being big bullies. Their city got destroyed by humans, it ticked them off and they start the war of nerves because they got humiliated by an inferior race, hence all the loud speaker threats. I think it's also why they changed tactics with the President, because they were outsmarted again and it annoyed them.