No bones about it?

[shaqui]

Kim found a reply to a letter in TV21 issue 171, while sorting through issues. It is from Mark Fisher, who was essentially asking 'Is Captain Scarlet's body the one created by the Mysterons?'

The answer by 'Doctor Fawn' is as follows:

"Although we still cannot explain fully the extraordinary stages through which Captain Scarlet passed, we do know that this body is that created by our enemy. Basically, his body is the same as everybody's, with blood and flesh but apparently no bones. His ultra-fast powers of healing and his virtual indestructibility are the result of his ordeal. The fact that he regained his own voice and natural characteritics is still a puzzle. The only answer I can deduce is that Scarlet's very life, his soul, was captured in an unusual suspended animation for a brief while, after which they returned to his new, Mysteronised body."

Now I'm not sure what significance a Mysteron reconstruction having 'no bones' is, unless this is an interpretation of x-rays not showing bones but a normal image - but I thought it migh interest you.

Comment very much invited!

[yorkie]

Maybe by having no bones he bounced when he fell off the car-vu and this explains how he survived the fall. Or maybe not.

[DartBrat701]

Maybe by having no bones he bounced when he fell off the car-vu and this explains how he survived the fall. Or maybe not.

That would have made for one BIG bounce!

*BOINNNNNNNNNG, BOIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNG!*

(Who knows, he could have bounced himself back to Cloudbase! )

[Marion]

Shaqui quoted from TV21:
Basically, his body is the same as everybody's, with blood and flesh but apparently no bones.

Now, Captain Scarlet is the very last man I would have thought lacked a backbone... and whatever happened to the stated explanation that the Mysterons make 'exact copy of a person or object'? Are we supposed to assume that every Mysteronised replica was a human being with no skeleton in the first place?
Besides, it beggers belief as to how the Mysteron replicas would stand, walk, pick things up etc.. Even if the Mysterons - assuming they have a corporeal form - are boneless wonders, I can't see that that would work on Earth - isn't our gravity greater than on Mars?
Surely Fawn could have thought of another reason why no skeleton shows up on X-rays - IF that is why he makes this somewhat farcical assertion?

On a similar vein, whilst looking at Shaqui's comic strip site I noticed a snippet that said Mysterons cannot use their retrometabolism on anything that's been dead for longer than 12 hours - yet I remember a comic story where they retrometabolised an entire military graveyard to attack and rob a bank (something they seem to like doing, strangely enough - attacking banks, that is ).
That would seem to suggest that TV21 is in the business of confusing the issue with regard to the Mysterons and keeping people guessing as to the nature of the Mysteron threat.

[chrisbishop]

Could it be part of a huge conspiracy ordered by the World Government - and put in place by Spectrum - to "protect" people and see that they will never know the whole truth behind the Mysterons!?

I can very well see the WG elaborating a series of such cockeyed stories only to confuse people.

[DartBrat701]

I noticed a snippet that said Mysterons cannot use their retrometabolism on anything that's been dead for longer than 12 hours - yet I remember a comic story where they retrometabolised an entire military graveyard to attack and rob a bank (something they seem to like doing, strangely enough - attacking banks, that is ).
[/color]

I think you just answered my question about Capt. Black and graveyards, Marion!

[MMK]

I noticed a snippet that said Mysterons cannot use their retrometabolism on anything that's been dead for longer than 12 hours - yet I remember a comic story where they retrometabolised an entire military graveyard to attack and rob a bank (something they seem to like doing, strangely enough - attacking banks, that is ).
[/color]

I think you just answered my question about Capt. Black and graveyards, Marion!

I was wondering about Capt. Black as well (when you brought that up Marion). Cheers!

[MMK]

Have been looking through many discussions, and I've actually 'taken in' more of what people have said. {it's amazing what you notice}
For instance:

Now, Captain Scarlet is the very last man I would have thought lacked a backbone

It'd be very difficult for CS not to have a backbone, as it seems - half of the time... no, 99.9% - he has the 'weight of the world' on his shoulders.

[Parker Gabriel]

Mysteron likenesses having no bones? No way, fellow members of Spectrum--NO WAY! [Deep breath slowly released!]

No one here should care if that question was tongue-in-cheek or not; Mysteron likenesses of Earthmen do indeed have bones!

It's just that they also emit a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation that blocks x-rays but not fMRI scans.

This is posted with all respect to the Colonel, of course.

[Clya Brown]

That rather depends on what you mean by a bone, doesn't it? Something made of calcium that grows within a human body? Or is it something that is artificially created in the likeness of a bone by a process of which nobody knows anything at all? Nobody knows what a Mysteron likeness really is, how it's created, what it's made of or what it's properties are, other than the established "facts" that it's impervious to X-rays and susceptible to being "killed" (though maybe "deactivated" would be a better word, since nobody really knows whether it was "alive" in the first place) by high-voltage electricity. That it emits electromagnetic radiation is speculation, unless that was established on the TV show, which I don't think it was - but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point.

A good parallel with explaining the workings of the Mysterons in terms we understand might be trying to convey the phenomenon of a rainbow without having any understanding of the effect of water droplets on all the wavelengths contained in a single shaft of light. The best the ancients could manage in that regard was that is was a mystical bow placed in the firmament by way of a divine promise not to cause another big flood. I reckon that's pretty much the sort of level we're at here!

[MMK]

I reckon that's pretty much the sort of level we're at here!

It certainly looks like it...

Doc Brown, thats an interesting theory about rainbows.

[Intensity Angel]

Several ideas have ppped into my head concerning this 'no bones' thing about Captain Scarlet.

The theory that Fawn is referring to the x-rays sounds plausiable, but Spectrum discovers this in 'Operation Time' I believe, I haven't watched the episodes in a while.

Waht if Scarlet was first found by grave robbers or something of the likes, and his bones were removed for the black market trade? Just a random idea, I'm not standing by it! Don't bite me over it!

Prehaps his skeleton is made of metal, like Wolverine? Maybe that's what Fawn meant by no bones.

Or his skeleton isn't made of calcium, but infact some other material that isn't bone. Something organic similar to bone.

Just ideas...