Several Questions
Moderator: Spectrum Strike Force
On the business of how the cap mikes work, I've trawled the following out of my archives from the Mark I forum. I agree with Doc Denim above that this communications thing isn't an insurmountable problem - as indeed I seem to remember we agreed at the time. It's only complicated by what we actually saw in the original series, namely the various Spectrum operatives managing to activate the things without any apparent hand movements. On that problem, I came up with the following (not totally serious) suggestion...
<<Getting a bit into the sci-fi area for a minute, could it be that the colours are the key to all this? Perhaps Spectrum’s R&D team discovered a way to analyse radiated brainwaves by the wearer of one of their caps from the area of the brain that is chiefly responsible for identification of colour – the upshot of which would be that you think of a colour (a lot easier than thinking of a more complicated concept like a person), and the microchips in your cap detect the radiated pattern and analyse it to determine which colour you’re thinking of. Automatically placing the call would then be child’s play. Of course, you’d need some way to prevent the cap from picking up the fact that you’d just seen a pretty girl walking down the street in a scarlet dress, but I imagine that would be done by physically turning the colour-detection system on in some way before you want to make the call (or by not looking too closely at pretty girls).
Detection of patterns in quite noisy waveforms is nothing new – I’ve analysed the output from an EEG machine with electrodes stuck to someone’s jaw with sticking plaster while they’re chewing food with a view to trying to determine what it was they were eating. I won’t claim that the project was an unqualified success, but it’s been done, and the mathematics isn’t all that hard. The process of electronically recording muscle movement is called electromyography, and discriminating between the waveforms usually involves Fourier analysis. Another application of waveform analysis is identifying the source of origin of a sample of orange juice from its spectrophotometric signature – and that process is remarkably accurate, allowing you to determine sometimes not only which country it comes from but also which year’s harvest it was. This is done as a check on the juice’s authenticity, since it’s possible to mix it with cheaper products without markedly changing the taste – but not without changing the signature.
One obvious stumbling block in all this would be the similarity of many shades of colour (e.g. Lieutenants Russet and Roan in Siobhan Zettler’s excellent story “Operation Minerva” – I think they were described as reddish-brown and brownish-red respectively). However, let’s not get too hung-up on details at this stage of the game!>>
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Clya Brown
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One obvious stumbling block in all this would be the similarity of many shades of colour (e.g. Lieutenants Russet and Roan in Siobhan Zettler’s excellent story “Operation Minerva” – I think they were described as reddish-brown and brownish-red respectively). However, let’s not get too hung-up on details at this stage of the game!
Ochre: "Magenta, you are going to have to come and see this video I've got from the ladies' locker room... Oh, it's you, Cerise... Damn colour detector chips..."

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Captain Indigo
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"This is Captain Coral Pink to Lieutenant Peach Melba, do you copy?"
Black, obviously, is an exception to this practice and until such time as he's apprehended and taken into custody, the code name is (I have to say it!) black-listed.
Ciao!
Doc Denim
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Doc Denim
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Too right, Doc. I have to agree with you there - because sooner or later, Spectrum would run out of colours, even if they used the ones that sound rather silly.
Mind you, I still feel sorry for the agent they decide to call "Madder"!

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Scarlet Lady
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Captain Indigo
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Lieutenant Indigo wrote:Okay, SL, I'll bite. Just what colour is 'madder'?

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mb2000
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James. C
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Captain Indigo
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I looked it up -btw- and 'madder' comes from the red, fleshy roots of plants from the genus rubia - at least it did originally. The dye obtained is described as : dark reddish-purple ...
It's now made synthetically and used as a pigment in inks and paints.
The origin of the English word is given as 'Middle-Dutch or Norse'.
Now, don't you feel better for knowing that?

Note to self: Stop spending so much time with Captain Blue - this need to know everything is catching...

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Marion
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CS: Adam, I hope you realise that you're quite mad!
CB: Yeah, but HE'S *points to Captain Madder* quite Madder!*both laugh at the Captain's expense*
Poor bloke...

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Scarlet Lady

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Captain Indigo
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mb2000 wrote:2) Why weren't Ochre and Magenta wearing their shoulder epulets in the leisure room in "Winged Assasin"?
I'm new here so go easy on me,
I think everyone's missing the point here. The photo isn't there any more, it's been replaced, but if they are relaxing in the leisure room they've probably taken off their epaulettes, possibly to charge the batteries. They may even be off duty in which case there would be no need for them to keep their communications capability on them.
It may well have been a continuity error, but I'd much rather come up with a proper answer.
james
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james
Doc Denim wrote:I seem to recall (and this goes back many, many years) seeing one and only one of the Captain Scarlet Annuals, which had a story in it that explained what had happened to the crew of the MEV. (I know I asked about this in the old Forum, and just don’t remember if anyone responded to it or not….) This particular book may well have been one of the first Annuals, as it was ’68 or ’69 when I first laid eyes on it. It had many of the character bios, and a comic story about a threat to destroy New Baghdad – which was ultra modern, encased in glass, and if the air conditioning went out the citizens would fry in the desert sun – but there was also a bit that explained that the MEV had been returned to Earth orbit, where two of the crew (I am presuming Black’s crew) were removed suffering from something called zircon fever – or similar. And that Captain Black had been with them, and on return to Glenn Field (or wherever) had subsequently disappeared. I know I didn’t make any of those things up myself, because I’d never heard of Glenn Field and something like zircon fever wouldn’t have crossed my mind. And I’ve also wondered ever since, exactly WHEN the War of Nerves was actually ‘engaged’. How long did it take for the MEV to return to Earth? Did the Mysterons pick it up and drop it back into Earth orbit by whatever mysterious means of teleporting things they have, or did they allow the MEV to make its own way back (which would likely be several months, space travel time) giving Black/the crew time to report the error of their ways and for the Earth to prepare for the consequences? No real time lapse is actually shown in the series (and wasn’t necessary, storyline-wise) but there must have been some sort of a ‘delay’ before the Mysterons actually announced their very first threat and carried it out. (I have speculated about this in some half-written fan-fic, I shall have to dig it out.)
Does anyone out there remember this particular Annual? I know it’s old, but I’m also convinced that I got this information from that sort of ‘official’ source – I had very limited access to any ‘Anderson’ related material, so it would be difficult for me to have confused it with something else along the way.
P.S. - I did a quick google, and found a site selling the 1967 Annual - the cover pic they showed looks quite familiar, so it may have been the '67 annual I'm thinking about. Does anyone have it in their collections?
It is the first annual - ©1967 - and does contain the New Baghdad strip you mention. Zircon fever was used in one of the strips, but can't recall if it was this one - I'll check when i get back home...

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shaqui
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And BTW I only know that because dear Marion gave me her spare copy...What a wonderful lass she is...

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Carrie
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However, the TV21 history has Mars colonised by the time Captain Scarlet starts - which confuses the matter of why the Mysterons were never seen before - but which would also make trips to Mars a more frequent event.

In the pages of TV21 itself, there was no answer either. The strip Front Page (which I've just recently researched for the Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History) shows the events just prior to the return of Zero X to Earth, and its arrival at Glenn Field, but also neatly sidesteps the issue.
So no definitive answer as to the actual fate of the Zero X crew.

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shaqui
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