Renegade Rocket

Did You Know?

• The miniature model of the J-17 fighter was built with parts from an Airfix Dassault Mirage III model kit.
• The incidental music was performed by an ensemble of 12 instrumentalists and recorded during a four-and-a-half-hour studio session on 14 May 1967.
• Music for "Operation Time" was also recorded during the same session.

Plot

Space Major Reeves, a rocket expert and friend of Colonel White, leaves Cloudbase after a tour and boards a motor yacht bound for Base Concord. Captain Black, watching from shore, uses the Mysterons' powers to induce nausea in Reeves, who falls overboard and drowns. A Mysteron double of Reeves arrives at Base Concord, shoots the control room officer, and launches an incendiary variable-geometry rocket (VGR) using the control code "ZERO". He escapes in a J-17 fighter jet with the flight program unit, leaving base personnel unable to determine the VGR's target or which of 10,000 possible codes will trigger its self-destruct.

The VGR is not showing on radar. The commander alerts Spectrum, and Captains Scarlet and Blue are dispatched to Base Concord while the Angel squadron is launched to track Reeves. Reeves cripples Melody's aircraft, forcing her to eject. Scarlet, Blue, and base personnel deduce that the VGR is invisible to radar because it is travelling upward, and that its vertical descent makes Base Concord the only plausible target.

A replacement program unit is installed, and personnel transmit codes in alphabetical order. Reeves ignores Rhapsody's order to surrender and kills himself by crashing his fighter; the program unit survives but is lost on the seabed. With Base Concord evacuated except for Scarlet and Blue, White orders them to leave. Disobeying, they continue inputting codes, their final try being "AMEN".

On the seabed, an underwater current knocks over the sunken unit, causing it to re-transmit "ZERO" and destroy the VGR. Scarlet and Blue return to Cloudbase believing they found the correct code. White reprimands them for insubordination but stops short of court-martialling them.

Reception

Anthony Clark of sci-fi-online.com describes "Renegade Rocket" as "just about average" and "about as dull as [Captain Scarlet] gets", viewing it as an example of the series' "patchy" quality and questioning Scarlet and Blue's motives for disobeying White given their remote chances of finding the correct destruct code. Chris Bentley, author of Captain Scarlet: The Vault, criticises the editing of the VGR's final approach, noting that White reaches zero in his countdown even though the rocket is destroyed before impact, calling the sequence "baffling".

Shane M. Dallmann of Video Watchdog magazine suggests the plot "could have similarly serviced a sitcom" and finds the episode less "gripping" than "Point 783". Writer Fred McNamara compares it negatively to that episode, commenting that a "gripping" and "strong" first half is let down by a "disjointed" pace and "awkward story-telling". He calls the revelation of the VGR's target "some nicely played-out drama" but finds the attempts to guess the destruct code "tedious", stating that "the further the episode progresses, the more the script runs out of steam".

He criticises Spectrum's tactics, wondering why they do not launch another rocket to destroy the VGR, and argues that the evacuation of Base Concord renders the Mysteron threat "unsatisfying". He describes the VGR's destruction by luck as a "desperate way to end a desperate episode", summing up the episode as "little more than pulling the trigger without a bullet, a bang without an impact".