Special Assignment (Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons)

Plot

Captain Black murders filling station attendant Mason by running him over, and the Mysterons create a replica of Mason. Later, con artists Steele and Kramer have their car's brakes drained by the reconstructed Mason, causing them to crash fatally. The Mysterons replicate them and vow to destroy all of North America. After meeting with Colonel White about a special assignment, Captain Scarlet visits a casino and loses $5,000 on roulette, leading to his dismissal from Spectrum.

Broke, Scarlet moves to an Arizona hotel, where the reconstructions of Steele and Kramer offer to clear his debt in exchange for a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle. Scarlet agrees and learns they plan to use the SPV to attack Nuclear City, aiming to detonate a nuclear device and obliterate the continent. Captain Blue, concerned, goes AWOL to find Scarlet. At a desert ranch house, Scarlet appears to shoot Blue dead, but uses a tranquilliser dart.

Blue regains consciousness and learns from a furious Colonel White that Scarlet is undercover. From a map, Blue discovers the threat to Nuclear City and informs White. The Angels intercept the SPV; Scarlet signals them to attack. Steele fatally shoots Scarlet, but Scarlet ejects before the SPV is destroyed, saving Nuclear City. Later, a revived Scarlet joins Blue, White and Lieutenant Green at the casino.

Production

Several script changes were made for timing reasons. Originally, the episode began with Scarlet's gambling dismissal, but the first cut was too short, so scenes of Steele and Kramer's car crash and reconstruction were added, followed by Colonel White addressing Cloudbase. Still under time, Captain Black's murder of Mason and the sabotage of the car were also added. The script described Nuclear City as housing all of North America's nuclear weapons, but this was not conveyed in the finished episode.

The Mysteron threat was truncated from a scripted seven-day deadline. The casino set reused props from the Creighton-Ward Mansion dining room in Thunderbirds, and the miniature roulette props from a Merit Toys set had appeared in the Thunderbirds episode "The Duchess Assignment". The ranch house model was a modified version of the hunting lodge from "Spectrum Strikes Back". All music was recycled from earlier episodes, including "White as Snow" during Mason's murder and music originally composed for the Thunderbirds episode "30 Minutes After Noon".

Although the script had Blue driving a Spectrum Patrol Car, the model shot shows an unmarked car. The fate of the Mysteron reconstruction of Mason is not shown. This is one of the few episodes where Colonel White is seen away from Cloudbase.

Reception

Chris Drake and Graeme Bassett noted the plot's unusual nature, containing more than one red herring. Andrew Pixley and Julie Rogers of Starburst magazine considered Black's murder of Mason by running him over to be one of the series' more violent moments. Fred McNamara, in his book Spectrum Is Indestructible, criticised the episode's "clumsy, scrambling premise" and "bizarre" structure, questioning the logic of the Mysterons' methods, as they killed the original conmen before Scarlet's dismissal.

However, he praised its visual strengths and engaging human aspects, including the "harrowing sight" of the SPV under attack and the voice acting of Ed Bishop and Francis Matthews. He admired Tony Barwick's skill in "playfully twisting Cold War motifs" and concluded that it is best to embrace the episode as "a lovely bit of Cold War-inspired trickery." In a later article, he ranked it among the best episodes, calling it "a delightfully subversive entry" with noir-ish imagery of Scarlet as a lone wolf.