Gerry Anderson's "New Captain Scarlet" began its 26 episode run on the morning of Saturday 12th February 2005 on CITV although, to be honest, I wish it wasn't part of "Ministry of Mayhem"! Why are ITV afraid to try for a bigger audience late afternoon/early evening? Also, in "MOM", the gap between the two halves of each episode is much longer than a regular commercial break would be!
I'd like to know the thinking behind changing Lt. Green from a black male to a white female especially as there are already five female characters in the shape of the Angels although, of the five, we only meet Destiny in the first episode. The suggestion is that, like Councillor Troi when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" began, she is the character through which the emotional content of an episode will be channelled.
I'm also curious about the change of name from Cloudbase to Skybase? That aside, it moved at a furious pace and, in so-doing, lost the luxuriously sedate menace of the 1967 original. The Supermarionation version was much aided by Barry Gray's music whereas the score for the new CGI series meanders rather nondescriptly, instantly forgotten. I wonder what the closing credits are like? We weren't given the chance to see or even hear them on CITV!
There was much to recommend the new show. Particularly impressive were the Angel flight sequences and Black's resurrection, fist through the coffin lid! This made him come across as some vampire-like figure and the great coat swirling behind him reminded me of "Blade Runner" though younger viewers would probably have associated it with Spike from "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer"!
What would be nice is for those younger viewers to want to discover the beauty of the original puppet series which, for all its woodenness, still felt three dimensional; something you just don't seem to get from computer generated material. Even so, I enjoyed it and will stay with the series both now and when it returns later in the year...
