Anderthon: It's the Marvel of the Age...

Supercar series 2
episodes 10-13

Jail Break

A contemporary crime thriller that harks back to the style of the first series, this episode begins with a terrific jazz score as we encounter the criminal Joe Anna, who’s rotting away in prison. Nevertheless, plans are afoot in the outside world to effect his escape. In the big city, we meet the gangster Red James, who receives his instructions from a mysterious “Mr Big” figure at the end of the telephone. Tasked with getting Joe out of jail, Red contacts a company called Helicopter Services Inc, and proceeds to hire the use of a helicopter. His cover story is that he wants to take aerial photographs to aid with land surveying work. But when he arrives to make his flight the following day, he pulls a gun on Mr Weston, the pilot, and tells him that they’re going to fly low over the prison (aerial footage of a real prison, of course). Red lets out a cable from the helicopter, which Joe ties around the bars of his cell window. The helicopter then strains away at the end of the cable, until it pulls the bars clear from the crumbling brickwork of the prison wall. The entire grille comes away in one piece, which is lucky as Joe’s only means of escape is to hang on to it as the helicopter lifts him away. (It does strike me as a bit of a slapdash plan, relying on a lot of lucky chances – that the helicopter can take the strain, that the stonework is weak enough, that the bars stay together in one piece, that Joe can manage to hold on as he’s winched high into the air – still maybe that’s the best that Red could come up with at short notice. What’s amusing about it is that it’s exactly like the jailbreaks we see in Westerns – including Four Feather Falls! – but translated into the modern age, with the helicopter substituting for a horse trying to pull the bars out.)

Meanwhile at the lab, Beaker has developed a new rocket-powered ejector seat for Supercar. Again recalling the first series, we see the team going through a series of meticulous tests to perfect the mechanism – laced with humour as Mike is shot out through the roof doors, only for his seat to come to rest out in the desert stuck on top of a large cactus. But the ejector system seems to be working fine, and Beaker elects to work through the night to make the final tweaks and adjustments (despite some interruptions from Mitch). Demonstrating a post-modern awareness of the show’s tropes, Beaker’s got a feeling that the ejector seat is going to come in handy very soon – as he says, all his new inventions soon prove useful! Sure enough, next day the villains’ helicopter is hovering overhead. What’s that building down there? asks Red. Learning that it’s the “famous Supercar lab”, he hatches a new plan. Entering the lab, Red holds Jimmy and the scientists hostage, to force Mike to fly Joe Anna to safety across the border – reasoning that no one would suspect Supercar of ferrying an escaped con. Once airborne, Mike uses the ejector seat – and amusingly enough ends up stuck on top of a cactus again! Stuck in the cockpit and unable to operate the controls, Joe is scared he’s going to crash – he agrees to throw out his gun if Beaker and Popkiss will bring Supercar back to the ground by remote control. Mitch meanwhile has already taken care of Red James by throwing a horseshoe at his head! Jimmy then keeps him covered while the scientists deal with Joe. (Yes, they let the ten year old kid use a gun…!) As Supercar lands, they learn that Joe Anna has double crossed them – he’s got a second gun. Fortunately, Mike turns up (having extricated himself from his prickly situation) and takes care of the convict. Joe and Red are tied to chairs while they wait for the police to arrive, with Mitch holding a gun on them. (They’re just letting anyone handle firearms now, it seems – at least they tell us that Mitch’s gun is empty.)

The Day That Time Stood Still

The voiceover man is back this week, introducing us to the stars and planets of our galaxy, before taking us to an alien world. For a series that’s essentially grounded (bar a few odd flights of fancy) in the real world of 1960, this all seems just a bit out of step. As I said right back at the beginning, the science fiction content of Supercar has always been pretty minimal – now even given that the Andersons have been driving the show in weird and unexpected directions, suddenly throwing aliens into the mix seems like it’s taking us into another series entirely. (Just imagine if aliens had suddenly popped up in Danger Man for instance.) This planet is Mercurius, which is known as the “planet of dreams”. Maybe they’re planning a dream right now, says voiceover man. (Am I getting that sinking feeling…?) So here we have two aliens, Planetimus their leader, and one of his people called Kalmus – they wear the sort of silly classical robes that tv and films liked to use to suggest an advanced society – and they’re discussing something important. Unfortunately, they talk a “flob-a-dob” language, and without subtitles, we haven’t a clue what they’re on about. Meanwhile at the Supercar lab, Mike is listening to the radio as he prepares to go to bed. (The news is reporting recent sightings of a flying saucer – I wonder if that’s going to be significant…) Anyway, Mike goes to sleep – he’s looking forward to tomorrow, which is his birthday. Yet when he wakes up, he has a funny moment, and seems to think he might still be asleep. Oh no, what do you think that might mean? Anyway, everyone seems to have forgotten his birthday. There are no good wishes, no cards, no presents, and no one picks up on his not-so-subtle hints to them about what day it is. Feeling a bit pissed off, Mike has to take Supercar to Chicago, to collect Aunt Heidi and Zizi, who are coming to visit. He doesn’t anticipate it being a particularly long trip… But it’s all a ruse. Popkiss phones Heidi and tells her to keep Mike tied up as long as possible. Of course, no one’s forgotten his birthday really – they just want him out of the way while they prepare a surprise party.

In Chicago, Heidi and Zizi employ various delaying tactics, taking ages to get ready, insisting on giving Mike cups of coffee, and so on. In fact, Mike ends up asleep in the armchair, which is surprising – with the amount of coffee they’ve forced down him, he really ought to be hyper! While all this is going on, Popkiss is busy baking a cake; Jimmy is making Mike a model of Supercar; and Beaker is doing something mysterious in his workshop – all the while, Mitch interferes and makes a nuisance of himself, eating the cake and bursting balloons. When Mike arrives back with Heidi and Zizi, he discovers the lab in darkness and no one answering the radio. Fearing something is wrong, he operates the roof doors by remote control. Of course, everyone is waiting in the dark to surprise Mike. The party is a great success. After the food and presents, Beaker unveils what he’s been working on: a sort of weird electronic organ he calls the Beakette. It comes sliding out of his workshop like some demented Wurlitzer, and he proceeds to play The Blue Danube with loud electronic chords and crazy puffs of smoke coming out of the thing! Then he accompanies Zizi, who sings a song about her new-found life in the USA. While this is going on, time seems to freeze. Popkiss, Heidi, Jimmy and Zizi are rendered as statues, but oddly Mike and Beaker still retain the power of movement. A flying saucer then lands outside the lab, and Kalmus emerges. He announces that he’s frozen time for the whole world, and is only allowing Mike and Beaker to learn of his existence (and actually, Mitch as well, though Kalmus doesn’t make any comment about that). He tells Mike that they’ve been watching him on Mercurius, and wish to reward him for being a hero: Kalmus gives Mike a magic belt. Once the alien has departed, time returns to normal. Mike then demonstrates his new belt, which gives him the power to fly. He opens the roof doors and proceeds to take off – as he says, he doesn’t need Supercar any more. But executing various manoeuvres, Mike loses control and crashes back into the lab… Whereupon, he wakes up and finds it was all a dream. Then Popkiss, Beaker and Jimmy come in and wish him a happy birthday.

Now, you know I’m not going to be keen on a dream episode, but in this case, I just can’t see what the writers are trying to achieve. The Andersons seem to deploy this device at random whether they need to or not – Supercar is already a bonkers enough series. Consider that it’s already discovered the secrets of miniaturization and invisibility, and felt no need to explain those as dreams. A farce about keeping Mike away from the preparations for his surprise party certainly wouldn’t need to be a dream – so ultimately, the only outré thing here is the presence of the aliens and their technology. And yet… the aliens are real! They were there at the start of the episode before Mike went to sleep – and indeed, there’s that implication that they generated the dream in the first place. So I’m confused. It just doesn’t make any sense. And I think this is what happens when you try to make a show without proper writers, or at least a script editor who could have looked at the script with an objective eye.

Transatlantic Cable

The voiceover man gives his final introduction this week, explaining the existence and importance of the transatlantic telephone cable – a blatant bit of exposition that could probably have been conveyed in dialogue during the course of the episode. But at least it ensures that we’re clued into the danger posed by the two frogmen who swim into shot and start tampering with the cable. In New York, Masterspy and Zarin are running a new operation: the subtly-named Mastermind Information Service. Yes, they have managed to tap the telephone cable. Zarin listens in to transatlantic phone calls through a set of headphones, from which he gleans sensitive business information. Masterspy then passes this on to various clients, enabling them to steal a march on their competitors by undercutting prices and sabotaging deals. Meanwhile, Mike has been called to the city by Mr Bell, the head of the Telecable Corporation. They’re aware that the cable has been tapped, but they’ve been unable to establish where or how – and now they’re requesting the assistance of Supercar. Back at the lab, Mike discusses it with the team. Popkiss feels that anyone tapping the cable must be operating from a surface vessel in the vicinity, so the obvious plan is to fly Supercar over the ocean following the course of the cable, and see if they can spot any out of place ships. But when they don’t find anything, they decide instead to dive under the waves, and follow the cable along the ocean floor to look for any signs of tampering. At one point, the cable passes quite close to an old shipwreck, and Jimmy thinks he sees a light shining through one of its portholes – a light that’s quickly extinguished before the others see it. Needless to say, no one believes Jimmy, thinking he must have seen a reflection of Supercar’s lamp. Well, they should have listened, because inside the shipwreck is a chamber that’s been made watertight, wherein two villains called Forman and Johnson are ensconced. Through their dialogue we learn that they’re working for Masterspy (clever of him to have them stuck here under the sea, while he reaps all the profits and doesn’t even get his feet wet!) They used an ocean-going tug to dive down to the cable originally – once their wiretap was in place and they’d created this underwater base, the tug went back to port, and they could remain here undetected. They use echo sounding equipment to detect the approach of any submarine vessels, so they can put out their lights in time. (They were just a fraction too late when Supercar turned up before.) Back at the lab, Beaker is slowly coming round to the idea that Jimmy might have been on to something. He thinks that Mike needs to take Supercar back to investigate the wreck – and he’s come up with another useful invention which he fits to the vehicle. Mike and Popkiss return to the shipwreck – to fool the echo-sounding gear, they make a show of rising back up to the surface, then cut their engines to silently drift down to the ocean floor – then they lie in wait. Eventually, Forman and Johnson turn their light back on, giving away their position. Mike deploys Beaker’s new gadget – a drill fitted to Supercar’s nose. He drills a hole through the side of the shipwreck, and the secret chamber starts flooding with water. The villains have no choice but to put on their diving gear and evacuate. Supercar follows them back to the surface, and they’re taken prisoner. Later, Mike phones the Mastermind Information Service, and offers Masterspy some information free of charge: the fact that the police are even now on their way to his penthouse to arrest him and Zarin. With sirens wailing ever closer, our two criminals are reducing to arguing amongst themselves as to whose fault it all was!

King Cool

Jimmy and Mitch are watching a tv show, in which jazz pianist Bud Hamburger introduces his sensational co-star – King Cool, a gorilla who can play the drums. And I don’t just mean bashing them, he’s a really talented jazz drummer, playing sensitively with brushes and everything. Jimmy decides that he could probably teach Mitch to play the drums just as well, and asks Dr Beaker if he’ll build Mitch a drumkit. Despite claiming to be far too busy for such frivolities, Beaker ends up making a drumkit anyway. He works through the night, and so we get a nice repeat of the running gag about Beaker keeping everyone awake as he hammers and bangs – capped off nicely here as Beaker ends up trying out the drumkit, playing a spectacular drum solo through the night! (It’s an impressive piece of puppetry, but the sequence is made especially memorable by being shot through the open laboratory door – all we see is Beaker’s shadow cast onto the wall inside.) Anyway, Jimmy – who can play a mean jazz piano himself – soon teaches Mitch to play the drums. Christening him “Musical Mitch”, he presents a performance for the rest of the team. However, tensions over Beaker’s late night working finally come to a head, and he and Popkiss end up having a row about it. Beaker seems amazed that anyone could think he was noisy – he storms out slamming the door, causing pictures to fall off the wall! Beaker drives into Batesville to visit his old friend Professor Harlow. He doesn’t realize that Mitch has stowed away in the back of the truck, hoping to visit the home of Bud Hamburger and maybe further his musical career. But round the back of Hamburger’s house, Mitch discovers that when he’s not performing, King Cool is kept locked up in a cage. In a very silly scene, Mitch and King Cool talk to each other through the bars – they talk in ape noises of course, but fortunately we get subtitles! The two converse in jazz slang, all “man” and “daddio” – and they come up with a plan to get King Cool free of his cage.

Meanwhile, Beaker is spending the evening at Professor Harlow’s observatory. Weirdly though, Harlow is described as an astrologer – so I don’t know what he needs an observatory for: it should be birth charts and mumbo jumbo. Now, I know that accurate science isn’t really the Andersons’ strong suit, but I find it incredible that they don’t seem to know the difference between an astronomer and an astrologer. And it’s not just a confusion of semantics – despite the observatory and the professorial title, Harlow is most definitely an astrologer, making predictions that Beaker is soon to be visited by a tall stranger. (Beaker himself is pretty sceptical of the whole thing. But come on, how many serious observational astronomers give any credence to astrology?) Well, as it turns out, the prediction is accurate – for Mitch and King Cool have swapped places, and the gorilla travels back to the Supercar lab in Beaker’s truck. When Jimmy finds King Cool asleep in Mitch’s bed the next morning, he jumps to the understandable conclusion that Mitch has somehow mutated in the night! Smart thinking there… (Slightly more disconcerting for me is the fact that Popkiss and Beaker take the suggestion entirely seriously, and begin to wonder what could have caused it.) King Cool becomes disorientated in his new surroundings, and starts to smash the place up. He seems dangerous and out of control, until Jimmy comes up with the idea of playing jazz piano. This calms the gorilla down, and he starts to join in on drums. Meanwhile, the reverse situation is happening to Bud Hamburger: finding Mitch in King Cool’s cage, he thinks that his star attraction has somehow shrunk! By now, Jimmy has worked out the switcheroo, so the team take King Cool back to Hamburger. He agrees that it’s probably unnecessary to keep the gorilla in a cage, and promises not to do so from now on. That night, he introduces special guests on the King Cool show: “Musical Mitch” and the members of the “world famous Supercar team”. And so rather bizarrely, the series bows out with our heroes playing in a jazz band – Mike it seems is a great double bass player, and Beaker can blow a killer saxophone!

It’s an odd choice for the final episode – from a modern perspective, you’d expect a big adventure, a daring rescue mission, a final showdown with Masterspy. Instead you get comical shenanigans with simian mistaken identity (and just a vague message about the mistreatment of animals). It’s also very funny, and utterly bonkers. What interests me most is the way that the series can go out on a limb like this, and yet not come out and say it was all a dream. It doesn’t need to – this show can take surrealism in its stride. And that, I think, shows up the failing of The Day That Time Stood Still.

*******************

And so this schizophrenic series draws to a close. These last four episodes really highlight the different directions that it’s trying to pull in. We get two decent crime thrillers, much more in keeping with the first series, in which the application of science saves the day; and we get two slices of pure whimsy. I’m still not sure which is better, as there’s much to enjoy in both approaches. In some ways, it’s a shame that the show ends here, as I’d have been interested to see where the Andersons might have taken it next. Would they continue in the comedy direction? Would they take it further into sci-fi and fantasy? (Possibly so, considering what they’re going to be making next…)

Anderthon: Roof Doors Opening...

Supercar series 2
episodes 6-9

Space For Mitch

Beaker’s back to working for the government. This time, he’s designed a small, cheap space rocket that can be operated by a minimal ground crew without all the usual gantries and paraphernalia of Cape Canaveral. The episode opens with our heroes inside a concrete rocket test bunker, looking out through the slit window at the rocket outside. It’s a scene that recalls many tense cold war images of scientists and generals waiting for the latest bomb or rocket test. Then we learn that, despite the fact we’ve never seen this area before, it’s actually built onto the side of the Black Rock lab: Mike simply goes next door to get into Supercar. Beaker successfully launches the rocket on an unmanned test flight, separates the capsule from the launch vehicle, and then fires the retro rockets by remote control. Everything goes according to plan: the capsule re-enters safely and parachutes into the sea. Mike arrives in Supercar, fitted once again with Beaker’s electromagnetic grab, and successfully recovers the capsule. With the team to observe the test is Professor Harvey from the Space Administration. He’s very enthused by the project, and commits NASA to funding a further test – this time to be a manned flight. What I find interesting about this is how prescient it all is. At the time it was written, space exploration was in its infancy and almost exclusively the preserve of huge government-funded organizations. Nowadays, with funding cut to the bone, the notion of NASA turning to private contractors to provide launch vehicles doesn’t seem nearly so far-fetched. With everything lined up for the second launch, all that remains is to find someone to fly the rocket. Jimmy suggests his brother Bill for the job, since he is an astronaut! Did I miss some important character development here? The way that Bill has gone from a man in a pick-up truck, to airline flight instructor, and now to a fully-qualified astronaut in the space of a year is nothing short of miraculous. It’s almost as if the Andersons bring in Bill whenever they need an extra character to fulfil some story-specific function. (I don’t know, maybe they’ve run out of puppets or something…) But it’s jarring that we’re expected to just accept whatever occupation and skills he’s supposed to have this week, and really it’s lazy writing.

Meanwhile, Mitch has been reading one of Jimmy’s magazines, and finds a photo of a chimpanzee in a space suit – one of the apes used by NASA to test their early rockets. This obviously puts ideas in his head, as that night Mitch emerges from the lab wearing a space suit (lucky that he’s managed to locate a monkey-sized one…) – he climbs into the rocket and manages to launch it. The noise wakes everyone up. There’s a great piece of characterization as Mike jerks awake shouting out the Supercar launch procedure – it seems he even dreams about flying it. With Mitch now in orbit and his air supply rapidly depleting, they’re unable to fire the retro rockets remotely, as Beaker has rewired the rocket to be operated solely by the onboard pilot. (Which seems incredibly short-sighted – I’d have thought dual control would have been essential. What if the pilot’s injured or blacks out? I also don’t see why they can’t try and talk Mitch through operating the controls – we’ve seen time and again that he’s more intelligent than the average monkey.) While Jimmy talks to Mitch to try and keep him calm and preserve his air, Mike takes Supercar up into orbit. (Yes, finally they’ve sorted out the problems with the cockpit canopy so Supercar is able to fulfil the promise of theme song that it can travel in space.) Mike overtakes the capsule and uses Supercar’s jets to tip it onto its re-entry trajectory. Then he follows it down and recovers it from the sea, saving Mitch in the nick of time. Which just leaves Bill to wake up in the morning, unaware of what’s been going on – astronauts are so calm, they can sleep through the most extreme of disasters.

The Sky’s the Limit

Masterspy and Zarin are literally rolling in money. They’ve bought skyscrapers and cars and yachts. They live in a massive house with a huge long banqueting table – sitting at opposite ends, they’re so far apart that Masterspy has installed a two way radio so that they can talk to each other without the need to shout. We soon discover how they’ve made their new fortune – they’re running a counterfeiting operation. There is however one thing that money (real or fake) cannot buy: Supercar! Masterspy even tries writing a letter to Popkiss, posing as an eccentric millionaire prepared to pay a huge sum for the chance to own Supercar, but he gets a polite letter back turning the offer down. So there’s only one thing for it – they’ll have to steal Supercar. They recruit a couple of New York gangsters, Bud and Jaz, to help with the heist. Meanwhile at the lab, Beaker has developed a new kind of paint that will confer adamantine strength onto any object coated with it. However, he’s made some error with his formula, as instead it turns objects invisible. (And once again, the writers are deploying magic and pretending it’s science. I’m sorry, but I can’t buy it. It would be perfectly possible to devise some pseudoscience technobabble explanation for making something invisible – but just saying it’s invisibility paint doesn’t cut it. It’s only coating the exterior surfaces after all, it could perhaps reflect light back, but it couldn’t allow light to pass through the solidity of the object.) While all this is going on, the team have been informed that some census officials will be arriving soon to carry out a population check. This leads to a fantastic sequence in which Jimmy walks past the lab window, while the light aeroplane carrying the officials lands on the desert outside – it’s an amazing combination of the puppet and set in the foreground with the model desert and aircraft in the background, all done in the one shot.

The census officials are bogus of course – they turn out to be Masterspy and Zarin and their new henchmen. The first our heroes realize is when the villains open fire on the lab – the windows shatter, and everyone dives for cover. The gangsters cut the phone lines and even shoot down the radio mast, so the lab is completely cut off. Realizing that they’re under siege, Mike tells Beaker to fetch the guns. Now, I realize that America has a different attitude to firearms ownership than this country, but when I heard that, I expected to see a hunting rifle and maybe a couple of hand guns – not the two tommy guns that Mike and Beaker start brandishing to shoot back at the villains! Mike attempts to launch Supercar to go and fetch help, but Masterspy has thought of this, and rigged a bomb to the roof doors. So the team are definitely trapped and isolated in the lab. They’re also almost entirely out of food, as Popkiss had been due to go shopping just before the siege started. So it becomes a question of how long they can hold out. Eventually, Mike comes up with a plan. They wave a white flag, and tell Masterspy that they’re surrendering. But when they open the doors, Masterspy enters to discover that Supercar is not in the building. It’s been sent over to England for repairs to its electronic systems. Masterspy doesn’t believe it, as he heard the engines powering up earlier. But Mike bluffs him by playing a tape recording of the engine noise, and explaining that they were trying to deceive him earlier. Eventually, Masterspy buys the story, as there’s clearly nowhere in the building when they could be hiding Supercar. He demands to know where in England he will find the vehicle. (Amusingly, Mike gives the name of the outside contractors as A.P. Electronics of Slough!) Like me, you’ve probably guessed by now that Supercar is still in the building, but has been coated with Beaker’s invisibility paint. As Masterspy and his cohorts leave in their plane, Mike and Beaker take off in the now invisible Supercar to give chase. This basically means the two of them are apparently suspended in mid air. Mike comments that it’s like they’re really flying, empty space around them and no visible means of suspension – apart from all the dirty great strings holding them up, that is! (And yes, I realize it’s a cheap shot to point out the strings in a puppet show, but honestly if they’re going to draw such attention to them with comments like that, I think it’s fair game…) Diving the invisible Supercar into Masterspy’s plane, Mike slices off the wing; the plane spirals out of control and crashes into the ground with an almighty explosion. Nevertheless, as before, Masterspy and Zarin escape with hardly a scratch – and at last! the team tie them up and are going to hand them over to the police. Why didn’t they think of that sooner? Another oddity is the fact that they turn Supercar invisible here, and don’t use this ability again in the subsequent episodes. There must be plenty of situations where it would be pretty useful…

70-B-Lo

Popkiss wakes up with stabbing pains in his side, and Beaker diagnoses appendicitis. They call an ambulance to take the Professor into Batesville hospital. (Mike wants to take him in Supercar – any excuse to fly it! – but Beaker thinks the Prof needs to stay lying flat.) At the hospital, Dr Maslin concurs with Beaker’s diagnosis, whilst noting that Beaker is not actually a medical doctor. (Weirdly, I thought he was in the first series – didn’t he treat Bill and Jimmy after their plane crash ordeal?) There’s no cause for worry, as a simple operation should see Popkiss alright. Beaker admires an x-ray machine in Dr Maslin’s office, and asks if he can borrow it to x-ray some electronic components. Maslin is happy to lend it – anything to help the Supercar team (so there are some advantages to becoming globally famous, it seems). Back in Black Rock, Beaker demonstrates the x-ray machine to Jimmy, and is slightly perturbed to discover that he appears to have an additional rib bone – fortunately, it’s only his pipe which he’s left in his breast pocket. Beaker reacts to this with such excessive hilarity that I had to wonder whether he’d taken rather more than an x-ray machine from the hospital – he does seem to have been at the “happy pills”. Unfortunately, there’s bad news about Popkiss: there have been complications to his operation, and he desperately needs a blood transfusion. The problem is: Popkiss has a very rare blood type, and there aren’t supplies available. In fact, the only possible donor that Maslin knows about is a Professor Karzinski, and he’s currently out of contact on a scientific expedition to the Arctic. (Surely it’s a bit risky having to rely simply on one doctor’s personal knowledge of available blood donors – shouldn’t they have a central database of such things? Then they could probably find a donor a bit closer to home. I don’t think there’s any blood type that’s so rare, there’s only one other donor in the world… Of course, that would mean Mike wouldn’t have to set out on a perilous mission to the North Pole.) So Mike and Dr Maslin put on arctic gear and set off in Supercar. In an amusing sequence, Mike lifts off through the roof, then immediately brings Supercar back down into the lab – and kicks out Mitch, who’s trying to stow himself aboard again (and dressed in a fur coat and astrakhan hat!)

Meanwhile, at the North Pole, Professor Karzinski and his assistant Jason have discovered uranium deposits beneath the ice cap. Watching with a modern eye, I’m struck by the fact that Karzinski is a dead ringer for the late former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Jason, on the other hand, is played by the most sinister-looking puppet they could find, so it’s really no surprise when he turns out to be a bad guy. He plans to kill/abandon the Professor, and return to civilization with the news of the uranium deposits. Karzinski assumes that Jason is a foreign agent, but actually he’s just in it for self-interest, intending to sell the information to whichever government pays best – it could even be the USA if they meet his price. Supercar’s arrival advances Jason’s plans, and he sees it as a chance to get back three months earlier than he planned. Holding the others at gunpoint, he plans to force them to take him to Switzerland. Mike advises him to strap on his safety belt, but he refuses, thinking that it’s an attempt to restrain him so they can overpower him. So Mike flies low, skimming Supercar across the snow field, and eventually crashing the nose into a drift. Jason is catapulted over the seats, and ends up stuck headfirst beneath the dashboard – it’s a stark warning of the need for passengers to use rear seatbelts. Back in Batesville, Popkiss makes a full recovery – Professor Karzinksi is happy to help out the famous Supercar team. As everyone gathers around Popkiss’s bed, Beaker has the x-ray machine right there in the hospital room, for no other reason than to provide the punchline to a weak joke – he claims to have lost his pen, which Jimmy finds by switching on the machine to show it’s been in Beaker’s pocket all along. Beaker dissolves into paroxysms of forced laughter again, and it’s all rather paniful – it wasn’t that funny the first time round.

Atomic Witch Hunt

An interesting idea behind this episode: small nuclear devices are being hidden in American cities, tucked away in warehouses and office buildings. So far, the devices have been located through geiger counter readings, but there must be a fear that some could remain undetected. It’s fascinating as it’s another moment when Supercar predicts something that seems more real and relevant in the modern age. We’ve all heard of the fear of terrorist groups being able to utilize so-called “suitcase bombs”. For Mike and Beaker, it seems more likely that the culprits are a hostile nation, which I suppose reflects the thinking of the cold war era – they suspect it is a smaller country trying to attack the US by stealth, rather than one of the big communist nations that could simply deploy its nuclear arsenal. Nevertheless, Beaker takes it upon himself to commit the team to dealing with the problem. They take themselves off to Batesville library, to read through back issue newspapers. In this way, they discover that at the times the previous bombs were located, there had been mysterious and unexplained sightings of a submarine near the coastal town of Temport – Beaker thinks this is how the bombs are being smuggled into the country. (I love the way that the team are able to find this evidence and make these deductions. You have to wonder what the US is paying CIA analysts for – the State Department should just get on the phone to Black Rock whenever anything untoward happens.) So they all pile into Supercar, and head to Temport to investigate. I don’t know… It’s impressive they’ve been able to put all this together, but you’d think now would be the time to call the proper authorities, rather than the five of them trying to sort it out themselves – it’s like they’re starting to believe their own legend. There’s some interesting camerawork here, as we see Supercar lifting off from a different angle than usual. Unfortunately, it then leads to a visual continuity error: we cut to a model shot showing Supercar from above, lifting up towards the camera with the laboratory in the background. It’s a very impressive miniature effect, but sadly it doesn’t match up with the previous interior shot. Instead of emerging through the open roof doors, Supercar appears to be lifting off from the desert sand in front of the building.

Nevertheless, the modelwork in this episode is some of the most impressive in the series so far, with terrific shots of Supercar landing on the sea; exploring an underwater tunnel after they spot the enemy submarine entering it; and finally surfacing in a subterranean cavern. (There’s also a brief semi-educational interlude as the team admire the aquatic life around them whilst lying in wait for the submarine to reappear – allowing Jimmy to marvel at film of a real octopus and the like.) When Mike and Beaker explore the cavern, they find a stash of the nuclear bombs, and the transmitter that will send the detonation signal. But they step onto a concealed pressure pad in the floor, and manage to get themselves caught in the crossfire of three machine guns that will fire if they try to step off the pad. Worried that Mike and Beaker have been gone too long, Popkiss sends Jimmy to fetch the local sheriff, unaware that he’s really the ringleader of the whole operation. There’s a trap door in his office that leads down into the cavern. The sheriff sends his two cohorts down to capture Mike and Beaker – but fortunately, they’ve got themselves out of the machine gun trap thanks to Mitch pushing a packing crate over to them, which they use to maintain the weight on the pressure pad as they jump off. Then they pull their guns and succeed in capturing the two villains – and for poetic justice, leave them standing on the pressure pad, caught in their own trap. So it’s Mike and Beaker who emerge back up into the sheriff’s office and bring the errant lawman to justice.

Anderthon: Through the Heavens' Mighty Rage...

Supercar series 2
episodes 2-5

Precious Cargo

After playing it fairly safe with last week’s episode, the Andersons now begin to lead the series into new and unexpected directions. What we’ve lost perhaps is the sense of cutting edge technological development that the Woodhouses brought to the format; on the other hand, we’re now getting a more eclectic, freewheeling approach – less emphasis on straightforward well-plotted thrillers, and more on spectacle, wacky humour and sheer mind-bending “we’re making this up as we go along” bravado. I’m not sure which is better, as both have their merits. You can certainly cite other examples of cult shows that go off the deep end in subverting their own formats – not least among them The Prisoner and Gangsters, so you could say that Supercar is blazing quite a trail here. This week’s episode starts with Popkiss and Jimmy visiting Chicago (via film of the real city of course – you know how these things work by now), where they’ve been staying with Aunt Heidi, whom I presume is the Professor’s sister – she certainly speaks with the same mittel-European accent. Popkiss has been particularly enthused with the wine she’s been serving, so before they leave he gets the name of the vineyard, planning to order a case for himself. Meanwhile, back at the lab, humour is derived from Popkiss’s absence, as Beaker tries to cope without the Professor’s culinary skills. Yes, it turns out that Popkiss does all the cooking for the team – I can’t say that I was really cognizant of this fact previously (although I recall him cooking his breakfast in Crash Landing), so I guess it never figured very prominently in the scripts. Here though we see Beaker and Mitch desperately trying to clear up Popkiss’s beloved kitchen before the Prof gets back – a situation made worse when Beaker accidentally blows up the oven.

Anyway, Popkiss sends off his wine order to Monsieur Laval’s vineyard in France. At this point, the episode switches its focus to the vineyard, and picks up the story of Zizi, a young French girl who lives there. We learn that Monsieur Laval took Zizi from an orphanage, but instead of providing her with a loving new home, he works her like a slave. She has to do all the domestic chores about his house, and he expects her to work to a precise timetable and have his dinner ready on the dot. A seering indictment of child exploitation and the abuse of the French adoption system? Well, not exactly, because the story doesn’t really go anywhere with the idea, beyond making Laval a pantomime wicked villain. What’s interesting is that Zizi dreams of being rescued by Supercar. She’s got a comic book that actually has a Supercar adventure in it. (So there we go – Popkiss’s security concerns are right out of the window, and the team have released their own range of tie-in comics. In fact, Zizi might even be reading the Supercar strip in TV Comic. It’s something bizarrely metatextual, the series acknowledging the existence of its own spin-offs.) Reading the comic in bed, Zizi drifts off into a dream sequence, in which she telephones the “Supercar Rescue Service” – manned by Jimmy and Mike in matching uniform caps. Jimmy then pilots Supercar out to rescue her. The pointlessness of dream sequences aside, this is all an interesting departure for the show, letting us see our heroes as others view them. Waking up back to reality, Zizi manages to effect her own escape from the life of drudgery, by hiding herself inside Popkiss’s wine crate and getting delivered to the Black Rock lab. This leaves the team with the problem of what to do about her – she and Jimmy have to sit outside the control room as Mike and scientists are seen arguing inside. (They didn’t seem to have any problem taking in Jimmy and his monkey, but a French girl seems to be a step too far!) But all is neatly resolved at the end, with Zizi being taken in by Aunt Heidi and going to live in Chicago.

Operation Superstork

An episode that places our heroes in some real jeopardy, yet juxtaposes the threat with some frankly bizarre humour. We start with a new innovation, a voice-over introducing us to the lab – quite why this was thought necessary this late into the series is anyone’s guess. (Interestingly, the voice-over refers to “Mike Mercury and his team”. I thought it was Professor Popkiss’s team, and that Mike worked for him. That certainly seems to be the implication in the first series, although the idea that Mike is in charge was probably part of Gerry Anderson’s original conception – after all, it’s Mike who gets the starring credit in the opening titles – before the Woodhouses placed the scientists more to the forefront.) Anyway, the lab is currently a hive of activity, as we see Popkiss at work in the kitchen – so that’s something consistent with what we learnt last week – I do wonder though why the Andersons are depicting Popkiss as a chef rather than an experimental aircraft designer. Meanwhile, Beaker is busy at work on some new engineering project. This keeps him sequestered in his laboratory, leaving the team to wonder what he could be creating in there. The sounds of banging and drilling continue well into the night, keeping the others awake. Popkiss’s increasing frustration is played up to comic effect. Come morning, the noise seems to have stopped, and Popkiss ends up sleeping in. Mike and Jimmy drive into town to buy supplies – a place called Batesville this time. (I couldn’t find it on the map, but one presumes it’s a small town a bit closer to the lab than Carson City is.) In the local supermarket (which is actually a foreground counter in front of a back projected photograph!) we’re subjected to a comedy sequence as the shopkeeper Andy (who appears to have learning difficulties) struggles with a temperamental cash register that seems to shake the building to its foundations every time he uses it.

When they get back to Black Rock, Mike and Jimmy discover what Beaker’s been up to. His fabulous new invention is… a hot air balloon. It seems he only wants to indulge a passion for ballooning. Mike’s not particularly impressed – for him, nothing can compare to Supercar. I think though that Beaker is being a bit more inventive than he’s given credit for here – I’ve described it as a “hot air balloon”, but there’s no burner in evidence – rather he seems to have created a sealed, self-contained unit filled with a lighter-than-air gas. He’s not yet fitted a valve to allow him to release the pressure inside the balloon, which means there’s no way to check the balloon’s ascent – so obviously the thing isn’t ready for a flight yet. Despite this, he rather foolishly invites Mike and Jimmy into the basket to experience the sensation of floating for themselves. You can probably see where this is leading. Mitch the monkey decides to untether the balloon, and up it goes. Perhaps realizing what he’s done, Mitch tries to alert the recently-risen Popkiss to the situation, but he can’t get his meaning across. Meanwhile, with the balloon still climbing, Beaker explains that when they reach the upper atmosphere, the low air pressure outside will cause the balloon to burst, whereupon the basket will tumble to the ground and they’ll all be killed. He’s brought some emergency equipment with him – an oxygen cylinder and a parachute – not enough for all three of them though. It’s decided that Mike should use the parachute, as he’s the one with the best chance of reaching the ground and being able to fetch help. (Some film of a real man jumping and opening his ‘chute is cut in here.) Landing in the desert, Mike eventually makes it to Batesville, and wanders into another incongruous slapstick sequence involving Andy’s cash register. Using the supermarket’s phone, he manages to alert Popkiss, who flies out there in Supercar. Mike then takes the vehicle up to search for the balloon, while Popkiss co-ordinates search planes with the Air Force. But too late! The balloon bursts, and the basket plummets to Earth. Mike manages to swoop in at the last moment, and snag the basket’s ropes on Supercar’s nose, carrying Beaker and Jimmy to safety.

Hi-Jack

The voice-over narrator is back, this time introducing us to the episode’s location, the island of Bantonga, which he says only exists in the “realms of fantasy”, which seems a rather post-modern way of acknowledging the show’s fictionality – I wonder what kids watching at the time would have thought. Anyway, Bantonga is a South American banana republic ruled by President Gomez, the usual dictator with an over-elaborate uniform. His main worry at the moment is that his presidential aircraft is not fitting for his station – it’s a clapped-out old triplane he has to pilot himself. He wants to replace it with a Boeing 707, though as Bantonga can’t possibly afford one, his plan is to steal one. To that end, he has an American pilot called Captain Ross kidnapped. He intends one of his men, Lieutenant Swarb, to return to the US impersonating Ross – he’ll then enrol on a 707 pilot’s training course, and steal the plane in the process. Foolproof! Gomez has employed a couple of foreign advisers to help with kidnapping Captain Ross – yes, it’s Masterspy and Zarin! – and now it’s time to pay them off. The President invites them to his yacht that night, where he has his own private casino. He encourages Masterspy to play the roulette wheel, which is crooked. At the touch of a secret button, the agent starts to lose heavily, and before they know it, Masterspy and Zarin have lost all their ill-gotten gains. No honour among thieves, it seems.

Back at the Supercar lab, Bill Gibson is visiting. He announces that he’s about to start as an instructor on a Boeing 707 training course. There’s a surprise. (But is Bill qualified to do this? All we’ve ever seen him operating before is a light aircraft and a pick-up truck. When did he become an expert airline pilot?) Beaker meanwhile is back developing spy gadgets – this time a secret transmitter in his bowtie. Jimmy and Beaker decide to accompany Bill as passengers on his 707 training flight – Bill’s first pupil being none other than “Captain Ross”. (It just writes itself…) We’re treated to film of a real airport, and a real 707 taxiing and taking off; but once airborne, it becomes a model shot. In flight, Lieutenant Swarb pulls a gun and demands that Bill changes course for Bantonga. With his brother and Beaker as potential hostages, Bill doesn’t have much choice. He tries to warn Mike and Popkiss what’s going on when they radio in, by getting the Prof’s name wrong, and rather pointedly saying “Hi, Jack!” Despite this most obvious of clues, neither Mike nor Popkiss pick up on it. It’s left to Beaker to use his bowtie radio to alert them that something’s wrong. Mike launches Supercar to try and investigate, but even though he catches up with the 707, he can’t do anything to stop Swarb while he holds the others at gunpoint. But help comes from an unexpected quarter. To get back at Gomez for ripping him off, Masterspy phones the lab and explains what’s happening. The 707 is too heavy to land on Bantonga’s muddy airstrip, so Swarb is taking it to another island – meanwhile, Gomez is piloting his presidential triplane there to rendezvous. Armed with this knowledge, Mike intercepts Gomez’s plane, and “buzzes” it with Supercar. The slipstream from the jets causes Gomez to go into an uncontrollable tail spin – fortunately, the President is able to pull out just before he crashes into the sea. (Mike doesn’t seem to have considered what they’ll do if Gomez is killed…) Under this threat, Gomez is forced to order Swarb to turn the plane back to the US. He’s not prepared though for Mike “hijacking” him; and Supercar escorts the triplane back to America, where presumably Gomez will face justice.

Calling Charlie Queen

The team are all out in Supercar, leaving Mitch alone in the lab. He’s enjoying a quiet cigar (yes, really!) when a radio message comes in: “Calling Charlie Queen!” A desperate voice is asking for help, and saying: “He’s coming back!” When the others return, Mitch is unable to tell them what he’s heard – but fortunately, the message is repeated. We cut away to see the fellow transmitting – he appears to be standing in a giant-sized room, perhaps a workbench in a laboratory, surrounded by giant-sized apparatus. But then we realize perhaps it’s not the room that’s big, perhaps it’s him who’s small – for a man who appears to be a giant enters the room, picks up the desperate man in his hand, and tells him he’s going to be put back in his cage. (It’s quite an impressive shot featuring a puppet and a full-sized actor together in a full sized set.) Overhearing all this, the team can’t decide whether it’s a hoax or not, but think they have to investigate. (“Calling Charlie Queen” being a generic distress call to all stations listening.) Beaker manages to trace the signal’s source, so he and Mike fly out there in Supercar. They land near an isolated house, which has a radio mast on the roof – it must be the place they’re looking for. They ring the bell, and the door is answered by the sinister-looking Professor Karloff. Beaker tries to bluff his way in by saying they’re conducting a survey of amateur radio stations in the area – but Karloff cuts through all this by saying he knows why they’re really here. If they come in, he’ll explain the mysterious radio message over a cup of coffee. It all seems reasonable enough. Mike and Beaker are startled by a shape behind a curtain, but it turns out to be Mitch, who’s must have snuck into Supercar’s trunk to accompany them. Karloff comes back with coffee, but it’s a trap. The coffee is drugged, and pretty soon Mike, Beaker and Mitch are unconscious.

They wake up in Professor Karloff’s lab, and discover that they’ve been miniaturized! They also meet the man who sent the distress call: Karloff’s assistant, Hopkins, who’s been similarly shrunk and is locked in a cage on the workbench. He explains that Karloff has invented a formula that will reduce people to one third of their normal size. He plans to introduce it into the water supply of every city, and turn America into a nation of miniature people, over which he will rule. I can’t even begin to address the scientific impossibility of all this. (Actually Beaker does all that for me!) But you can’t reduce people – where does all their mass go? Why does their metabolism stay at the same rate? And how does ingesting this chemical formula cause their clothes to shrink with them? It just won’t do! They might just as well have said it was magic. At least then they’d have some plausible self-consistency. And once again, the Andersons give us a villain whose only motivation is that he’s crazy – at least Mike acknowledges this fact. They find the radio on the bench, but Karloff has put it out of action. Beaker climbs inside to repair it, and Mike manages to radio back to the lab. But too late! Having not hear from then, Popkiss and Jimmy have already left in the truck, driving all through the night to try and find their friends. Arriving at Karloff’s house, Popkiss tries to bluff his way in by saying they’re conducting a survey of amateur radio stations in the area! Inevitably, they’re invited in for a cup of coffee. In the laboratory, Beaker has discovered Karloff’s notebook containing the formula for an antidote – but he can’t understand all of Karloff’s notations, and therefore can’t find all the right ingredients for the mix. Good job they’ve got Mitch then: he serendipitously knocks a bottle over into the mixing bowl, and there’s a flash! Beaker’s finger, which was in the bowl, is restored to normal size. (A miniature Beaker with one normal-sized finger is certainly an amusing image.) The formula found, our heroes are able to restore themselves to proper size, and save Popkiss and Jimmy from drinking the coffee. They leave Karloff in Hopkins’s care until the police can arrive – that’s to say, the miniaturized Karloff now locked in the cage on the workbench. Hopkins does seem to rather relish taunting him, but I guess that’s understandable given what he’s been through.

One of the things to notice about this episode is how the ideas, and indeed some of the visual imagery – such as the puppets representing miniaturized people inserted into a real-sized environment – prefigure those we’ll see in The Secret Service in a few years’ time. In fact, given the way that Supercar often uses real film of locations, vehicles and backgrounds, integrated with the puppet characters in the close-ups, The Secret Service doesn’t seem quite as much of the far-out departure/innovation (delete according to your point of view) as is often claimed. They’ve done most of it already…

Anderthon: Lean Forward, Masterspy!

Supercar series 2
episode 1

When a programme is renewed for a second series, what’s the worst thing they can do to it? Sack the head writers? Lose or replace characters without explanation? Completely alter the style? No, it’s changing the theme music! OK, so I’m not being entirely serious – the other things mentioned are probably far worse crimes. It’s a tricky business revamping a show between seasons – producers are just concerned to make the show appeal to the biggest audience possible, but whatever changes they make risk alienating the existing fanbase. Compared to what's going to happen in the mid-seventies, the changes to Supercar might seem quite minor, yet there is a distinct change in the style of the show which I’ll be examining as we go on.

But that theme music! I’m going to make a shocking confession here: I don’t really like the music for Supercar. Now I’m normally a huge fan of Barry Gray’s work, but I hardly ever put the Supercar CD on for enjoyment. I don’t feel he’s quite hit his stride yet – giving us a rather simplistic march for Supercar in action, and “comedy” children’s music for Beaker and Mitch – though there are the first hints of weird electronic “outer space” music, and some of the lush orchestrations that will later be used to depict tropical islands and exotic alien worlds. As for the theme song itself, with its overly literal lyrics describing Supercar’s abilities, it’s very kids tv, isn’t it? Can you imagine if the Thunderbirds theme had similar words?

Thunderbird 2
It’s big and fat and green
Thunderbird 2
Got a pod with cool stuff in

OK, maybe not… Despite the lyrics, what the Supercar theme has going for it is that it’s big, bold and dramatic, with the vocalist giving it his all! And that impact is completely lost in the second series version – the instrumentation is weak and insipid, and the performance of the vocal group completely lacking in power (and the words are less clear too.) I wonder why they felt the need to change it…?

The Runaway Train

Interestingly, it’s not immediately apparent that there’s been a change in the writing staff. This episode starts out much like a first series tale. Beaker is working with the army, trying to devise a new method for transporting tanks over difficult terrain. He goes into his lab, and gets to work. Eventually, after some false starts, he comes up with a powerful electromagnet, which he demonstrates to Mike and Popkiss. Beaker has done his work too well, and the magnet is so powerful that it attracts every metal object in the building, including things like belt buckles. Much hilarity ensues… I have to say, Mike is somewhat brusque in his reactions to Beaker’s invention, and maintains a rather offhand attitude towards the good Doc throughout the rest of the episode. Maybe a flying metal object did him some rather sensitive damage that he doesn’t tell us about? Beaker fits the new magnet to the underside of Supercar, and demonstrates to the army its use to pick up tanks and deliver them across rivers and other tricky terrain. He also says that he’s going to leave this new device on Supercar, which leads me to suspect that it’s going to become important later on.

People who notice these things will spot a new name on the end credits: Derek Meddings, now permanently installed as special effects wizard. And one thing I noticed straight away is an improvement in the modelwork, with helicopters, tanks, cars and buildings. Even the laboratory, previously represented by a painting, is now a complete model building. There are some problems of scale however. When Supercar picks up the tanks, it just looks wrong to my eye: Supercar is too big in comparison to the tank. Previously, we’ve seen that the cockpit of Supercar is no bigger than the interior of a small car like a Mini (which is really obvious when all the team have to cram into it) – so even with its elongated nose and tail, the vehicle really shouldn’t be any bigger than the average saloon car. And yet here it dwarfs a tank! Later in the episode, Supercar actually picks up a car – which should obviously be about the same size – but again, Supercar is much larger than it should be. And since we can see the figure of Mike sitting in the cockpit, this makes him look like a giant! (And in fact, if you compare the two sequences, you’d get the impression that the car is as big as a tank as well!)

Anyway, what’s all this got to do with the episode title? Well, a new atomic-powered train has been built in England. Those very words tell us that, despite the early sixties setting, the Andersons are starting to lead us into their vision of the future, the whizz-bang labour-saving nuclear-powered utopia that we’ll see more of over the coming decade. (It seems hopelessly naïve and optimistic now – like the hover cars and personal jet packs we were all supposed to have by the year 2000 – but the Andersons really buy into that Look and Learn vision that must have seemed so exciting to young boys then.) It turns out that Dr Beaker has become so famous that he’s been asked to drive the train on its inaugural journey. (So he’s a qualified engine driver too? There’s no end to his talents.) This highlights another subtle change to the series format – after all Popkiss’s efforts to keep the Supercar project top secret in the first series, the team are now globally renowned. Indeed, Mike is referred to by a hotel receptionist as “the famous test pilot”.

The team decamp to London, represented naturally enough by real live action film of people walking past Big Ben. What they don’t realize is that staying in the same hotel as them are none other than Masterspy and Zarin. You’ll remember how much I was missing them by the end of the first series, so it’s good to see them back. To avoid detection, Masterspy books in under a cunningly fiendish alias: “Mr Masterspoon”! That night, he and Zarin break into the engine shed where the atomic train is being kept – there’s film of a real railway marshalling yard, real tracks and real engines, and yet bizarrely enough an unconvincing model shot of the Moon to indicate night-time. (What, there wasn’t any stock footage available of the Moon in the sky? Crazy!) On behalf of the hostile foreign power which employs them, they sabotage the atomic motor. So, the train sets off the next day with Beaker and Popkiss aboard, and pretty soon the engine runs out of control. I can’t be sure, but the back projection in the cab may well be the famous BBC interlude film London to Brighton in Four Minutes. As the train hurtles towards Brighton, Masterspy and Zarin drive there hoping to see the big explosion it will cause. (As with The Lost City, the Andersons really seem ignorant of all the health dangers associated with proximity to a nuclear detonation – even allowing that Masterspy wouldn’t be foolish enough to actually be standing at ground zero. If I knew that a nuclear bomb was about to go off in Brighton, I’d be making all haste to somewhere like Edinburgh…)

Beaker is unable to stop the train, so calls Mike on the radio. The time scale of the episode seems to stretch out here somewhat. Despite there being only minutes to impact, Mike has time to question the receptionist about “Mr Masterspoon” – then to track Masterspy’s car. And here, Beaker’s electromagnet finally comes into its own, as Mike uses it to pick up the car and deposit it on the top of a tv transmitter mast, where he leaves the villains to cool off. Thus precariously balanced, Masterspy and Zarin are left having to lean backwards and forwards to try and keep the car from toppling. Supercar then races after the train, and Mike again uses the electromagnet to grab hold of the engine. Then he fires reverse thrust, and manages to draw the train to a halt just as it pulls up to the buffers in Brighton station.

So overall, a good start to series 2. Despite some slight changes in style and outlook, we’re not really feeling the absence of the Woodhouses yet. Masterspy and Zarin come back in an espionage plot, and get a suitably comical comeuppance; and the carefully demonstrated application of science saves the day. Let’s see where we go from here...

Anderthon: Satisfactory... Most Satisfactory...

Supercar
episodes 23-26

The Lost City

It's another script from the pens of Gerry and Sylvia, and this one demonstrates perhaps most clearly how their approach differs to that of the Woodhouses. It's no dream sequence or jungle comedy, this is a straight down the line adventure story - but unlike the Woodhouses' reasonably well thought-out crime and espionage tales, what we get here is tacky pulp sci-fi. I wonder if this is how the Andersons saw their creations – not worth expending any thought on, at least not on the scripting side of things? Far more interested in the visuals and technical innovations, and seeing the story as merely a framework to hang all that wizardry on. (And here, once again, I'm reminded of how writers seem to be very minor cogs in the Anderson machine, and often overlooked by the fandom.) I'm also interested by the fact that, despite working for a civilian outfit, Mike suddenly and without explanation seems to have acquired a uniform. He's now kitted out with a huge peaked cap, complete with a Supercar logo badge fixed to the front. Actually, it makes him look like a milkman, but it does seem to establish the sort of futuristic military look that will typify the Andersons' creations for the next several years.

Anyway, Mike and Beaker are off to the Antarctic on a scientific expedition, with Mitch and Jimmy along for the ride. Flying over South America, Supercar goes out of control and into a dive. Fortunately Mike regains control just before hitting the ground. They find themselves amid the ruins of an ancient city, which fascinates Beaker enough that he doesn't seem to mind missing Antarctica. Mike and Beaker stumble upon a hidden lift, which whisks them down into a secret base beneath the ruins, manned by some rather flimsy-looking robots. At the heart of it all is a man Beaker recognizes – an English scientist called Professor Watkins who disappeared about ten years before. He's a sort of wannabe Bond villain, and true to form, he locks Mike and Beaker up and proceeds to explain his operation to them. Somehow he's built himself this base, an army of robots and a collection of nuclear missiles. His masterplan is to fire one of these at Washington DC. Quite apart from glossing over how he could afford to do all this, the script offers no clue whatsoever about his motivations. He's just a nutcase. (At least Blofeld was out to blackmail the world powers with the threat of nuclear destruction.)

Watkins sends a robot to the surface to capture Jimmy and Mitch – but they're able to destroy it with Popkiss's radioed assistance, by charging Supercar's engines to overload and catching the robot in the blast of the jets. Meanwhile, Mike and Beaker realize that the robots only respond to Watkins's voice, so Beaker reveals another of his myriad talents: mimicry. He impersonates the Professor perfectly, and gets the robots to release them. As they make their escape in Supercar, the writers at least allow Beaker to use science to save the day – realizing that it was the radio guidance beams for the missiles that originally jammed Supercar's controls, he's able to use the vehicle's radio to deflect the nuclear missile from its original course, and send it crashing back on top of the lost city – presumably destroying Watkins, robots, base and all. (And yes, needless to say, there’s stock footage of a mushroom cloud.) Supercar is bathed in a very harsh white light, effectively suggesting the flash of the explosion – I’m rather surprised our heroes aren’t blinded in fact. I'd also be rather worried by the ecological effects of a nuclear detonation in the middle of the Amazon, but where would an Anderson show be without a gratuitious big bang? Hey, at least Washington was saved...

The Magic Carpet

Beaker has come up with two new inventions – a hand-held miniaturized control console, which enables them to operate Supercar by remote control; and an engine noise suppressor which means the jets can fire with little more than a rush of air. I've got the feeling that both of these are going to come in useful in the next 25 minutes. Mike and Beaker are testing these outside the lab when Popkiss comes out waving a newspaper – the news is that Prince Nurid Hassan of Karrakhan is grievously ill. His country is almost cut off from civilization, and only Supercar can reach the Prince with life-saving medicines. Jimmy seems excited by the thought of flying off on a mercy mission to help a distressed foreign noble. If you recall, he wanted to do the exact same thing for the Princess Caroline of Bavania, and Popkiss flatly refused, saying it wasn't their business to interfere in the affairs of other nations – and forcing Jimmy into the dreaded dream sequence. I wonder what's happened to change the Professor's tune on this occasion.

As the episode unfolds, we actually see that this episode bears more than a passing resemblance to Flight of Fancy. Again there's a corrupt official trying to get rid of the rightful ruler and claim the throne for himself. The regent, Alif Bey, is simply waiting for Prince Hassan to die, relying on Karrakhan's remoteness to ensure that no outside help can reach him in time. It seems that there's nothing wrong with Hassan that modern antibiotics can't cure, but Alif claims the medicines simply aren't available. To legitimize his claim to the throne, he's planning to marry Hassan's sister, Princess Medina, the next day. What's interesting here is to note the choices this episode makes differently. Rather than a fairy-tale European kingdom, we get an isolated Middle Eastern sultanate, the sort of realm that would still have existed in 1960 (and familiar to viewers from things like Danger Man) – and the adventure is resolved with the usual mixture of science and ingenuity. It's as if the Woodhouses are subtly winding their employers up, saying this is how to do the story properly, without resorting to dream sequences and wise-cracking monkeys.

Arriving in Karrakhan, Supercar is initially mistaken for a magic carpet by a superstitious guard. Mike and the team are locked up by Alif Bey to prevent them from helping Prince Hassan. Using the remote control and the noise suppressor, they're able to get Supercar to lift off in the courtyard and hover across to the Prince's window. Princess Medina then takes the medical supplies from the cockpit and uses them to treat her brother. (see, I said those gadgets would prove important – the writers taking giving us a real Chekhov’s gun here.) The only witness to all this is the comedy guard: hearing the gentle whoosh of the suppressed engines, he thinks the foreigners have escaped on their magic carpet – but every time Alif looks into the cell, he can clearly see Mike and Beaker sitting down playing chess! With Hassan on the road to recovery, Mike sets about getting them free. Mitch climbs out through the bars and tries to find a file in Supercar's toolkit – cue some comedy business as the monkey repeatedly picks up the wrong tool. (Strangely, he seems to have reverted to being a dumb animal this week.) Mike and Beaker take turns filing through the bars, and then use knotted sheets to make an escape rope. In the morning, there's a tense stand-off between Mike and Alif Bey before the recovering Prince Hassan arrives to have his treacherous regent arrested.

The White Line

Rather a neat little crime thriller, albeit with a few gaping plot holes. Scotland Yard are baffled by some armoured car robberies occurring on a quiet stretch of road, with deliveries of gold bullion being snatched. Now I don’t know about you, but that sentence conjures up in my mind a huge van with reinforced sides, wire mesh over the windows, and a couple of hulking blokes in body armour and crash helmets driving it – and the robbery something like the opening scene in the movie Heat. Well, it seems in 1960s Britain, an armoured car was a normal family saloon being driven at night by a lone guy in an ordinary suit – but at least he’s got a (slightly) strong box on the front seat containing the gold. It’s emblazoned with the logo “Safe T Cars”, presumably the name of the company offering this courier service. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to be driving Securicor out of business. Once we get past the fact that the victims are leaving themselves wide open, the plan here is rather ingenious. The opening shots are of a look-out waiting beside a phone box, watching real film of a car’s headlights going past – with some lovely camerawork and a groovy jazz soundtrack. The look-out sends up a flare, and the villains up ahead go to work. They roll out special carpets that cover the road markings, and another that lays down fake markings leading to the edge of a ravine. Since a man driving on an unlit road at night will follow the white line, they’re leading the bank couriers to their doom. (Well, actually no one dies – after the cars plunge into the ravine, the villains capture the driver and lock him up in their hideout, an abandoned country house.)

Scotland Yard call in the Supercar team. As soon as he’s heard the tale, Mike instantly guesses it must be the work of the Chicago gangsters Joe and Maxie Hoyle. (I’m not quite sure how he came to this conclusion – it turns out he’s right of course – maybe he reads a lot of true crime magazines…) Mike and Beaker agree to help by transferring some bullion across London in Supercar – I’m not sure why, given the original robberies didn’t happen in London. When they arrive at the Bank of Kensington, they take the gold down in the lift to the vault, only to discover the Hoyles waiting for them inside. They take the gold, and leave Mike and friends locked inside the vault. (And there’s the gaping plot hole I mentioned – not only do there appear to be no guards in the bank, apart from a single police inspector, but if the Hoyles could get into the vault so easily, why didn’t they come back later and take the gold when there was no one else about?) Anyway, after this little upset, Mike decides to go back to a more sensible plan – following the routes of the armoured cars and finding out how the villains are doing it. So with Beaker driving the route, Mike, Mitch and Jimmy scout ahead in Supercar. Seeing the lookout’s flare going up, Mike uses the “clear view” system to watch the false road markings being laid out. He’s unable to warn Beaker though as the Hoyles appear and shoot off Supercar’s radio aerial with their tommy-guns. Mitch gets out of Supercar and decoys the gangsters into a chase around the woods, giving Mike time to get airborne again. Then Mitch leaps from a tree onto the back of Supercar, hanging on as Mike races to stop Beaker going over the ravine. Eventually, Mike has to land Supercar in Beaker’s path, and the scientist manages to pull up just in time. Realizing the game is up, the Hoyles try to make a getaway with their bullion – unfortunately, they fall into their own trap, following the fake white lines into the ravine! (And amusingly, it’s not their truck that goes over the cliff in the model shot, it’s a repeat of the car from the opening sequence – it’s a bit like ITC’s infamous white Jag…)

Supercar “Take One”

Professor Popkiss is away on holiday, but Beaker feels he can operate the console perfectly well on his own. Unfortunately, as Mike launches on one of his test flights, Beaker forgets to open the roof doors, resulting in a lot of wreckage falling into the lab, and amusingly a Supercar shaped hole in the roof. Supercar itself is made of sterner stuff, and only requires a bit of repainting. Later, Beaker takes delivery of a movie camera, which he’s planning to use to make film records of his experiments. But Jimmy persuades him to make a sort of home movie about Supercar. Beaker turns out to be a bit of a Stanley Kubrick-style perfectionist, making Mike go through 104 takes of charging up Supercar’s engines. Jimmy is the clapper-loader and Mitch acts as sound man. Beaker really gets into it, filming action sequences of Supercar in flight, and even underwater. (He’s wearing a full diving suit to operate the camera of course.) Beaker sends the film away to be developed, but when it comes back, the team are shocked to find it contains film of naval manoeuvres and secret plans for a nuclear power source. They’ve been sent the wrong film by the developers! The film has come from Satellite Film Productions in New York, which Beaker realizes must be a front for an foreign spy ring. They decide to fly to New York to investigate – but first Beaker insists on changing into a bowler hat and grabbing an umbrella. I’d say he was trying to emulate John Steed, but The Avengers had barely started by this time. As they prepare for take-off, Mitch reminds Beaker to open the roof doors this time. Worth his weight in gold, that monkey.

Arriving in New York, they land on top of the skyscraper that contains the film company’s offices. Beaker goes down to pay a visit, with Mike preparing to follow if he doesn’t return within half an hour. I was slightly disappointed, given the similarity of the setting, to discover that the villains of the piece weren’t Masterspy and Zarin – it might have been fun to see them again for the last episode of the series – and indeed, I realized then that (aside from the dream episode) they haven’t been seen for a whole thirteen episodes now. Instead, we meet Herman Gredenski and his glamorous assistant Miss Devenish, who are running the spy ring. Miss Devenish tricks Beaker into sitting in a certain chair, which is on top of a trap door – which deposits him via a chute into a strong room below. Inside, he finds the secret files of the spy ring. When Mike comes looking for Beaker, he’s also tricked into sitting in the booby-trapped chair. (Miss Devenish is so ridiculously insistent that it has to be that particular chair, you wonder why neither of them was the slightest bit suspicious of her motives.) Nevertheless, as Mike is deposited down the chute, he comes face to face with Beaker’s coolest moment in the entire series: leaning nonchalantly on a filing cabinet, he tells Mike he’s late. (“I expected you seven minutes ago.”) Now we discover that Beaker’s costume is not merely for decoration. The crown of his bowler hat conceals a radio (as indeed did John Steed’s some years later – I wonder if the writers of The Avengers took any pointers from this episode?) He calls Jimmy – who says Beaker sounds like he talking through his hat! – and tells him to call the police. Then Gredenski tries to kill his visitors by pumping deadly gas into the strong room. Fortunately, Beaker’s umbrella conceals a drill which he uses to drill out the lock. The two rush back up to the office, where Miss Devenish is being menaced by Mitch, whom she believes is an escaped gorilla. Beaker tells her that he’s in fact a very intelligent chimpanzee. So there we are – one thing Beaker’s not good at is primatology, if he can’t recognize the difference between a chimp and a monkey. (Come on, Mitch has got a tail!) With the police on their way, Gredenski and Miss Devenish announce they have a secret way out of the building – but Mitch activates the trap door and deposits them down into the strong room! (Except, wait a minute, Beaker drilled the lock out – so they’ll be able to escape and make use of their secret exit…)

This final episode is another script by the Andersons. It’s probably the best of their episodes so far. Aside from the incongruity of the secret agent version of Beaker, it’s certainly entertaining and amusing, although it does rely on convenient use of gadgets rather than the well-reasoned application of science and technology that the Woodhouses tended to employ. So it’ll be interesting to see how the second series develops, as sadly we’ve seen the last of the Woodhouses. Having discovered they can write their own scripts, Gerry and Sylvia don’t bother to invite them back. (I’m not sure if there’s any pattern in these things, but it’s odd how the chief writers seem to drop out of these shows – remember how Phil Wrestler disappeared before the end of Four Feather Falls?) If it weren’t for the DVD documentary, I doubt I’d even be aware of the major contribution that Hugh and Martin made to the series. (They get precisely one mention in Gerry Anderson’s authorized biography for example.) But it’s more than that: as I said before, by demonstrating what these fabulous machines could be used for in a civilian context (impossible rescue missions and the like) – rather than just employing them for military use as the Andersons will do in many of their subsequent shows – the Woodhouses have practically set up the premise of Thunderbirds.