Mysteron

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For the Captain Scarlet episode, see The Mysterons (Captain Scarlet episode)

The Mysterons are a fictional race of extraterrestrials which appear in the British science fiction Supermarionation television series' Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet.

Hostilities between Earth and the Mysterons began following a Zero-X expedition on Mars led by Captain Black of Earth security organisation, Spectrum. The purpose of the mission had been to locate the source of radio signals that Spectrum had detected emanating from the planet. Following the transmissions, the party discovered an alien complex on the surface. After mistaking an alien camera for a weapons placement, Captain Black feared an attack and, in violation of his orders, launched an assault on the complex that destroyed it completely. However, the city was almost immediately rebuilt before their eyes as a blue beam of light passed over the ruins.

Identifying themselves as the Mysterons, the aliens claimed to have discovered the secret of reversing matter. They proved to have the ability to re-create an exact likeness of an object or person. A power they could exercise only after the original object had been destroyed or after the original person had been killed. Devoting themselves to retaliation for the unprovoked attack on their complex, retaliation they declare "will be slow, but nonetheless effective," they take over Captain Black and send him back to Earth under their control, making him instrumental in avenging the Mysterons by recruiting other persons and objects in a similar fashion. But their attempt to assassinate the World President, for which purpose they re-create Captain Scarlet himself, fails when his likeness is shot, and killed, in a fall during his unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the World President, and regains the normal personality of the original Captain Scarlet (how this happens is never explained in the series canon). The Mysterons themselves are never actually seen on screen. They broadcast their threats by radio, often disguising their intentions with word play, and they are only represented visually by twin rings of green light, suggestive of eyes, that they project onto the scenes of destructions and killings from which likenesses emerge.

From one point of view, the Mysterons' hostility to humans, to the extent of their intending "the ultimate destruction of life on Earth," seems to make little sense. It is unclear, if they were able to re-create their complex, why were they so upset by its original destruction, or why they ignore Earth's gestures of reconciliation. The Andersons' intent was to portray the Mysterons as computers that were left behind on Mars by visiting aliens. This would explain their seeming lack of emotion.

Anderson initially intended the Mysterons to be more conventional Martians, then chose to make them invisible aliens during production so the series would not feel dated. The TV Century 21 comic book depicted the Mysterons as both energy beings and computers. The computer explanation is favoured by most fans today.

[edit] New Captain Scarlet

The last episode of the reimagined series, Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, reveals a great deal about the Mysterons, or at least as they exist in the version of the new series. They are categorically stated to be energy beings, with one shown in the original episode actually transforming into their trademark 'green rings', and are to some extent 'individuals' as we understand it; There is a dissenting faction in the "Mysteron consciousness" (as a member of the faction put it) that believes that, given time, humans will outgrow their destructive impulses and become more like the Mysterons themselves. Unfortunately for the series' protagonists, this group has virtually no influence, and their only agent dispatched to Earth was quickly decorporalised and remanded into Mysteron custody by the majority group's primary agent, Captain Black.