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Fictional alien race in Captain Scarlet

The Mysterons are a fictional race of extraterrestrials and the antagonists in the 1960s British Supermarionation science fiction television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967–68) and its 2005 animated remake, New Captain Scarlet. They are the remnants of the original Mysteron race: alien beings that originated in a galaxy other than the Milky Way and maintained a colony on Mars. They are symbolised by ubiquitous, projected green rings of light and the deep bass voice of their human convert Captain Black. They were voiced by Donald Gray in the original series and Mike Hayley in the remake. In the 2000 animated test film Captain Scarlet and the Return of the Mysterons, they were voiced by Gary Martin.

As shown in the first episode of the Captain Scarlet television series, hostilities between Earth and the Mysterons commence following a Zero X expedition to Mars, led by Captain Black of the 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. The Zero X astronauts discover an alien city complex on the Martian surface. After mistaking a deployed surveillance device for a weapon, Black fears an attack and, in violation of his orders, launches an assault on the complex that destroys it completely. However, the city is almost immediately rebuilt before their eyes as a blue beam of light passes over its ruins. Speaking in a deep, echoing voice, the aliens identify themselves as the Mysterons and state that they have discovered the secret of "reversing matter" (a power later referred to as "retrometabolism"). They have the ability to heal any physical injury, and re create the exact likeness of any object or person – a power they can exercise only after the original object has been destroyed or the original person killed. Dedicating themselves to a "slow, but nonetheless effective" retaliation for the unprovoked attack on their Martian complex, the Mysterons seize telepathic control of Black and return him to Earth, making him instrumental in avenging the Mysterons by acting as their agent and destroying other people and objects, so that they may be re created under Mysteron control. [[File:Mysteron rings. jpg|thumb|left|alt=The broken bodies of two dead men lie on a rock face. Vehicle debris is strewn behind them and there is a burst of flame in the bottom left corner. A pair of translucent green circles are passing over the men.|The Mysteron "rings", twin circles of green light that pass over the Mysterons' victims (here, two men killed in a road accident) as the aliens create replicas to do their bidding. In their original script for the first episode, the Andersons compared the rings to eyes. The aliens are represented visually by twin rings of green light that they cast onto the scenes of murder and destruction from which their facsimiles emerge. The pilot script described these rings as "two fiery green circles" suggestive of eyes. During filming, the ring effect was produced by panning a transparency across the set using a slide projector. The Mysteron likenesses created are impervious to X Rays showing up on X Rays as though they were conventional photographs and can only be destroyed by massive amounts of electricity. The re creation process requires the subject to be clinically dead before the copy is created; in one episode, ("Treble Cross"), World Air Force test pilot Major Gravener, who the Mysterons had attacked and copied, was later resuscitated in hospital, allowing Spectrum to set a trap for the Mysterons by sending the real Gravener out in place of his duplicate. Despite their general ruthlessness, certain storylines have shown that the Mysterons are unwilling to cause agony or resort to torture. In one episode Captain Black releases one of the Angels from a radioactive chamber before she could suffer radiation poisoning (albeit after he trapped her there), although this was a ruse to draw away the Spectrum agents who were tracking him with geiger counters. A novelisation also depicts the Mysterons trapping Captains Scarlet and Blue on a satellite that they plan to obliterate using its self destruct mechanism, rather than leaving it to plunge into the Sun where the Spectrum agents would die a slower, more painful death. Anderson originally intended the Mysterons to be more conventional Martians, later choosing to make them effectively invisible so that the series would not feel dated.

The final episode of the re imagined series, New Captain Scarlet, reveals a great deal about the Mysterons as they exist in the version of the new series. They live in a city on Mars that is normally hidden from view. The city appears on the surface of Mars for the first time in 2068, during the ill fated mission commanded by Captain Black (Instrument of Destruction, Part 1). They are categorically stated to be energy beings, with one being shown to be capable of transforming into the "green rings", and are to some extent individualised – there is a dissenting faction in the "Mysteron consciousness" (as a member of the faction puts 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 de corporalised and remanded into Mysteron custody by the majority group's primary agent, Black. The Mysterons were first discovered by Spectrum captains Scarlet and Black during an investigation into the source of strange signals emanating from Mars. They appear as a pair of green rings; however, it is not known whether this is the result of technology. The Mysterons claim to be peaceful beings, but wage a "war of nerves" against the people of Earth following Black's devastating assault on the Mysteron city. The Mysterons possess the ability to reconstruct exact replicas of objects or persons. It is due to this remarkable ability that they are able to re create their city following Black's attack. They also employ this power from time to time during the "Mysteronisation" process, which imbues the reconstruction (dubbed "replicant" by Spectrum) with the power of "retro metabolisation" – the replicant is able to heal completely from almost any injury, including fatal ones. Replicants may occasionally break from Mysteron control when confronted by human loved ones or are reminded of their human past. Sadly this is only temporary and the Mysterons will forcibly and painfully reassert control over the replicant. The only known survivor of the process is Scarlet, who retains his retro metabolism and remains virtually indestructible, an ability which is a great asset in his work. Mysterons are also able to control the minds of their human victims, whether the subject has been replicated or not. Mysterons make use of hypnosis for short term control, as demonstrated by the replicant of Commander Lewis on Doctor Gold ("The Homecoming"). To create a full agent, they use the reconstruction process which leaves them in total control of the victim's body. The Mysteronisation process alters the replicants at the sub atomic level and subtly alters their genetic code. It is this alteration of DNA that leaves them vulnerable to detection, and as such all Spectrum personnel are subject to regular DNA checking.

Commentators have offered a range of explanations as to the exact nature of the Mysterons. According to Nicholas J. Cull, they are a species of "invisible" alien, The computer complex on Mars is the legacy of the original, corporeal Mysteron race – described as being of extragalactic origin and "masters in the art of computer technology" – who colonised the planet in the 2nd millennium BC and abandoned it at the start of the 20th century AD. Sarah Kurchak of The A. V. Club believes that the Mysterons marked a departure from the villains of earlier Anderson productions due to their apparent omnipresence and omnipotence. She describes them as "truly, realistically terrifying [ ] an unknowable foreign entity capable of the deepest undercover work that could strike at any time," adding that Spectrum's occasional defeats at their hands made them "all the more alarming". Wilkins and Bushwick categorise the Mysterons as an example of the "monstrous and evil" type of Martian commonly seen in film, TV and literature, and rank them second only to the invaders of the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds (1897) for malevolence. Simon J. Gerard of Starburst magazine regards the secondary title sequence – in which the Mysterons, represented only by their "strange green light beams", announce their latest threat to Spectrum – as the "defining moment" of the original Captain Scarlet. The authors of The Rough Guide to Cult TV argue that for younger children, the aliens' slow, deep voice "seemed to embody evil." Several commentators argue that the fact that the Mysterons remain unseen, preferring instead to operate through their replicated intermediaries, makes them all the more frightening. Kyle Anderson of Nerdist. com considers the Mysterons' schemes "pretty ingenious". Other commentators have criticised their methods. Tom Spilsbury questions the wisdom of making the duplicate of Captain Scarlet indestructible given that his death and resurrection in the first episode cause him to break free of Mysteron control. Jeffery queries why the aliens need to create duplicates at all, given that they are apparently able to manipulate Black through mind control. Andrew Blair of Den of Geek writes that "there's something both rubbish and endearing about the Mysterons' attempts to harass humanity into submission with their decidedly piecemeal approach."

Actor Cy Grant, who voiced the original Lieutenant Green and praised Captain Scarlet for its positive multiculturalism, believed that the series employed a form of black and white dualism of which the Mysterons were an aspect: "The 'darkness' of the Mysterons is most easily seen as the psychological rift — the struggle of 'good' and 'evil' — of the Western world as personified by Colonel White and his team. Dark and light are but aspects of each other. Incidentally, green is the colour of nature that can heal that rift." Colonel White (the head of Spectrum) to God, Cull, who interprets the original Captain Scarlet as a media product of the Cold War, regards the Mysterons' campaign against Earth as a kind of "Cold War scenario". In an allusion to other science fiction of the time, he states that the Mysterons' reconstructive ability "creates an ever present danger of an enemy within, which is the stuff of archetypal Cold War paranoia narratives on the model of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)." For Jeffery, that the Mysterons are not "out and out villains" is one of the elements that makes Captain Scarlet more "mature" than Thunderbirds. including commentator Andrew Billen. Jim Sangster and Paul Condon consider it "oddly prophetic" that Captain Scarlets original UK run ended not long before the hi jacking of El Al Flight 426, an event that "made political terrorism big news." They regard the series' theme of terrorism as "incredibly perceptive" on Anderson's part, calling it "staggering that at the same time as airplane hi jacks became a distressingly regular occurrence in the Middle East, and IRA bombings in London, Gerry Anderson was explaining the effects of terrorism to kids, even down to having an aggressor who, it could be argued, has a genuine cause for complaint." Commenting on the updated Mysterons of the 2005 remake, David Garland suggested that the aliens' persistent focus on terrorising Earth remotely, as opposed to invading it, "holds particular contemporary resonance". Anderson rejected comparisons to 21st century terrorism, stating that the Mysterons' methods are not terrorism "as we know it" but "of an invisible force from another world". On parallels between the series and modern events, he argued that "any film that has any kind of war or conflict is always timely, because we as human beings are forever killing each other".