A SHORT REVIEW OF THE DELUXE CAPTAIN SCARLET BLU-RAY BOX

Although I’ve had the Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons DVD Carlton Box set for years, which as many of you will already know, is packed with extras, I thought I’d check out the new deluxe Blu-ray version from Network.

It is limited to 1250 pressings, and from what I gather has already completely sold out from Network and the Gerry Anderson store, so expect one or two of them to be turning up for inflated prices on eBay anytime soon.

The Deluxe set is actually an enhanced fourth volume, with the other standard volumes available separately.  As with the standard fourth volume, it contains a disc with the last eight episodes, all perfectly cleaned up and digitally re-mastered to Blu-ray quality, but there’s also a second special features disc which apart from some newly produced documentaries, and some nostalgic items from the sixties like ad bumpers and adverts, it also includes Joe 90: Most Special Agent, the first episode from the series, heralding Network’s next Gerry Anderson Blu-ray release.

I must add, I personally really like the uncluttered look when the disc loads, so apart from a nice simple menu with Captain Scarlet in the background, there are no superfluous newly created digital images.   

It also comes with some additional ephemera which, according to what’s written on them are only available as part of the deluxe set , and won't be sold seperatly.  There’s a specially produced poster drawn by legendary TV21 artist Mike Noble and Lee Sullivan, who has had some recent involvement with Anderson Entertainment’s new ‘Firestorm’ minisode .

Here’s a photo of Mike and Lee at the first Andercon.

There’s also a ‘Captain Scarlet’ comic which reproduces the poster on the front cover.  There are a couple of pages showing behind the scenes photos from the original series and a couple of comic strips.

The Captain Scarlet strip is drawn by Paul McCaffrey, who did the illustration for the Project Sword text story in the TV21 facsimile copy which was originally included in Network’s ‘Supermarionation is Go’ boxed set. The advantage of this strip is we get to see Paul’s proper comic strip art skills in colour and black & white. As you can obviously see Paul has a solid and confident style. He does excellent and expressive figure drawing, which, I have to say, I've noted that some the current crop of professional artists attempting comic strips can’t,  As with the vast majority of comic art these days  it looks like it has been done digitally, but thankfully  it’s not photo-realistic which, while I might be in the minority here, I’m not keen on at all, especially when the subject matter is nostalgia.  

The second strip, which is a continuation of the first, but this time features The Angels,  is drawn by Martin Baines who drew the Thunderbirds strip in the Network TV21 facsimile that I previously mentioned. Fans of the New Captain Scarlet will easily spot that Martin has used a NCS Falcon Interceptor design as Captain Black’s getaway jet.

But for me a large part of Captain Scarlet is really about nostalgia, and memories of watching the series way back in the late sixties. So with that in mind Network have reproduced a really nice set of glossy prints showing the series end credits artwork wonderfully painted by the late Ron Embleton, another legendary TV21 artist.

Although, some have commented that they have been slightly cropped they are still a rather nice addition to anyone’s Captain Scarlet collection.

Network have even provided sufficient space in the box (once some internal packaging is removed) to put the other three volumes for the complete package, so I guess I’m going to have to invest in them now.