Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons - Broadcasts

Broadcasts

Captain Scarlet officially opened on British television on 29 September 1967, in the late-afternoon slot of 5.25 pm, in the ATV Midlands region. Viewing figures for the pilot episode, "The Mysterons", were promising at 0.45 million. Five months earlier, on 29 April, the series opener had been given a late-night test transmission in the London area. After the start of the Midlands broadcasts, London and Scotland followed on 1 October, with the Granada, Anglia, Southern, Westward and Channel areas all televising the series by the end of the month. However, it was not until the start of 1968 that the series was being broadcast all across the nation. In the Midlands region, the ratings averaged 1.1 million. In 1968, Captain Scarlet was also screened in more than 40 other countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. In the United States, the series was transmitted on first-run syndication. Meanwhile, only six episodes of the series were transmitted in the Netherlands.

Repeat runs have varied greatly according to region. While Granada, HTV and Tyne Tees continued to broadcast the series into 1972, the Midlands received four colour re-runs from 1969 to 1974, while in other areas, such as Yorkshire, it was not repeated at all. All 32 episodes were purchased by the ITV network for broadcast on Saturday mornings between 1985 and 1986, with broadcasting in segmented form on the ITV Night Network in 1987. A BBC commission led to the series' first simultaneous network broadcast on BBC2 starting on 1 October 1993. On this occasion, the pilot episode attracted an audience of four million, high enough to award it third position in the BBC2 ratings chart for the week of transmission.

Digitally remastered, the series resurfaced on BBC Two in the autumn of 2001. On this occasion, the episode schedule needed to be re-arranged at short notice to avoid offence in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September attacks. The second episode, "Winged Assassin", in which the Mysterons destroy and reconstruct a plane to assassinate a world leader, and the third, "Big Ben Strikes Again", in which London comes under threat from an atomic device, were held back and replaced with the fourth episode, "Manhunt", due to parallels between the plotlines and events in the real world. In the week after the attacks, the Captain Scarlet section on the Carlton website was also temporarily removed.