Review of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

Anderson's follow up to 'Thunderbirds' is far more brutal and pessimistic about the future. Virtually every episode begins with the Mysterons murdering someone to 'reconstruct' them under their control. The puppets are technically superior to ThunderBirds, Stingray etc and the special effects by Derek Meddings and co are excellent. There are some nice touches-the multi-racial, equal opportunity organisation 'Spectrum', the puppet 'guest stars',particularly the Robert Mitchum lookalike, and the fact that Colonel White, the Spectrum commander and the Mysterons share the same voice (is this symbolically significant as opposed to Anderson economising on actors?).However, overall it lacked the charm and innocent appeal of its predecessors. For pedants like me there were also some holes in the basic concept. It was quietly forgotten that Captain Scarlet himself was not the original but a Mysteron reconstruction. Was there no danger of him being taken over again? Like the workings of the Star Trek transporter the exact nature of his indestructibility was left vague. In the opening credits he is shown to be bullet proof, but in the series itself he just seems to be able to recover quickly from catastrophic injuries. Anyway, as far as I recall none of the other Mysteron agents were indestructible so why was he? Anderson is reputedly remaking the series as of 2003 so perhaps we'll learn some answers. Hope it's better than some of his latter day shows like 'Terrahawks' and the abysmal 'Space Precinct'