White as Snow (Captain Scarlet)

Manned communications satellite TVR-17 is destroyed when Captain Black infiltrates mission control and changes the spacecraft's flight path, causing it to prematurely re-enter the atmosphere and blow up. Reconstructing TVR-17 and its crew, the Mysterons (voiced by Donald Gray) lock the satellite on a collision course with Cloudbase. The reconstruction is shot down by Symphony Angel (voiced by Janna Hill) despite the protests of Captain Scarlet (voiced by Francis Matthews), who questions whether TVR-17 is really under Mysteron control.

When the Mysterons threaten his life, Colonel White (voiced by Donald Gray) realises that TVR-17 was targeting him personally and decides to leave Cloudbase for the safety of its personnel. He appoints Captain Blue acting controller of the base after Scarlet, angered by White's decision to destroy the satellite, refuses to step in. However, when the wreckage of the original TVR-17 is discovered, Scarlet regrets his actions. He asks Lieutenant Green (voiced by Cy Grant) if he knows White's destination, but Green has orders to remain silent.

Posing as Robert Snow, a deep-sea fisherman, White boards the World Navy submarine USS Panther II. As the submarine prepares to dive, Ensign Soames gets his foot caught in a chain on the open deck and drowns as the vessel submerges. Later, the Panther II captain appoints Soames' Mysteron replacement as White's steward.

Entering White's cabin with a gun, Soames shoots the occupant, but with a last effort his victim returns fire and kills Soames. It is then discovered the man in the cabin is not White, who is found bound and gagged in a storage compartment, but Scarlet, who was killed while disguised as the colonel.

Back on Cloudbase, the revived Scarlet tells White that he pulled rank on Green to learn his whereabouts, used his Spectrum ID to pass navy security and stowed away on board the submarine before it left its base. White sentences Scarlet to death for gross insubordination but immediately grants him a reprieve, ruefully noting that the captain's indestructibility would make his execution pointless.

Filming for this episode began on 6 March 1967.[2]

As scripted, the episode begins with the Mysterons taking control of TVR-17 remotely.[3][4] The scenes of Captain Black hi-jacking mission control and programming the satellite into a premature re-entry were added after the first cut of the episode was found to be too short.[5] The mission control room and the TVR-17 communications room, both of which were made especially for these new scenes, were constructed at opposite ends of the same puppet set.[5] The computer props that appear in the background were originally made for the Thunderbirds episode "Ricochet".[5]

The TVR-17 model was designed by Mike Trim.[6] As an in-joke, the satellite's resident DJ, Bob Lynn, is named after the episode's director, Robert Lynn.[3][4] The track played by TVR-17, written by series composer Barry Gray, is also titled "White as Snow"[3] and was recorded with this episode's other incidental music on 28 May 1967 in a four-hour studio session using a 14-member orchestra.[7] The Hammond organ notes were played by Gray himself.[7] "White as Snow" would feature in the later Captain Scarlet episode "Special Assignment" as well as episodes of Joe 90 and The Secret Service.[3] A commercial version of the tune is included on the CD release of the Captain Scarlet soundtrack.[8]

The USS Panther II was a re-use of a scale model that first appeared in the Thunderbirds episode "Atlantic Inferno", while the helijet that flies White to the submarine was first seen in "30 Minutes After Noon". The helijet's puppet-size cockpit appeared in various episodes of Thunderbirds.[9]

A continuity error results in the Mysteron reconstruction of Soames holding different models of gun between shots as he prepares to kill Colonel White.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, authors of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, praise "White as Snow" for its depiction of "Scarlet [losing] faith in Colonel White", naming the episode one of "the finest pieces in the Anderson canon".[10] Chris Drake and Graeme Bassett note the humorous portrayal of Captain Blue,[11] who makes the most of his stint as head of Cloudbase by scheduling pointless lectures for the base's personnel and ordering the Angels to carry out unnecessary target practice.[11]

James Stansfield of the website Den of Geek ranks "White as Snow" third in his list of the "top 10" Captain Scarlet episodes, arguing that Blue's "humorous tenure" as White's replacement helps to make it "probably the funniest episode" of the series. He applauds the tension between Scarlet and White, noting that as the episode is "one of the earliest of the series, [this is] one of the first times we see the different personalities in Spectrum come out".[12]

In his review of the CD release of the Captain Scarlet soundtrack, Andrew Pixley of TV Zone magazine names Barry Gray's "White as Snow" as one of two standout tracks.[13] Andrew Thomas of Dreamwatch magazine considers the drowning of Soames to be one of many moments where Captain Scarlet employs a level of violence that is "graphic, even shocking ... for a children's show".[14]

Works cited

• Bentley, Chris (2017). Hearn, Marcus (ed.). Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: The Vault. Cambridge, UK: Signum Books/Flashpoint Media. ISBN 978-0-995519-12-1.

• "White as Snow" at IMDb
• "White as Snow" at TV.com
• "White as Snow" at TheVervoid.com