Fire At Rig 15

"Fire at Rig 15" is the 19th episode of ''Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons'', a British Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Written by Bryan Cooper and directed by Ken Turner, it was first broadcast on 16 February 1968 on ATV Midlands.

Set in 2068, the series depicts a "war of nerves" between Earth and the Mysterons: a hostile race of Martians with the power to create functioning copies of destroyed people or objects and use the reconstructions to carry out specific acts of aggression against humanity. Earth is defended by a military organisation called Spectrum, whose top agent, Captain Scarlet, was murdered by the Mysterons and replaced with a reconstruction that later broke free of their control. Scarlet's double has a self-repairing ability that enables him to recover from injuries that would be fatal to any other person, making Spectrum's strongest asset in its fight against the Mysterons.

In this episode, the Mysterons attempt to immobilise the whole of Spectrum by targeting the oil refinery that supplies the fuel for its vehicles.

Plot

In the oil fields of the Middle East, the Mysterons (voiced by Donald Gray) sabotage the drilling on Rig 15 by opening a safety valve, releasing a jet of oil that quickly ignites and turns the rig into an inferno. The nearby Bensheba oil refinery is the only source of fuel for the vehicles used by the Spectrum Organisation. When the Mysterons cryptically threaten to "immobilise" the whole organisation, Colonel White (voiced by Donald Gray) fears that they intend to disrupt this fuel supply and dispatches Captains Scarlet and Blue (voiced by Francis Matthews and Ed Bishop) to investigate the unfolding disaster at Rig 15.

On arrival, Scarlet and Blue learn from rig controller Kinley and his assistant, Hansen, that explosives expert Jason Smith has been brought in to "blow out" the fire by detonating an explosive charge at its centre. Unknown to the Spectrum officers and rig personnel, Captain Black (voiced by Donald Gray) has been observing the blaze from a distance. During the planting of the charge, he uses the Mysterons' powers to hypnotise Smith. The charge detonates and extinguishes the fire, but Smith is killed in the explosion and replaced with a double under Mysteron control.

That night, Black orders the reconstructed Smith to leave in his truck and use his explosives to destroy the Bensheba refinery. The following morning, the body of the original Smith is discovered and Scarlet and Blue realise that he has been taken over by the Mysterons. Scarlet requisitions a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle and chases Smith down the highway leading to Bensheba, managing to force him off the road before they reach the refinery. As Smith's truck crashes into a sand dune and explodes, Scarlet's SPV collides with a set of oil tanks, fatally injuring Scarlet. The captain's soon-to-revive body is flown back to Spectrum Cloudbase.

Production

Writer Bryan Cooper, who had co-authored a book about North Sea oil, based the plot of "Fire at Rig 15" on the disaster known as the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter": an Algerian gas well fire that burned for six months between 1961 and 1962 until it was finally extinguished by detonating a nitroglycerin charge at its epicentre to dispel the surrounding oxygen. The character of Jason Smith was inspired by Red Adair