Joe 90 is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company, Century 21, for ITC Entertainment. It follows the exploits of nine-year-old schoolboy Joe McClaine, who becomes a spy after his adoptive father invents a device capable of recording expert knowledge and experience and transferring it to another human brain. Armed with the skills of the world's top academic and military minds, Joe is recruited by the World Intelligence Network (WIN) as its "Most Special Agent".
First broadcast on the ITV regional franchises between 1968 and 1969, the 30-episode series was the final Anderson production to be made primarily using Supermarionation, a form of electronic marionette puppetry. The following series, The Secret Service, included extensive footage of live actors. As in the preceding series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, the puppets of Joe 90 are of natural body proportions rather than the caricatured design used in Thunderbirds and its precursors.
Though not as successful as Century 21's earlier productions, Joe 90 has been praised for the characterisation of its main puppet cast and the quality of its scale model sets and special effects. Commentators have interpreted the spy-fi theme and use of a boy protagonist as both a "kids-play-Bond" concept and an enshrinement of children's imagination. The series has drawn some criticism for its lack of female characters, especially compared to the Andersons' earlier series.
Century 21 produced tie-ins from comic strips to toy cars. The series was syndicated in the United States in 1969, repeated in the UK in the 1990s and released on DVD in the 2000s. A live-action film adaptation has been proposed more than once but remains undeveloped.
Premise
Joe 90 is widely believed to be set in 2012 and 2013. The scriptwriters' guide stated that the year is 1998, while other sources place the series at an unspecified point in the early 21st century.Bentley: Episode Guide, p. 142. The episode "The Unorthodox Shepherd" is implied to be set in 2013. Episode 13.
The series revolves around the eponymous Joe, a nine-year-old schoolboy and the adopted son of widowed computer expert Professor Ian "Mac" McClaine. Ostensibly an ordinary father-and-son pair, the McClaines live in an Elizabethan-style cottage on the Dorset coast. In the basement of the cottage is a secret laboratory containing Mac's latest invention, the Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer (referred to by the acronym "BIG RAT"): a machine capable of recording a person's knowledge and experience and transferring it to the mind of another. The BIG RAT is centred around the "Rat Trap": a spinning, spherical cage in which the pre-recorded "brain patterns" are uploaded to the recipient.
Sam Loover, a friend of Mac and an agent of the World Intelligence Network (WIN), recognises the potential of Joe and the BIG RAT and persuades the McClaines to pledge their services to the organisation. With the aid of the BIG RAT, Joe becomes a spy unlike any other: by taking on the brain patterns of expert adults, he gains the skills needed to undertake dangerous missions, while his youth helps him to avoid arousing enemy suspicion. Episode 1. As long as he wears a pair of special glasses, which contain electrodes that store the transferred brain patterns, he is able to carry out all manner of assignments—from piloting fighter aircraft Episode 20. Episode 25. Episode 27. to performing neurosurgery Episode 12. to playing the piano. Episode 8. Known as WIN's "Most Special Agent", Joe 90 reports to Shane Weston, the network's commander-in-chief in London, and carries a specially adapted school case featuring a secret compartment that contains a radio transceiver and high-capacity handgun.There is some inconsistency as to why Joe is codenamed "90". According to the series' publicity, he is so called because he is the 90th WIN agent to be based in London. However, the episode "Project 90" implies that it originates from "File Number 90", WIN's secret dossier on the BIG RAT (La Rivière, p. 185). Episode 4. The series ends with a clip show episode set on Joe's 10th birthday, in which a number of his missions are recalled as flashbacks during a surprise party. Episode 30.
Like earlier Supermarionation series, Joe 90 features secret organisations, Episode 3. rescue missions, Episode 11. global security threatsCull, p. 197. and advanced technology: Episode 18. the last exemplified by the "Jet Air Car", a land-sea-air vehicle invented by Mac as the primary means of transport for him and Joe. Like the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) in Stingray, the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is a global organisation referred to by an acronym.Cull, p. 199. In the fictional world of Joe 90, the Cold War—significant when the series was first broadcast, due to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—has ended and a world government has been formed.Cull, p. 205. WIN is the successor to MI6, the Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB, which all merged to form the new global spy network. Although the first episode sees Joe hi-jack a prototype Russian fighter and bring it to England, this is revealed to be a fiction imagined by Weston to explain the types of espionage that the boy will perform as a WIN agent. This plot twist, which also reveals that Russia and the West are now allies, has been praised by media historian Nicholas J. Cull for its "progressiveness of spirit" and for demonstrating Gerry Anderson's wish to "[take] an end to the Cold War as a given in his work". Cull states that Anderson was motivated by what he viewed as a "duty to the rising generation to avoid perpetuating Cold War stereotypes".
However, despite the existence of a world government, the nations of Earth are still divided into Western and Eastern blocs. Here, Cull argues, Joe 90 is similar to earlier Anderson series in that it "unashamedly capitalised on the Cold War cult of the secret agent whose skills defend the home from enemies unknown".Cull, pp. 199–200. Hostile entities include the Eastern Alliance, which dominates Asia and appears in the episodes "Attack of the Tiger" and "Mission X-41". "Arctic Adventure" and "Attack of the Tiger" combine the threat from the East with dangerous nuclear technology: in the former, Joe attempts to recover a lost atomic warhead from the ocean floor while avoiding enemy submarines; in the latter, he must destroy a nuclear device before it is launched into orbit to hold the world to ransom. Episode 15.Cull, p. 198. In contrast, "Big Fish" portrays nuclear technology as a force for good: in this episode, Joe pilots a damaged nuclear submarine out of the territorial waters of a Latin American police state. Episode 10.Cull, p. 206.
Voice cast
Compared to Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 features a smaller cast of just five regular characters. Like the preceding series, it has been described as more "English-sounding" than Thunderbirds, the Andersons having dispensed with the idea that the main character should be a "square-jawed, fair-skinned male with a Mid-Atlantic accent".Archer and Hearn, p. 169. Instead, Joe 90 focuses on the strong American supporting characters of Sam Loover and Shane Weston.Cull, p. 202.
Len Jones as Joe McClaine. While child characters in earlier Supermarionation series had been voiced by grown actresses, Joe was voiced by a child actor to give the new series greater realism.La Rivière, p. 181. Gerry Anderson commented that having a woman voice a boy "always sounded rather odd to me. It never sounded like a real little boy ... With Joe 90, I suggested finding a British kid and making him repeat the lines parrot fashion." He described Jones' performance as "only adequate, but at least it sounded authentic."Archer and Hearn, p. 170. Rupert Davies as Professor Ian "Mac" McClaine. At the time of production, Davies was well known for playing Maigret in the TV series of the same name, a role that had left him typecast. He was the most distinguished actor yet to contribute to an Anderson series. In Gerry Anderson's biography What Made Thunderbirds Go!, Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn describe Mac's "warm yet distinguished" English tones as a "perfect counterpoint" to Sam Loover and Shane Weston. Keith Alexander as Sam Loover. Alexander had previously voiced characters in Thunderbird 6 as a replacement for Ray Barrett. During the 1960s, he also provided the voice of another puppet character, Topo Gigio, on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US. David Healy as Shane Weston. Healy, an American expatriate actor, had voiced guest characters in Captain Scarlet and often played transatlantic characters in British television. Sylvia Anderson as Mrs Harris, the McClaines' housekeeper, who is unaware of their involvement with WIN. Anderson was best known for voicing Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds and its film sequels.
Supporting characters were voiced by Alexander, Healy and Anderson as well as returning voice actors Gary Files, Martin King, Jeremy Wilkin, Shane Rimmer and (for one episode, "Viva Cordova") Liz Morgan. Rimmer and Morgan were not credited for their contributions.Bentley: Episode Guide, p. 139. Files said that he was "tickled pink" to be working with Davies, commenting: "I hated the way that so many so-called producers wouldn't meet his eye. He was Maigret forever, you see, in their eyes." On her one role in Joe 90, Morgan said: "They needed a voice, they called around and everyone else was out shopping. So they called me in."
Production Development Joe 90 was intended to be a different kind of Supermarionation series, with the emphasis less on action, gadgetry and special effects and more on characterisation and plots that were more spy thriller than science fiction.Bentley: Episode Guide, p. 137.Bentley: Captain Scarlet, p. 112.La Rivière, p. 182.Supermarionation Classics, p. 300. According to Gerry Anderson, "The show majored on its characters, which I thought were all very good. The puppets had become so lifelike, I now strongly believed that they could carry the action without the usual massive assistance from futuristic hardware."Archer and Nicholls, p. 140.Archer and Hearn, p. 167.
When it came to devising the series, Anderson was inspired by his early work as an assistant editor on films such as The Wicked Lady (1945), for which he handled recording tape on a daily basis.La Rivière, p. 177. While reflecting on the uses of the tape, Anderson made an association with the workings of the human brain: "I read somewhere that the human brain is controlled by electrical impulses and how thoughts are stored electronically. I started toying with the story potential of a process that would allow the recording of brain patterns and transferring them to another brain. I was really likening it to magnetic recording, where material could be stored or transferred to another tape." As to naming the main character, Anderson remembered that Steve Zodiac, the protagonist of Fireball XL5, was originally to have had the surname "Ninety".La Rivière, p. 185.Archer and Hearn, p. 166.
Writing and filming The series was commissioned by Lew Grade in the autumn of 1967. Pre-production was completed in October while the last episodes of Captain Scarlet were being filmed.La Rivière, p. 179. Principal photography ran from 13 November 1967 to mid-August 1968 on the two puppet stages at Century 21's studios on the Slough Trading Estate.Archer and Hearn, p. 168.La Rivière, p. 184.Bentley: Captain Scarlet, p. 114.Slough Trading Estate: (principal photography and editing) Each episode took an average of two weeks to film.