Despite the rather absurd premise, I really enjoyed this series. The characters were great (even Shane Weston, with his abominable puns). The emphasis was more on character than fancy vehicles and equipment, although the BIG RAT was as sophisticated a piece of machinery as ever seen on Supermarionation. Not to mention Mac's car.

According to the info found in the bonus section, the BIG RAT could not only record people's brain patterns, it could filter out all but the necessary information required for the mission. This explains why Joe was never troubled by any "adult" thoughts and emotions while he was "brained up."

According to the episode guide, there was a deleted scene in "Operation McClaine" which would have explained the whole premise of the show. Professor McClaine apparently thought that a child's mind, being more open and flexible, would be more receptive to foreign brain patterns than an adult's mind would. Too bad that they didn't simply include this in the pilot episode, when Mac was explaining things to Sam. (Actually, the one time that Mac took on someone's brain patterns, he handled it perfectly well.)

According to the biographies in the bonus section, Sam Loover is the youngest of the three men, being four years younger than Mac, and a year younger than Shane. Funny that he has the most grey hair....

BTW, if Sam is four years younger than Mac, how did they get to be such good friends? If they met in school, as the bios said, Mac would have been far ahead of him. Two possible answers are that A) Mac took some time off before starting his higher education, or B) Sam Loover himself is a genius and skipped several grades.

Mac indicated in the first episode that the new knowledge in Joe's head would be retained only as long as he was in contact with the electrodes. This idea promptly went out the window, as Joe can be out of contact with the electrodes for long periods and still be able to access the brain patterns. Logically, they should have had him put on the glasses before ever stepping out of the rat trap, and keeping them on until the mission was completed.

Several of the episodes hinged on the fact that Joe did not know what information was in his head until he put on his glasses. Why would he not know about it while sitting in the chair in the rat trap? In fact, in "Three's a Crowd" Joe remained seated in the chair while informing Sam about Angela Davis.

Is Joe home-schooled? I can see the school authorities raising heck about how often Joe skips out.

One oddity that I noticed was not in the show, but in my DVD set. In all of my sets, each case or disc has a different character "hosting" it. The Thunderbirds set has all of the main characters including the Hood. Supercar, Fireball XL5, and Stingray have all of their main characters. Captain Scarlet does not have enough discs to go around, so it has Scarlet, Blue, Black, and Destiny. Joe 90 has four discs, and four regular characters. However, instead of using Sam and Shane to "host", they had Private Johnson from "Colonel McClaine" and Carlotti from "Hi-jacked", in addition to Joe and Mac. I can't imagine why they would have done this. Another oddity in the set is, the bonus section is "hosted" by Angela Davis--wearing a WIN badge!

I do wish that they had shown Sam smacking Shane Weston upside the head, or at least throwing something at him. "Enough with the bad puns, willya?"

It seemed rather odd, after the strong character of Lady Penelope, and the Angel pilots of Captain Scarlet, there were no really significant woman characters in this show. Even Shane Weston's secretary was a man (or else a woman with a really deep voice.) Only two really stand out--Angela Davis, enemy spy, and Dorina Cordova, protective wife. Mrs. Harris was practically invisible. Does WIN have no female agents at all?

I think that it would have been nice if they had had an adult make use of the BIG RAT more than the one time, and maybe some comments on how it felt to have alien brain patterns in one's head.

I also wish that they had gone more lightly with the Cassandra Complex--telling the truth and never being believed.

It's amazing what a change of hair color will do for one. I've been rewatching Captain Scarlet, armed with my handy-dandy Complete Guide to Captain Scarlet. It points out characters that are reused elsewhere, such as Sam Loover and Shane Weston. They never messed around with the Sam puppet, so he was always instantly recognizeable. However, if I hadn't been told that that blond male that turned up so frequently was going to be Shane Weston, I don't think that I would have noticed it too easily. As a blond, Shane looked very boyish. Even as Dr. Kurnitz, he still had a young look about him. As a brunette, Shane Weston looks more mature (albeit with an immature sense of humor!)

Speaking of hair, Sam Loover apparently sprays on those silvery streaks above his ears when he brushes his hair in the morning. If you look carefully from episode to episode, you'll see that the curve of the streak occasionally changes.

In "Project 90", there was a line to indicate that Joe does, in fact, go to school. So how does he explain his frequent absences? ("Oh, I was just off saving the free world again....")

BTW, does anyone know why Gerry Anderson was fixated on the name "90"? In reading about the early ideas for what would become Fireball XL5, they indicated that the hero's name was supposed to be Joe 90. They dropped this, and assigned the name 90 to the Lieutenant (whose first name might very possibly have been Joseph!)
In the first episode, Shane Weston opened up a folder concerning the Soviet airplane (that turned out to be fake) and referred to it as "90". Presumably this is where they got "Project 90" and "Joe 90", but still...why 90?

>>So how does he explain his frequent absences? ("Oh, I was just off saving the free world again....")

Thats probably what he *does* do - Cassandra Complex again?

Probably...can you imagine the school authorities calling in Prof. McClaine to discuss his son?

"He keeps telling everyone that he's going off on missions all over the world for some intelligence agency."

"Well, yes, that's exactly what he's been doing. What's the problem?"

I finally got the DVDs. I've only watched 8 episodes so far, but I love it. Thanks for describing the deleted scene that helps explain the premise - that was bugging me - why did Sam and the Prof. use Joe instead of using themselves. I thought perhaps it was just that most people wouldn't believe a 9-year old could be a WIN agent and he could get away with more.

I like this a lot more than Captain Scarlet. The show has more heart and the characters are likeable. Ultimately, I really didn't care all that much what happened to the Scarlet characters.

I would have loved to have seen this when I was a kid. I watched all the spy shows then (U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible, etc.) and loved to play "secret agent". Seeing a kid agent would have been great!

Is it ever mentioned in your episode guide what year this is set in? I know it has to be after 1996 since the gravestone in "The Unorthodox Shepherd" has a date of death in 1996.

As for the school issue - maybe everything is done on weekends!

Apparently, according to the original writer's guide for the series, it was supposed to be set in 1998. Chris Bentley, author of The Complete Gerry Anderson used the date on the tombstone in "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to date it around 2012/13. (Whoever did the "biographies" in the bonus section did so as well.)

I think that I agree with you--I like this show better than Captain Scarlet. Before seeing this, Captain Scarlet was my second favorite (after Thunderbirds). It was very exciting to watch, but you couldn't really empathise with the characters because they didn't give them much personality. (And how can you feel concerned for a man who gets killed in practically every episode and keeps coming back for more?)

The characters in this show have more distinct personalities--and they're quite capable of getting upset or losing their tempers, too. (The few times that the Spectrum team showed any signs of "personal"ness, Col. White usually yanked them quickly back in line.)

And you would never--never, never, never--see a member of Spectrum wearing orange fluorescent socks!

Well - I don't recall seeing Spectrum members' feet all that often, but you're probably right!

I'm going to have to get the Complete Gerry Anderson book. It sounds informative.

If you're from the States, you might have to special order it. I had to get it as an out-of-print book, in spite of the fact that it was only published in March.

It is quite informative, and covers all the series. However, since it does cover all of them, it doesn't have much room to go in depth. I have Bentley's Complete Book of Thunderbirds and Complete Book of Captain Scarlet, and I wish he'd do the other Supermarionation series as well--they have lots of background material, and room to discuss the episodes a bit, not just give a synopsis.

One thing that's always puzzled me in the Anderson shows -- why all the deceased parents? Mothers are almost always dead and quite often the fathers too. Supercar's Jimmy was an orphan, as was ZiZi (I think that was her name). In the Dragon of Ho Meng there was just a father and daughter.

I think the little boy in Stingray's Christmas episode was an orphan. Thunderbirds had the motherless Tracys and Tin-Tin. The little boys who kept turning up in Thunderbirds had just their father. Fireball's Jonathan was one of the few kids who had both his parents.

Now in Joe 90, not only is Mary McClaine dead, but the McClaines adopted Joe -- so his real parents are dead. I haven't seen all of the episodes yet, so maybe his deceased parents become a plot point. Also, we see Sam Loover's dad in the show - no mention of his mom.

I'm also seem to recall in Space 1999 the first baby being born on the moonbase had just a mother - his father had just died.

Of course there were a lot of other TV shows in the 50s and 60s with single parents - usually dads.

I agree - I would like to see someone smack Shane Weston for his puns. I loved the Project 90 episode when the bad guy said he didn't want to listen to the recordings again because he couldn't stand hearing Weston's puns!

I have no answer for the fixation on "90", but I always thought the Commander Zero/Lt. 90 thing was odd - code names maybe?

Also, there was a General Tempest in Joe 90's "The Race" -- Troy's great grandfather maybe?