Len Jones

Joe 90 is a 1960s British science-fiction television series following the adventures of a nine-year-old child, Joe McClaine, who starts a double life as a schoolboy-turned-spy when his scientist father invents a device capable of duplicating and transferring expert knowledge and experience from one human brain to another. Equipped with the skills of the foremost academic and military minds, Joe is recruited by the World Intelligence Network and, becoming its “Most Special Agent”, pursues the ideal of world peace and saving human life. Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by Century 21 Productions, the 30-episode series followed the earlier Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

First broadcast in the UK between September 1968 and April 1969 on the ATV network, Joe 90 was the sixth and final of the Andersons’ productions to be made exclusively using the form of marionette puppetry termed “Supermarionation”. Their final puppet series, The Secret Service, used this process only in combination with extensive live-action filming. As in the case of its antecedent, Captain Scarlet, the puppets of Joe 90 are of natural proportions as opposed to the more caricatured design of the characters of Thunderbirds.