Bring The Magic Home!: The Story Of ITC's Carlton Video Home Entertainment

13 - Joe 90 - our most special agent

Joe 90 is another one of my favourite of Gerry Anderson's productions, although he never seemed to think it was one of his best productions. However, he always remained proud of the concept and liked the characters. Among the VHS and DVD sets in fall 2002, a whole new wave of merchandise followed similarly as with the other SUPERMARIONATION series, combined with the rumour that a Joe 90 feature film was in development from Disney. Cards, a wonderful Fanderson model of Mac's cottage, lens cloth, WIN sticker, ringtones, tie-in books like the SUPERMARIONATION cross-section and What Made Thunderbirds Go!, Konami toys of the Jet Air Car and the U59 Explosive Truck from Colonel McClaine. Joe 90 would be airing on TV on Bravo in double bill slots with Captain Scarlet in 2000, before the Channel 5 Gerry Anderson Day on 22nd August featured various episodes of his productions such as Stingray, Space: 1999, the Mr Thunderbirds documentary, and the opening episode of Joe 90 - The Most Special Agent.

 The series would also air on Bravo again from late 2003 - early 2004 (although these were the poor 16mm unremastered prints). Carlton had planned for the release of Joe 90 on 9th September 2002, with prints remastered about a year before their release. The date of release was 30th September, including a complete box set on VHS and DVD, with volumes 1 and 2 of both video and DVD. Videos and discs 3 and 4 followed on November 11th 2002, and volume 5 was released on January 27th 2003. Early promo images of the covers featured the U certificate and Joe's Most Special Agent badge in swapped positions. The Region 0 discs in mono sound followed (almost) the original production order, and each volume would contain six episodes. The individual DVDs were priced at £15.99, and the complete series set was £69.99. The covers followed this synopsis "Joe McClaine is a seemingly ordinary 9-year-old boy. However, his father has developed a marvellous method of transferring special brain patterns into his son's mind that allows Joe to acquire incredible skills. Soon Joe becomes an agent for the World Intelligence Network and uses his extraordinary enhancements to serve justice around the world...". 

Joe was also described as "The Original Boy Genius", and the spine of the videos on the complete set featured Joe on his chair with the electrodes on his head, and had pictures of the interior of Joe's case and his glasses. The front cover of the complete set had Joe in the Rat Trap, and had pictures of characters on the side, with details of the series on the back. The DVD front cover had a logo of Joe 90 and a number of photos in a shape designed like the BIG RAT. This case featured a Digipak with episode details and extras behind the discs and was not in separate boxes that upset some fans. The discs are designed in the same colour and character from that volume. Both discs and front of VHS/DVDs contained the episodes, whilst the back contained episode details, copyright etc "Fighting for justice and saving human life".

The VHS releases would also have the Carlton Video/Gerry Anderson trailer.

The inside of the DVDs would have the same cover as the front of the DVD again and would contain chapter details inside, Fanderson details, and adverts for the other Gerry Anderson series already available to buy; Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Space: 1999 (Years 1 and 2) and UFO. With the opening of the menu seeing a whirling vortex, we see Joe's glasses and are revealed to Joe's eyes and are transformed into a CGI Joe in the working Rat Trap accompanied by the series' theme tune. For the main menu, we would orbit around Joe and see various clips from each episode at a time. Once we came to the end of the orbit, the same sequence would be replayed. The subtitles section was designed with bright alternating colours changing that would fizz around neurones as the section to select subtitles would be designed as Joe's WIN radio. The episode scene selection was designed in the form of Joe's briefcase containing clips from the episode in four frames and music from the series, and you could select other episodes from this area as well. The extras menu saw a CGI opening of the BIG RAT computer as we could select four different areas to navigate to (the bottom right was always back to the main menu). The extras are as follows;

1 - Character bio - Joe, Info file - WIN, Warning Sequence Footage, stills gallery

2 - Character bio - Professor McClaine, Info file - Mac's cottage, The Unorthodox Shepherd location reconnaissance, stills gallery

3 - Character bio - Sam Loover, Info file - BIG RAT, promo items gallery, stills gallery

4 - Character bio - Shane Weston, Info file - Jet Air Car + Joe's case, stills gallery

5 - Merch gallery, original design for end titles gallery, behind the scenes gallery, I Love The 90s trails, stills gallery

The warning sequence footage voiced by Tim Turner included the outtakes first, followed by the real thing. The I Love the 90s trails were filmed at Banana Park studios in August 2001. Promotional trails for the first three programmes featured a studio standard reproduction Joe 90 puppet in a kind of "Next Generation" updated version of the laboratory set, including a fully working Rat Trap! As the trails had a 16:9 aspect ratio, the Rat Trap was modified to better suit the widescreen image. Joe enters into the Rat Trap to receive the brain patterns of a 90s personality, and the sequence imitates the opening titles of the show. The classic theme is then drowned out by music appropriate to the character Joe is "becoming". The Rat Trap stops and Joe emerges with the persona, clothes & voice of either Oasis star Liam Gallagher, comedian Vic Reeves, or Garth from Wayne's World. For the DVD, Joe's opening voiceover is the 1990 "generic" version on all three, many sound effects are missing, and the voiceover "tag" and BBC TWO captions are absent.

The promotional material promoted the series as "Cooler than Scott Tracy! Brainier than Brains! Tougher than Captain Scarlet! Gerry Anderson's Ultimate Supermarionation Agent...". A folder contained brochure material for the series and an Experts Promotional Case included; the DVD box set, DVDs Volumes 1 and 2, VHS Volumes 1 and 2, the Promotional brochure, a Business card holder, a Travel calculator resembling Joe's case, and a T-shirt. In 2004, a Computing magazine featured two episodes of Joe 90 on their January 2004 cover DVD (issue 111), which included The Most Special Agent and Hi-Jacked for £4.99 with the yellow cover of Joe in the Volume 1 DVD. And that brings us to the end of Carlton's excellent releases of Joe 90. With one more ITC Gerry Anderson series left to have been released by Carlton, that series was the only one of Anderson's productions to have been networked in the US...