History

U.S.S. agent Karen Wainwright

Born January 6, 2042, in Cedar Rapids Iowa, Karen Wainwright displayed such amazing gifted talents at her unnamed high school in Boston, Massachusetts, where she often was top of the class, that consequently, still a teenager, she was sent at 16 to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. There, she showed herself better than other students much older than she was, gaining seven degrees in the study and employment of mathematics and technology. So amazing were her academic abilities that Karen was nominated “student of the year” by the combined university committee.

Her abilities attracted the attention of the Universal Secret Service and soon after she graduated from Yale, Karen was contacted and offered employment by them. An adventurous young person eager for excitement, the USS offer greatly appealed to Karen and she readily accepted it. She followed the USS comprehensive training course and such was her adaptability and swift and intelligent thinking that she passed it in only two years, while the norm was at least five years. By early 2062, Karen was a fully fledged USS field agent, dealing solely with industrial espionage, and she became a great credit to the organisation. During her career, she handled many tricky assignments, and in five years had become the USS’s number one secret agent. This allowed her to develop techniques that helped revamp the way the USS was dealing with espionage, and these methods became a model to be used by other espionage and security agencies.

While training as an aircraft pilot for a special USS mission, Karen literally fell in love with flying, and it wasn’t long before she came to realise that the one ambition in her life was to become an aircraft pilot. She left the service in early 2067, and joined up with an unnamed charter company, dealing with worldwide passenger transport. Karen’s flying skills were so good that she soon gained worldwide recognition, and even became headline news.

Her many talents and her potential were recognised by the Spectrum selection committee, and, she was offered the chance to become one of their ace pilots (some sources say at late as late 2067). Karen passed the entrance exam with ease and was enlisted by Spectrum to become Symphony Angel.

Personality profile

On duty, Symphony is proficient and skilful, and totally dedicated to her role as Spectrum pilot. Intuitive, capable, and brave to the point of recklessness, her impetuosity, however, can get the better of her, and she sometimes finds herself in tricky situations (“Manhunt”, “The Trap”).

Off duty, Symphony is quick-witted, and sympathetic to her fellow Angels and Spectrum officers. Her great hobby is hairdressing, and she’s often asked by the other Angels to create a fabulous new hairstyle for special occasions.

Symphony seems to have romantic interest in Captain Blue, and the series suggests that these feelings are reciprocated by Blue.

Captain Blue and Symphony Angel

The romantic relationship between Symphony Angel and Captain Blue is regarded as the only official one from the Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons TV series. Although a semi-official relationship has been drawn between Captain Scarlet and Rhapsody Angel, it is not really hinted at in the TV series, and might have found its roots in various other sources, such as story books, John Theydon’s novels and most notably, fan fiction.

In the case of Symphony and Blue, the romantic interest between them is hinted at in a few episodes: “Manhunt”, in which Blue shows his deep concern for Symphony when she has been abducted by Captain Black, to the point where he would be ready to disobey orders and rush to her rescue at the Culver Atomic Centre, and “Attack on Cloudbase”. As it is revealed that most of this episode is a fantasy created by the concussed Symphony, it cannot be absolutely stated that Blue’s feelings, as portrayed in the episode, are a true representation of his real feelings, but it is clear that she does have deep feelings for him, and the final scenes on Cloudbase do suggest the affection is reciprocal.

This relationship (or possible relationship) has been mentioned in, and was the inspiration for, many stories by various fan fiction writers, such as Marion Woods, Chris Bishop, Caroline Smith, Sage Harper, to name but a few. While the pair are depicted as lovers and even engaged in many of these stories, so far, only Marion Woods (“Valediction” and "You belong to me"), Chris Bishop (“Dark Horizons”) and Lezli Farrington (“Pride and Joy”), have shown them as a married couple, and these stories are set in the future, and are not part of the ‘series present timeline’.

Symphony’s Family… according to Fan Fiction

Neither the TV series, nor any other official source lists any information regarding Symphony Angel’s relatives. However, fan fiction writers have created relatives for her, for the sake of their stories. The most prominent amongst them is her widowed mother, Amanda Wainwright, created by Chris Bishop for her story “A Symphony in Blue”, in which Colonel White begins to show some romantic interest in the woman – a plotline that has been continued in the following years, not only by Chris Bishop, but also by other authors (Marion Woods, Lezli Farrington, Sage Harper), to whom the idea appealed. Amanda’s maiden name of “Hoffman” was not created by Chris, but is the creation of Marion Woods for her story "A Busman’s Holiday". Amanda is the owner of a Dude Ranch in her native Iowa.

While Chris Bishop called Karen’s father Harry Wainwright, and described him as a ‘John Wayne-like’ kind of modern cow-boy, who recently died somewhere during the events of the first episodes of the series (revealed in the fan fiction stories “The Quest”, and “A Symphony in Blue”), Marion Woods uses the name Sam Wainwright instead, and made him a native of Boston, who fell in love with the young Amanda Hoffman when he moved to Iowa to work for an engineering company.

According to Chris Bishop, in her short story “The Last Flight”, Ted Wainwright was Harry’s brother, and the owner of a small fleet of planes in Iowa, and the two men were largely responsible for Karen’s love of flying – she having learned to fly at an early age under her father and uncle’s encouragement, and only learned to fly more complicated aircraft much later in his life, during the mission described in her official biography, which renewed her love of flying.

Symphony is generally portrayed as an only child.

In Marion Woods’ “Valediction”, Colonel White has become Symphony’s stepfather, but the same story reveals her to be childless, stating that Symphony was rendered infertile because of her exposure to radiation in the TV episode “Manhunt”. However this is not a universally held view and in other stories , such as “Pride and Joy”, by Lezli Farrington, Symphony is revealed to be an expectant mother, and in “Dark Horizons”, by Chris Bishop, she is the mother of two boys, named Paul and Charles. What is consistent is that in all these ‘future stories’, Karen’s husband is Adam Svenson (Captain Blue).

What is Symphony Angel’s real face?

Janna Hill

Symphony Angel from Spectrum

Virginia Lake (Wanda Ventham)

Symphony Angel’s voice was performed by actress Janna Hill.

Contrary to the other Angels, whose features had been modelled on living actresses and performers, it doesn’t seem to be the case for Symphony. Although it has been reported on a website by someone stating that she was Janna Hill’s Granddaughter, that the features of the puppet had been based on her grandmother, there is nothing official to confirm that claim, although there is a certain resemblance between both the character and the performer. Sadly, the page were this information was reported cannot be found anymore.

However, a much closer likeness could be drawn between Symphony’s features and those of actress Wanda Ventham, who played the role of Colonel Virginia Lake in the later Anderson live-action series, “U.F.O.”. This resemblance, however, might be purely accidental.

In addition to Symphony Angel, Janna Hill also lent her voice to other characters in the series; as for the Symphony puppet, she reappeared later on in “Joe 90”.

In other media…

Lynn Sompson's art

by Barrie Mitchell in 'Going for Gold'

Although Symphony was the most prominent of the Angels in the TV series – her character was certainly developed more than her fellow Angels, along with that of Destiny Angel – it doesn’t seem like she inspired comic strips writers that much (Destiny, Rhapsody, and even Harmony seemed to have been their preferred characters). However, like all the other Angels, she was featured in “The Angels” comic strips, and her portrait was drawn by Lynn Simpson for the “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” magazine, in the 90s. The character of Symphony was also featured in the novel “The Angels and the Creeping Enemy”, where there is mention of her Middle-Western background.

Probably because of her prominence in the TV series, and her hinted relationship with Captain Blue, Symphony Angel has become, over the years, one of the most featured characters in fan fiction stories.

These have explored and developed her relationships with other characters – such as her fellow Angel pilots and the other Spectrum Officers - as well as that with Captain Blue. Several stories have mentioned similarities of character between her and Captain Scarlet; the most prominent being the fact that both impulsive and are only children, although – according to Marion Woods – Symphony is a rather petulant and wilful one.

Her personality varies from one author to the other. However various the portrayal of their favourite Angel might be, it seems that there’s a consistency in Symphony’s persona in that she’s always represented as a strong, courageous and dedicated young woman, quite in accord with the information from her official biography.

What of the CGI Symphony character?

Like the majority of characters created for the CGI series revamp “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet”, Symphony Angel was changed drastically.

She is now a completely new character, a Japanese girl of the name of Yoko Inukai, a former test pilot, who had little in common with the American Karen Wainwright. She no longer held the leading rank amongst the female characters – that role now being attributed almost equally to Destiny Angel and the new female Lieutenant Green and Captain Ochre – and instead was relegated to a ‘supporting cast’ role. There is no ‘romance’ hinted anymore between the Symphony Angel and Captain Blue characters (instead, the female Green has become the good captain’s love interest).

These drastic changes in Symphony’s role seemed to have raised criticisms and objections from die-hard fans who had come to see Symphony’s importance in the original series – and her hinted romance with Captain Blue – as part of the acknowledged background of the Captain Scarlet universe. However, as time passed, fans of the CGI series came to highly appreciate the character of the female Lieutenant Green and accept her as a suitable “replacement” in the role held by the original Symphony.

The “new Symphony” never appeared more than two or three times in the course of the series, and as such could never have taken the place of the original character. In the eyes of the fans, it seems that there could only be one, true, original Symphony Angel.

(Sources: TV Century 21 material (Annuals, books and magazines), Engale Marketing's Century 21 magazine, Issue 15, Winter 1995, Fleetway Magazines, Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons book by Chris Drake & Graham Bassett, Complete Book of Captain Scarlet by Chris Bentley… all related to TV Century 21 material - Photo-montages provided by dedicated fans.)