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.

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.

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.

[E 1][7] The series revolves around the eponymous Joe, a nine-year-old schoolboy and the adopted son of widowed computer expert Professor Ian "Mac" McClaine.

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.

[E 2] 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[E 2][E 3][E 4][E 5] to performing neurosurgery[E 6] to playing the piano.

[E 7] Known as WIN's "Most Special Agent",[E 2] 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.

[3] 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.

[E 2][3] 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".

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".

[13] 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".

"[4] 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.

"[6][18][28] 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.

[32][36][43] Though busy with Thunderbird 6 and Doppelgänger, Derek Meddings briefly reprised his role as special effects director to construct Mac's Jet Air Car.

"[26][19] Stephen La Rivière, author of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, considers the Jet Air Car an update of Supercar from the series of the same name.

Episodes begin with either a cold open (a first for an Anderson series) or the title sequence, which sees Joe receiving a brain pattern from the BIG RAT.

[19] In Gerry Anderson's biography, What Made Thunderbirds Go!, the Joe 90 theme is described as a "dizzying piece of psychedelic pop art that could have been produced only in the late Sixties".

The piano music in the episode "International Concerto" was performed by Robert Docker, while the child's hands seen in the close-up shots of Joe playing belonged to Gray's son, Simon.

[46][50] Rating the CD three-and-a-half stars out of five, AllMusic reviewer William Ruhlmann comments that while the music is "not great writing" it remains "perfectly adequate, if not inspired.

[25][23] Granada, which started its run with the Christmas-themed "The Unorthodox Shepherd" rather than "The Most Special Agent", was one of several broadcasters to transmit the series under the alternative title The Adventures of Joe 90.

[13] Noting Joe 90's subscription to "wider themes in Cold War culture", Cull likens the BIG RAT's capabilities to brainwashing but concludes that fundamentally it is "benign" technology.

[31][33] Anthony Clark of the British Film Institute commends Joe 90 for including more effective characterisation than Captain Scarlet, also praising the writing and Barry Gray's musical score.

"[29] Writer John R. Cook agrees with La Rivière's points on viewer self-identification, describing the series as "wish-fulfilment fantasy" and Joe as a reflection of the young target audience.

Premiered in the same year [as] 2001: A Space Odyssey, [...] Joe 90 expressed for its child audience equivalent kinds of "golden living dreams and visions" of futuristic possibility, appropriate to the then general utopian Zeitgeist.

[74] Grouping Joe 90 with Supercar and The Secret Service, Peel concludes that it is "hardly coincidental that these tend to be the least loved of [Anderson's] series; he had, after all, ignored half of his potential audience.

[76] Jeff Evans, author of The Penguin TV Companion, criticises the glasses as a plot device, writing that they make Joe "look more like the class swot than a secret agent.

"[70] Cook suggests that BIG RAT's ability to provide Joe with instant access to brain patterns could be interpreted as a prediction of the development of the Internet.

Each of these depicts Joe entering the BIG RAT and receiving the brain pattern of a 1990s household name, from Liam Gallagher to Vic Reeves to Garth (played by Dana Carvey) from the film Wayne's World.