Set in 2068, the series depicts a "war of nerves" between Earth and the Mysterons: a race of Martians with the power to create functioning copies of destroyed people or objects and use them to carry out acts of aggression against humanity.
Earth is defended by a military organisation called Spectrum, whose top agent, Captain Scarlet, was killed by the Mysterons and replaced by a reconstruction that subsequently broke free of their control.
Scarlet's double has a self-healing power that enables him to recover from injuries that would be fatal to anyone else, making him Spectrum's best asset in its fight against the Mysterons.
The conference ends without further incident and Roberts, thinking the danger has passed, asks Scarlet if he can attend the launching of the Trans-Pacific Shipping Corporation's new atomic-powered liner.
A re-shoot was conducted on the same stage that October after Century 21 learnt that the Chicago Tribune, the character Mervin Brand's employer, shared its name with a real-life newspaper.
[9] In a negative review of the episode, writer Fred McNamara describes "The Launching" as well paced but also "anticlimactic" and suffering from a "conspicuous lack of genuine plot".
He calls the plot twist "flatly" delivered, stating that the reveal of the Mysterons' true target "goes for a bang but has little impact, whilst watching the episode back only shows how mundane the whole affair winds up being."
He adds that Spectrum's focus on protecting the wrong target dampens the tension, also opining that "the few elements that make 'The Launching' worth watching bear little relation to the episode's plot itself."
Besides questioning the Mervin Brand doppelganger's decision to linger outside the presidential residence when his actual objective is the ocean liner, McNamara also argues that the brief appearance of President Roberts herself fails to "convey the majesty of the craft".
However, he praises the scene of the original Brand's death and reconstruction, describing it as "evocative" and "Gothic", and states that the use of a fictional US president as a guest character leads to some "welcome world-building" on the part of the scriptwriters.