The Most Special Agent

"The Most Special Agent" is the first episode of Joe 90, a British Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company Century 21 for ITC Entertainment. Written by the Andersons and David Lane and directed by Desmond Saunders, it was first broadcast on 29 September 1968 on Associated Television and Tyne Tees Television.

Set in the future, the series follows the adventures of nine-year-old schoolboy Joe McClaine, who becomes the "Most Special Agent" of the World Intelligence Network (WIN). With the help of the Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer (BIG RAT), a mind uploading device created by his adoptive father Professor "Mac" McClaine, Joe assumes the knowledge and experience of leading experts to carry out dangerous spy missions for WIN, his youth and innocence helping him to avoid raising enemy suspicion.

In the first episode of the series, Mac transfers his own brain pattern to Joe to demonstrate the BIG RAT's potential to his friend Sam Loover, a WIN agent. In a meeting at WIN's London headquarters, Loover's superior Shane Weston seeks to recruit Joe and the BIG RAT, hypothesising a mission in which Joe steals a Russian fighter to illustrate how boy and machine could become valuable assets to the organisation. The episode has received a mixed response, drawing praise for its technical direction but some criticism for its use of a Cold War-inspired fictitious scenario to explain the series' concept.