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When I was a kid, Thunderbirds was one of my favourite programmes. So I was intrigued to hear that you can now invest in one of Gerry Anderson's other ventures. Yes, through the Enterprise Investment Scheme, you can now invest in Captain Scarlet! Well, I was excited until I looked at the details. Gerry Anderson Productions is raising money to produce a new computer-generated version of Captain Scarlet. £8m was raised this Spring and the first two pilot episodes are due to be completed by the end of this year. Investors are now being sought to stump up a further £7.9m which, it is hoped, will fund a further eleven episodes. Enterprise Investment Schemes (EIS) have been around for around 10 years but are still very low key. Put simply, they allow people to invest in unquoted companies and get certain tax concessions. Income tax relief is available on the initial investment and, provided the shares are held for three years and the EIS conditions are still met, no capital gains tax is payable on their disposal. However, like all such schemes, there's often a great temptation to concentrate on the tax benefits at the expense of analysing the underlying investment. This is the one of the largest EIS fundraisings to date. The minimum investment is £11,000, which is quite low for an EIS scheme although it's a lot of money for most people. Further inspection of the prospectus reveals a few other nasties, such as the fact that Carlton Communications (LSE: CCM) will receive 5% of gross revenues and it, Anderson Entertainment and the investment managers will also take 45% of all profits made. Then there is a 5.5% initial fee and a 1.5% (plus VAT) annual fee. There's plenty of strings attached to this investment you could say! Not only that, although I rarely watch the telly on Saturday and Sunday mornings, whenever I do catch it, it seems rather full to the brim of these computer-generated programmes. I'm not convinced that one more, even with Gerry Anderson's backing, will make much of an impact. From what little I do know about the TV and film business, it is characterised by the odd moneyspinner and numerous lossmakers. The chances of picking the former are quite slim. Investing in quoted companies is risky. But investing in unquoted companies is far, far riskier. There's no market for the shares, making them very hard to sell. And as a minority shareholder, you have far less protection than you do in a listed company. However, the real clincher for me was looking at the Captain Scarlet website. Having giggled at Captain Ochre and Captain Magenta, I was distraught to find out that Captain Scarlet's real name is... Paul Metcalfe. Suddenly, he doesn't sound so indestructible.