In an article on "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons", Jim Sangster and Paul Condon criticised Colonel White's "often desperate attempts to frame even Spectrum's most humiliating defeats as a step forward", describing them as "misjudged and more than a little trite" and one of the "few bad points" of the series. Writing for "Starburst" magazine, Andrew Pixley and Julie Rogers noted the character's "fatherly" nature and his habit of concluding episodes "with a rather pompous, patriotic speech about how Earth will triumph over the Mysterons."