Tag: Cathy Gale

The Avengers: The Outside-In Man

The Outside-In Man (Episode 3-22, February 1964).

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I am a staunch defender of John Steed, especially in these early seasons where he’s typically dismissed as manipulative or callous. In general, he’s neither manipulative nor callous, usually acting on what he believes are his best instincts, and keeping his partner (and others) out of immediate danger. Then there’s The Outside-In Man.

The Outside-In Man begins with Steed put in charge of security measures to protect visiting diplomat General Sharp (Philip Anthony), a former British soldier who defected to the enemy country of Abarain and proceeded to become a target for assassination. Now he’s back to do an arms deal with Britain and Steed, despite having been part of a team who fought Sharp’s forces back in the late 50s, has to protect him. Complications arise in the form of Mark Charters (James Maxwell), a recently released prisoner of war originally tasked with assassinating Sharp. He’s captured, tortured by Sharp’s men for years and then suddenly, inexplicably released back to Britain. Steed and his superior officer Quilpie (Ronald Radd) fear that Charters is going to try to complete the mission he failed at and finish off Sharp.

There are so many problems with The Outside-In Man that it’s difficult to decide where to begin. While the initial premise is intriguing, the plot soon gets lost in convolutions that include Steed going dark and refusing to speak with Cathy, Cathy tracking Charters across the English countryside, and the machinations of Sharp’s embassy. The whole thing culminates in a confusing, final act reveal that makes no sense with what has come before, and forces one to wonder if the entire British government are a pack of imbeciles.

Plot issues aside, The Outside-In Man loses points with me for the character of Mark Charters, a sneering, unsympathetic figure who spends most of his time making obscene passes at Quilpie’s secretary. Worse things come when Cathy appears to try and talk him out of assassinating Sharp – not because she cares about Sharp’s life, but because she doesn’t want to see Charters back in prison. Charters proceeds to first make fun of her and then threaten her, finally forcing her out of the room at gunpoint. Why Cathy cares what happens to this man is beyond me. Meanwhile, Steed is giving his own performance of manipulation and meanness, ignoring Cathy’s questions and trying to order her about while keeping her entirely in the dark. It’s one of the few times that I wonder why Cathy continued to stick it out with Steed.

There are points of interest in this mess, however. The scenes in Quilpie’s headquarters at a butcher’s are humorous, especially when Cathy is brought in. Her disdain for the secret organization that she nonetheless works for becomes evident, and I quite sympathize with her this time. But those moments are few and far between, and there are very few scenes with the typical Steed and Cathy banter that make this season otherwise so enjoyable.

The Outside-In Man does manage to evoke strong emotions – the only character I find halfway sympathetic is Cathy herself. Frankly, given the ending of this episode, I hope she locked Steed out of her apartment for a few days.

The Avengers: Man With Two Shadows

Man with Two Shadows (Episode 3-03, October 1963).

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Man with Two Shadows represents the first Avengers attempt at a “doppelgänger” episode – they will repeat the performance in Season 4’s Two’s a Crowd, Season 6’s They Keep Killing Steed, and The New Avengers’ Faces. But Man with Two Shadows stands as the best use of the often-overused trope, and also the most disturbing.

The episode opens with the interrogation of Peter Borowski (Terence Lodge), an agent who has apparently been brainwashed and implanted with multiple personalities. In a disturbing sequence, Steed effectively beats and tortures Borowski, finally discovering the existence of a plot to replace certain key members of the British government with doppelgängers. Tracing some of Borowski’s movements, as well as the disappearance of Gordon, an eminent government scientist, Steed and Cathy stumble onto a holiday camp where the villains have been funneling their doppelgängers into regular life. As they delve deeper into the investigation, they also discover that one of the replacements might be Steed himself.

There are any number of excellent elements to this uneven episode. Terence Lodge gives a brief but virtuosic performance as the mad Borowski, his mania both terrifying and pathetic in a scene that deeply complicates the audience’s feelings about Steed (his own superior can’t stand to watch the agent beating Borowski). Paul Whitsun-Jones is equally bizarre as Steed’s superior Charles, a rather disgusting and morally questionable member of the Ministry. But the doppelgänger plot itself is somewhat thin: much time is spent on proving whether or not Gordon is the “real” Gordon, something of which the audience is already aware. Sections of the plot are elided over, giving the episode a disconnected feeling, as though some needed details and character development have been left out. It’s hard to feel sympathy for Judy, the girl whom the doppelgänger Gordon finds himself involved with, when her character is so single-note.

Man with Two Shadows does manage to twist the Steed and Cathy relationship to a degree that we might wonder if they ever manage to trust each other again. Steed reveals that he has in fact been captured and interrogated by the very people who drove Borowski mad; later, his very personality will come into question when his doppelgänger arrives to kill and replace him. Cathy remains in the dark, uncertain about whether to trust Steed, uncertain if he even IS Steed. The results are disconcerting, made more so if one notes that this episode aired right before The Nutshell, where Steed might (or might not) be a traitor. The partners have never been divided so deeply as they are here, and there is a distressing sense that not only do they fail to trust each other, they don’t even know each other.

The levels of moral ambiguity fail to resolve in Man with Two Shadows, leaving us with a sense of violation at a rather unsatisfying conclusion. While everyone in the cast give remarkable performances, there is something deeply unpleasant at the core of this episode. Sympathies are divided and remain divided, loyalties are drawn into question without resolution. While far better in tone and script than the later doppelgänger attempts, Man with Two Shadows still mostly succeeds in making you dislike everyone involved. In a show that typically trades on the charm and interplay between its leads, there is very little to enjoy here.

The Avengers: Dressed To Kill

Dressed to Kill (Episode 03-14, December 1963)

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Dressed to Kill is The Avengers meet Agatha Christie, with some very mixed results. The plot revolves around a train trip on New Year’s Eve, with numerous guests, one of whom is a nefarious villain. The episode begins with Steed explaining to Cathy that World War III very nearly broke out the night before, when all the country’s early warning stations received word of a nuclear attack. The alarm proved false, but the government needs to know how and why the signal was sent. To solve the mystery, Steed joins a New Year’s fancy dress party on board a train. The guests share one thing in common: they all have options on plots of land in Cornwall, coincidentally close to the only early warning station that did not receive the false signal. When the train is diverted to an abandoned station and the guests begin dying off, Steed has to grapple with suspicions against him while trying to ferret out the killer.

Dressed to Kill has much to recommend it. The majority of the episode is occupied with the train journey and the guests at the party, all of whom do a credible job at appearing villainous and innocent in equal measure. The plot itself is sinister and the cinematography atmospheric and among the best The Avengers ever accomplished, with hardly a misstep in sight. Things pick up even more when stowaway Cathy pops up on the scene, providing one very entertaining scene as our heroes try to pick a pair of handcuffs.

Dressed to Kill has its problems, though. It is difficult to imagine a more annoying set of secondary characters, such that it’s almost a relief when they begin dying off. Among the worst are William Cavendish (Leonard Rossiter), dressed as Robin Hood, who makes it a point to be loud, venal, and insulting to everyone; and Jane/”Pussy Cat” (Anneke Wills), an insipid model character there to give the writers an excuse to make bad pussy and dumb blonde jokes. Her character in particular reinforces the fact that while The Avengers might have been very ahead of the times in female representation, it could still do sexism with the best of them.

The plot of Dressed to Kill likewise has a number of holes if considered for too long, with a denouement that feels both speedy and bit too pat. I could think of at least two other solutions to the mystery that would have been far more interesting, but alas, it was not to be. What is more, some of the early sequences on the train have so much dialogue going on at once – not to mention ambient noise – that it’s virtually impossible to catch what individual characters are saying, or if it’s even important.

Dressed to Kill rests very squarely on Macnee’s shoulders, and luckily he’s more than happy to oblige, playing his “gentleman of leisure” character to the hilt and evidently enjoying sporting a cowboy hat and six-shooter (In fact, Macnee played a few cowboys in his short Hollywood career). When Blackman reappears dressed as a Highwaywoman, events pick up and the episode saves itself.

Dressed to Kill would later be remade as the vastly inferior The Superlative Seven in Season 5. The original, for all its difficulties, is the better episode and remains one of the best examples of what The Avengers could do with limited budget and only three cameras.

The Avengers: The Grandeur That Was Rome

The Grandeur That Was Rome (Episode 03-10, November 1963).

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The Avengers typically conjures up some impressive plots: diabolical masterminds with delusions of grandeur abound, some of them with a pretty good idea and a desire to rule the world. The Grandeur That Was Rome and its villain Sir Bruno Luca (Hugh Burden) should be among the finest examples of early insanity in a show that would eventually feature man-eating plants from the Moon. It’s unfortunate, therefore, that a good idea turns out to be so poorly done.

The basic plot is this: Sir Bruno, a feed manufacturer with an obsessive love for Ancient Rome, decides that he’s going to take over the world and turn it into a new Roman Empire, with himself as Caesar. To accomplish this, he enlists the help of Marcus (John Flint) to drum up trouble abroad when the grain he manufactures begins killing off livestock and tainting crops. But Bruno’s plans run even deeper and more diabolical than that, as Steed and Cathy step into the picture to stop the madman and save the world.

This has all the hallmarks of a really great episode: an obsessive madman, a credible and deadly plot, and plenty of togas. How, then, does it manage to fall so precariously short? For starters, the episode spends far too much time on the sneering villains and far too little time with our intrepid heroes. While Hugh Burden’s Sir Bruno is an excellent bad guy, it eventually becomes difficult to stomach his obvious delusions. His right-hand man Marcus and consort Octavia (Colette Wilde) are even less interesting, posturing to a degree that is boring rather than chilling.

When Steed and Cathy do put in an appearance, things begin to pick up. While we have precious little of Cathy’s judo to enjoy, there are some charming scenes of repartee between the pair. One might have hoped for some even greater excitement with the final act Bacchanalia at Sir Bruno’s house, but (as with the later Emma Peel episode A Touch of Brimstone) the censorship requirements of 1960s television put a damper on things. There is the joy of seeing Steed in a toga – not to mention Cathy’s reaction – but unfortunately that does not make for more than a few seconds of justifiable fun.

The Grandeur That Was Rome is an episode that I earnestly wish had been remade later in the series, when money and a better crew of writers might have been able to turn it into something truly weird and delightful. As it is, there are only a few scenes to really justify its existence.

The Avengers: The White Elephant

The White Elephant (03-15, January 1964).

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Steed and Cathy grapple with ivory smugglers and big game hunters in The White Elephant, making it the only episode that utilizes Cathy’s past as a big game hunter in Africa as an important plot element. It’s unfortunate that The White Elephant fails to gain momentum, because it has all the hallmarks of a good episode.

The trouble all begins with the disappearance of a white elephant named Snowy from “Noah’s Ark,” a clearing-ground for imported animals run by Noah Marshall (Godfrey Quigley). The animals are captured by Noah’s team of hunters, and then run through the Ark on their way to zoos and “private collectors” across Britain and Europe. But Steed suspects that Noah’s Ark is also a front for smuggled ivory from illegally slaughtered elephants. Cathy joins up as a new hunter while Steed starts tracing possible co-conspirators, leading him to a gun merchant’s and, more amusingly, a ironworks specializing in cages and restraints.

The White Elephant goes through a lot of bending and twisting to make everything work out, once more introducing the “young lovers” motif that makes so many episodes from the video seasons so very boring. These lovers are not terribly sympathetic: secretary Brenda (Judy Parfitt) and hunter Lew Conniston (Scott Forbes) are among the least likable of the bunch. Their nasty little problems drag down some scenes that might otherwise pop, and unfortunately they take up more than their allotted space. The time spent with secondary characters takes away from the main plot, but it also continues to highlight the somewhat questionable activities of…pretty much everyone. While the importation of captured animals must have been more common in 1964, it leaves a bad taste in 2015 – especially as we watch a final fight waged around animals who look somewhat terrified by the whole ordeal.

Still, there are certainly high points in The White Elephant. We have Cathy telling one baddie that he “surely does not need a gun to kill a woman” (answer: yeah, he does), while Steed has a marvelous time purchasing restraints. Our two heroes seem to be enjoying each other’s company for the majority of the episode, playing chess and looking over Steed’s bondage purchases with open interest. If the rest of the plot was as interesting as their relationship, The White Elephant would be one of the best of the season. As it is, it’s not quite a bad episode, but is also nothing to write home about.

The Avengers: The Gilded Cage

The Gilded Cage (Episode 03-07, November 1963).

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As The Avengers moved into its third season, the series hit a stride that produced some of its all-around best episodes. Still tied down by the necessities of live videotaping, the writers and directors tried to expand their repertoire to involve more locations and more complex plots. Among the best of Season 3 is The Gilded Cage, an episode that eerily foreshadows Honor Blackman’s later foray into the gold trade.

The Gilded Cage has Cathy posing as a gold bullion expert employed at a secret vault that stores millions of pounds worth of gold bars. She and Steed attempt to draw millionaire criminal  J.P. Spagge (Patrick Magee) out of retirement using a brilliantly planned robbery (conceived by Cathy) as bait. Things do not  go as planned, resulting in Cathy’s arrest for Spagge’s murder. All is not as it seems, however, and Cathy soon finds herself in the company of some nefarious (but charming) criminals, led by Abe Benham (Edric Connor), while Steed tries to figure out just what the hell is going on.

The Gilded Cage has two things going for it: excellent plotting with numerous but explicable twists and turns, and a very strong supporting cast. Edric Connor’s performance as Abe Benham is notable – he’s a charming crook, likable and good-humored, with an undercurrent of ruthlessness that perfectly matches Cathy’s. He’s also one of the only black actors to have a major role in an Avengers episode, happily giving the lie to Brian Clemens’s unfortunate pronouncement that there are no black people in that world. Abe and Cathy have a powerful, amusing chemistry together that makes one almost wonder if Cathy wouldn’t like to chuck in the whole “law and order” thing and have a go at being a criminal mastermind.

The plot of this episode demands a number of location changes and some pretty complicated blocking, most of which comes off without a hitch. The greatest failure in the episode is that lack of Steed and Cathy banter – they’re separated within the first fifteen minutes, and remain separated right until the end. But both get to have their fun: Cathy with Abe and the boys, and Steed as a rather inept crook nonetheless admired by Spagge’s butler Fleming (Norman Campbell). Listen carefully as Fleming delineates Steed’s wardrobe, where he got it, and how much he paid for it: it’s a beautiful litany of male sartorial appreciation.

The Gilded Cage is a high point of Season 3, right up there with The Wringer, The Nutshell, and Don’t Look Behind You. The Avengers would be cleaner in the future, but you can’t get much better than this.

The Avengers: The Medicine Men

The Medicine Men (Episode 03-09, November 1963)

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There are very few bad episodes of The Avengers (at least leading up to the sixth season), but there are quite a few that simply don’t impress. Some, like The Secrets Broker, fail to add up to something cohesive. Others are difficult to nail down, as their parts and plots all add up, their characters are interesting, but the episode itself comes off as lackluster. The Medicine Men is one such episode.

Steed and Cathy are back in the business side of things as they investigate the production of counterfeit medicines that have been flooding the market. When a young woman doing some investigation is murdered in a Turkish bath, that’s when The Avengers get involved. Cathy goes to the baths and Steed goes to Willis-Sopwith Pharmaceuticals, one of the companies hit the hardest by the counterfeit drug trade. They soon uncover a pretty diabolical conspiracy afoot, as Cathy’s investigations lead her to an artist (the delightfully creepy Harold Innocent) involved in the counterfeiting and Steed begins to suspect that someone within Willis-Sopwith is responsible for murder.

The Medicine Men has some excellent moments: Steed pretends to be an art dealer from Reykjavik, while Cathy gets smacked in the eye and spends the rest of the episode in an eyepatch. Their scenes together are as entertaining as they come as they trade barbs and golfing tips. Yet The Medicine Men fails to ever properly get going, rather moving from one scene to the next without much energy or panache. Here I think the plot itself is the culprit: like other business-themed episodes, the story gets bogged down in counterfeiting discussions, leaving the rest of the plot floundering. It took me awhile to begin to care about the case itself, and by the time I did the episode had about ten minutes left.

Still, The Medicine Men is far from a bad episode – in fact, the sum total of the enjoyable scenes makes up for the lack of an interesting plot. Put this one in the middling category; it’s far from the worst The Avengers did.

The Avengers: The Charmers

The Charmers (Episode 03-23).

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The Charmers bears the distinction of being one of a handful of Season 2 and 3 episodes to be remade – with mixed results – in the Emma Peel era. In this case, it’s a toss-up as to which version of the story is more successful, for there were several very fundamental changes made when The Charmers became The Correct Way to Kill.

In this iteration, Steed and Cathy have their domestic bliss invaded when Martin (John Barcroft), a Soviet agent, bursts in at Steed’s door waving a gun and accusing the British agent of killing a Soviet operative. Steed denies knowledge of the death, claiming that the Ministry thought that the “opposition” were doing a bit of housecleaning. It soon becomes clear that both sides are innocent of the murder, which means that a third party has been attempting to drive a rift between them. Steed goes to see Keller (Warren Mitchell, in his pre-Brodny manifestation), his “opposite number” on the other side, to propose a brief truce until they can get to the bottom of the killings. Keller suggests that they make a gesture of good faith: he will send an agent to assist Steed, and Steed will offer up a partner for Martin. So it is that Cathy, much to her chagrin, winds up as Martin’s partner, while Steed receives the services of “Agent” Kim Lawrence (Fenella Fielding). Unfortunately, Kim is actually an actress who thinks that Steed is a “Method” writer at work on a spy novel.

The convolutions of plot aside, this one is played for comedy, from Cathy’s fury at being “sold” to the other side, to Kim and Steed’s humorous misunderstandings as she talks about her life on the stage and he thinks she’s talking about her life as an agent. There are some very funny scenes in a shop as Steed insists on a tie for a “Totterers” Club, and some equally funny repartee between Cathy and Martin, who has quite a crush on the female agent. Unfortunately, the episode begins to fragment just a bit nearing the end, as the limitations of staging an elaborate fight scene on live television begin to tell. Splitting up our team for a large portion of the runtime also means that we don’t get much Steed/Cathy banter, but that might be forgivable in light of the very enjoyable opening scenes.

The Charmers is an episode that bears repeat viewings, if just to catch some of the fast dialogue between Kim (who becomes less annoying as time goes on) and a very confused Steed. While I give a slight edge to some of the changes made in The Correct Way to Kill, The Charmers is still very…charming.

The Avengers: The Wringer

The Wringer (Episode 03-17, January 1964).

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The Wringer is arguably one of the best dramatic episodes of The Avengers; it’s certainly the most serious. Steed is sent in pursuit of fellow agent and old friend Hal Anderson (Peter Sallis), one of seven agents who went missing after being detailed to the Corinthian Pipeline, an agent escape route in Austria. The others are all dead or captured, but Anderson remains at large and has not checked back in with his Ministry superiors. As is usual, Steed goes off on his own and eventually locates Anderson in a lookout post in the Highlands. But something is wrong: Anderson has forgotten the last two months of his life. Then he remembers, or appears to, and accuses Steed of being a traitor, the man responsible for selling out details on the Pipeline and causing the deaths of the other agents. Found guilty, Steed is sent to “The Unit” for interrogation and eventual disposal.

The Wringer achieves a complexity that not many episodes of The Avengers can boast about. The plot is complex without feeling weighted or overcomplicated. While some elements are introduced within the last ten or fifteen minutes, the whole moves along at a good pace, never rushed. The tension – and there’s a lot of it – is underscored by the relative calm surrounding the events. Steed does not yell, fight, or bluster when he’s accused of treachery, which makes moments of violence (as when he smashes a lunch tray) all the more powerful. We are watching our hero come apart at the seams, but he does it gradually, a testament to the strength of the character and to Macnee’s acting.

Cathy never loses faith in Steed, arguing with his superiors until they agree to allow her to see her partner. She represents it as wanting to know if she was wrong about the man she’s worked with for “many months,” but the subterfuge of cold intellectual interest is belied both by her concern and the look on her face the moment she sees him. She’s far from detached, as emotionally invested as Steed.

If The Wringer has any flaws, it is in the lack of humor. Seldom has there been a more somber episode, with even the opening scenes weighted down by Steed’s preoccupation with his assignment. The Ministry officials are both incompetent and unlikable figures, the villains (when we find them) creepy and self-involved. But the stars here are Steed and Cathy, their relationship and their reliance on each other in spite of everything that can be done to sever them. For once we are given insight into the psychological and emotional lives of these characters. While I’m glad that not all Avengers episodes are quite this intense, I’m pleased this one exists.

 

The Avengers: Death a la Carte

Death a la Carte (Episode 03-13, December 1963).

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In Death a la Carte, Steed and Cathy go undercover in a hotel kitchen. There they cater to the needs of Emir Abdulla Akaba (Henry Soskin), the potentate of a Middle Eastern nation with oil concessions that the British government hankers after. Akaba is in London to visit Dr. Spender (Paul Dawkins); the Emir is in poor health, surrounded by yes-men, and has been the target of several assassination attempts. Steed and Cathy have reason to believe that another attempt will be made during the Emir’s stay at the hotel, to which end Steed poses as a chef to keep his eyes on the pastry cook Lucien Chaplet (Gordon Rollings) and pasta-maker Umberto Equi (David Nettheim). Cathy acts as go-between, managing the Emir’s menu and keeping watch over his bodyguard Ali (Valentino Musetti) and right-hand man Mellor (Robert James).

Death a la Carte has a number of things going for it, not the least of which is the cast. There are broad racial and national caricatures, but despite the “brown-face” performances it largely avoids overt racism or unkind stereotyping. Everyone is stereotyped, really, from the passionate Italian chef and his conflict with the snarky Frenchman, to the silent bodyguard and lazy kitchen maid. Most enjoyable is the presence of Ken Parry as head chef and manager Arbuthnot (he’ll make another memorable appearance in the Emma Peel episode Honey for the Prince); he’s one of the more adorable secondary character actors to pop up in The Avengers. Even Steed and Cathy play their parts to the extreme, with Steed doing an amusing rendition as chef Sebastian Stone-Martin (“I got it from a bird,” says Steed). This takes the edge off the fact that once more Arab characters are being played by white men.

The kitchen antics are the most entertaining part of Death a la Carte – as well they should be, for we cannot say much for the plot. The viewer knows right off the bat what form the assassination attempt will take, so most of the tension lies in how Steed and Cathy will figure it all out and whether they will be able to prevent it. Unfortunately the kitchen/hotel setting makes for a lot of talking and walking about, but not a lot of action. Cathy doesn’t get to show off her judo skills much, but Steed does get to play action hero nearing the end – another reminder that Patrick Macnee had a lot of physical talent when he could be roused enough to show it off.

I have come to love Death a la Carte more with each viewing. Once you get past some of the dull dialogue about the Emir’s health, it’s actually a quiet, entertaining episode, full of comedy and vitality. The viewer might not care whether the Emir lives or dies, but our heroes do and that’s enough to keep things going. During this viewing, I was amazed at how much fun I was having just watching the actors do their thing. I’m not certain you can ask for much more.