Episode 15: The New Avengers
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"Chinese take-away!" Together with a CIA agent,
the Avengers intercept a drug drop that had been arranged by a Chinese overlord with
visions of joining the ranks of world-class drug dealers. Embarrassed by the bungled drop,
the overlord exacts his revenge on the Avengers by kidnapping them in a plane and bringing them to his home turf,
where he has prepared three chopping blocks for the purpose of executing them in front of his drug dealing chums!
IMHO |
Bad enough that the script is about three pages long and
thoroughly perforated—the bulk of the hour is spent in some "Eastern" forest,
with our trio trying to evade capture—but it is further crippled by an otherwise decent
guest actor (Terry Wood) who is about as Chinese as Gambit and affecting a dreadful voice
effect, plus another guest actor (Stuart Damon) playing a CIA agent with an American
accent about as convincing as Gambit's Irish burr—which is really odd, since Stuart
is American! Here's an example of one of the many plot deficiencies: Steed dons the
uniform of the enemy—a (real) oriental who stands a good foot shorter—yet it fits
perfectly. One of the three worst episodes (along with "The
Gladiators" and "Gnaws"), this one at least
has the benefit of being laughably bad on occasion.
Trivia |
Courtesy of Max Pemberton: Both this episode and the Cathy Gale episode "Conspiracy of Silence" feature screen appearances by Robert Rietty, coincidentally playing Carlo in the former and Dom Carlos in the latter.
Genre fans may not know that Rietty is also a versatile and venerable voice-over artist, most familiarly the voice of the unseen Number Two during the opening tiles of The Prisoner (1967). He voiced, uncredited in all, agent Strangways in Dr. No (1962), Emilio Largo in Thunderball (1965), Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice (1967) and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in For Your Eyes Only (1981 and in the pre-credits scenes in which Bond, eventually, mercilessly dumps the wheelchair-bound Blofeld down a factory chimney from a helicopter skid. Incidentally, the voice, and laugh, he uses here is unmistakably the same as that for The Prisoner intro. Also in this sequence, before his demise, Blofeld offers Bond a deal wherein which he will buy Bond "a delicatessen in stainless steel." The curious reasons behind this offer, which Bond refuses, are still open to debate. However, I digress…).
He also appeared, uncredited, as a Casino Baccarat Official in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) which starred Diana Rigg and Joanna Lumley, and appeared, again uncredited, as a police officer in The Assassination Bureau (1969) again with Diana Rigg. Also noteworthy is that both these films paired Diana Rigg with Telly Savalas. In fact, as well as Rietty, The Assassination Bureau featured an impressive array of Avengers performers: Patrick Allen (voice only), Peter Bowles, Maurice Browning, Roger Delgado, Vernon Dobtcheff, Arthur Hewlett, William Kendall, Jeremy Lloyd, Philip Madoc, Ralph Michael, Warren Mitchell, George Murcell, Gordon Sterne, and Frank Thornton.
Rietty also appeared in other genre favourites as Ghost Squad, Man of the World, Danger Man, Man in a Suitcase, The Adventurer, The Persuaders and The Professionals.
In 1983 he appeared as an Italian Minister in the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again, which was a remake of Thunderball, thus making him the only actor apart from Sean Connery to feature in both versions of the story.
In 1992, 29 years after his first Avengers appearance and 16 years after his second, he appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady which starred a certain young (ish) actor named Patrick MacNee as Dr. John Stee… sorry, Watson.
Director Ray Austin, by the way, was the stunt arranger for
the Emma Peel era, and made a credited appearance in
"The
Gravediggers."
Best Line |
Steed: "My arm is broken." Purdey: "Are you sure?" Steed: "It is my arm."
