Another Shallow-friendly ep, set around and indeed inside Plato, the very latest computer. Cathy visits the project hoping to use Plato to translate dead languages, only to hear that the computer is suffering from possible sabotage.
She and we witness an attention-demanding performance from Anthony 'Scouse git/Cherie's dad' Booth as brilliant young show-off programmer Dr Kearns. There are repeated scenes in which the other staff - Tenniel 'Major Daly' Evans and David 'Solicitor Grey/Mid-air Time Lord' Garth - complain to their boss about Kearns' rudeness. Watching those was just like being at work.
Steed (who's largely on the sidelines in this one) is interested to hear about Plato's problems, because of its strategic importance in performing ballistics calculations (this was indeed a major reason for funding of computers in the 50s and 60s). So he tells Cathy to keep an eye on Kearns.
This is easy because Kearns has weaknesses for gambling, drinking and women, the last splendidly illustrated by his abrupt loss of interest in Cathy when he hears she's Mrs Gale - and his abrupt resumption of interest when she tells him she's a widow. Cathy accompanies him to a poker game, where villains Broster and Clarissa get him drunk and fleece him for large sums.
The rest of the action is essentially misdirection as to whether Broster is just a high-class cardsharp, or an evil enemy agent, and whether Kearns or persons unknown are carrying out the sabotage. There's a nice scene where Cathy has to assure Kearns' doormat girlfriend Janet (Marina 'Drahvin One' Martin) that she isn't interested in him, and then warns her to stop him gambling if she wants to hang onto him. This is the sort of thing that makes Cathy such an interesting 60s character, they can write her as having this sort of conversation, or making the comment in Traitor in Zebra about how any woman would be interested in the biggest ruby in the world, and also on the other hand as the ruthless, icy professional agent, without the two kinds of characterisation seeming inconsistent.
I liked this episode a lot, both for the 60s computer setting and for Anthony Booth. It's in my 'best so far' list along with Dead on Course, Bullseye and The Mauritius Penny.
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