Naive Avengersthon - 24. White Dwarf

A Shallow-friendly episode opens at Tor Point observatory in Cornwall: six months ago Dr Richter (Keith 'Autloc/the Speedlearning waiter in The General' Pyott) hypothesised that a wandering white dwarf star has entered our solar system to destroy life on Earth. The government made him keep quiet. (They were just as good at doing that in 1962). Now he's just made a crucial observation that disproves his theory.

This is a Malcolm Hulke script, so rather than murdering everyone else to preserve his reputation, Dr R is himself murdered. The government are keenly awaiting the result of a replacement observation, and consequently Steed is busy asking Cathy for exposition about white dwarfs. He then packs her off to Tor Point in the guise of an astronomer. Cue light relief at the vegetarian guesthouse run by Miss Tregarth (Constance 'Gladys Bowman' Chapman). Was this the germ of the idea for the Nut Hatch? George 'some character' Roubicek is also around, as Richter's son.

At Tor Point, Dr Rahim (Paul 'Jacko' Anil) asks permission to make some observations of his own on the dwarf. Prof Cartright (Philip 'Borusa 83' Latham) grants it, and shortly afterwards Rahim is found dead at the eyepiece, just like Richter.

Cathy returns to London to report to Steed and there's rather a good scene where they consider the advantage someone might derive from knowing that the world isn't going to end, but that the government is about to announce that it is.

The plot doesn't conceal this information from us, so neither will I: that 'someone' is crooked financier Maxwell Barker (George A 'Mr Griffiths' Cooper, playing the part like Harold Wilson's evil mirror universe counterpart), who knows about the government's upcoming announcement because his brother, honest civil servant Henry Barker (Peter 'Dr Warlock' Copley) has confided in him. When stocks plunge on the news, he and his associates will be able to make a killing.

Fortunately, Steed and Cathy are able to trick Maxwell Barker's astronomer confederate into revealing himself. One quick shoot-out at the observatory later and we can finish on a comedy astrology/astronomy mixup back at Steed's.

I had to watch this episode four times (the most so far) before I felt I completely understood how Maxwell Barker and his friends could be sure that the dwarf wasn't going to put an end to the Earth. And even then I missed the explanation of how Cathy is able to make his confederate believe in the climactic scene that doom is on its way. (Thanks to the recap at Dissolute for explaining it to me).

It's a clever story though, because most of the villains' plan is shown to us very early on; what really keeps us guessing is how Hulke is going to unmask them without actually having the world come to an end.

Apart from Cathy's exposition about white dwarfs, the astronomy is a bit wobbly - the astronomers use a lot of technical terms in ways that make no sense, and if the white dwarf did have, as shown, about 1/30 the apparent size of the moon, there's no way that no other telescope would have picked it up. I'm not sure in fact that it wouldn't have been visible to the naked eye in daylight.

Also the astrology isn't right either: although Hulke remembers that the astronomers were talking about Mars currently being at opposition, and has the astrology book in the final scene repeat the phrase, astrologers don't talk about Mars being 'at opposition'. They'd say 'Mars is in opposition to the Sun' because astrology uses a system centred on the Earth.

Updated to say that Hulke was probably mistaken in assuming that stocks would plunge on the news that the world was going to end. At the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, markets were rising strongly - it seems that stock prices acquired an implicit qualifier of 'providing civilisation doesn't end' and business continued as usual.

Come to think of it, they always have that qualifier, it just only becomes visible at certain crucial moments.

Updated again to say that another way of looking at it that stock prices are actually an equity/cash ratio. If the world ends, stocks aren't worth anything, and neither is cash. The prospect of the end of the world would only affect stock prices if you expected one to lose value, but not the other. Given the received wisdom that the only things to hold value after the apocalypse will be tinned food, medicine, weapons and ammunition, that seems unlikely.

Kenneth Williams and The Avengers

KW's diary for January 7th 1966 records:

Went to see Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Watched some television, 'The Avengers', which was puerile.

Records show that this must have been Room Without A View. What a picture that conjures up, the three of them sitting there at Noel Road under the pink and yellow chessboard squares of the ceiling, watching this chess-themed Avengers ep.

Naive Avengersthon - 62. The Cybernauts

This is one of the two Avengers episodes that I'd heard of before I started this 'thon. I had high hopes of it, and at first I wasn't disappointed, with a series of electronics industry bigwigs getting offed by an unseen, possibly mechanical visitor, and an obvious but stylish red herring in the form of John 'Sondergaard' Hollis (returning from Warlock) and his karate class. Katherine 'Sabetha' Schofield gets a good karate-ing at the hands of Mrs Peel, which I enjoyed.

Then we have a great meeting between Steed and the wheelchair-using Dr Armstrong (Michael 'Toymaker' Gough), head of United Automation in his computerised office. He even sends Steed away with a present that isn't what it seems - it's as if Tobias Vaughn is impersonating Davros in order to carry out the evil scheme in Robot.

But, like The Master Minds, once the story has shown its hand, it doesn't do much with it except give us runaround and fighting. So I went away unsatisfied in terms of the episode itself, though it was good to confirm its vaunted similarity with least two major Doctor Who stories.

Previously seen - lots of people: Burt 'Lin Futu' Kwouk from Lobster Quadrille, Bernard 'Gulliver' Horsfall, Ronald 'Commander Radnor' Leigh-Hunt, Frederick 'Sorenson' Jaeger from Death of a Great Dane, John 'the Time Lord in Genesis of the Daleks' Franklyn-Robbins and Gordon Whiting from The Golden Eggs.

Naive Avengersthon - 61. Too Many Christmas Trees

Steed is having surreal Christmas-themed nightmares, and when he accompanies Mrs Peel to a Christmas house party he finds them becoming reality. This episode failed to grab me - the dream images were so bizarre that the rest of the story couldn't really live up to them, it was just a gradual reveal of who induced the nightmares, and some vague suggestions as to why (presumably they were hoping to probe his mind for official secrets). There's also the same confusion between hypnosis, magic, spiritualism and psychology that we saw in Warlock - the 'fluence worked in whatever way the plot demanded at any given point.

One good thing was Jeanette Sterke as the chief mesmerist, very callous and sinister.

Although someone has kindly explained the reason for the pre-closing credit scenes that this series has, with Steed and Mrs Peel on various forms of transport in front of back projections, I still don't like them, I'm starting to think 'If you're not going to take this seriously, why should I?'

Previously seen: Edwin 'Captain Hart' Richfield making his fourth appearance, and his first as a white hat. Robert 'Lesterson' James as the butler, returning from Death a la Carte.

Naive Avengersthon - 59. Dial A Deadly Number

This starts excitingly, with cutting edge transistorised pagers being used to assassinate people for financial advantage, but tails off disappointingly into a series of wine tastings, dinner parties and gunfights. On the plus side, there's an excitingly shot scene where Steed is attacked by motorcyclists; I liked the reminder that for all his languid charm, when things get tough he doesn't hesitate to get his shooter out. And the pager killings are accompanied by eerie shots of automatic phone exchange equipment clicking away inexorably.

John 'Ambril' Carson is pretty good as the sinister Fitch - making his third appearance. Gerald Sim also gets his hat-trick, and there's a fine haul of other familiar faces: Tina 'Ann Travers' Packer, Clifford 'Number Two in Do Not Forsake Me' who also played one of my ancestors in Kilvert's Diary, John 'Edward Waterfield' Bailey returning from Killer Whale, Peter Bowles from Second Sight, Norman Chappell from The Gilded Cage, Jan Holden from The Undertakers and also Alan Chuntz, who was the chauffeur in Seeds of Doom.

Naive Avengersthon - 58. The Master Minds

Now this is much more like it. Divided into two distinct parts: the first part invites us (and Steed and Mrs Peel) to consider how a cabinet minister came to be shot during a secrets-related burglary, and to lose his memory of the event. Fun with Mrs Peel assuming the role of nurse, though she doesn't have the job for long as the patient is offed by psychiatrist Dr Campbell (Ian M[a]cnaughton of Python direction fame), who appears to be under some kind of hypnotic influence.

The dead man and Campbell are, it seems, both members of high-IQ group RANSACK, whose director Desmond Leeming (Bernard 'Marcus Scarman' Archard) is conveniently on the scene to lead our heroes into part two, which centres around the RANSACK summer school. Patricia Haines returns from The Nutshell, she's extraordinary fruity during the archery practice scene here.

The familiar trope of sleep hypnosis (and one protagonist escaping its influence while the other succumbs) quickly appears, and as soon as it's clear that RANSACK members are being used to carry out the sort of raid seen in the teaser, everything is resolved with a big, stylish fight. I found the combination of foreground fisticuffs and background military film oddly reminiscent of Fall Out; it was also fun to have this scene, with fighting taking place in front of, behind and indeed through the projection screen, immediately followed by some very obvious back projection for the final gag.

The 'elitist society' theme reminded me rather of Robot, and the 'work under hypnosis' idea of The War Machines. I found Robert Banks Stewart at the typewriter rather than Terrance Dicks or Ian Stuart Black, though.

Archard is excellent as Desmond Leeming. I warmed to Mrs Peel a bit more in this one, there wasn't so much of the irritating coyness seen in the last two episodes. The more she's like Cathy Gale, the more I'll be pleased.

Also seen: Martin 'Watchmaker/Kublai Khan' Miller as Prof Spencer, who has nothing to do with the story as far as I can work out. And John 'Sir Charles in Do Not Forsake Me' Wentworth returns from Six Hands Across A Table as Sir Jeremy. Two Sir Charles and one Sir Jeremy, this man's at it knight after knight after knight.

Naive Avengersthon - 57. The Murder Market

Oh dear, I think they're losing me with this series. It's not so much like jumping from season 7 to season 10 of Doctor Who, it's like jumping from Doctor Who to the 2005 parody remake. The plot concerns an exclusive marriage bureau that is actually a front for arranging murders, but that just seems to be an excuse for a series of visually striking sets and a lot of highly stylised acting and fighting. Like Town of No Return, it was nice to look at but it didn't engage me.

What I most enjoyed looking at was Mrs Peel's tipsy dance around the crypt (and hurried return to her coffin) and the funeral procession, which was the best thing in the episode; some really grim faces and doomy organ music.

It was also fun to see the visual style of the later 60s taking over; we're definitely in War Machines territory now, whereas series 1 and 2 were constantly reminding me of Planet of the Giants or Unearthly Child.

Seen elsewhere: Patrick 'Hammer into Anvil' Cargill, and John 'The Marshall' Woodvine.

Naive Avengersthon - 56. The Town of No Return

New credits, new 'companion' Emma Peel and new, incredibly intrusive incidental music. I didn't like this episode at all, which is unfortunate because I think it's the way the show is going to go from now on.

Steed and Mrs Peel visit sinister village Little Bazeley and discover a ludicrous, Pythonesque plot to invade Britain by replacing the population, person by person and town by town. I was warned that this series was more 'stylised' and that warning was justified: we've moved away from realism and more towards Prisoner-style surrealism. Some of it is nice to look at - Steed producing an entire tea service from his carpet bag on the train, an immaculately dressed man emerging out of the sea in a plastic bag - but it didn't engage me, it didn't draw me into the action or make me care what happened.

I'm not keen on Mrs Peel so far. Cathy would never have let Steed wrap her up in a curtain during a fencing bout, nor been so coy with him when she emerged. Steed himself has become more of a joke character, he appears to have an armoured bowler hat in one scene.

Also appearing: Robert 'M apparently' Brown, Patrick Newell, who was Col. Faraday and is also the second Avengers actor to end up in the 'bored shitless with interesting things' bit in The Young Ones. Terence 'Lord Ravensworth' Alexander as a cartoon pub landlord and Juliet 'nearly in Carry On Matron' Harmer.

Naive Avengersthon - 55. Lobster Quadrille

Bit of a let-down this one, a dull tale about heroin being smuggled in lobsters via a chess shop run by Bert 'Lin Futu' Kwouk.

Corin Redgrave on show, also Norman Scace, who I think is the psychiatrist in Hammer Into Anvil who gets fooled by Number Six and ranted at by Number Two. Also appearing: Gary 'Arthur Terrall' Watson returning from Immortal Clay, and Jennie 'film Barbara' Linden.

I detected some of the 'stylisation' I'd heard about in this, with the chess-themed sets (why is a pathology lab decorated in chessboard squares?) and Alice In Wonderland references. Readers will recall that the object of the original Lobster Quadrille was to throw the lobsters as far out to sea as you can - treatment which I'd feel like giving the DVD if it didn't also have Esprit de Corps on it.

Perhaps that's a bit harsh, there are one or two good moments, like Kwouk's character cutting off Cathy's Confucius quote by saying that all that sort of thing just sounds pompous in these modern times. And I did feel rather sad at Cathy's clearly delineated departure. Her final experience is a traumatic and narrow escape from a conflagration, which makes it believable that she would now decide to refuse any future missions.

There's a quiet moment after she's gone, and I was strongly reminded of the inter-companion bits in the Fourth Doctor era, at the end of Invasion of Time and the start of The Ribos Operation, or the start of Destiny of the Daleks.

Steed however wastes no time in getting on the phone to sort himself out with a new 'companion'. Who will it be I wonder?...

Naive Avengersthon - 54. Esprit de Corps

The old 'Jacobite insurrection' plot, updated and with the general of a Highland regiment (Duncan 'Napoleon in Dance of the Dead' Macrae) at the head of it. He has a very clever plan to make it seem like an innocent military exercise - with an even cleverer twist.

John Thaw is his right-hand man Captain Trench, who not only tries to strangle Cathy but also puts Steed in front of a firing squad. Roy Kinnear providing blackly comic relief as Corporal Jessop.

Also to be seen: Douglas Robinson making his 4th appearance.

Macrae, Thaw and Kinnear are all excellent. Macrae outshines all the renegade generals of the Pertwee years, he even convinces when he tells Cathy that she is to take the throne as Queen Anne II. Thaw is by turns quietly sardonic and quietly sinister. And Kinnear's scenes with Steed are a delight - sarcastic eye-rolling at the court-martial, ironic sympathy during the last meal. Even in their first scene, the way he wordlessly conveys that he's waiting for a tip is brilliant.

One of my favourites so far, up there with The Big Thinker, Dressed to Kill and School for Traitors, and with some of the best acting since Death of a Great Dane.

Naive Avengersthon - 53. The Charmers

The charm of this story wore off very quickly - for about the first 5 minutes I enjoyed the 'Spy vs. Spy' type comedy, but it soon became very tiresome indeed. I hope this isn't the direction that the show is going to go in. I like straight stories with comic interludes, not this broad comedy where they aren't taking it seriously at all. One of my least favourites so far.

Perhaps Fenella Fielding prejudiced me against it - I love her in The Poetry Society, but when I see her in anything else she puts my teeth on edge.

Some of the comedy did appeal to me: the suggestion that Steed was annoyed not to find his picture on the evil spies' Most Wanted board for instance, and also the cab-hailing drill at the charm school run by Brian Oulton (who's crossed my viewing path before in everything from Hancock to The Young Ones via Carry On).

If you're going to have a childrens-TV-style comedy spy chief, then Warren Mitchell is a good choice to play him.

Also seen - Frank Mills, who was the radio telescope Director in Terror of the Autons and Peterson the commissionaire in the Granada Blue Carbuncle, as the dentist.

Naive Avengersthon - 52. The Outside-In Man

Ronald 'the Rook' Radd returns from Bullseye, as Quilpie, Steed's latest boss. He uses a butcher's shop as a front, which leads to fun as he keeps up the butcher's talk and accent until they're out of earshot of the shop, then abruptly assumes his proper persona with 'That's quite enough of that.'

He assigns Steed to prevent the assassination of one Sharp (later seen to be Philip 'Mars/Venus game' Anthony, returning from Man With Two Shadows) who defected to 'Aburania' but is about to visit Britain under diplomatic protection.

Their meeting is interrupted by the unexpected and coincidental return of agent Charter (James 'Jackson in Underworld' Maxwell) who was sent to Aburania to kill Sharp but has spent five years in prison there.

It soon becomes apparent that Charter is still intent on fulfilling his mission to kill Sharp, even though highly important arms sales will be imperilled if he does so. Steed and Cathy have to track him down before he succeeds.

Maxwell is pretty good as Charter - he seems fairly together at first, in the club scene, but gets increasingly edgy and fanatical as the story progresses. He's got one of those no-nonsense 40s George Orwell faces, which really helps sell the idea that he intends to carry out his original orders.

Basil 'Number Fourteen in Hammer Into Anvil' Hoskins as the Aburanian embassy attache, something of the manner of Philip Madoc about him. Ronald 'Dulcian councillor' Mansell as the club butler. The garage owner is Arthur Lovegrove, who was fairly inconspicuously in Carry on Cowboy.

I didn't spot this myself but various web sources point out that Quilpie's (and presumably Steed's) organisation is named PANSAC. I think this is the first time so far that a name has been put to it.

The story itself is a little bit reminiscent of The Decapod - even the twist is similar (but more complex) than the one in that. The problem for me was that I wasn't really that fussed if he killed Sharp, because early 60s Britain had plenty of other potential customers for armaments.

Naive Avengersthon - 51. Trojan Horse

The teaser scene suggests that this episode is going to be about a bookmaker with no-nonsense credit control methods. Then Steed's seen at the stables, representing the Foreign Office's concerns about the security of a sultan's horse - so it looks like doping is going into the mix. But the story then veers wildly off into the methods of a network of assassins, leaving all the racing stuff on the periphery.

Tony Heuston (T.P. 'Captain Cook' McKenna, not William 'Reegan' Dysart as I thought) is the bookmaker at the centre of the plot, Derek 'Greg Sutton' Newark as his head killer Johnson. I enjoyed Newark's toughly-delivered evening class about the use of poisons; he's not quite so good when he has to yell angrily about being treated like a serf.

It felt like there wasn't much Steed, or much Cathy in this - their main scenes (Steed chatting up women, Cathy dazzling Heuston with her ability to work out bets) are good, but feel like set pieces.

Geoffrey 'radio comedy' Whitehead as the aristocratic Fordsham, whose entrapment into the murder network by Heuston and Johnson is used to show us how the operation works. Basil 'the replacement Supervisor in Checkmate' Dignam as Heuston's ally at the stables.

Another episode with an uneasy combination of plot elements really.

Naive Avengersthon - 50. Mandrake

Tin-mining areas have a lot of arsenic in their soil - arsenic which is quickly absorbed by any body buried in it. Which makes it impossible to detect whether or not the deceased was killed by arsenic poisoning. Got that? Good.

We open (like Death of a Great Dane) at a burial service, conducted by the Rev Adrian Wyper (George Benson, who I think is the likeable civil servant in Free For All).

Steed is unobtrusively in the background, because it's an old friend of his being buried. And he has suspicions about how he came by his death, causing him to make some visits to the deceased's son (Robert 'Major Hunda in Traitor' Morris). On the second occasion he displays some unusual anger - which, like everything else Macnee does, nevertheless seems perfectly Steed-like.

We're shown exactly how Steed's friend ended up dead in the progress of the latest undertaking of Mandrake Investments - proprietors Roy Hopkins (Philip 'Bigon' Locke back again) and Dr Macombie (John Le Mesurier as the second bent doctor in as many episodes).

Cathy is despatched to the churchyard in Cornwall for some misdirection about exactly who's involved in the scheme at that end, while Steed visits Hopkins' Christmas cracker factory to sweet-talk Annette 'the watchmaker's daughter in It's Your Funeral' André. And from there it's not far to the compulsory winding-up of Mandrake Investments in the public interest.

Not a bad episode - Benson's playing in particular keeps us in doubt for as long as possible about whether or not the vicar is part of the scheme.

Naive Avengersthon - 49. The Little Wonders

This one falls into the Box of Tricks category of episodes which unsuccessfully mix very disparate plot elements. The conceit about criminals using clerical titles is amusing, if not very original, but it doesn't seem to fit with the strand about the dolls' hospital and hiding microfilm in dolls.

Steed's guise as 'Johnny the Horse' is quite pleasing, and Tony Steedman's suave bent doctor held my attention.

Lois 'Moneypenny' Maxwell as the 'Bishop of Winnipeg''s nurse/concubine. Frank 'again' Maher as Hasek the doll doctor. Kenneth J Warren, returning for a third appearance, Christopher 'Cyberleader/Karkus' Robbie and Mark 'Ralph in The Moonbase' Heath among the fake prelates.

Naive Avengersthon - 48. The Wringer

Steed is accused of sabotaging the Carinthia Pipeline, a secret transit route for spies out of Eastern Europe, by giving away information leading to the deaths of 6 agents. His colleague Anderson (Peter 'also Penley' Sallis) has all the evidence that Charles (Paul Whitsun-Jones - the first actor I've noted so far who's returned as the same character) needs to hear, and Steed is sent away to 'the unit'.

In charge of that facility is 'The Wringer' - a brilliantly punchable portrayal by Terence 'Orum' Lodge, returning from Man With Two Shadows. He and his colleagues proceed to subject Steed to psychological torture and brainwashing - thus suggesting where Anderson got his fixed ideas about Steed's guilt from.

Luckily Cathy comes to the rescue once again, first by using persuasion on Charles' sidekick Oliver (our own Barry Letts in his previous incarnation as an actor), then by bravely visiting the unit and engineering an escape. Anderson is deconditioned and Steed, presumably, restored to his position...

Lodge is the star of this one, no question. My only disappointment was that the unit was very quickly revealed to be a renegade operation; if their methods had been officially sanctioned, like in The Nutshell, it would have been a whole lot more sinister.

I liked the carthartic/purifying imagery of the escape via the drains into the rain-flooded ditch.

Also returning: Gerald Sim from Mission to Montreal, and Douglas Cummings from The Gilded Cage.

Naive Avengersthon - 47. Dressed to Kill

Someone is using jamming to create false alarms at Britain's missile radar stations. And someone has invited Steed and six other people to a mobile fancy dress New Year's Eve party on board a train - and then left them at an abandoned station in the middle of nowhere.

This is one of those 'Six Napoleons' stories, with a limited number of possible explanations - though the setup (the idea that six people would all have options on parcels of land in a particular area) is incredibly contrived. But it does feature a Napoleon, as well as a returning Richard 'Gatherer Hade' Leech as a Victorian peeler, and two prize catches in Leonard Rossiter as Robin Hood and our very own Anneke Wills in a sexy cat costume. You can see why the last two went on to better things - Rossiter in particular seems to jump off the screen demanding our attention.

The abandoned station is quite eerie, with things changing behind the characters' backs, people being killed or knocked out and a mysterious hooded friar hanging about. Mixed with this there's a 'New Year special' comedy feeling, with Steed's cowboy costume leading to a couple of enjoyable Western-style shots.

Leon 'Jabel' Eagles as the jammer, Frank Maher returning from November Five as the barman.

Quite enjoyed this one. I've made it sound as though the chills and the comedy didn't mix, but they do work together pretty well. Also there are plenty of reasons to suspect all the characters, so the identity of the villain comes as a surprise - most Avengers eps fail in this regard, it's usually blindingly obvious.

Naive Avengersthon - 46. The White Elephant

Zookeeper Martin Friend (back from The Gilded Cage) is upset to find that Snowy the white elephant has gone missing from the private zoo run by Noah Marshall (Godfrey 'film Dortmun' Quigley, returning from Hot Snow). Cathy's safari experience in Kenya is ideal for putting her onto the case as a potential new collector for the zoo.

Judy Parfitt returns from Bullseye as Noah's efficient - and therefore, instantly suspicious - secretary. Edwin 'Captain Hart' Richfield makes his third appearance as a supposedly missing anthropologist.

Rather like Second Sight, this story uses a lot of setup to tell what turns out to be a fairly simple story by about smuggling. John Lucarotti dresses it up with scenes at a gunsmith's (run by Bruno Barnabe, who was the BBC bloke in The Bowmans) and a supplier of human and animal restraints (principal saleslady, Rowena Gregory from Immortal Clay).

At least here the smuggled goods (ivory) have some connection with the rest of the plot. The actual reason for abstracting the elephant isn't very well explained: as far as I can work out, it's because she knew Lawrence and would have reacted to seeing him at the zoo, thus creating a disturbance not conducive to smuggling. But then, if it was so necessary for Lawrence to come to the zoo, why had the smuggling plan been able to operate successfully before now without him coming there?

There's some fairly good cold villainy from Richfield, and Scott Forbes as fellow-smuggler Conniston, and I liked Toke Townley's fussy gun craftsman. And you have to admire Quigley for being able to act with a real live parrot sitting on his shoulder in half the scenes.

The final scene is one of Cathy's rare but periodic disenchantments with her work with Steed: he presents her with an ivory carving, and she comments 'You always manage to win something, don't you?' Steed would probably understand the additional meaning of 'win' as an Army word for 'help oneself to'.

Naive Avengersthon - 45. The Medicine Men

When Malcolm Hulke's at the typewriter, business is never just business, and in this ep we're shown British commercial interests getting tangled up with anti-colonial elements in the country of Karim.

Peter 'Granada's Colonel Ross' Barkworth as Geoffrey Willis, the hard-working boss of Willis Sopwith Pharmaceuticals plagued by Far Eastern rip-off copies of his products. Steed once more assumes his civil servant cover to investigate, having been alerted by the death in a Turkish bath of one Tu Hsiu Yung. Macnee has some comic lines to deliver based on this amusing name, but handles them with a pleasing mixture of deprecation and embarrassment.

Cathy is also on the case as a business efficiency expert. A good scene between her and Willis, where she cunningly both gets his attention and wins his goodwill by using a sales technique from a manual written by his grandad.

Harold 'Gilbert M' Innocent as Leeson, an alcoholic avant-garde painter who's the British end of the fake goods operation. He has a wonderful line about Karim being 'the size of a postage stamp - and not worth much more.'

His artistic technique involves getting young women to bathe in paint, then rub themselves against the canvas. This sets up one of Cathy's best lines so far; Willis' secretary, Miss Dowell (Joy Wood) arrives at Leeson's studio and holds a gun on her. 'Have you come to roll in the oils too, Miss Dowell?' she asks in deliciously sarcastic tones.

John Crocker returns from Propellant 23 - I thought he was Brian Murphy.

Brenda Cowling, who I think is seen for about 10 seconds in the plaque-unveiling scene in Carry On Girls, appears as the chatty masseuse at the Turkish bath.

This is a great episode: there's an intriguing plot, and some wonderful playing by all the principals. I have only two criticisms. The treacherous employee trope has featured in almost all the 'business' episodes so far, it's becoming very predictable. And Willis, discovering Steed ferreting around in his offices, holds him at gunpoint, is shot, and then disappears from the story. I couldn't work out if he was part of the fake goods scam or not - he does have a suspicious-sounding exchange with Miss Dowell about printing in one scene, but it wasn't conclusive.

Naive Avengersthon - 44. The Gilded Cage

Steed plans to entrap retired villain Spagge (Patrick Magee, returning from Killer Whale) into a robbery, by putting Cathy forward with a carefully researched plan to rob a bullion vault.

It's impossible to say any more without spoiling a really good pull-back-and-reveal in the middle of the episode - I haven't been so completely taken in since I read The Magus.

Another Killer Whale actor, Fredric 'Potter' Abbott, returns as a gang member, likewise Alan 'Hector' Haywood from Chorus of Frogs and Geoff L'Cise from Death Dispatch. Martin 'Styggron' Friend is also in the gang.

Neil 'Sam Seeley' Wilson returns from The Frighteners as a guard.

Norman Chappell is great as Spagge's accomplished butler Fleming (Steed must like him too, as he lets him escape.)