I mean, this was the weirdest episode of Doctor Who I've ever
seen.
Why are we back in black and white again?
And like, why is Tom Baker wearing a bowler?
Do you know what I mean?
And where's the Tartars?
The whole thing just made no sense at all.
Hello and welcome back to Flightthrough Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast, which this week is talking about...
The Avengers.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm a suffering pseudopod for this episode.
So we are talking about an Avengers episode this week.
The man eater of sorry, Green, which many of you as an antecedent
to Seeds of Doom.
Now, Seeds of Doom had many antecedents.
It had the thing from another whirlwind, which we've discussed, Day
of the Triffords, Quator Mass, but this is possibly a lesser known
one for modern viewers, which is why we decided to talk about it.
For those of you not familiar with the Avengers, and maybe you've
only seen the episode that we're talking about this week, for
which we posted a YouTube link online, The Avengers was a 1960s
spy and espionage series.
It was also one of the 1st ones to be to have the label applied
spy-fi because it ended up having science fictional elements
within it.
It had a strange beginning in that it came originally from a
series called Police Surgeon, in which an actor called Ian Hendry
was playing a surgeon attached to the police.
That series ran for 13 episodes before it ran into script
trouble.
Plus it wasn't actually terribly popular, but Ian Hendry was.
So a new show was developed around him playing a new character
again playing a doctor.
But in this case, the doctor's fiance was killed by underworld
figures, who had accidentally delivered to her a package full of
drugs and killed her to silence her.
She still had no idea.
Into the picture comes a spy called John Steed.
And together with Ian Hendry's, Dr. Keel, they work to take down
underground masterminds and what have you.
The men who sell illegal fruit.
It wasn't all entirely fantastic.
No, it was the longest running show, um, spice show of the 60s. 161
episodes.
And it was, it very quickly stopped being about spies and started
being about the medium itself and probably the greatest television
show of war time.
Can we just do a podcast on this?
It's a much more fun movie.
Well, very soon.
Within the 1st year, Ian Hendry, who was the star of the show
there was a writer's strike, which halted production, and he was
getting lots of film offers.
So he used the strike because he was sort of contracted for a
period of time rather than a period of episodes.
He used to strike to get out of his contract, and Patrick McNee as
John Steed, who has unfortunately recently passed away at a ripe
old age of 93, carried on with the show as the lead.
And that's when it really transmogrified into this larger than
life spy series.
He was joined in that era by Honour Blackman.
So what season does she join?
She joins in season two. along with Julie Stevens, who is also
famous for presenting Play School in the UK.
What was her character?
Her character was Venus Smith, Venus Smith, as a nightclub
singer.
On a Blackman played Kathy Gale, an anthropologist.
And we own her. in terror of the verboids.
And of course, Goldfinger. and Goldfinger.
Steed was also briefly joined by a temporary character called Dr
Martin King, who was played by John Rollerson, familiar with our
listeners as Harold Chorley from the web of fear.
Brilliant.
After 2 years on a left-to-do goldfinger, and America started
buying the series, but bought it on the proviso that it be made on
film and in colour, to which the producers in England very quickly
said, well, look, we can't afford to do one.
We can afford to do film more colour this year and then go to the
other one next year.
So they said, right, film, please.
And that's where Diana Rigg comes in as Emma Peel, who is, I would
say, unarguably the most famous Avengers Girl, if you like, or
Avengers Woman, sidekick to Steed.
And is she like the sexiest woman ever to appear on television?
She really is.
Maybe Barbara Felden.
Barbara Felden was lovely from Get Smart, but she did it demurely
and with a certain faintness.
It's kind of wrong to say the sidekick, because even McNee admits
he was the sidekick. and Mrs. Peel was the lead.
So we own Diana Rigg as well.
We own Diana Rigg as well.
She has appeared in Doctor Who in the Crimson Horror.
And she was in the unfairly underrated Game of Thrones.
The throne.
No one's talking about that at all.
She just doesn't mind looking like a terrifying crone, does she
now that she's older.
But she's, of course, in on her majesty's secret service.
Indeed.
After one black and white film season and one colour film season
Diana left the Avengers.
It was a gruelling filming schedule, despite the fact they were
working on film.
It was more like a television videotape production schedule as the
1st 3 series had been.
And between her 1st and 2nd series, she discovered that she was
being paid less than the cameraman.
And she managed to get her salary tripled because she threatened
to leave.
But she made it very clear from the beginning of season 5 that she
would be leaving at the end of that season.
And so she did, she went on to do on Her Majesty's Secret
Service.
She was replaced by a very polarising figure in Avengers fandom.
Linda Thorson as Tara King, who played a Cardassian, who played a
Cardassian in Star Trek, has yet to appear in Doctor Who.
Stephen Moffat, are you listening?
We want Linda Thorson.
I don't think he is.
Now, Tara's character was a lot.
Younger had a lot less experience than her 2 predecessors, but
still held her own very well, had a great chemistry with Patrick
McNee, and Patrick McNee spoke very fondly of all of his co-stars
that he worked with.
Around this time that the Seeds of Doom was on, the Avengers had
actually been revived as the new Avengers, still featuring Patrick
McNee, and also Joanna Lumley in her 1st major TV role after she'd
appeared in one Her Majesty's Secret Service.
She's so fabulous.
She gets like one line.
We'll get there And Gareth Hunt. as Mike Gambit. from Metabolist 3
from Metabolist 3.
So there are many, many Doctor Who leagues.
And even more, if you look at the guest cast, but the only major
cast members of the Avengers who haven't appeared in Doctor Who
are the sadly departed, Ian Hendry, the now sadly departed Patrick
McNee, and, of course, Linda Fawson.
So it's not too late to get Linda, of course, because Joanna has
played the doctor.
Yes, in curse of fatal death.
Now, after that little potted history of the Avengers. get
straight into it.
Man eater of Surrey Green.
Richard, I'd like you to lead this off because you know even more
about the Avengers than I do.
It's difficult.
This is my 2nd love after Doctor Who, and it's something that hung
about me.
I 1st discovered the Avengers with Joanna Lumley in the role of
the, I suppose you could actually say closest to the M appeal
character.
The thing about the Avengers, just like Doctor Who, is that it
reinvented itself, but it always stayed within the tenet of what
it presupposed, what the viewer presupposed they were going to
see.
In Doctor Who's case, it's the figure of the doctor and the TARDIS
but actually only the TARDIS remains relatively unchanging.
In the Avengers, it was Patrick McNee.
He was always there.
He represented the old school, he represented Britain, the
establishment, but he didn't.
He subverted it.
He took advantage of it.
He purloined it.
Pat was at Eton with Christopher Lee.
They were good mates and they did a little puppet show, little
puppet school together, but then Pat later went on to say he also
ran the school's pornography racket and was expelled because of
that.
And he did a lot of other really creative things and that he
really is the character of Steed.
It's very clever film critics in the UK have said that the
Avengers actually invented postmodernism.
So now we've moved on from German expressionism.
Now I hear you will take a sigh, but it really does in that it
plays around with ideas and throws it up in the air.
In this story, it does it with Dave the Triffords.
And it does it with science fiction generally.
It's the 1st science fiction story that the Avengers ever does.
And it actually does it beautifully.
It's 1965.
So we're right there with Thunderboose is just starting.
Billy is still piloting the TARDIS, I take it that Ian and Barbara
are still ricocheting around with him and with Vicky.
Quite possibly.
Yes, quite possibly.
So we're still early days.
It just does incredibly beautiful things.
You can see how Robert Banks Stewart has been criticised for
reusing Avenger scripts that he actually he didn't write.
I was writing in this period.
He was for the Avengers.
Oh, well, Castle DF is very much Terror of the Zygons, and this
one is very much Seeds of Doom.
It's the secondary carry, just that really do it.
Okay, there's a plant from outer space, in the Avengers, it's
caught up with a British rocket.
I love that Britain, just like in Doctor Who, and just like in
Quader Mass, has a space program.
One of their spacemen disappeared a year ago and has never been
seen no more.
It's funny that no one seems to have heard or noticed that, but...
Wing Commander, what's his face, does that?
that hushed it up.
He's our generic character, isn't he?
I think he gets mulched by Harrison Chase. later on.
Well, we were all into recycling, aren't we?
stories as much as people.
And also, the space plant travels in pairs because there's the one
that hit the shuttle, which is dead.
But then there's the one that's being cultivated in the eccentric
botanist's land.
He prefers plants to people.
Inst of a mad campy Harrison Chase.
We have the very saturnine and far more controlled figure of...
Sir Lyle Peterson.
That's the one.
So we don't get Sir Lyle Peterson immediately, though. when it
opens.
And as I haven't watched a lot of Avengers.
Well, I can tell you, this is the other thing.
The structure of the Avengers, unlike Doctor Who, is always the
same.
Yes, no, no.
I have...
It's a 4 act playing.
You start, yeah, yeah.
So 2nd act is introducing the villain.
We start initially with Alan and Laura and they're in love.
They're a lovely Terrence Rashican couple from lovely drawing
room.
British theatre.
And of course, it's going to be horribly subverted and something
you're going to go horribly wrong.
She gets it.
She wanders off, tramples through the daisies, even though they're
suddenly, and gets into Goldfingers Rolls-Royce.
So you know it's not going to end well.
So we have a sinister chauffeur as well, like the scenes of doom.
In any other show, the closing scene would be the 2 of them
getting back together after being separated.
But somehow I think that's not, things aren't going to work out
for Alan and Laura.
The most striking thing as someone who's watched Doctor Who of
this period is that it's in a laboratory and there's a window
behind them and you can see things through the window and then
they walk outside and then they're outside beyond the window.
Doctor Who never has windows, you can see things through because
it's all shot in the studio.
But this is a beautiful location and just superb film work, I
think.
Brendan.
And well, when you do see things through a window in Doctor Who, as
we see in the Android invasion, it has no bearing with what is
actually outside on the location.
The film era of the Avengers, they really took advantage of the
film equality of it.
And Douglas Canfield, of course, was a big fan of film direction.
So even though in the seeds of doom, he is shooting on outside
broadcast video, he shoots it like he's using fare.
He does a great job of it too.
I was thinking that, I mean, the ob broadcasting must have been
something he couldn't have been too happy about, but he really
really goes to town and directs it incredibly well.
So the 1st striking thing about Alan is that he's wearing a
hearing aid and it's, I suppose it's like Chekhov's hearing aid
really, isn't it?
It's, he's the 1st of 3 deaf characters in this story and that's
going to be important to its, um, its resolution.
And so after that scene, which introduces them.
This is the other Avengers trope, which you can tell us about
Richard.
It the teaser, isn't it?
And so the teaser is the sexiest exposition trope ever invented
for television.
Are we up to the cactus yet?
No, no, no.
That's sexy in a completely different way.
It's a bit with the roses, isn't it?
where Steve's watering his own plant.
This is far more romantic, of course, this whole season than the
honour blackman one, which was actually kind of abrasive, and very
much...
The theory, the theory with the honour Blackman one was that Steed
was very romantically or sexually interested, yeah.
And she, she was not.
Now, of course, Kathy Gale and Appeal are both portrayed as widows
the characters, but Kathy doesn't want a bar of steed in that way
and often objects to his methods and what have you, with Steed and
Mrs. Peel.
The production team and the actors all have the opinion of because
with the bright young things of the 60s all being interested in
the Avengers, Shipping is not a modern idea, dear listener.
People were asking in the 60s, ooh, Steve and Mrs. Peel, have they
or haven't they?
And the production team, as far as they were concerned.
And you couldn't imagine this happening with Doctor Who and a
companion.
Thank God.
The production team's perspective was...
Yes, they have.
But what we see is always the morning after.
Interestingly.
They've gone out of their system.
When they were both interviewed.
McNee maintained, yes, they always had, Rig maintained, no they
never did.
And you get that lovely duality that is really reflected in the
scenes.
It is very lightness and touch and very romantic.
It's more, if you were looking at what it was, I don't suppose
anybody knows the thin man films anymore with Myrna Loi and
William Powell, but they're very much the style of this lovely
romantic thing.
So, yes, he's growing roses.
And speed is very much within the capitalist spectrum, but
constantly subverting it.
Emma Peel's father was a leading manufacturer and industrialist.
Knight was his name.
Yes.
Yeah So, yeah, but they're still very, they're kind of, they are
as I keep saying, they are subversive.
There's a socialist meme to this.
They're really, they're really outside the system.
He's growing his own...
And it's free enterprise and, you know, he's kind of getting
around the whole capitalist system that way.
But he always has a way of cajoling the story and the heroin into
the narrative.
Yeah, so that's discuss it here.
That's what the purpose of this scene is and it is a trope in the
Avengers, isn't it?
Every scene has this teaser where they're bantering and being sort
of blurty and stuff.
In the black and white season, it's far more involved and
discourse ridden in the colour series.
You just get a little visual teaser because everything's
simplified once it becomes made for the American series.
But again, why I think this one works and why it's interesting to
Doctor Who and to this particular story of Doctor Who, The Seeds
of Doom, is that the characters, you can kind of lift them
straight out and put them into the Doctor Who story and they would
fit.
We have a professor of botany who is almost Amelia Ducart, but
it's actually just Margaret Rutherford without bicycle.
And then you have Salyle, who is Harrison Chase, only not as
crazy.
Well, not as camp.
Or as camp.
Well, no.
Doesn't have a lovely bow tie, though.
I thought he must have been in Doctor Who, because he's a very
that guy sort of thing.
His name's Derek Farr.
Yeah, I don't believe he has.
No, but he is Ensor, the creator of Aorak. which is where you've
all seen him before.
So yeah, he kind of got mad Professor parts, really, didn't he?
Yeah, so he's actually quite low key, and he and Steed have lovely
banter about drinking whiskey, which is something that you have to
approve of.
And he only really reveals how crazy he is when he starts feeding
blue bottles to his fly trumpet Venus fly. which is suddenly a
really big thing this year.
I mean, no one had ever heard of Venus Flytraps before the mid
60s.
It's little shop of horrors and the Adams family and...
It's almost certain that the puppet makers had never seen a Venus
flash.
I don't know.
I've got a cat that's a bit like it.
But yeah, I mean, that whole scene, and especially the lead up to
it was Steed and the sort of the ivy covered hallway with the
strange mannequins covered in ivy, and he gets that great line.
This mannequin is just wearing a boa of ivy and nothing else.
And he says, I'd love to see you come the autumn.
Oh, look forward to seeing more of you coming.
That's right.
It's very evocative of Harrison Chase's 1st scene, or rather
Harrison Chase's 1st scene is very evocative of it.
You know, Chase immediately he starts talking about plants.
And this steed ingratiates himself by saying he wants to say
plants.
And straight away, Sir Lyle is like, yes, we must save the
plants.
A lot of people have said that seeds of doom is a copy of that
Avengers episode.
No, no, I think it's far more likely.
Of course, Robert Banks Stewart was working on the Avengers.
I think it's far more likely he also watched it.
And just the ideas, like any good writer, the ideas got lodged in
his brain.
And when he came time to write this Doctor Who story later, he
still had the ideas of this Avengers story in his head.
And as we discussed in our podcasts on season 13 of Doctor Who, The
production team were interested in making the team of the Doctor
and Sarah more like Steed and Mrs. Peel, more like an Avengers
kind of witty repartee intellectual equals relationship.
Yes, very much so.
In Seeds of Doom, the doctor and Sarah are called in by the World
Ecology Bureau, but it's not clear who they're working for.
And that's, I mean, Steed and Mrs. Peel, presumably they work for
someone.
And obviously they pin it down once Tara King comes along.
But here it's really not at all clear what their job is or who's
employing them sort of thing and they just sort of are sort of
freelance troublemakers.
And of course, Steed always calls Mrs. Peel, Mrs. Peel, never Emma
except for one instance, and right at the end.
And um, the doctor introduces Sarah.
This is Miss Smith.
She's my best friend.
But I think what's so telling just to get to the nub before maybe
we get to the exposition, because everything in the Avengers is
about inversion, turning things around, is that Doctor Who is most
successful, when it takes bricolage, if you like, when it takes
pieces from many other different stories and genres and mediums
film, TV, literature, Doctor Who will put loin, all of them and
subvert them and use them themselves, the Avengers did it 1st and
the Avengers was possibly the 1st television series to ever be
postmodern in the way that it actually has too much in it to fit
into one story.
There are too many references.
There are too many tropes, would you say?
There are too many symbols and symbolisms. too much going on.
It's actually counterproductive for an easy understanding for an
audience member who were used to shows like Maigre, Danger Man, for
instance.
Avengers is not a spy show.
There is one thing I would like to make really clear.
It's a comedy, subversion, and fun making of the British Empire
and decline of film.
Ultimately, it's about TV, just like Doctor Who is about TV.
But this is about other kinds of television.
This is about empire films.
This is actually, this one is purloining Ealing comedies.
You can really imagine Peter Sellers and Alistair Sims doing a
science fiction story of this, and the Avengers simply jump in
from the side, subvert it, make fun of it, throw along some silly
lines.
There's some great things when he says, all that old thing.
And she said, obviously, no, I didn't feel that originality was
needed here, whenever they do an escape sequence.
Everything is always turned inside out.
Even to the state that McNee said, I always played the woman and
the woman always played the man.
And it's true that she's generally rescuing Steve.
She's terrific.
She is given all of the physical stuff to do.
Speaking of which, don't you wish we'd got a Tom and Liz slap off
the way that we get Steve and Mrs. Peel really go for it in the
end.
Mrs. Peel is taken over.
Like Mrs. Peel has a gun, you know, she shoots the...
Both barrels.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Take that Colin fate.
Yeah, I mean, but she also makes him be the man.
So they go to a farm and I'm not quite sure how she tracks down
some equipment and the farm is where they find the space ship
capsule under a haystack.
But Mrs. Peel just hands steed the shovel and just expects to
stand back and he can do the man's work. you know, in that case.
But otherwise, you know, she's the one gun toting and fighting and
all of that.
There are lovely stories where he's making her doing the rowing
when they're in a punt, and you can just imagine.
It's actually quite like Tom standing up in shard with poor old
Lana sitting down in the in the punch doing the same thing.
But yeah, yeah. he's a gentleman.
You know, even though he's beautifully dressed and he's
spectacularly well dressed.
His clothes are lovely.
He chosen himself.
It is, and it is a combination of that, you know, the way a mid
20th century gentleman dresses, but it's updated for the 60s.
But it's also very trad.
It's an Edwardian style.
And Kingsley Amis has commented on this when he talked about James
Bond.
And you say, you know, every man wanted to be Bond in the 60s.
He was masculinity in apotheosis.
No one would have actually wanted to have done steed directly
because it's just a bit too camp.
It's a bit too much. boldlerized as a pun.
And that's the point.
He's not, he doesn't fit into the story and she doesn't fit either
but they're both too interesting for the story itself.
Yeah, the doctor and Sarah don't really fit into the story.
Do they?
But we're very, very glad that they're there, not just because, you
know, they help to save the world, but because if Seeds of Doom
didn't have the doctor and Sarah, it would be, it'd be an episode
of Doomwatch or an episode of the professionals with a sort of
science fiction flair, both of which are decent shows in their own
right.
But it would lack a lot of the warmth and the heart that those
characters bring.
Same with Steve and Mrs. Peel, bring the warmth and the heart to
the story.
And they're just funnier and sexier than anyone else on the
screen.
Yeah, absolutely.
Laura and Alan are movie stars.
Beautiful Alan.
Yeah, they're they're John.
Yeah, they're John and Martha.
That's why it has to be horribly ruined.
Thank you.
The categories.
Because you can't have straight people in the Avengers.
They don't fit.
You're not allowed to have a normal run.
And that's the wickedness of it.
The audience in the 60s were getting what was going on, even if it
wasn't conscious.
So they were undermining that convention.
Yeah, stars have to be got together at the end.
Everything has to be about restoring that sort of heterosexual
couple at the end.
Watching this, I'm thinking more.
Seeing the Avengers now, again, if we're watching them again, I'm
thinking more of Peter Cook and his club, the establishment.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as much as in not only but also their
sketch review show.
But if you look again at Peter Cook's Club, it started in the
early 60s, it was stand-up comedy.
Barry Humphreys made his debut in London stage then with Dave
Edna.
And it was just, it was anything but the establishment.
It's about playing around with ideas.
Satire was sadly, unfortunately, with all things like trends and
fashion, satire kind of went out of fashion, but goodness when it
was very necessary in the 60s.
We've mentioned the perfume most candle before.
The Avengers is satirising science fiction in this.
This is a comedy take on SF.
So it's, you know, it's showing how silly everything is, but it's
still enjoying it.
But they balance the comedy very well because the problem with, and
Douglas Adams talked about this with this time with Doctor Who, he
said, the problem with injecting humour into a drama series is
people start taking as an opportunity to do silly voices and silly
walks.
And if you do that, you undermine the drama.
Now, in the Avengers, there is comedy in there, but Steed and Mrs
Peel, while they may joke about the threat, they never treat the
threat as a joke.
It's a very difficult thing to get right.
And you can see from the Avengers film.
I mean, they never seem, particularly Mrs. Peel.
They never seem like they're really in danger.
Do you know what I mean?
Mrs. Peel just looks like she could walk out of the frame and
she'd be fine.
What about the fight scene when she's taken over?
They're not stressed by it.
Do you know what I mean?
They never distressed or upset, I think.
Yeah, except in the end.
But the threat, you know, we were complaining about the violence
in Seeds of Doom, but this is actually vastly more violent than
that.
So you get, you get the delivery man who goes to investigate Sir
Lyle, you know, what are we doing with all of these, the
fertiliser?
Yeah, yeah.
And then he's hypnotised by the plant and so he stands still while
Lennox, the chauffeur, just shoots him full blank in the chest or
whatever.
You get an utterly horrifying scene, which is the hypnotised Laura
is working in Sir Lyle's estate.
Alan goes to get her, and he calls out to her, and she ignores him
because she's hypnotised, and so he climbs up the fence and he's
electrocuted to death, and she, you know, barely bats an island.
She's kind of wand so chilly to see what's happened.
And it's beautifully directed as well.
Like the, it's so well shot.
And so there is, you know, there's there's genuine horror in it in
this darker than Doctor Who.
The aforementioned moment where Mrs. Peel shoots the chauffeur
point blank with a shotgun.
I think we learn that the entire population of Surrey Green and
all of the scientists, including Laura, have all been eaten by the
monster by the time Steve and Mrs. Peel arrive. they're famous for
that, aren't they?
They often arrive after they've heard those.
Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.
Somebody once said, I would hate to be an expert in anything if
Steve and Mrs. Peel turned up because I'd be dead by this.
Yeah, there was a, there was a quote that was used in an ad for
the Avengers, which then made it into one of the colour episodes
where they arrive on a scene and Mrs. Peel says, where's the body
and sees his, what body?
And Mrs. Peel says, there's always a bottle.
Something I found very interesting about that confrontation scene
when it starts.
And I hadn't noticed it until this time around is, they're able to
realise that something's gone wrong by going to the pub and the
only person left there is the guy with the hearing aid because
spoiler alert, the hearing aid blocks the hypnotic signal.
Even if you don't need it because Stephen Mrs. Peel both put one
on.
As they make their way to the house, there's clothes strewn around
everywhere.
And thus the implication, which I never got before.
The creature makes people peel themselves, like we would peel a
banana.
Don't you think it just eats them whole and then spits out the
clothes?
Well, no, because Mad a monster?
Because there's no indication that it's made it as far as the
pub.
It's still sitting on top of the house like the crinoid dips.
So it's drawn the people to it and as they've come along, they're
peeling themselves.
They're removing their clothes.
And that's how we find the Avengers breaks one of their own rules
because one of the rules that Brian Clemens institutes with the
film seasons of the Avengers is that no women are to be killed.
Laura cops it.
Laura cops, and we know that because Emma finds her shoe.
And it's one of the few times that we see Emma Peel, because Emma
Peel, one of her character traits says she's unflappable.
She's not emotionless, but she isn't affected.
And she picks up the shoe.
And the look on Diana Riggs's face, there is pain there, you know
because she's her old friend.
Exactly.
She's an old friend.
Not only is she an old friend, but 1st of all, her fiance has
reported her missing and then he's gone missing.
And yeah, she comes to the realisation of what has happened.
And it's a small moment, but it helps offset this sort of
unflappable nature of the character.
There's fabulous violence at the end.
Yes.
Can we have the end?
Another thing that it shares with Seeds of Doom is, of course, it
ends up in a house that's covered by a giant many tentacled
monster, and we don't see it.
There's no sort of crummy model work or anything like that.
So there's just sort of shapes moving outside the house and we see
the occasional tentacle and stuff and a tentacle comes and drags
off Lennox's body after Mrs. Peel shoots him and poor old lesbian
botanist Miss Sheldon gets sort of hauled off and they just
managed to rescue her.
But one of the tendrils knocks the of the hearing aid out of Mrs
Peel's ear.
Yes.
And so she's possessed by the plant and she starts pouring on the
floor, all of the, um, the never-ending buckler.
Fertiliser, they've, not fertiliser. a bottle of herbicide that
they've brought to kill the creature.
And so we have a wonderful fight sequence between Mrs. Peel.
I'm resolved I wasn't going to call her Emma this story.
Mrs. Bell and Steed, where they're stunt doubles.
Like we thought we were hard done by when we...
And you know what?
Often, often Sid Child, who is a pretty convincing double for
Diana Rigg would do the stunts.
I don't think that's Sid Child doing the fight.
I think it's a chap, you know, it's it's like it's like Stuart
fell doubling for Katie Manning.
Katie Manning suddenly has the shoulders of a bricklayer.
Yeah, and there's a terrible, like, like they don't attempt to
give the stunt double a steed wig either, do they?
No, well, the thing is, Rocky Taylor had similar hair to Patrick
McNee anyway.
It didn't quite have the wave, and it's not until the end of the
colour season that they realise they actually have to style it in
a similar way.
I mean, you know, it's the whole thing.
I remember you watching on a screen the size of your iPhone.
Yeah, that's true.
It was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the different lines as well, yeah.
And I think the film is kinder to it now.
Do you know what I mean?
Because now we can see on our big screen sometimes.
And yeah, it's been digitally rescanned and restored.
We talk about the lighting. like the score of this as well.
Yeah, talk about the way it's lit.
And yeah, well, the lighting when the creature is attacking
becomes darker and darker and darker.
We don't see that many tendrils.
It's done with the lighting and it's done with sound design.
But that fight is brutal.
And I think...
It's great, isn't it?
There have been very few times where the 2 main characters in the
Avengers have had to fight one another.
I can think of a couple of examples in the honour Blackman era.
There are 2 times where Kathy has to subdue Steed.
And even then she only does it with the strictly limited necessary
amount of force to do so.
Whereas this, because Emma's possessed.
It just keeps going and going and going.
You know, it's not a couple of knocks and she's out, and
eventually they practically have to give each other concussions to
knock around.
The expression helped.
Well, he...
He headbutts are.
Yeah.
It's a liveable kiss.
Well, she is a Liverpool less, like...
Luckily, it's likely...
Yeah, yeah, he is.
Once she's unconscious and this is horrifying.
I watched this twice and I didn't properly notice it the 1st time
I might have been tired.
But then he just liberally pores herbicide all over her and leaves
her for the tentacle.
And she's dragged off under the beast.
And it is a bit confusing because she's then in the corridor
without her coat far away.
So there's one of 2 things that have happened and there's still
debate amongst the fandom.
Apparently, the original intent in the script was that it would be
revealed as she was dragging out that Steve had actually put the
coat on one of the mannequins in order to fool the creature.
But it doesn't come across on screen.
So the implication on screen...
The implication on the screen is that the creatures spatter out
afterwards.
Either way, you know, it's a very nail biting ending.
It's a bit brutal though.
Yeah, it is Mrs. Pale, you know, and then 5 minutes later they're
on a hay rick, you know, flirting again.
And of course, don't forget, Steed is a herbicidal.
Yeah, brilliant.
And yeah, we then do get what is known as the tag scene, which
comes in in the film series.
So in this series for the tag scene, as always, they're making a
getaway on some related vehicle in series 5 and six.
It's sort of a witty commentary on the story that's come before.
Yeah, so they're making their getaway on a hay bale and have a
chat about going to a horticultural centre.
But no creepers, please.
It's the stylistic performances and we can be so banal, but it's
the way that Rig and McNee play off each other that feels to me as
the closest to seeds of doom, even over and above the storylines
and similarities.
It's the camaraderie between Regan and McNee are very much Liz and
Tom.
And I, we've mentioned before.
Was it Hinchcliffe who said he wanted an Avengers style, but
between the leagues.
I think he certainly gets it.
I actually, even at the time thinking, without using the words, but
as a doctor and Sarah, intimate.
Oh, you see, I don't think so at all.
And in fact, I...
No.
In fact, Tom is really cold all the way through, Seeds of Doom, and
really angry and dismissive.
And he's... short with Sarah, though, a few times.
And so the kind of warmth.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't relationships sometimes go that way?
That's it.
Because you know where that was coming from in Seeds of Doom
though.
But that's because both he and Dougie Canfield were so unhappy
with the script, apparently. that they said, you know, we've got
to ramp it up somehow.
He's kind of unpleasant to her, I think, whereas Steed, like just
the warm from the way they dig at each other, Steve, and Mrs. Peel
is wonderful.
Like she mocks him, he mocks her.
We didn't even mention the cactus, you know, we're almost out of
time.
So I think that's the last thing we're going to talk about.
There's a dildo in the event.
There is this very phallically shaped cactus that's put under
Steve... not the same cactus under the settee.
No, indeed.
It's foot under steed seat, and he notices it and takes it back to
Emma, who says that it is poisonous or venomous. would have killed
him.
And then it rolls under the settee.
And this is a sign of how dynamic things are on the Avengers, even
though it was filmed, they had the same kind of script
turnaround.
I am convinced that there was a scene in there where someone
attacks them in Steed's flat and falls on the cactus and that was
dropped, but we still have this, we have a vestigial phallic
cactus in the event.
Is that the name of this episode?
That's just the Avengers to a team. handing it to each other.
Yeah, it's delightful.
Oh, I think I'm going to go back and watch the whole thing.
What was that other show we did the podcast when I can't
remember?
No idea.
Well, that's definitely all the time we have for the Avengers this
week.
Don't worry, we will be back on Doctor Who next week with The Mask
of Mad Dragra.
Nathan and I will be back and Todd will be joining us.
Richard, you'll join us again. climbing up into that octahedron
loading up there.
I remember to wear long trousers.
Yes, you will be back for Horror of Fangs Rock.
Definite threat.
Season 15.
Do please join us.
Find us online with Flightthrough Entires.com, flight through
entirety on Facebook and iTunes, FTE podcast on Twitter.
And don't forget, we also have our 2nd podcast, James Bond
commentary is on Bond Finger up and running.
So that's bondfinger.com or at bondfingercast on Twitter
bondfinger on Facebook as well.
Until then, thank you very much for listening, and may all your
champagne be perfectly chilled.
I'm Brendan.
Thank you very much.
Good night, Chin Chin.
Backwards, flat your entirety with Nathan Boffinley, Brendan Jones
and Richard Stone.
This episode, sexiest exposition trope, was recording on July the
11th.
The next episode will be released on September 13th.
You can find much the same excitement as this story in our new
bomb finger commentary on from Russia with love.
Although probably not a green man.
Hello and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety, the only Doctor
Who podcast, which this week is talking about the Avengers.
I'll have the fan fan there.
I'm Brendan.