The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 6 (Big Finish)

Written by: Berkley Mather, Ian Potter, John Dorney
Adapted by: Rae Leaver
Based on storylines by: James Mitchell and John Kruse
Directed by: Ken Bentley
Starring:
Anthony Howell (Dr Keel), Julian Wadham (John Steed), Lucy Briggs-Owen (Carol Wilson), Michael Lumsden (The Deacon),John Culshaw (Sir William Bonner),Dan Starkey (One-Ten), Pete Colins (Harry Black)
Music by: Toby Hrycek-Robinson
Cover Art by: Anthony Lamb
Duration: 180' approx
Originally Released July 2016

Big Finish’s exploration deep into the darkest heart of the missing Avengers episodes was always going to be a finite journey. There are, after all, only so many adventures for Steed and Keel to reconstruct.  And so this penultimate boxset sees the usual number of instalments reduced from four to three.

As with Volume Five, we’re also exploring some of the most missing of episodes where only a couple of typed pages of outline – of the type Terry Nation might have delivered to Dennis Spooner’s doorstep before vanishing into the night in his sports car – survive. And ironically this again creates a consistency and characterization the more complete episodes sometimes lacked. It was an inevitable reality of sixties television production that many writers would only have seen a handful of episodes of the show they’d been commissioned for. The difference in having a Steed and Keel crafted by people who’d followed this endeavour all the way through is notable.

The Frighteners

One of the key problems in any crime-of-the-week drama is the insertion of the regulars into the case. Some shows make this straightforward by having their leads be police detectives simply assigned to the investigation. Others almost made such a feature of the improbability that, Murder She Wrote style, audiences began to wonder if the lead was actually a serial killer and each episode a meticulous frame job. The Avengers has pinged back and forth from Steed recruiting Keel to help with a mission of national security that he’s been assigned, and Keel begging a return favour from Steed to help some patient or friend in need.

Of the former, The Frighteners is a bit of an oddity. It never quite convinces that “the Department” that Steed works for would trouble itself with a ‘frighteners service’ – a criminal enterprise renting out experts in intimidation and warning beatings. In fact, this particular case of a millionaire attempting to have a lothario gold digger warned off his daughter seems like something Steed would firmly file under “Not My Problem.” It may have worked better with the beaten lothario one of Chelsea doctor Keel’s patients and Steed dragged in that way.

It is, however, wonderfully daft. One of the frighteners gets his neck broken in a fight with Keel and Steed and is then extorted into helping them – led around town as their informant on the threat that they otherwise won’t bring him to the hospital to get his broken neck fixed before his spinal column gets cut by the jagged bone.  And the final resolution is so completely left field that adapter Rae Leaver suggests that it’s the result of someone fluffing their line in the original television recording and then the entire case winging an entirely new ending off the top of their heads.

Death on the Slipway

Our second case in this boxset is much more up Steed’s alley. A shipping yard responsible for construction of the Royal Navy’s latest experimental nuclear submarine is suspected of being targeted by the usual Unnamed Eastern European Foreign Superpower. Steed’s assigned to keep an eye on things, undercover as an metallurgist from the Admirality but immediately finds himself helping the police investigate a suspicious death. Very few Avengers stories are whodunnits but present themselves as games of cat and mouse between our heroes and their targets and this is no exception. But it’s an exceptionally satisfying one as we follow the two strands in parallel – Steed following the clues to identify the mole at work on the site, and the foreign agent trying to evade him and his increasingly fraught relationship with the British asset he’s blackmailed into helping him. Steed may be approaching Peak Flirt in these scripts but there’s rarely been the sense of danger and high stakes as is to be found here.

Tunnel of Fear

It’s hard to identify exactly what makes Tunnel of Fear so relatively forgettable for an Avengers episode. Whatever the reasons, the end result is a rather by-the-numbers story. It does stand out in featuring one of Steed’s other assets – a wrongly convicted man whom Steed has gotten out of prison in return for infiltrating criminal gangs for him. It’s a wonder Keel isn’t jealous as that’s usually the sort of work he gets landed with. The use of hypnotism feels very weak though, even if it gives Julian Wadham the opportunity to have fun playing Steed’s complete refusal to be hypnotized.

One unique point of interest, though, is that since this audio was released the original TV episode has actually been found. Allowing us a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the story John Dorney had to write almost from scratch to the actual end result.

A slimmer volume than most, The Avengers Lost Episode Volume 6 still contains enough drama, action and wit to satisfy any fan of our heroes. With Tunnel of Fear it also provides that rare opportunity for fans to get an insight into how close to the 'real thing' the other reconstructed scripts may have come. That alone makes it an essential purpose for the most devoted.