The New Avengers Season Two Eps 8 - 10

 

One would imagine that, afforded the luxury of being the series’ only two parter, would mean a complex plot too knotty to deal with in forty seven minutes. `K Is For Kill` Part One; `The Tiger Wakes` however has less plot in it than an average episode with a supposed mystery that even the slowest viewer would work out before the combined intelligence of the Avengers and a French police inspector manage. It would be a little less straightforward were it not for a prologue set in Tibet which drops a line that a hermit who appears to be in his thirties is actually decades older. Laying it on we then see a young Russian soldier attacking a seemingly isolated garage in the Sixties only to be found minutes later having aged decades. We’ve pretty much got it by now but the point is further laboured by attacks happening in 1977 in France. So the trio hightail it the French countryside for an episode of dodging bullets and scratching heads clearly unable to hear millions of viewers explaining what is happening. 

Which is that somehow (and the somehow is really the only mystery) Russian Cold War soldiers have had their ageing process frozen and are running around taking out targets that decades later are empty or museums. Quite how these people from the Forties can find their way around dressed in full uniform or where they get their weapons from is overlooked. It is an interesting enough just poorly executed. It is clearly meant to be pin sharp from the time credited subtitles but even one of those is betrayed when we immediately see a clock telling a totally different time. The Russians are stereotypical in the extreme and the fact that while everyone else is deadly serious the Avengers carry on as wittily as usual seems out of place. Still we get some dynamic action sequences set in woods and some humour courtesy of a retired General who now looks after a museum that is attacked. That he ends up personally knowing the soldier who led the assault removes what little credulity the episode had.

There’s a scene in `K Is For Kill` Part Two; `Tiger by the Tail` where Steed, Purdey and Gambit are literally meandering around Paris unsure what to do next and that is very much the feel of this second part of the story. There’s not enough plot to fill the run time hence a number of slow or unnecessary sequences pad it out. These are somewhat forced and lacking in the usual snappy Avengers dialogue. What it boils down to is that after all the soldiers awakened in part one have now been defeated there are just two K Agents left, assassins whose initial target is to the bafflement of all concerned the retire General. He makes his killing fairly easy as he happens to be standing on the steps of his beloved museum blowing a bugle at the time! I was sorry to see him go as he was a comedic character who sort of worked and his uncertain grasp of reality was a neat mirror to the main plot of the revived soldiers from the past. Anyway, his death is merely a means to an end as the remaining assassin is intending to dole out the same treatment to the French President.

Nobody actually says “sacre bleu” but the portrayal of the French in this episode is almost as cliched as that of the Russians. This reaches a low with a couple of scenes involving a French waiter who talks to himself (ie the viewers) about what he see mugging for all he’s worth. When it gets (eventually) to the sequence where the assassination is to take place the episode finally moves up a gear but is set up through too many unlikely coincidences to really ring true. Like for example how come nobody but Gambit notices the lack of a church bell at mid-day, the moment when the President is due to emerge from his car? The story could have fitted perfectly into a standard single episode but with drawn out battle sequences in part one and unnecessary scenes in part two it struggles to hold interest.

In the Seventies some of the ideas in `Complex` would be considered a bit far- fetched but watched from this distance it’s an interesting piece from a time when new technology was often viewed as a threat rather than a help. The Avengers are called into the search for a super efficient KGB agent called Scapina who remains elusively free despite numerous attempts to find him. Each time someone gets close they die. The trail leads to Toronto in Canada and an episode that is mostly set in a building controlled entirely by a super computer. Writer Dennis Spooner rather accurately predicts the sort of automatic mechanisms that have us frothing in supermarkets today and considering some of them didn’t come into our lives for decades after this story was written it seems quite prescient. Unexpected clarity in the story area!

It soon becomes apparent to the viewer- though not necessarily Steed and co- that Scapina is in fact the computer. We keep cutting back to its screen dialogue wherein it is clearly using some of the building’s electronic accoutrements to dispense death. One character falls from a window, another is scooped into a hidden incinerator and yet another steps into a lift only for it to drop instantly before he is in it. The production also provides an eerie tension inside the building with an increasing number of odd sounds suggesting danger round every corner. The building thus becomes something of a character complete with what seems like an electronic heartbeat in the sound mix.

Outside the direction is eager to show off the fact that they really are filming in Canada with wider shots reminiscent of many American police shows of the time. The special card before the opening credits did already tell us that though. A running gag about Gambit getting arrested plays well adding a touch of humour though the agents we meet on either side are not very memorable.

The ending is inventive as Steed and Gambit can’t get into the building as Purdey is trapped and the air being sucked out. It does get a little silly when the computer’s screen types out HELP! Being the time it was, the director has Purdey get soaking wet when she sets off the sparkler system, part of her dress already having been torn off minutes earlier. The computer itself looks fairly realistic in some respects tough some coloured patterns and dramatic lights give it an air of fiction too.