Bookmonkey's Top Five Episodes of The Avengers

So a few months back my friend Ron lent me the DVD boxed set, The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Mega-set, which contained 54 episodes of the classic '60s series, including three lost episodes of the Ian Keel years (season one) and an Emma Peel cameo episode of The New Avengers (I'm pretty sure they just used archival footage and another actress to do the voice). Anyway, after finishing this thoughouly fun show (and I recommend the entire series to anyone who is interested, I thought I would give my top five personal favourite episodes.

For a brief taste of what to expect from The Avengers, I recommend you head to YouTube and check out The Case of the Missing Corpse Basically this three minute short was created to advertise the fact that the show would now be in colour, and in those three minutes it explains the plot of pretty much any episode of the series.

5. The Man Eater of Surrey Green - Ages before Mulder and Scully took years to stop an alien invasion plot in The X-Files, Steed and Peel faced down a mind controlling plant from outer space with plans of world domination in one episode. This episode features monsters from outer space, a terrifying conspiracy and a race against the extinction of mankind.

4. The Gravediggers - This episode has everything I’ve grown to love about The Avengers, eccentric millionaires, the promise of an invading army and one of the best climaxes I’ve ever seen. To save Mrs. Peel, who has been tied to a train track, Steed must fight off three brutes and stop the train, which, by the way is one of those mini trains for little kids you find at amusement parks.

3. Too Many Christmas Trees - Possibly the creepiest Christmas themed episode of anything I’ve ever seen, it has a happy shout out to Steed’s previous partner, Cathy Gale, a very Dickensian Christmas party and the creepiest Santa I’ve seen since The Nightmare Before Christmas.

2. The House that Jack Built - An Emma Peel-focused episode, this one involves her inheriting a house from an aunt and finding out that the house is a lot deadlier than she thinks. This episode finally gave some back story to the character and had a really interesting concept.

1. The Girl From Auntie - My hands-down, favourite episode of the series, this John Steed-focused episode has an Emma Peel impostor, and rather than simply arresting her or what have you, Steed simply partners up with this girl and gets her help to find the real Mrs. Peel. The entire episode was hilarious, involving Russian agents, a knitting circle and an auction house that can get you anything you desire.

I'm really glad I got the opportunity to check out this series as I was vaguely familiar with it before hand, but can now say I've seen a lot of really great '60s television, as well as an introduction to a sub-genre of Science Fiction I had never heard of before; Spy-Fi, wherein espionage stories are told which involve science-fiction technology or concepts.

Genre Character of the Week: Dr. David Keel

Last week my friend Ron leant me a massive DVD box set – The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset. The boxed set collects every episode of The Avengers starring Diana Rigg as Emma Peel (even a ’77 episode of The New Avengers where she appears in a cameo). As I am definitely a completionist, I started with the three lost episodes from season one included in the bonus disc, and thank goodness I did as it allowed me to see the only three surviving episodes of the first season, starring Ian Hendry as our Genre Character of the Week, Dr. David Keel (Pictured left with Patrick Macnee as John Steed).

As far as pilot’s go, The Avenger’s starts out with a bang. We are introduced to Dr. David Keel, a man happily looking foward to wedded bliss with his secretary/fiancé Peggy (don't worry kids, getting married to your secretary was acceptable in the '60s, just check out any season of Mad Men to see what I mean). Anyway, Peggy may have seen a criminal mistakenly dropping off a package of cocaine to her boss's office, so obviously she had to die. After seeing her gunned down in the street in front of him, Dr. Keel was out for revenge – unfortunately, only the first 15 minutes of the pilot still exist, so that’s all I know. It is fair to assume that he and Agent John Steed solve the crime and decide to partner up. Next we see Dr. Keel solving a crime with the help of his new receptionist Cathy (and without Steed at all) at a Russian circus and in his final remaining appearance we actually get to see him and Steed work together in the partnership that started this classic television series.

Unfortunately for people who want to see more of the earliest episodes, most are missing or were broadcast live, so there are no recordings, and there never will be. Dr. Keel comes across as a man with a strong moral compass, working to do the right, and is often in over his head, but with the help of agent John Steed, he did a lot of good in the 25 episdoes in which he appeared.