NEW -The Avengers Series 1-3 Episode Guide

[michaellevenson]

Sadly only three episodes of series 1 survive of this 60s spyfi classic. Ian Hendry starred in the first series as Dr David Keel, John Steed a secondary character, who obviously would take over when Hendry left.
SERIES1
THE GIRL ON THE TRAPEZE.
Dr. Keel rescues a girl who tries to commit suicide by jumping into the Thames River. He discovers that the young lady is a trapeze artist with a visiting circus and foreign agents seek to capture her in order to force her father, a defecting scientist, to return to his country behind the Iron Curtain

TUNNEL OF FEAR.
Top-secret documents are disappearing and Steed trails them to a tawdry fairgrounds in Southend. He's captured, hypnotized and left bound in a train tunnel to await his fate.

THE FRIGHTENERS
Sir Thomas Waller disapproves of his daughter's choice in boyfriends and hires a criminal to scare off an unwanted suitor. Keel and Steed rescue the lad from the criminal's henchman and discover a clue to an extortion plot.

 

[michaellevenson]

SERIES 2. Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman as John Steed and Cathy Gale. A selection of episodes. The early years of the show were very much studio recorded, very little outside filming. It wasn't the all out action series it later became. The images reflect that.

PROPELLANT 23.
Steed and Cathy travel to Marseilles to pick up a flask of a secret new rocket fuel. When they arrive at the airport, they find the bottle gone and their contact dead. The pair battle foreign agents to regain the propellant.

BULLSEYE.
An old established British arms manufacturer falls under suspicion when their weapons begin showing up illegally in Africa. Then, when several bids to take over the company fail, the majority shareholders start turning up dead. So naturally Steed helps Cathy acquire a majority stockholding...

 

[michaellevenson]

TRAITOR IN ZEBRA
An experimental satellite tracking system is jammed every time it is tested, despite its being a top secret project, and the man accused of being the traitor insists he is innocent. Steed is sent in as a military psychiatrist, and Cathy as a research chemist, to track down the real traitor

INTERCRIME.
Two small-time robbers are shot in the midst of a heist. Thing is, their killer left the bag of jewels behind. When one of the robbers recovers, he is "holed up" in Steed's apartment, where he is pumped for information about an international crime syndicate. Posing as Hilda Stern, a member of the German branch of Intercrime, Cathy infiltrates their head office. Only trouble is, the real Hilda also shows up...

 

[michaellevenson]

WARLOCK.
Steed is asked to guard a revolutionary new formula for fuel when its inventor is discovered in a coma. When he learns that the scientist was a member of a black magic cult, he and Cathy investigate.

THE WHITE DWARF.
A famous astronomer predicts that the entry into the solar system of a small star will result in the destruction of the Earth. Steed and Cathy try to discover the connection, if any, between the astronomer's dire prediction and the threats on his life

Originally series 2 was going to see Steed have two female partners, alternating between episodes. Venus Smith played by Julie Stevens was the other one, as it transpired Cathy Gale proved much more popular and her character more dynamic and Venus appeared in 6 episodes only.
A CHORUS OF FROGS
While on holiday in Greece, Steed is asked to investigate the mysterious death of a Greek deep-sea diver and part-time smuggler. He was a member of an elite group of divers called the Frogs, who are currently aboard a ship in the Mediterranean. Steed stows away to find Venus Smith there to provide the entertainment, as well as a queer scientist and his laboratory, a whip-cracking woman from China, and the hot-headed girlfriend of the dead diver.



THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
A cipher expert inexplicably commits suicide at an amusement park, of all places. Only trouble is, Venus Smith has accidentally taken a photograph of the man, still very much alive, after his reported death.

 

[michaellevenson]

SERIES 3.
THE GOLDEN FLEECE.
Leaving a Chinese restaurant Steed picks up the wrong coat and finds a cheque to the value of £5,000 drawn to a bank in Hong Kong. It becomes evident that the restaurant is the front for an international gold smuggling operation, run by big wig Mr. Lo. However, the Avengers are surprised to encounter Major Ruse, a modern Robin Hood, and his band of ex-servicemen who are exploiting the racket for a worthy cause.

THE OUTSIDE -IN MAN.
Five years earlier the British Secret Service ordered Mark Charter to assassinate Sharp, a renegade British agent who defected to the enemy state of Abarain. But now the two countries are at peace and it is Sharp who has come to broker an important arms deal in Britain on behalf of his government. Charter, supposedly dead but actually in jail, is now free and is coming after Sharp, giving Steed the unusual task of protecting an erstwhile traitor

THE WRINGER
When five of six agents all working in the same area are lost in short order, Steed is called in to find out how. He tracks down the sixth, who promptly turns Steed in as the killer of the other five. Steed is found guilty and sent for interrogation. But Cathy has more faith in Steed than his superiors, and she discovers that they are guilty of gross negligence in the management of their own interrogation facility




THE GILDED CAGE
Steed and Cathy plan to steal £3 million in gold from an obscure vault. Whilst Steed taps the resources of one J.P. Spagge to pull it off, Cathy is inexplicably arrested, tried and convicted for the renowned criminal's murder. After learning that her ordeal was a hoax arranged by Spagge's minions as a test, Cathy arranges the perfect heist—perhaps a little too perfect.

 

[michaellevenson]

BUILD A BETTER MOUSETRAP.
Angered by a noisy motor bike gang who ride on their land, elderly sisters Cynthia and Ermyntrude Peck, who claim to be witches, cast a spell which causes all the motor-bikes to stall. Not only that but almost every electronic and mechanical object in the area also tends to malfunction. Mrs. Gale in her leathers joins the gang to ask permission from the sisters to ride on their property and in the process discovers that these two sweet old dears may actually be in possession of a sophisticated long range jamming device. They may have built a better mouse-trap but it will cause some unsavoury types to beat a path to their door.

DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.
Cathy is invited to the home of an expert on mediæval attire. She arrives to find the man had left unexpectedly, and his "ward," an extremely strange young woman, looks after her. Then the girl is called away, but it soon becomes clear that Cathy is being watched, and after a series of harrowing experiences, a tortured criminal confronts her for having broken his heart. This story was remade in colour for series 5 as the episode The Joker.

DEATH A LA CARTE
A Middle eastern emir, Abdulla Akaba, comes to London as he does every year for his health check up by specialist doctor Spender. Steed believes that the emir will be killed by poisoning and poses as a chef at the hotel where he is staying.Poisoned mushrooms are detected but the emir actually dies of what appear to be natural causes. Has Dr. Spender engineered this ? Or a member of the emir's staff? And why? The Avengers investigate.


MAN WITH TWO SHADOWS
Courtesy of a tip-off from an almost hopelessly brainwashed agent, it is learned that doubles are being trained to replace certain key people, such as a nuclear physicist and a super-spy—Steed! After Steed's double shows up at a resort to make the switch, Cathy must decide if Steed is still Steed—if not, she is under orders to kill him.

 

[michaellevenson]

THE MEDICINE MEN.
Steed discovers that somebody is flooding the market with cheap imitations of medical products being manufactured by the Willis-Sopwith Pharmaceutical Company. Furthermore, there is a plan to distribute poisoned medicines in an oil-rich Middle Eastern country to start a revolution and drive out the British companies there.

DRESSED TO KILL
All of the country's early warning systems bar one go off, mistakenly suggesting a nuclear attack. When land is about to be sold, adjacent to the one that was not sounded, interested buyers are invited to a fancy dress party on board a train. Steed, dressed as a gambler, and Mrs. Gale, a monk - and later a highwaywoman - join the party, where they meet the likes of Robin Hood and Napoleon Bonaparte and have to decide which one is a killer and why?

THE UNDERTAKERS
Undertakers arrive with a coffin to take away a businessman—before he is dead! When Steed goes looking for the man he was to escort to New York City, he finds him locked away, inaccessible, in an exclusive retirement home. When the man's neighbour winds up in the same place under strange circumstances, Cathy shows up at the home as an employee to find impostors taking their places.

 

[michaellevenson]

SECOND SIGHT.
Steed is involved in the escort of a pair of corneas to be used in a graft to give sight to Martin Halvarsson, a millionaire who has been blind since the Second World War. A doctor who opines that there is something wrong with the procedure is murdered and then it turns out that the donor of the corneas was also killed, apparently by one of Halvarsson's staff. The Avengers investigate.

THE LITTLE WONDERS.
Steed and Cathy search the baggage of the Reverend Harbottle, RIP, which contains a gun, ammunition, and an antique doll with a head full of microfilm. Posing as Harbottle's replacement, Steed infiltrates a very old crime syndicate, Bibliotek. When their dying leader asks his "flock" to vote on his replacement, his assistant, Sister Johnson, does the voting for them—with a machine gun!

MANDRAKE
Steed attends the funeral of a former colleague and not only suspects foul play but is struck by the fact that the tiny, isolated Cornish churchyard contains the corpses of several worthies hardly to be associated with the area. His investigations lead to a sinister assassination bureau, Mandrake Investments, who bury poison victims in the churchyard because its proximity to an old tin mine means that the nature of the soil prevents the detection of the poison.

 

[michaellevenson]

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME.
When a spate of strange diseases breaks out on a global scale, the Avengers find out that grain being distributed by the United Food and Dressing Limited, has been deliberately tampered with and infected with ergot.Whilst investigating the firm's headquarters Mrs. Gale is caught and whisked off to a reconstruction of Ancient Rome, ruled by a mad, would-be Caesar called Bruno. His aim is to unleash bubonic plague upon the world and intends to test its effects on Mrs. Gale.

LOBSTER QUADRILLE.
In investigating the death of a colleague who has died in a fire Steed and Mrs. Gale find an ornately-carved chess piece in the dead man's possession. This leads them to an importation business. On the face of it the commodity is lobsters but it is the front for a gang trying to smuggle heroin into the country.

Link below to Series 4 guide.

The Avengers Series 4 guide

Series 4 - Mrs Peel's first story. 1. THE TOWN OF NO RETURN. Steed and Emma visit a mysterious coastal town where several agents have vanished, and where the locals are not all they seem.

www.imdforums.com

 

[michaellevenson]

Esprit De Corps
Young Highland Guardsman Corporal Craig is found shot, his corpse containing bullets from three separate guns. He has been shot by a firing squad, for treason, and when Steed re-enlists in the Army under his old rank of Major, he could very well end up the same way, thanks to a bizarre plot by latter day Jacobites, whose plan is to overthrow the monarchy and crown a descendant of the Stuart dynasty, a descendant who just happens to be Mrs. Gale!

November Five
Michael Dyter, the newly elected M.P. for South East Anglia, is assassinated after he has threatened to expose a government plot concerning the theft of a nuclear warhead. Mrs. Gale replaces him as a potential political candidate but she and Steed discover that Dyter is actually alive and in possession of the war-head, which he intends to set off on November the Fifth.

 

[michaellevenson]