The Avengers International Fan Forum

Allard · Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:12 am Post subject: 1.26 - Dragonsfield

LOST EPISODE - episode summary from The Avengers Dissolute website:

With work nearly completed on a new material to shield astronauts from radiation, saboteurs prepare for one final assault. Complicated inter-personal relationships within the team suggest a traitor and Saunders, from Security, tracks the gang. Meanwhile, Steed tracks Saunders and rescues him from being killed. With the saboteurs in custody, the traitor is unmasked as Susan Summers, Alford's assistant, and Steed neutralises this final threat.

AnthonyDurrant · Nutshell Joined: 20 Sep 2013 Posts: 46

The episodes involving technoterrorism, including Dragonsfield, have a special resonance for me in that l had to take computer courses in college to attain my multimedia certificate. One of these was abruptly canceled because our teacher had accepted a position at another school and no replacement could be found. The college put together a special course that l took for three Sundays that summer. I ended up with a D, though l don't know if it was for the canceled class or the special one.

Frankymole · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:12 pm Post subject:

The picture of "Morris Perry" on the cast list isn't him.

This is Morris Perry as Second Technician, from the Tele-Snaps. I'm not sure who the other fellow, above, is. If he's the guy killed (or severely harmed) at the start he may well be an uncredited extra.

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dissolute · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 4:04 pm Post subject:

Thanks, I'll revise it.
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Frankymole · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:41 am Post subject:

dissolute · Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2021 9:58 pm Post subject:

I just stumbled across Herb Nelson's contract for this episode, which shows it was filmed as episode 23 in production order, on 13 September 1961.

This means every single published source about this and the other episodes screened in December 1961 is wrong!
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Frankymole · Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2021 11:16 pm Post subject:

What source did they use? Camera scripts?
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denis rigg · A Touch of Brimstone Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 2615

Interesting case. Apparently Alan Hayes needs help here, who worked with materials.

In my opinion it looks like the error may be in the incorrect identification of production episodes 23 and 25, ie The Deadly Air and Dragonsfield.

We have the camera script for the episode A Change of Bait, so it is actually episode 24 in the production order. We have a rehearsal script for the last episode, Dead of Winter, based on that it also makes it obvious that this is number 26.

But what do we know about The Deadly Air and Dragonsfield?

According to Alan Hayes' books:

The Deadly Air

ABC Production Nimber: 3420

Surviving material: Synopses, Production photographs and Telesnaps.

Rehearsal dates are unknown! Camera rehearsed on 7 September 1961, recording - same day.

Dragonsfield

ABC Production Nimber: 3422

Surviving material: Synopses, Production photographs and Telesnaps.

Rehearsal dates are unknown! Camera rehearsed on 27 September 1961, recording - same day.

The result is the following:

Since the rehearsal dates for both episodes The Deadly Air and Dragonsfield are unknown, it looks like the recording dates could have been guesswork (that is, for example, if Alan had papers that episodes 23 and 25 were recorded on September 7 and 27, but these papers did not include the names of the episodes).

As for the ABC Production Nimbers, there could also be guesswork for The Deadly Air and Dragonsfield.

If so, we go to disclosure in the form of the following production order:

23. Dragonsfield
24. A Change of Bait
25. The Deadly Air
26. Dead of Winter
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dissolute · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 3:26 am Post subject:

Yes, that's my understanding. The production numbers are clear as we are only missing one and they are sequential. It's the tape numbers we don't know entirely as they are not sequential.
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Mrs Peel, you're needed!
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Every episode from 1961 to 1977 plus more trivia than you can shake a brolly at.

denis rigg · A Touch of Brimstone Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 2615

Frankymole · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 6:22 am Post subject:

I suppose it makes sense they would hold off showing the episode that has no Dr Keel, so they get the audience back on board with episodes with the pair of stars, after the strike.
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denis rigg · A Touch of Brimstone Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 2615

mousemeat · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:53 pm Post subject:

dissolute · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2021 2:10 pm Post subject:

darren · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2021 8:26 am Post subject:

This is an episode that I'd really love see.

mousemeat · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2021 8:32 am Post subject:

denis rigg · A Touch of Brimstone Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 2615

denis rigg · A Touch of Brimstone Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 2615

Frankymole · Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 3:56 am Post subject:

The tapes themselves were huge things, and treated as re-usable for ALL programmes. They were not seen as a permanent storage medium, being too costly to keep "untouched", so were taped over, again and again, with other productions. The way that permanent copies were kept was on the much cheaper medium of 16mm film telerecordings, whereby the programmes were filmed and those negatives then used to make copies for any buyers, e.g. overseas television stations that wanted to show the series. This is how the Cathy Gales survived (just! since the negatives were in danger of being deemed unbroadcastable and unsaleable in the 80s and might've been junked then).

Why Ian Hendry's The Frighteners episode survived in the vaults is anyone's guess, but luckily it did and was able to be stumbled upon by Dave Rogers and saved from oblivion (and used on This Is Your Life). Even more mysterious is how copies of several Keel episodes made their way over to America and UCLA's library. We may never know. But it's fun to speculate, and the chance that some other episodes are out there, somewhere in the world, is ever-present. After all, "Girl on the Trapeze" and the other early season 1 "live" episodes were long-thought to have never been recorded at all, yet one has come back to us.

Denis has a good point when he says "why should we believe that they were exactly destroyed like many other videotapes at the time?". The "official" record of wiped episodes is often in error; lots of Dr Who episodes have been recovered that officially no longer exist - film prints found in car boot sales, hanging on a door handle in a carrier bag in an editing suite, used as doorstops, slung in church admin buildings' basements... even sometimes in forgotten cupboards at TV stations having a clear-out decades later. And some are known to be in the hands of collectors who have not shared them (as Tunnel of Fear was rumoured to be for a long time).

I'd like to know how Tunnel of Fear escaped, but that's under a cloak of mystery too, perhaps protecting the innocent... after all, films have been known to "wander" from their original owners....
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mousemeat · Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:30 am Post subject: