The Avengers International Fan Forum

Lhbizness · Guest

Ok, so I have a question for anyone who has been listening to the Big Finish adaptations of Season 1. Does adapting what was originally intended to be a television script to a radio format materially change the script or the characterization?

It's an odd situation, because those scripts are technically canonical but we never get to see them on TV (except for the few surviving episodes) and so we never see the original actors or all the changes that could have been made during shooting. So how much do we experience what the Hendry series was like, or how it transformed?

(Apologies if something like that has been asked before - I'm new here.)

mousemeat · Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 9:48 am Post subject: Re: The Avengers on Radio vs. TV

Lhbizness · Guest

Frankymole · Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:39 am Post subject:

There is no change in time period. They're set in 1961.

Barely a word has been changed - there is a little dialogue added to set scenes, like the passerby being asked about Dr Tredding's surgery in episode 1, as the otherwise wordless scene of the intruder finding and entering the building would be hard to portray.

The scripts are the same otherwise, and the music authentic to the period and feel of the originals and the production (sound effects etc) sympathetic.

I don't know what "canon" really means, beyond religious works, but they're the proper stories if that is what you mean.

I didn't see the Hendry episodes in 1961 and don't know anyone who has, so it's hard to judge whether it is "transformed", but the episodes seem true to the "feel" surviving ones (and "Hot Snow's" first reel).

Why not try them yourself and judge?

Have you tried the South African radio series with Donald Monat and Diane Appleby as Steed and Emma? The BF ones are more faithful than that.
_________________
Last watched: Tunnel of Fear.

Lhbizness · Guest

Alan · Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 2:26 pm Post subject:

I think they're as authentic as it is possible to make them. We don't have the soundtracks from 1961 (unlike we do for 1960s Doctor Who, for instance), but as Franky says, the adaptator John Dorney has treated the scripts as gospel and has only made changes where it was impossible to convey something visual in audio alone - but even that has been done sympathetically.

I say this as someone who has studied Series 1 in great detail (I've even written a book on those episodes).

Of course what we don't know is just how much the episodes as transmitted varied from the scripts (we know that much of Hot Snow was changed between script and screen following an eleventh hour meeting between actors and the director, but of course all we now have is the script).
_________________
Alan
--
Hidden Tiger Books