In You’ll Catch Your Death, villains created a virus which makes people sneeze themselves to death. Before they can monetize their invention, they try to kill anyone with enough knowledge in their field to stop them. In The Rotters, villains have created a chemical that quickly destroys wood. Before they can monetize their invention, they try to kill anyone with enough knowledge in their field to stop them. We therefore have a repeatable formula that can be used for Avengers episodes, and the episodes almost write themselves. That’s ok, as long as those pesky viewers don’t notice the trick.

The formula is a pretty good one. You think of a weird invention that would be life changing or life destroying on a sufficient scale that the world could be held to ransom, or it could be used by one country against another. The villains embark on a killing spree. The skills of the experts who are dying provide the vital clue for Steed and Tara to discover the plot. They try to save other experts, leading them on a trail of meeting some eccentric people, until eventually they find the villains and punch lots of them in the face or hit them with things. Somewhere along the line, Tara gets captured and has to be rescued by Steed.

It’s not bad, is it. The biggest flaw in the formula is the lack of logic in the villains’ plans. Instead of killing a lot of experts, if they just got on with their plan to hold the world to ransom with their invention, they might just have walked away with a billion pounds. Likewise, if the villains in You’ll Catch Your Death had simply sold their virus to the highest bidder, they would have been more likely to get away with their scheme. Once they start killing anyone who could provide an antidote, it’s small-scale, murderous criminality, in comparison to the moustache-twirling master plan, and it gets them noticed before they can go after the big money. I suppose we can’t necessarily expect logic from criminals, but these are quite specifically very clever individuals. In fact they are geniuses, who have invented things that nobody else could, so it’s odd that they are so clumsy with their plans. Then again, there are different kinds of intelligence, and perhaps the kind of brain that invents something remarkable is not the kind of brain that puts together a flawless plan for criminal activity.

That brings us to another interesting aspect of The Avengers, which I don’t think I’ve commented on before: the class dynamics of the series. So many thriller/crime/espionage shows are all about showing us lowlife criminals being defeated by dashing heroes. There is generally a clear class distinction between criminal and detective/secret agent/hero. The Avengers tends to be different, with villains who hail from the upper echelons of society, either financially or professionally. It doesn’t always happen, but it happens enough to mark out the series as something with slightly different values to most of the television landscape that surrounded it. That’s even present here in the henchmen, not just the mastermind. Even if the crime boss is a middle or upper class character, we would expect the henchmen to be lowlife crims, but instead we have two toffs who sneer about their working class victims. It stops short of demonising wealth or intelligence, because Steed is also wealthy and intelligent, so it works really well as a demonstration that villainy and immorality are found in all walks of life. In fact, those things are possibly found even more at the highest levels of society. It’s just that those people are better able to protect themselves from the consequences of their hideousness.

A lot of money seems to have been thrown at The Avengers, due to its success in the US, so the production values are generally very high. This is a rare disappointment. I’ve often noticed the face of a stuntman captured accidentally on screen, but the fight scenes in this one are just awful. Even on a smaller 60s television, I can’t imagine anyone failing to notice Steed’s face completely change on several occasions, and if you don’t notice that then you’ll probably spot the caps magically appearing back on the villains’ heads when he’s fighting them. More importantly, the dry-rotting wood idea just couldn’t be translated onto the screen. It only works once, and that’s when Steed’s pencil is crumbling. The rest of the time, things disappear instead of crumbling, which really doesn’t work with the idea that they were trying to bring to the screen, especially as it’s so inconsistent. It must be a very selective rot, which makes a door vanish in an instant, but leaves the frame unharmed. Has the rot finally set in for this series as well? Despite the repeated idea, almost halfway through the final season, it doesn’t feel like it yet.   RP

The view from across the pond:

I really do try to like The Avengers.  If nothing else, the show does do one thing incredibly well: it knows how to hook you.  The Rotters may offer one of the funniest hooks to date.  As Sir James is locking his door, the camera zooms into the lock as he turns the key when a zap occurs.  I was convinced he was electrocuted.  The camera pulls back, and the door itself is gone leaving only the handle that he was holding.  The baddies stand on the other side and shoot Sir James.  I laughed deeply.  I may need help.  When this same tactic was used later with Tara hiding in a shed, I roared.  It was even funnier the second time around.  When we finally use it on a villain by shooting the steps out from under him, the effect doesn’t take away the entire building; the gas knows exactly what to target.   It’s actually more believable this way and works wonderfully as a way to stop the guy from escaping, but it takes away from everything that lead up to it, which is a shame because it was effective comedy.  It’s moments like that where I get bummed that the writers didn’t care about consistency.

That said, this show should absolutely be viewed as nothing more than a comedy.  For some reason, the day I watched this I had the Police Squad music in my head – don’t ask – and it dawned on me that I would never take that show nearly as seriously as I take this one.  Maybe if I took it like Police Squad, I’d like it more.  It has the same sort of quirky characters.  Look at Prof Palmer who stands guard over a mighty oak, or redwood, or whatever it will be in a thousand years.  He randomly pulls a revolver out to shoot pigeons away.  What does he expect to do, wait there for a thousand years to see it grow?  Then there’s the even quirkier Pym who listens to wood.  When he is crushed and says the word “dry”, Tara asks him if he needs a drink.  Suddenly, he sounds totally ok again, declines the drink and then goes back to dying with the final words of “dry…rot!”  (Mind you, this is a guy who gets shot at from the lower level of a tower and his quick thinking is to close the trap door leading to his location!  That made me chuckle at the sheer simplicity of it all.)  And there are the titles of the various institutes, like The Institute of Timber Technology.

Meanwhile I’m teleported back to many years ago when I was playfully teasing a very good and dear friend.   He seemed put out by it all, so I apologized in what I hoped was the most winning British phrase I could think of: “Sorry old chap,” I said.  “It’s the war and all that!”  I should have thrown in a “wot!” at the end, just to make it stick.  We both laughed and still use that phrase to this day.  But I don’t know where it came from – not even the expression so much as the idea of it.  Do the Brits really have that overly polite way of speaking even when you’re needling someone?  What made us both think it?  Maybe it dates back to this series – maybe it’s been there far longer, but whatever the case, Kenneth and George are really sporting chaps, wot!  I love their logic for not killing Tara: it wouldn’t be cricket. It’s just not done!  Duh!!  All this time I’ve been ranting about people who don’t kill Steed and Tara and we actually have two blokes who explain why they won’t do it.  It wouldn’t be sporting.  If only someone explained it earlier!

Unfortunately, there are a number of weak points but none really derailed my enjoyment like they usually do.  I’m especially bothered by the axe-wielding villain who attacks Tara while she’s driving.  Rather than run him over, she gets out of her car and runs away.  Come on!  This isn’t a trained spy, it’s a girl Steed picked up and offered a job.  (However, when she lobbed a bottle at the back of a guy’s head and knocked him down, I did applaud.  While laughing.  As I said, I may need help…)  I also get sick of the villain that explains everything so gleefully to the guy he’s going to kill.  Here too, however, I have a pleasant flip side.  I loved his explanation for what he was doing, that poor deluded megalomaniac.  He says, “Consider a world without wood Miss King… My dry rot will make the nuclear bomb… the greatest earthquake… the mightiest volcano, seem as insignificant as a tear drop in Niagara!”  Yes, an over-the-top maniac is delightful to listen to whatever his rationale.

So this wasn’t the most memorable episode ever, but it was very good anyway and offered a lot of laughs.  I really think they’ve dispensed with logic utterly at this point, but I’m not hoping for anything more.  I’ll just open each episode while humming the Police Squad theme and maybe I’ll appreciate these a lot more.  Surely this show isn’t serious!  (It isn’t serious, but don’t call it Shirley!)  ML

Read next in the Junkyard… The Avengers: Invasion of the Earthmen