Don Leaver did not feel welcome in the filmed era of the show. There is no doubt that he and Hammond kept the videotape era fresh and inventive under trying pressures.MikeR wrote:
Don Leaver has said that he actually preferred directing a videotaped episode in the confined space of a television studio, because it was a challenge to get it right first time without the luxury of having the safety net of being able to do more than a solitary take. Having looked at various scripts I can see that Patrick Macnee often ad-libbed his lines to more or less say what the screenplay indicated. Though further to this, he was also very good at getting things back on track when someone else in the cast got things wrong, ad-libbing to cover up the mistake.
Am still enjoying plunging and replunging into the book.