5.12 - The Superlative Seven

[peabody]

Discuss, review and rate The Superlative Seven, production completed Monday 13th March 1967.

Teleplay by Brian Clemens
Directed by Sidney Hayers

[cyberrich]

Not a bad episode, but not brilliant either. My least but one fave, after Breakfast. My problem is it's lack of originality, being more or less the exact same plot as Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians novel. The very nature of it being a whodunnit and it's all too familiar plot doesn't bode well for too many repeated views of this one. Great cast though Charlotte Rampling might even have made a good Avenger, though I find her style of acting a little cold, so she may have been unable to have created as warm a character as Emma. 6/10.

[anti-clockwise]

yes agree. Not a great one like I had remembered it to be.

[darren]

I really like this episode. It helps that it's a rewrite of Dressed to Kill. The setup may be hackneyed but it's one I find very pleasing. I love all the disparate characters gathered together for some twisted scheme.

Sidney Hayers does a great job (the best season 5 director). And Alan Hume's lighting is so atmospheric. The house from The Joker is an effective ruin (prior to becoming that set of course).

I really love the opening with those wonderful circular tunnels leading to the large fighting space. It has Johnson's rousing score at the camera tracks away down the corridor making a good frame for the title.

It has another great pun like the thesis line from Sense of History, this time about Joe Smith's bullfighting record:

Steed: "that is a lot of... That's a very impressive record".

Macnee carries the episode impressively but he's such a giving actor that he enables the other guest cast to shine. Rampling's is bit too irritating with her constant shooting but her character gels well with Steed's. We get Brian Blessed.... Not shouting. Where has that actor gone? Donald Sutherland does that awful finger clicking but is mostly forgettable.

8/10

[Rhonda]

I gave 8

[The Honorable Flegghorn]

This episode makes me happy.

I gave it a 9 because the characters on the island are required by the plot to act like total idiots, though.

[Lhbizness]

Only excuse for this episode is Steed's mussed hair and wonderfully tight trousers. Macnee maintains his decorum, but everyone else is just awful.

[Mona]

Well, of course, I love in this episode we see another example of Steed's hidden physical strength; his unbending of the iron bar. Of course, it is much more difficult to unbend than originally bend an iron bar.

Overall, I like this episode. It's fun and silly. Not the best but not the worst, either. Just an easy hour to enjoyably pass. I think it is bad form to stand downwind of a gun being fired, though!

[Ian Wegg]

My problem is its lack of originality, being more or less the exact same plot as Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians novel.

This is one of just 3 or 4 episodes that stuck in my memory long after watching it on first broadcast in my pre-teen years. That alone would normally earn it at least a 9.

It was only comparatively recently that I discovered the story line was lifted from the Christie novel, so I've downgraded it. I still gave it an 8 though, it's a great episode anyway.

~iw