I also give it a ' 8 '...and it's really a pretty good episode..with some twists ..and fits in well..Rhonda wrote:I give it 8/10. As to why the air-crash survivors might be being kept as prisoners I think that the criminals are hoping that their crimes are never discovered and they don't want to bump any more people off. As I remember it the best scenes are the cover-ups going on in the darkness of the 'convent'. I didn't see the twist with Vincent coming myself at all! It's a very good episode that I would love to introduce people to. I can't remember if this is the 'airplane one' with a well know actor as the pilot (or not).
2.02 - Dead on Course
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mousemeat
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Frankymole
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Allard
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Re: 2.02 - Dead on Course
The most worthwhile and interesting episode of the three with Dr Martin King.
The whole episode breathes the atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s police dramas, yet it has some real Avengers touches and therein lies what makes this episode interesting. You can see the Avengers on its way to become not just a crime series but that playful touch being comedic through charm as well. This is down to Macnee of course, but Jon Rollason holds his part up well, were it not that he made way for Cathy Gale I'd wish there'd be more Dr King episodes.
This one is a bit shabbily produced with the cuts not as smooth as others episodes, but the tension of the plot and nuns-with-gun, make up for all that. If you can forgive it its early TV flaws, this one stands out very nicely. Early Avengers daring to make a story of planes crashing entertaining.
The whole episode breathes the atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s police dramas, yet it has some real Avengers touches and therein lies what makes this episode interesting. You can see the Avengers on its way to become not just a crime series but that playful touch being comedic through charm as well. This is down to Macnee of course, but Jon Rollason holds his part up well, were it not that he made way for Cathy Gale I'd wish there'd be more Dr King episodes.
This one is a bit shabbily produced with the cuts not as smooth as others episodes, but the tension of the plot and nuns-with-gun, make up for all that. If you can forgive it its early TV flaws, this one stands out very nicely. Early Avengers daring to make a story of planes crashing entertaining.
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Tredding On Thin Ice
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Re: 2.02 - Dead on Course
There are some noticeable things wrong with this episode, and oddly I think we would all ‘like’ it better if it was one of the missing S1 stories.
The blinking corpse and the nun with five o clock shadow remind me of Doctor Who fandom’s reaction to ‘Tomb Of The Cybermen’ in 1992. Before the recovery, the story was thought of as an untouchable Holy Grail of Doctor Who stories. When it turned up, it found itself knocked down a notch when it turned out there were some really visible wires at one point, a cliffhanger with a non-Cyberman Cyberman, an obvious harness in a key scene, and a Cyberleader who’s helmet clearly cracks and breaks in a shot done as a film insert, but suddenly is A-OK in the next scene when we switch back to the studio. What was perfect when it was lost was still extremely good, but had its flaws.
As for Dr. King, I do really wish they had somehow talked Hendry into guesting in S2 in place of Jon Rollason’s Dr. King. I know that on a practical level that would never have happened. Imagine how guesting on what was once his own programme would have felt for Ian Hendry? But a boy can dream…
That’s not in any way a knock on Jon Rollason, by the way. His performances are great, but Dr. King’s exasperation at it all would have been so much more meaningful if it had been Dr. Keel, especially after those closing scenes in ‘Toy Trap’, where Keel seems to be close to the end of his rope in terms of helping his friend in what Steed later calls “‘my little projects”.
With Dr. King, both the apparent closeness of the relationship and the reasons for him getting roped into things sometimes against his will are not really explored, and therefore less satisfying to the viewer compared to how it would have felt if it had been Dr. Keel responding to Steed.
Nonetheless, this is definitely a good ‘un.
I was interested to note how many technical flaws, dropouts, and glitches there were all throughout the episode. I presumed that the existing film prints would have been telecined fairly soon after the initial transmission. But boy do they look ropey.
Do any technical bods out there have any guesses as to why this episode suffers from so many tape glitches, and whether those would have been present on broadcast?
The blinking corpse and the nun with five o clock shadow remind me of Doctor Who fandom’s reaction to ‘Tomb Of The Cybermen’ in 1992. Before the recovery, the story was thought of as an untouchable Holy Grail of Doctor Who stories. When it turned up, it found itself knocked down a notch when it turned out there were some really visible wires at one point, a cliffhanger with a non-Cyberman Cyberman, an obvious harness in a key scene, and a Cyberleader who’s helmet clearly cracks and breaks in a shot done as a film insert, but suddenly is A-OK in the next scene when we switch back to the studio. What was perfect when it was lost was still extremely good, but had its flaws.
As for Dr. King, I do really wish they had somehow talked Hendry into guesting in S2 in place of Jon Rollason’s Dr. King. I know that on a practical level that would never have happened. Imagine how guesting on what was once his own programme would have felt for Ian Hendry? But a boy can dream…
That’s not in any way a knock on Jon Rollason, by the way. His performances are great, but Dr. King’s exasperation at it all would have been so much more meaningful if it had been Dr. Keel, especially after those closing scenes in ‘Toy Trap’, where Keel seems to be close to the end of his rope in terms of helping his friend in what Steed later calls “‘my little projects”.
With Dr. King, both the apparent closeness of the relationship and the reasons for him getting roped into things sometimes against his will are not really explored, and therefore less satisfying to the viewer compared to how it would have felt if it had been Dr. Keel responding to Steed.
Nonetheless, this is definitely a good ‘un.
I was interested to note how many technical flaws, dropouts, and glitches there were all throughout the episode. I presumed that the existing film prints would have been telecined fairly soon after the initial transmission. But boy do they look ropey.
Do any technical bods out there have any guesses as to why this episode suffers from so many tape glitches, and whether those would have been present on broadcast?