Dandy Forsdyke wrote:By the way Timeless, I'm glad you took my comments in the way they were intended. I didn't mean to suggest you were being 'ungrateful' that we haven't got ALL the episodes we'd like. As an Avengers fan I would love to have them all, and beautifully restored to boot. I just sometimes think it's by sheer good fortune we have what we've got. Those Cathy Gales were nearly goners too - and all because they were on video and perhaps weren't seen to have the same overseas appeal of their counterparts The Saint and Danger Man.
It's just makes me feel sad that, outside of this forum, Ian Hendry doesn't stand toe to toe with Patrick, Gareth and the Avengers ladies as an Avenger.
Oh, no, I didn't think you were suggesting that at all. But it's certainly a shame that Ian's work on the series never got the broad audience it deserved, and the summaries in series guides have never really given us a lot to go on. That's why I love the Declassified write-ups so much--they give a great sense of what season one was like, and the dynamic between the characters, to the point I feel as though I've "seen" some of the episodes. I actually think now that, if we had the Keels, they'd be one of my favourite eras of the series, and I think Dr. Keel would have been one of my favourite Avengers.
Frankymole wrote:Yes, scraping the dregs of my memory, there was some call or appeal for fans to do letter-writing and expressions of interest because even when the negatives were located, the owner (Weintraub? Or whoever owned them before?) didn't want to spend any money striking positives or copies, or restoring any damage, so they were going to languish forever, at best. Patrick Macnee himself complained about the situation, when informed of it by (I believe) Dave Rogers.
Clearly things turned round, with showings in the US and the UK in the early 90s, perhaps due to renewed 80s/early 90s interest in the Rigg seasons and 60s nostalgia in general.
But it was touch and go for a while. I certainly never expected to see them anyway - video releases were late starting (rights hell again, I suppose - or were Lumiere an incarnation of Canal, the famous restoration-dodgers?), and videos very few and far between when they did begin to come out with just patchy Rigg episodes here and there.
That makes me feel a bit sick, that they could have all deteriorated to nothing that easily. Thank heavens they got to them in time.
