The Avengers International Fan Forum

I am not that keen on the Mother character but it didn't really bother me particularly, I suppose I just accepted it. I think I didn't like another main-ish character sharing precious screentime with JS and TK.

I suppose Mother could be useful in tying things together when either Steed or Tara had a "holiday week", due to double-banking episodes filming.

That way the agents wuld have someone to talk to, share clues with and develop theories with, not just the occasional new face (like Dinsdale Landen as Mother's nephew in All Done With Mirrors, or Merlin in The Morning After, fun as they were - one was too thick and the other was too villainous, to have helped on more than a single occasion each!).

Timeless A-Peel wrote:I assumed that the codenames were more specific to particular people, so once they were gone, the codename went with them. But they did seem to have systems of codenames, as you say, so perhaps they simply cycled through them. By TNA they seem to have gotten rid of them completely, as evidenced by Gambit's "They used a lot of funny names in those days" comment. I wonder if Purdey and Gambit had agent numbers like Tara, though?

If so, I bet after Tara's departure Gambit insisted on being Number 69, it's just his sense of humour!

Frankymole wrote:

Timeless A-Peel wrote:I assumed that the codenames were more specific to particular people, so once they were gone, the codename went with them. But they did seem to have systems of codenames, as you say, so perhaps they simply cycled through them. By TNA they seem to have gotten rid of them completely, as evidenced by Gambit's "They used a lot of funny names in those days" comment. I wonder if Purdey and Gambit had agent numbers like Tara, though?

If so, I bet after Tara's departure Gambit insisted on being Number 69, it's just his sense of humour!

I can see that, too. I doubt Purdey would have been amused, though--I can hear her tsking from here.

Timeless A-Peel wrote:I can see that, too. I doubt Purdey would have been amused, though--I can hear her tsking from here.

Yeah - "undercover, [wink wink] under...cover..."... cue the frosty disdain

Frankymole wrote:I suppose Mother could be useful in tying things together when either Steed or Tara had a "holiday week", due to double-banking episodes filming.

That way the agents wuld have someone to talk to, share clues with and develop theories with, not just the occasional new face (like Dinsdale Landen as Mother's nephew in All Done With Mirrors, or Merlin in The Morning After, fun as they were - one was too thick and the other was too villainous, to have helped on more than a single occasion each!).

Merlin would have been an interesting new partner, if the show had wanted to shift gears après Tara King. In fact a less villainous Merlin would have been an ironic Avengers full circle, as Steed was a mystery in the earliest episodes.

He certainly had charisma, and the events of the episode made him walk the line between crookery and reluctant derring-do. I am sure he would've reverted to type if he could... but having a shady sidekick (indeed, very early-Steed-like) who could be less strictly moral than the current Steed would have been interesting.

His magic/deception abilities might have been too much of a "get out of jail free card" (though that's one thing he wasn't good at!), preventing some kinds of dramatic jeopardy, but that can be written around, with him running out of the necesssary trick paraphernalia and having the rug pulled out from him in various ways.

Some good stories with Merlin and Steed would seem to be an unmined area for fan fiction.

Frankymole wrote:

Timeless A-Peel wrote:I can see that, too. I doubt Purdey would have been amused, though--I can hear her tsking from here.

Yeah - "undercover, [wink wink] under...cover..."... cue the frosty disdain

I can see him chatting up some pretty file clerk--"Mike Gambit, Agent 69"--while Purdey rolls her eyes in the background.

Dandy Forsdyke wrote:Merlin would have been an interesting new partner, if the show had wanted to shift gears après Tara King. In fact a less villainous Merlin would have been an ironic Avengers full circle, as Steed was a mystery in the earliest episodes.

That's actually a really good idea. Merlin wasn't straightforwardly evil, just self-serving, but rather fun in spite of it all. It would have been fun to have some scenes where Merlin suggests some morally questionable course of action, and Steed rejects it out of hand, only to realise after a moment's reflection that it's exactly what he would have done circa 1961. It'd be like his penance for all the ways he manipulated his early partners. Somewhere, Dr. Keel would be smiling.

Frankymole wrote:He certainly had charisma, and the events of the episode made him walk the line between crookery and reluctant derring-do. I am sure he would've reverted to type if he could... but having a shady sidekick (indeed, very early-Steed-like) who could be less strictly moral than the current Steed would have been interesting.

His magic/deception abilities might have been too much of a "get out of jail free card" (though that's one thing he wasn't good at!), preventing some kinds of dramatic jeopardy, but that can be written around, with him running out of the necesssary trick paraphernalia and having the rug pulled out from him in various ways.

Some good stories with Merlin and Steed would seem to be an unmined area for fan fiction.

The magic/sleight-of-hand thing would actually be a nice change of course after all the emphasis on the lead characters' fighting skills. To have a partner with a fresh set of skills would be very much in the Avengers tradition. So long as it didn't become an easy out for the writers, it could be very effective.

I actually really want to see this now. Don't give me new fiction ideas--I've got too many half-finished things at the moment as it is.

The best part of Mother was his name. It does not get any more hilarious than to have heavy set man in a wheelchair being called mother. And wasn't there a father or was that just the movie?
Does anyone know when mother first appeared?

anti-clockwise wrote:The best part of Mother was his name. It does not get any more hilarious than to have heavy set man in a wheelchair being called mother. And wasn't there a father or was that just the movie?
Does anyone know when mother first appeared?

Mother first popped up in The Forget-Me-Not, and was intended to be a one-off character, but the American buyers of the series liked him, so they brought him back. By then they'd deconstructed the set with all the straps hanging from the ceiling because they thought they wouldn't need it again, so they ended up having him in the wheelchair instead.

And yes, there was a Father--a blind woman who fills in for Mother in the episode Stay Tuned. There was also a "Grandma", apparently, but we never see him, just hear Mother talking to him on the phone.