Series 5 — Episode 2
The Fear Merchants

Plot summary

A man awakes in the middle of Wembley stadium and goes mad, but he’s not the only one.
Emma receives a box of chocolates — but it’s empty except for a card from Steed declaring they’re needed.
All of Jeremy Raven’s business rivals are going mad or dying, through one fear or another. The Business Efficiency Bureau have a motto: “our merchandise is fear” — they discover people’s fears and frighten them to death. Steed, determined to get to the bottom of their plot, enrols as a client and Mrs. Peel becomes his business rival. The Avengers close down the B.E.B. by discovering the evildoers are afraid of the dark.
Mrs. Peel discovers that Steed is afraid she may have run out of champagne.

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Prologue

Middle-aged businessman Richard Meadows (Edward Burnham) wakes up, dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown, in the middle of Wembley stadium and the shock caused by his agoraphobia drives him insane,¹ a menacing figure watching from the stands, but all we see of him is his kid gloves.

Act 1

Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) returns home and is delighted to find a big box of chocolates awaiting her, but smirks in mild annoyance when she discovers it’s a summons from John Steed (Patrick Macnee) to help him investigate the case — the chocolates replaced with one of his Mrs. Peel We’re Needed! cards.

At a hospital, she’s shown Meadows and told he went to bed in Birmingham, 113 miles away, and woke up in Wembley. Now a mental wreck, he ran English Earthenware — which won’t run without him. He’s not the first either, and Steed shows her John Tyler (Oliver Tomlin), found on a mountain in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and David Wallace, found on a raft in the Channel in a dinner jacket and cummerbund.

Meanwhile, fit young industrialist Martin Fox (Bernard Horsfall) is working out at a London gym while hefty Saunders (Declan Mulholland) flings his barbell about in the background. He goes to change,² and is incapacitated by the shock of finding a mouse in his clothes… The Avengers visit the hospital to see Fox, who is catatonic and lying on a gurney.

EMMA: It’s the same old pattern.
STEED: His name is Fox. Went beserk at a gymnasium, scared out of his wits.

Steed mentions the firm makes bone china and Mrs. Peel realises all the businessmen were in the ceramics trade — Fox heading Fox, White and Crawley.

EMMA: It is the same old pattern.
STEED: Almost. They ran one man concerns; Fox has two fellow directors.

Steed visits Crawley (Andrew Keir), who is rattled by Fox’s attack, and a ‘pointless’ visit by a market research firm, the “Business Efficiency Bureau” and Steed notes a business card emblazoned with a stylised B.E.B.. Crawley has to dash off to try to find a replacement for Fox and the sinister, unsmiling Gordon White (Jeremy Burnham), the third director, enters — there’s trouble at the kiln and nobody has Fox’s knowledge of it.

Steed sees Crawley off then notices his chauffeur knocked out in the garage. He gives chase but the Rolls-Royce has already disappeared and he stops at an intersection, unsure which way to go.

In the Rolls-Royce, the kid glove wearing driver speeds up, Crawley only noticing when they fly over a humped bridge. Crawley raps on the glass divider, begging him to slow down but the driver ignores Crawley’s fear of speed³ and accelerates until the man passes out from shock… The driver screeches to a halt and coldly gets out of the car to make sure Crawley has passed out.

Act 2

Steed and Emma investigate Crawley’s Rolls-Royce⁴ and find an offer to merge the companies of all the victims from a Jeremy Raven. Mrs. Peel goes to search Crawley’s office for his response (after an unsubtle hint from Steed), and overhears White filling in a survey for a kid glove wearing market researcher, who disappears abruptly after Mrs. Peel makes a noise.⁵

Mr. Kid Gloves returns to the B.E.B. with White’s questionnaire and is revealed as Gilbert (Garfield Morgan) when he gives the form to Pemberton (Patrick Cargill), president of the B.E.B.. Pemberton congratulates Gilbert and Dr. Voss (Annette Carell) on their ‘treatment’ for Crawley.

GILBERT: I enjoyed the drive.
PEMBERTON: I gather he didn’t.
GILBERT: A trifle car sick.

They turn their attention to White’s questionnaire and Gilbert thinks him unstable, ideal for their purposes — his father was an ornithologist. Dr. Voss concurs⁶ and Pemberton says he wants White disposed of immediately.

Mrs. Peel drills away at an enormous concrete sculpture as she tells Steed there was nothing in the files about Raven, not a single reply. Steed considers that a man who wanted to set up a monopoly wouldn’t take kindly to that and goes to visit him in another guise while she returns to watch White.

Steed arrives at the office of Jeremy Raven (Brian Wilde) posing as a minor offcial from the Monopolies Commission. Raven proves to be a young⁷ eccentric who keeps smashing perfectly good pottery he doesn’t think excellent enough, then stops Steed from smashing a hideous purple lump of clay.

Raven demonstrates his creation by automation — a machine that can make any pottery electronically, but after a lot of burping and squeaking it just delivers a mangled mess instead of the expected Persian piece.⁸

Raven has new economics in his head, and tells him his merger proposal was rejected by every party. When Steed talks to him about his competitors, he seems strangely callous about their recent troubles.

RAVEN: New promotion techniques… only way to survive. Otherwise you soon fall by the wayside.
STEED: A few of your competitors already have.
RAVEN: It’s a highly competitive business. Show the slightest weakness, and you crack. A simple matter of elimination.
STEED: Elimination!

Dr. Voss meanwhile confirms White’s weakness — a fear of birds — and Gilbert is dispatched with a hawk in a cage. White is scared out of his top storey window by it just before Mrs. Peel arrives and Gilbert makes his getaway by tipping a display case on her.

Return to the office, she picks up a black feather which she later shows to Steed as she makes another start on her sculpting. Jumping after he strokes her bare foot with the feather, she nonetheless tells him someone else was there when she investigated the offices and Steed decides to put more pressure on Raven. Steed revisits Raven and learns he called in the B.E.B. to improve his results.

RAVEN (nervously): Well, you know the sort of thing they do. They study the market. Observe the competitors, examine statistics.
STEED: I’ve been doing a little of that too. Out of your seven main competitors, six have been driven out of their minds, and the seventh fell through a plate glass window.
RAVEN: I-I don’t…
STEED: Eliminate your competitors, didn’t you say? You’ve certainly done that Jeremy, but if one of those six men recovers maybe we’ll learn just how. And then…
(HE SMASHES A STATUETTE)

Act 3

Raven angrily visits the B.E.B., telling Pemberton he’d been to the hospital and seen Fox and the others. Pemberton orders him to sit back down — engaging the lie detector built into the arm rests of the chair, and he is played a recording of the initial interview:

PEMBERTON: You wish to employ us to what end, Mr. Raven?
RAVEN: To increase my share of the market and eliminate competition.
PEMBERTON: You’re very ruthless, Mr. Raven.
RAVEN: Oh, one has to be. You’ve a free hand, I leave it to you. Blow ’em all up if you have to.

Raven is blackmailed into continuing to pay them part of his profits, but the lie detector in his chair has revealed he means to spill the beans, so they plot to drive Raven insane as well — Dr. Voss has already run the computer analysis and Gilbert puts a thick wooden box containing a large spider on the table…

Raven calls Steed to meet him, but when they arrive he’s already been driven witless,⁹ a discarded B.E.B. brochure lying on the floor. Later, at Emma’s flat, they work out a plan of attack while Emma reads from the brochure.

EMMA: The Business Efficiency Bureau offers a unique means of building your business up (by knocking your opponents down). Bring science and psychology into the battle for bigger and better profits.

Steed arranges an appointment, claiming to be in the executive travel business, and Pemberton offers to help him improve his business in return for fifty per cent of his increased profit.

PEMBERTON: We’ll need a list of your competitors.
STEED: Well, there’s only one in the area that I operate.
PEMBERTON: The name?
STEED: Mrs. Peel… Mrs. Emma Peel.

Act 4

Mrs. Peel is visiting Raven at the hospital, where Dr. Hill (Ruth Trouncer) says he’s improving, but only for short periods.

The B.E.B. meanwhile discover Steed lied to every question and Gilbert is ordered to follow him.

Steed goes to the hospital where he confers with Mrs. Peel, telling her he’s named her as his competitor and she works out of her flat. Outside, Gilbert calls in to report that Steed has gone to the hospital and Pemberton tells him to eliminate Steed.

Back inside, Steed tries to get information out of Raven and discovers the spider tattoo on the nurse’s hand sets Raven off and he realises Raven has severe arachnophobia. He relates this information to Dr. Hill who confirms the phobias of the other patients.

On the way home he is waylaid by Gilbert, who has faked an accident by putting a hat and coat in a nearby quarry and tries to bury him with a bulldozer when Steed goes to investigate. They fight and Gilbert is killed when the bulldozer rolls into the pit where they’re fighting each other.

At the B.E.B. some time later, they become worried when Gilbert hasn’t returned, so Dr. Voss is sent to visit Mrs. Peel. She gives her a questionnaire¹⁰ then brings Mrs. Peel in at gun point and they interrogate her, tied up in the lie-detector seat¹¹ — but to no avail, as she refuses to crack.

PEMBERTON: We are not playing, Mrs. Peel. The stakes are too high. Now, how much does Steed know?
EMMA: Well, I’d say he has a pretty high IQ…

Pemberton reviews her questionnaire and is impressed with her answers. when she remains flippant he becomes threatening.

PEMBERTON: Our territory is the mind. Our merchandise is fear … The inner fabric of us all, Mrs. Peel. A dark balloon we try to hide. Prick it and … well, you’ll see.

Steed drops by Mrs. Peel’s flat¹² and finds a B.E.B. card with help! scrawled across the back in the sculpture. He rushes round and arrives just before they start to use medical instruments on her, as she’d proved beyond their usual fear techniques.

Steed realises from his tinted glasses that Pemberton is afraid of the dark and disables the lights, while the chair-bound Mrs. Peel pushes herself around the room, disarming Pemberton then Voss in turn. The villains defeated, Steed goes to free Mrs. Peel.

STEED: Didn’t think I’d get here in time, did you?
EMMA: The thought never entered my head!
(The seismograph leaps into action, the needles indicating her lie)
STEED: Never, Mrs. Peel?
EMMA: Never, Mr. Steed.
(The needles go beserk)

Epilogue

At her flat later, Steed carefully searches for any bugbears and Mrs. Peel fears the chocolate box — might be empty! She then discovers Steed is afraid she might not have any champagne.

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1. The director deftly has the camera whirling around the stadium to symbolise the maelstrom inside Meadows’ head. You will note as the episode goes on that the characters have names symbolic of their rôles or fears. ⭮
2. Bernard Horsfall, playing Fox, karate chops a piece of wood in half on his way, a reference to him doing the same thing two years earlier in The Cybernauts when playing Jephcott. ⭮
3. Angled, blurry shots of the road introduce a visual reinforcement of the element of fear along with a dramatic soundtrack. The stunt driver is really flinging the Rolls-Royce around those rural roads and became airborne when going over the humped bridge. ⭮
4. The scene has them leaning over the fender to look at the engine while the camera focuses on their backsides. ⭮
5. White returns to find his visitor gone and the globe in the corner of the office spinning madly. ⭮
6. Dr. Voss identifies White’s infantile hand, regressive personality, and very definite panic area. ⭮
7. It’s a strange casting choice, making someone so permanently middle aged as Brian Wilde be a young executive who uses the phrase “Youth at the helm”. ⭮
8. The sounds emitted by the machine are similar to those made by the machine in The Man In The White Suit (1951), which was also about replacing traditional methods with modern ones. ⭮
9. There’s a gorgeous shot of eight Jeremy Ravens, simulating a spider’s view as the spider descends from the curtains. ⭮
10. As Mrs. Peel fills in the survey, Dr. Voss says “They’re very revealing, I assure you”, but she might just be referring to Emma’s extraordinary catsuit which is more a crop top and leggings connected by metal hoops as there is so much material removed at the waist. ⭮
11. More bondage in The Avengers, Mrs. Peel wears a green suede catsuit with large cut outs and the bustier top is connected to the leggings by large metals hoops. ⭮
12. Steed lets himself in to Mrs. Peel’s flat by using a secret button at the top of the door. ⭮