Series 5 — Episode 5
The Bird Who Knew Too Much

Plot summary

Steed eschews the telephone for more primitive communications means, and Emma gets an arrow in her wall.
Steed and Mrs. Peel investigate the deaths of two agents, killed by Robin and Verret. Strange photographs taken in a no-flying exclusion zone of sensitive government installations lead them to Sam, a pretty model and the photographer for whom she works. First Steed, then Emma pose for the camera, before Mrs. Peel is captured and placed in a lethal booby trap. Steed’s continued preference for entering by the window saves her, and they’re back on the trail. The key clue rests in the mind of Captain Crusoe, a prize parrot that has disappeared. Twitter is dispatched but Cunliffe proves to be the real culprit.
With the gang trussed up, Steed proposes they meet a bird, basted in red wine, but he has to shoot it first!

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Prologue

Counter-espionage agent Percy Danvers (Peter Brace) is pursued across some wasteland by Robin (Clive Colin-Bowler). He slips on a towpath and drops his pistol into the canal, whereupon Robin lets fly a volley of bullets from his sub-machine gun. Danvers leaps a barbed wire fence and races to a nearby fire warning tower to use the emergency phone. While he’s talking to John Steed (Patrick Macnee), Robin catches up and shoots him through the floor; Danvers falls, and out of his chest pours bird seed instead of blood.

Act 1

Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) opens her living room curtains in the morning, only to have an arrow shoot past her and slam, quivering, into a statue¹ with a card tied to the shaft reading “Mrs. Peel We’re Needed!” Steed appears at the window and whisks her away to examine Danvers’ corpse, where they puzzle over the sack of “Best British Bird Seed” inside his jacket.

That night, counter-counter-counter-espionage agent Frank Elrick (Gerry Crampton) slips a pigeon into the basket on the back seat of an Austin parked at a building site, and picks up an envelope from the floor of the car. Inside are photos of a missile base² which he slips in his wallet.

He’s surprised by Verret (Michael Coles) returning to his car and Elrick makes his escape up some scaffolding, pursued by Verret and Robin. Robin is sent to the far end and loosens some of the scaffold, causing Elrick to plummet into a slab of recently-poured concrete, and he sinks slowly beneath the surface as Robin laughs evilly down at him.³

The next day, Steed is at Emma’s flat, meticulously checking seeds for hidden transmitters or microdots.

STEED: Do you know they brought over the whole of the Eastern rocket programme in the eye of a needle?
EMMA: Ingenious.
STEED: Except for the fact that the courier lay down and rested in a haystack.
EMMA: You mean they…
STEED: They’re still looking for it.

Suddenly, the pathological lab rings — they’ve found Elrick’s body at the construction site.

He’s chipped out of the slab and Steed confirms it’s Elrick by his clothes, then finds the aerial photos of the Muswells Back base in Elrick’s wallet. He’s puzzled by the photos as flying is prohibited near the base. He decides to visit Elrick’s partner, Mark Pearson (John Lee) who would know more about the case.

Pearson meanwhile is dressing for a date when a pigeon arrives in his coop. It’s not the one he’s waiting for however, and moments later he’s shot by Verret, who spots Steed and Emma enter as he’s leaving. Steed and Emma find Pearson, who manages to gasp that the secrets are being couriered by Captain Crusoe before dying. Meanwhile outside Verret returns to the car.

ROBIN: Did you do it?
VERRET: Yeah.
ROBIN: You have all the fun.⁴
VERRET: (INTO PHONE) Commander… Verret here. Yeah, ok. Pearson had some callers though. Man and a woman — yes — I recognised the man. John Steed.
(ROBIN REACTS)
VERRET: Yeah, right, I’ll deal with him.

Inside, Steed rings headquarters to check the Army and Navy lists, and to have Pearson’s body removed while Emma goes to investigate Heathcliff Hall, which she’d found written on a notepad. The killers watch Mrs. Peel leave and Robin annoys Verret by wondering where she’s going; they only have orders for Steed.

Back inside Steed finds a musical triangle and some photos of a pretty blonde woman, who promptly turns up. Steed, thinking she might be one of the killers returning, trips her up and she’s thrown to the ground.

SAM: Is this a private party or can anyone join in?
STEED: I’m terribly sorry. I was expecting someone else.
SAM: Who? A whole company of Marine Commandoes?

She introduces herself as Samantha Slade (Ilona Rodgers) and explains she’s Mark’s girlfriend, come round for a lunch date. Steed blusters about Mark’s absence and, hoping to gain information, offers to take her to lunch himself.

Act 2

At Heathcliff Hall, Emma is delighted to find herself in a room full of cages of exotic birds where she is confronted by the initially acerbic Edgar Twitter (John Wood), who is aghast to hear that a door was open. Mrs. Peel explains she closed it behind her and he calms down a bit then introduces himself.

TWITTER: Twitter.
EMMA: I’m afraid bird impressions are hardly my line.
TWITTER: Oh no, you misunderstand. I am Twitter. Edgar Twitter. Organiser of this feathered array.

He confesses the birds are mostly not his, but on loan from wealthy owners such as the Duke of Duffup and Lady Cynthia Cashwash⁵ — she drops Captain Crusoe’s⁶ name and Twitter offers to introduce her, as the Captain is at the exhibition.

Sam and Steed are chatting over lunch, but she clams up and leaves hurriedly when Steed mentions Captain Crusoe. Back at the Hall, Emma meets Twitter’s assistant, George Cunliffe (Anthony Valentine) and prepares to meet the captain, who turns out to be “a king, an emperor among parrots” but the cage is empty, much to their horror.

Steed, unaware that he is being tailed by Verret, escorts Sam to a studio where the photographer, Tom Savage (Kenneth Cope) mistakes him for a model⁷ and presses him into mincing for the camera. Steed subtly asks him about his darkroom gear, and whether he does aerial photography, then prods Sam for more information.

While they’re busy, Verret sneaks in and puts an impact grenade inside Steed’s umbrella cover. Luckily, our hero spots it when he leaves the studio and hurls it to the ground while diving back inside. He emerges to find the brolly obliterated and his bowler’s crown is torn off.

Emma is still working on her concrete sculpture⁸ when Steed returns to her flat and tells her about Sam and Tom Savage.

STEED: He employs models… Long legged pulchritude with whatever face and posture they’re wearing this year… (PLACES MAGAZINE ON EMMA’S HEAD) you get my meaning?
EMMA: I see. (STARTS WALKING, THE MAGAZINE STAYS IN PLACE) You want me to infiltrate… insinuate …
STEED: And use those big, beautiful, brown eyes to keep an eye on our girl Sam.

Emma in turn tells him about Crusoe being a parrot which has gone missing. They realise the photos were taken from only 100 feet — bird height — so Steed returns to Pearson’s flat, and settles in to wait, armed with caviar and champagne.¹⁰ Emma insinuates her way into Savage’s studio and Sam arrives with an important prop for her shoot — Captain Crusoe!

Robin and Verret meanwhile are near Muswells Back with their basket of pigeons — Robin notices that one flies West instead of Northwest and they take off after it.

The pigeon arrives at Pearson’s flat and Steed has just examined the miniature automatic camera attached to its leg when Robin arrives and clobbers him.⁹

Act 3

Mrs. Peel tries to make off with the parrot but Tom suddenly emerges from his darkroom.

TOM: You’ll never get away with it!
EMMA: Uh…
TOM: — that’s what the parrot symbolises… In the photographs… the caged creature, the bird mouthing empty phrases; sums up the whole state of mankind.

She offers to take the parrot round to Sam’s place but he refuses so she asks Tom for a print of her with the parrot, which he does reluctantly. Unfortunately, Twitter and Cunliffe swear they can’t make a positive identification from a photo. Emma doesn’t want to tell them where the bird is but Cunliffe notices Savage’s name on the back of the photo. She offers to bring the bird to them and Twitter insists she do so.

That night, she breaks into the Studio but Verret and Robin ambush her in the darkroom, knocking her out with chloroform. Verret says she can’t be left to talk so Robin pulls out a pistol. Verret stops him — they need a cast-iron alibi.

Steed regains consciousness and calls Mrs. Peel’s flat, the three-hour old message about going to Savage’s studio left on her answering machine sends him hurrying to her aide. The villains have left Mrs. Peel bound and gagged, tied to a chair¹¹ facing the door, attached to which is a pistol which will be fired by the door opening. Fortunately, Steed once again climbs in the window.

STEED: Lucky for you I’m a devious fellow… I’ve pulled some strings in my time, but that one —
EMMA: Would have had explosive repercussions!

He takes her to her flat and plies her with vintage champagne to ‘pick her up’ for their next effort — finding Captain Crusoe — and Steed encourages her to revisit Twitter.

Emma returns to Heathcliff Hall and buttonholes Twitter about the parrot’s theft from the studio. Twitter reminds her that Cunliffe also knew the bird was there, and Cunliffe chips in that Twitter had told the bird’s owner, Professor Jordan.

Meanwhile, Verret points a sniper rifle at Robin — then gives it to him, saying Mrs. Peel has been stirring up trouble and he’s to kill her and Professor Jordan.¹²

Act 4

Mrs. Peel drives to Jordan’s house¹³ but no-one answers the door. She goes round the side to enter and inside finds a bird classroom. She accidentally sets all the ‘pupils’ squawking and talking when she backs into a stand of triangles. The cacophony is silenced by Professor Jordan (Ron Moody) striking the triangles again.

Jordan is a batty old academic with a stuffed canary on his mortar board. He explains his training system of cueing the birds with particular notes and teaching them nursery rhymes, while lamenting the loss of Captain Crusoe.

JORDAN: His capacity for leaning is astonishing. The whole of Hamlet’s soliloquy without pause; Lincoln’s Gettysburg address without fault… nothing to Captain Crusoe.

Crusoe could learn any phrase, and mimic the tone and inflection of the person who taught it to him.

JORDAN: A parrot paragon!
EMMA: And now he’s a polly gone…

Jordan adds that Crusoe is cued with a top C, so anyone can identify him with his triangle, a special gold-plated triangle, currently in the car outside.

They go to get the triangle from Jordan’s car and Robin opens fire on them from the diving board of a nearby swimming pool.¹⁴ Jordan keeps him busy with Emma’s revolver (after initially pointing it at her in his confusion) while she sneak around behind and overpowers Robin, kicking him into the pool then doing a high-dive with a somersault to go after him, making the Professor pull a quizzical face.

Unfortunately, despite being clamped between Mrs. Peel’s legs, Robin can’t tell her who’s behind the plot, but reveals that the bird is “back where he belongs”.

Steed meanwhile interrogates Sam, who’s turned up, claiming Mark called her. Steed reveals that Mark is dead and she tells him that she though Mark had stolen the parrot, which recited details about the missile base deployments and technical details. At that point, Mrs. Peel bursts in.

STEED/EMMA (IN UNISON): The parrot’s taking the information out!

No human error, no papers, microphones or microdots, no agent to crack under pressure — pigeons take the pictures, which are described to the parrot. At Heathcliff Hall, the Avengers find the exhibition is packing up for a tour of Europe.

STEED: Two guesses to which part of Europe. Well, let’s have a look around for our… (UNCOVERS CAGE) undercover agent.

They eventually find the parrot in the back room but then Twitter confronts them with a shotgun.

EMMA: Twitter!
STEED: Bird impersonations are not my strong —
EMMA: His name is Twitter. Edgar J. Twitter.

They say they came to collect Crusoe and combine forces to knock Twitter¹⁵ out when he says the parrot isn’t there. Crusoe’s triangle is struck in the struggle and he starts talking — in Cunliffe’s voice! Cunliffe appears with a pistol and summons Verret to kill them, but the Avengers leap into action, Emma fighting Verret and Steed taking on Cunliffe. The villains dispatched, Captain Crusoe demands political asylum until silenced by Emma striking the triangle.

Epilogue

Another arrow in Emma’s wall from Steed at the window makes her wish he’d get used to using the phone — “Ran out of small change”, he quips, then asks if she’s busy.

STEED: I want you to meet a bird…
EMMA: (ARCHLY) A friend of yours?
STEED: Hardly… I intend basting it in red wine and submerging it in a succulent sauce.
EMMA: Now that sounds like my kind of bird.
STEED: There’s only one snag, I haven’t shot it yet.

She dresses for open air motoring in a bizarre short catsuit with attached thigh-high boots and an upside-down cap with a clear visor like a windscreen, but Steed can’t get his veteran Vauxhall out of reverse and they shoot off backwards…

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1. The modernist metal bird statue seen the previous series amongst the stolen artworks in The Girl from Auntie. Surely she didn’t …? ⭮
2. The photo is actually of the DRAGON experimental nuclear reactor at the UK Atomic Energy Authority site at Winfrith, Dorset. ⭮
3. When he lands in the concrete you can just see it’s a layer of wet cement on top of a black plastic inflated landing pad for the stuntman. ⭮
4. Confirmation, if his evil laughter earlier wasn’t enough, that Robin in a psychopath. ⭮
5. Regulation made-up names for the nobility; the Duke of Duffup had previously been one of Steed’s fake references in What the Butler Saw. ⭮
6. Diana spends most of the episode saying “Caruso” instead of “Crusoe”. ⭮
7. Steed's improbable attire, his layer of unreality, has him mistaken for a model here, just as he is seen to be dressed identically to a butler in The £50,000 Breakfast and, exactly as in that episode, he and his replica stare at each other in disbelief. In this way the facade of The Avengers is exposed; there is no suspension of disbelief here because you are expected to suspend belief instead. ⭮
8. Previously seen in The Fear Merchants. ⭮
9. Sound familiar? He did the same thing in The Trojan Horse. ⭮
10. A script error, as he fails to kill Steed despite their earlier orders from their Commander. ⭮
11. For The Avengers’ weekly dose of light bondage. ⭮
12. Confirming that either Twitter or Cunliffe must be the diabolical mastermind. ⭮
13. Shenley Hall, Rectory Lane, Shenley. ⭮
14. The not-very-nearby Splash Land, Stanbrough Park, Welwyn Garden City (now demolished). It’s about ten miles away. ⭮
15. Steed uses his steel-crowned bowler hat on Twitter and Cunliffe. ⭮