Series 5 — Episode 11
Epic
by Brian Clemens
Directed by James Hill
Steed catches a falling star
Emma makes a movie
Production No E.66.6.11
Production completed: February 27 1967. First transmission: March 29 1967.
Regional broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
Rediffusion London | 31/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
ABC Midlands | 1/04/1967 | 9.10pm |
ABC North | 1/04/1967 | 9.10pm |
Anglia Television | 31/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
Border Television | 2/04/1967 | 8.10pm |
Channel Television | 29/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
Grampian Television | 31/01/1968 | 8.00pm |
Southern Television | 31/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
Scottish Television | 12/01/1968 | 8.00pm |
Tyne Tees Television | 29/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
Ulster Television | 8/02/1968 | 7.30pm |
Westward Television | 29/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
Television Wales & West | 31/03/1967 | 8.00pm |
TV Times listing



9.10 The Avengers
starring
Patrick Macnee
as John Steed
and
Diana Rigg as Emma Peel
in
Epic
By Brian Clemens
In which Steed catches a falling Star — and Emma makes a movie!
Cast also includes
Stewart Kirby | Peter Wyngarde |
Damita Syn | Isa Miranda |
Z.Z. Von Schnerk |
Kenneth J. Warren |
Policeman | David Lodge |
Actor | Anthony Dawes |
Designed by Robert Jones
Music by Laurie Johnson
Directed by James Hill
Produced by Albert Fennell
and Brian Clemens
Executive Producer
Julian Wintle
ABC Weekend Network Production


International broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
ABN2 Sydney, Australia | 13/06/1967 | 8.00pm |
ABQ2 Brisbane, Australia | 17/07/1967 | 7.30pm |
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia | 12/06/1967 | 8.00pm |
ABS2 Adelaide, Australia | 25/07/1967 | 7.30pm |
ABC New York, USA | 14/04/1967 | 10.00pm |
ORTF2 France | 6/08/1968 | 8.30pm |
Suisse Romande, Switzerland | 15/01/1968 | 9.10pm |
French title | Caméra meutre | |
ZDF Germany | 9/04/1968 | 9.15pm |
German title | Filmstar Emma Peel | |
KRO Netherlands | 17/10/1967 | 9.00pm |
Dutch title | Gevallen steeren | |
Svizzera Italiana | 24/05/1974 | 9.00pm |
Italian title | una straordinaria avventura | |
Spain | 30/10/1967 | 4.10pm |
Spanish title | Epopeya |











Episode Rating
Subject | 0–5 |
---|---|
Direction | 5 stars |
Music | 4 stars |
Humour | 5 stars |
Intro/tag | 4 stars |
Mastermind | 4½ stars |
Plot | 4 stars |
Emma | 4 stars |
Set Design | 3½ stars |
Overall (0–10) |
9 stars |
This is called the polarisation of your audience. I love this episode — maybe only The Hidden Tiger is better. The use of the same set for outside Emma’s flat, and Schnerk’s representation of outside her flat is inspired, and the symmetry doesn’t stop there. Great acting, great clothes (well, mostly...), a fantastic score and wickedly funny lines. What more could you want?
A man resembling Steed is auditioned for a non-speaking part -
a corpse.
Mrs. Peel is already needed before Steed can get in the door,
summoned to a remote country lane by an anonymous telephone
call. Steed tags along, fearing a trap, but only an old priest
on a bicycle disrupts the blustery calm of the country. The
priest is in fact an old actor, who has just filmed Mrs. Peel
for a screen test as the star of a film, “The Destruction of
Emma Peel”. Mrs. Peel is kidnapped by the villains, Von
Schnerk, Syn and Kirby — played wonderfully by Peter Wyngarde,
who was so excellent as the villain in A Touch
of Brimstone. Chased around the set, shot at and attacked
with swords and tomahawks, then finally tied to a circular
saw, Mrs. Peel looks set to have her dying moments filmed...
Steed makes himself the understudy for the actor playing his
corpse and finishes Von Schnerk’s plans to make the epic of
the century.
Emma decides she would rather not see an old Stuart Kirby film
at the Plaza, and the Avengers decide to stay in for the
night.
The Cars
Marque/Model | Colour | Number Plate |
---|---|---|
Lotus Elan S3 | glacier blue | SJH 499D |
old bicycle | black, wicker basket | - |
Austin taxi | black | VGF 345 |
Rolls-Royce limousine | black | EXY 689 |
Rolls-Royce Hearse | black | MUL 296 |
policeman’s bicycle | black | - |
Bentley Speed Six 1926 | British racing green | RX 6180 |
Who’s Killing Whom?
Victim | Killer | Method |
---|---|---|
Actor | Stewart Kirby V* | Pistol |
Policeman | Stewart Kirby V* | Tommy gun |
Z.Z. von Schnerk V* | Steed & himself V* | Shot while struggling for pistol |

The Fashions
Continuity and trivia
- 3:38–3:49 — There’s dust on the caption scanner and probably the acetates as well — when the titles fade in spots appear all over the screen and there’s even more when the Steed & Emma subs appear.
- 6:00 — Mrs. Peel appears to record all her incoming phone calls.
- 8:27–8:37 — We see Mrs. Peel in the back of the cab, then cut to other angles of the cab drtiving through what looks like Watford. When we cut back to Mrs. Peel, the cab is still passing the same building as it was in the first shot!
- 13:00 — the long shot shows the whole side of the set open, so how come Mrs. Peel didn’t react until she opened the door and saw the cameras?
- 13:45 — The somewhat unconvincing exterior backdrop from Never Never Say Die (seen through the doorway when Steed is inside the cottage) is in the background of the scenes where Emma encounters Kirby dressed as a priest and undertaker.
- 15:56 — there’s suddenly a lot more gravestones on that hill.
- 16:46–17:07 — The modernist painting which was being viewed by the millionaire in the vault in the episode "From Venus With Love" is in the props back stage: at 16:46 you can see the silhouette painting down the hall from “Steed” and at 17:07 Emma walks past the full painting. Not only that, but both copies of it — with and without the silhouette — turn up in two episodes of The Saint ("A Portrait of Brenda" and “The Power Artist”). The non-silhouette version reappears in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
- 17:15 etc. — The chair and cherubs were last seen in The Murder Market.
- 21:30 (21:17) — Why doesn’t Mrs. Peel notice Z.Z. von Schnerk & Damita on the stairs in the saloon scene?
- 22:38 — Product placement for Mrs. Peel’s simply enormous Ansafone.
- 27:45 — The wagon that Emma hides behind and she and Kirby later fight on top of appeared in From Venus with Love.
- 28:02 (27:51) — Mrs. Peel discards the gun loaded with blanks (26:12) just before fighting Kirby. encountering the policeman, but is suddenly carrying it again as she leads him back to the dead body.
- 29:34 — The Simon Roberts & Son sign (undamaged version) from "The Winged Avenger" can also be seen in the back lot. David Lodge, playing a policeman, falls on it.
- 35:08 — The timing in the second fight scene goes wrong — Kirby swings at Emma before she can finish saying “ah ah ah!” to Damita.
- 42:27 — Schnerk tells them he needs more footage of them gloating over her before they throw the switch — but his camera is in the wrong place to film the mid-shot!
- 43:40 — The dead stand-in for “Steed” is on the prefab cobblestones from The Correct Way to Kill.
- 45:00 — Z.Z. von Schnerk sits down to play “the right music” — rollicking dramatic silent movie soundtrack stuff — with Mrs. Peel as the star of “The Perils of Pauline”.
- 45:50 — Emma is already at the control switch for the band saw but when the angle changes to Steed fighting Kirby alongside the saw, she hasn’t quite reached it yet.
- 47:15 (47:00) — How did Emma and Steed obtain new outfits for the tag scene?
- 48:10 — Steed reflects, “Unbridled passion... why don’t we just spend the evening at home?”
- Running time: 49′17″
- Isa Miranda suffered a cut to the forehead during filming when she was hit by a chair.
A note on the timecodes
Timecodes for episodes are problematic as each release has its own quirks so the 2009–11 Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD sets have different run times compared to the A&E and Contender DVD sets from a decade beforehand. The newer Studio Canal & Via Vision blu rays seems to be back in line with the earlier releases, except they often have StudioCanal idents lasting 20 to 22 seconds added to the beginning.
The Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD releases were remastered and their frame rate has been changed, resulting in a shorter running time. However, the picture quality has increased markedly. I assume this is because they used a simple 2:2 pulldown (24 @ 25) when converting from the original film masters (film runs at 24 frames per second, while PAL runs at 25fps, the new DVDs are in PAL format).
This pulldown was also the cause of audio errors on many episodes, especially for Series 5, as the audio sped up to match the new rate (4% faster), rather than being properly pitch-shifted. Checking the dialogue sheets, which list the feet and frames of the reels, it looks like the speed change is around 5.04%, so there may be some cuts as well — probably from around the commercial breaks and ends of reels, as they amount to about 25 seconds. All my assumptions are based on the episodes having been filmed on standard 35mm film, which has 16 frames per foot and runs at 24 frames per second, so a minute of footage uses 90 feet of film (1,440 frames).
The audio errors have been corrected in the currently available DVDs, but the 2:2 pulldown remains. There is also the addition of a Studio Canal lead-in, converted to black and white to match the episode for Series Four, but colour for Series Five, adding an extra 18 or 19 seconds to the running time and making it harder to match timecodes with previous releases. It’s annoying that it has been slapped on every single episode, Series 1–3 didn’t suffer this indignity.
The previous Contender and A&E DVD releases didn’t seem to suffer from these problems, so I assume they either used soft telecine and preserved the original 24fps rate of the film (my preferred option in DVDs) or they used 24 @ 25 pulldown (2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 Euro pull-down).
Thankfully, the new blu ray releases for series 4–6 appear to use native 24fps with soft telecine so the running times and pitch all seem to be correct again along with a much greatly improved picture quality, most notably in the Tara King episodes which are finally (mostly) back to their original glory.
Cast notes
- Peter Wyngarde (Stewart Kirby) had been the brilliantly evil John Cartney in A Touch of Brimstone and went on to be the lead in the two ITC shows Department S (see more trivia here) and Jason King. He played the character of Jason King in both.