Series 5 — Episode 12
The Superlative Seven

Plot summary

Mrs. Peel summons Steed with a rubber duck; he is needed to attend a fancy dress party — somewhere over the south of England!
Stranded on an unknown island, Steed and the other guests are told that one of their number is a killer. The scenario has been staged by Jessel to convince Kanwitch that his agent is unbeatable. Hana Wilde and the other guests suspect Steed is the killer but Mrs. Peel drops in to expose that the assassin is actually a pair of identical twins and Jessel loses a shoot-out with Mrs. Wilde.
Steed drops in on a Mrs. Peel’s duck shoot, just as she bags a brace of teddy bears — but she missed the bottle of champagne!

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Prologue

Kanwitch (John Hollis), a representative of a foreign power, brings his champion, Toy Sung (Terry Plummer)¹ to face the supposedly undefeatable warriors trained by Jessel (Donald Sutherland). The champion is defeated — first in unarmed combat by one of the men, and then in a sword fight with one of the women, who slices his belly open. Nevertheless, Kanwitch demands one last test before his country will pay for the training.

Act 1

John Steed (Patrick Macnee) is out hunting — he shoots at a passing flock,² but finds a rubber duck in its place, on which is written ‘Steed’; Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) pops up from the bushes, quacks once, then says “You’re needed” — to attend a fancy dress party thrown by the explorer, Sir George Robertson DSO CBE KCB, despite the impending case of seven athletes killed in the last week. According to the invitation, the party is to take place somewhere over the south of England!

Emma drops Steed at the airport and he goes on board, where he meets fellow revellers Max Hardy (Hugh Manning) — dressed as a WWI German officer, Jason Wade (James Maxwell) — dressed as a two-faced Gemini,³ Joe Smith (Gary Hope) — dressed as a matador, Freddy Richards (Leon Greene) — a campy circus strongman and Mrs. Hana Wilde (Charlotte Rampling)⁴ — dressed as a Western gunslinger.

A late arrival is an executioner, who keeps his hood on. The stewardess (Margaret Neale) takes his invitation and we see she is the woman who killed Toy Sung. Inside the plane, Hana tells Steed that Freddy claims to be the world’s strongest man, with a range of health tonics to his name, and Joe Smith really is a matador.

STEED: Oh! Jose el Smithio!
HANA WILDE: Best of all British bullfighters. Killed four hundred bulls last season.
STEED: That’s quite a lot of … that’s a very impressive record.

Steed already knows Hardy, who runs a fencing school. Wade wanders over and tells them he “tracks things down”, which they take to mean he’s a big game hunter.

Jessel’s voice comes over the intercom, telling them to prepare for take-off and once airborne they exchange invitations and they discover they’ve all supposedly been invited by different people. Max Hardy decides to find out what’s going on and they find the cockpit empty with the plane running on autopilot. A voice over the speakers tells them to go back to their seats and have a drink and relax.

Act 2

After searching the plane they realise it’s just the seven of them, and Wade says the manual controls don’t work. Steed observes that the autopilot is the only thing between them and the ground below — but Hana Wilde points out there is no ground below, they’re over the sea!

A while later, Hana tries to work out the common factor, why they’ve been selected and they discover the executioner is Major Mark Dayton (Brian Blessed), an unarmed combat expert — with that they realise the common factor between them is expertise is a physical pursuit.⁶

DAYTON: What about you? What sets you out from the crowd?
STEED: Uhh…. Maybe the way I hold my umbrella (while straightening a poker bent by Richards).

Jessel sends the plane into a dive and he and Kanwitch are pleased to see their ‘guinea pigs’ reacting bravely. The plane is brought in to land on a small Atlantic island, the passengers all bracing themselves for the landing, and the seven disembark. A lantern through the trees directing them to a dilapidated old house, the dining table laid with seven sets of weapons instead of cutlery, and six brand new coffins in an alcove.

KANWITCH (OVER SPEAKER): Six coffins and yet there are seven of you. You’re all wondering why you’ve been brought to this island. I can now tell you that you’re all part of a fascinating experiment… an acid test. A new system for training fighting personnel has been devised. The fine details are unimportant. All you need to know is that it is claimed that this system speeds up the reflexes to a super-human degree. It creates experts in all forms of combat … armed and unarmed. It turns the ordinary man, or woman, into a lethal, unbeatable opponent.
It is necessary, however, to submit this claim to further tests, that is why you have been selected. You all have records of courage, fortitude. All of you are experts … in your own manner.
Your chance of survival will depend upon your individual alertness and ingenuity. But indeed the odds are on your side. In fact, when you stepped off that plane, the odds were six to one. This would be no test at all if it were not fair… if the odds were not made clear to you.
The simple fact is this. Your killer is in your midst. Your killer is one of you.

Max Hardy tries to laugh it off and Hana, following his lead, says their captors have overlooked a portrait with eyes that move, and the suit of armour doesn’t contain a body — but when she lifts the visor she discovers Toy Sung’s body inside, which then crashes to the ground!

Act 3

Steed proposes they search the island and Wade suggests they split up to do so.⁷ Hardy wants them all to stick together for safety, but Smith and Richards, used to working alone, head off regardless and the rest of the party splits up, Steed choosing to lie in wait at the house while the rest of them head out into the grounds.

Smith methodically checks the bushes with his matador sword, watched by a cautious Dayton. Everyone is on edge, fearing an attack, and Freddy is attacked while searching a grove with Grecian columns. He closes quickly for hand-to-hand combat, and his death scream when he loses is heard across the grounds — even by Steed who is searching the inside of the house.

Everyone but Smith rushes to the scene, but they find nothing. Dayton suggests they spread out and search while making their way back to the house. Hana gets to the house first and fires her revolvers repeated to sound the alert and they all rush there — she’s found Freddy’s body in one of the coffins.

STEED: Looks as though his back was broken.
KANWITCH (OVER SPEAKER): Quite right, Mr. Steed … and then there were six.⁸

Mrs. Wilde is horrified that a professional strong man could be snapped in half and Dayton suggests Steed did it, as he had stayed behind, reminding them all that the voice had said the killer is in their midst. Hana suddenly realises that Smith isn’t with them.

STEED: He’s not in our midst.

A moment later Smith is searching a wood across the island, when he see a cart that slips its brake and rolls down the hill towards him. He playfully pretends it’s a bull, the curved shafts its horns. He takes his stance and waves his cape at the cart but is speared by a pitchfork thrown from the cart.

Dayton and Steed, hearing the noise, find the cart a moment later, but the body has vanished … Mrs. Wilde arrives and says she hasn’t seen Smith either.

Several minutes later, Steed jumps when he hears Max Hardy slashing at a branch. He hears a gun cocked and turns to find Wade lurking in the bushes. Discovered, Wade claims he thought he was being stalked, when they hear distant sword fighting. They split up to flank the scene and Steed arrives to find Hardy’s sword stuck in the ground, and his body down a gully a short distance away. Dayton and Wilde arrive and once again suspect Steed of being the killer.

MARK DAYTON: And Mr. Steed first on the scene of the crime again.⁹
STEED: Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Wade and I were toge- where is Wade? He should have been here by now.

Dayton’s suspicions deepen when Wade doesn’t turn up to corroborate Steed’s story and they head back to the house to see if he’s there. Instead, they find Smith’s body has appeared in one of the coffins. Steed tries to ease the tension by pointing out it could have been any of them, and he pours himself a whisky.

Act 4

Dayton turns on Steed when Wade doesn’t come back but an owl call outside has them all jumpily heading out to search the woods, Dayton saying they’ll stick together in case Steed needs another alibi.

As they walk through the woods, Hana thinks she sees something keeping pace with them and takes a couple of shots at it. Dayton asks Steed to help them circle the area. While they do so, someone has put Hardy’s body in a coffin, then relights the dining room candles…

KANWITCH: Three down!
JESSEL: Three to go. You are convinced?
KANWITCH: Partially convinced.

Despite Jessel insisting his programme works and he can make an army of assassins if Kanwitch gives them the financial assistance needed, Kanwitch refuses to sign over the funds until all six are dead.

Meanwhile, Wilde and Dayton find a sprung Malay tiger trap and wonder what happened to whoever was in it. Steed had returned to where Hardy was killed and sees that his body is no longer in the gully. As he does so, Dayton and Mrs. Wilde have returned to the house and see what has changed there — Hana screams to attract attention, and Steed rushes back to her aid, but is trapped in a net when he runs in.

They drag him across the room and show him that Wade’s body is now in the fourth coffin, a spear sticking out of his chest.

MARK DAYTON: Well, Mr. Steed, you’ve lost your alibi… we’ve found our killer.
STEED: This is either a large mistake or it’s part of a plan.
MARK DAYTON: What the heck…
STEED: I didn’t kill any of them so it must have been one of you.

Dayton silences Steed as he’s heard an aeroplane approaching then pass over the island. Desperate, Steed asks Hana if Dayton ever left her long enough to kill the others, then suggests maybe she is the killer. Major Dayton says they know who did it and decides to check the plane to syphon fuel in order to light a beacon, and they leave, Steed now tied up in the net.

STEED: There’ll only be one of you coming back and then there’s me! … and I’m a sitting duck…

Dayton orders Hana to collect some brushwood and then is attacked and garrotted while draining fuel from the engines and we later see Hana standing over his inert form,¹⁰ while Steed frees himself with a knife in the house. Steed pensively looks at the coffins then walks away — and Wade suddenly gets out of his coffin, announcing he is the killer, much to Steed’s surprise.

JASON WADE: You look startled, Mr. Steed.
STEED: My adrenalin will bear witness to that.
JASON WADE: A fake death. Old hunter’s trick.
STEED: Well, even for an old hunter to be in two places at once! You were with me when Smith was killed.

They fight, Steed enraged at Wade saying it would be ‘unsporting’ to have attacked him while still in the net, and Steed hurls the spear from the tiger trap into Wade’s chest, his body toppling off a balcony into the grounds. Kanwitch is disgusted, the test is a failure, but Jessel assures him Wade will return despite having taken a spear full in the chest.

Hana returns, accusing Steed of Dayton’s murder, and she pistol-whips him when he goes to show her Wade’s body but it’s vanished. Suddenly unsure, she checks the coffins and sees that Wade’s coffin is empty, then goes outside, where she is apprehended by Mrs Peel.

HANA WILDE: Shoot, kill me! Kill me like the others!
EMMA PEEL: Others?
HANA WILDE: You’ve had us jumping, suspecting each other. And all the time you…
EMMA PEEL: I’ve only just arrived.

Emma explains she was following them but lost them for a hour or so when the plane landed, until she spotted the island. She adds that Steed knew the invitations were false.

EMMA PEEL: Where is Steed?
HANA WILDE: Back at the house. I’m afraid I clobbered him.
EMMA PEEL: Naughty. He won’t like that.

Wade meanwhile has reappeared and is approaching the passed out Steed… The two women return to the house and Wade, hearing them coming, knocks out Mrs. Wilde with the door, but doesn’t see Mrs. Peel, who takes cover. She attacks Wade when he goes to shoot the groggy Steed — much to the astonishment of Jessel and Kanwitch. She gains the upper hand and flings him off the same balcony he had fallen from earlier.

Steed doesn’t believe he was attacked by Wade again and Emma jumps down to the garden. She shows him the Wade she defeated and the body of his identical twin, hidden under some tufts of grass: Gemini — there were two of them! Kanwitch realises he was being conned and turns on Jessel, who guns him down then goes to kill the Avengers.

Jessel emerges from a door hidden in the fireplace¹¹ and he’s just about to shoot Mrs. Peel when his gun is shot front his hand by Mrs. Wilde, who has just recovered. He backs down the dining table, trying to grab each revolver in turn before she can shoot them away, but she’s victorious each time, until he reaches the head of the table, where Steed clobbers him with a candlestick.

HANA WILDE: Pity, I was just starting to enjoy myself.

Epilogue

Mrs. Peel’s out shooting ducks¹² and brings down a flock — of teddy bears!.

EMMA: It looks as though I winged Father Christmas.

Steed replies that he’ll hang around in case she misses anything — and points out she missed the bottle of champagne, hidden in one of the bears. She bags a brace of glasses for them to drink from, leaving him gazing at the sky in wonder.

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1. A very European looking Chinese warrior but he could conceivably be a Soviet from Central Asia. ⭮
2. I assume we’re meant to think they are grouse or pheasant, but the birds are clearly pigeons. ⭮
3. Or perhaps, more appropriately, could it be Janus? ⭮
4. Mrs. Peel is mostly absent from this episode, as Diana Rigg was taking a short holiday, so a different sexy, emancipated, married action woman steps in. There’s a frisson between her and Steed but it’s not as intense as the one he shares with Mrs. Peel. ⭮
5. The surviving dialogue sheets in the archive date from 1989 and only indicate three parts instead of the four that were usual in this period of the show. The fade-out and fade-in here seems indicative of a commercial break leader. ⭮
6. This episode, as well as being an homage to Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”, (and its title a parody of “The Magnificent Seven”) is also something of a remake of Dressed To Kill from series 3. However in that episode the guests were simply people who had bought plots of land rather than martial arts experts. ⭮
7. A horror film trope but there’s a reason for the suggestion, as we discover later. As we see the grounds of the house, it’s clear that they are all studio sets to preserve the Avengers aesthetic of artificiality. ⭮
8. Underlining the Agatha Christie reference. ⭮
9. It’s a surprisingly un-shouty performance from Brian Blessed. ⭮
10. Misdirecting the viewer: Is Hana worried? Or is she now plotting Steed’s death? ⭮
11. Both Steed and Mrs. Peel had previously looked inside the fireplace but missed the mechanism. ⭮
12. More pigeons again… ⭮