The Lost Episodes - series discussion

[Frankymole]

Offensive to whom?

[darren]

I think of this as an equal opportunities point rather than a racial one.

If there's a German character or a French character on the audios, no one would say anything about an English actor playing the part and adopting an accent but because it's Chinese that's offensive.

I've not heard these audios but being that they are audio, you need to be clued in to a character identity (short of saying "I'm Chinese"), so an identifiable accent is important but how well the chosen actor does the voice is another matter. Even a Chinese actor would have to put in some emphasis. Look at the actor Gemma Chan, born in England to Chinese parents - for the Sherlock episode 'The Blind Banker' she had to adopt a cod-Chinese accent.

[Lhbizness]

Think the Siamese Cats in "Lady and the Tramp" and you're pretty close to the caricaturing being done here. So, yeah, it is in pretty bad taste. I won't have the argument about race issues right now, but it's out of place in an audio series that purports to be at least semi-realistic. You can make a Chinese accent recognizable and still realistic, same as you can have a French or a German accent. Regardless, I see no reason why they chose to go that route.

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

Listened to the latest volume of stories a couple of weeks ago, set number five, and enjoyed them all very much. There were a couple of episodes that were virtually original to the audios, with almost no record of the episodes as broadcast in either documentation or photos, but they fitted the feel and structure of the rest of the series well enough. The new audio performance of Girl on a Trapeze was good fun, and did not have me visualising Ian Hendry performing the same scenes which is a good indication of the effectiveness of Anthony Howell's new interpretation of the character. My favourite of the set though was Diamond Cut Diamond however, as adventures using transport and airlines etc for the setting always score high with me! Julian Wadham putting on an Irish accent for Steed's cover was not as distracting as I expected and it was a thoroughly absorbing mystery. Standards generally maintained here, another highly recommended release!

[Avengerholic]

In complete contrast to the comic strip adaptations these are simply amazing. I've very much enjoyed all of the first three box sets immensely, the only exception being The Springers which I found slightly dull not to mention rather poorly acted by the supporting cast.

[Lhbizness]

I've been considering why these eps bother me so much (beyond my issues with characterization and acting, etc.) I think it comes down the sense that they're built to replace the original episodes in some way. Unlike your usual reboot, where you still have the original productions to go back to if you don't like the new one, this is pretty much the only source for a performance of those missing episodes. So when I hear Wadham recreating a Steed that I really, really don't like, it's as though he's effectively replaced Patrick Macnee, overwriting everything that Patrick did in the development of Steed (and he did a lot).

[Alan]

I can see where you're coming from on this, but the way I see it is that it's a shame that the Big Finish releases didn't happen 15 years ago (they started producing Doctor Who audios in 1999, after all) as there would have been a chance that they could have secured Patrick to perform in them.

That would have been ideal, but IMHO this is really the next best thing (though of course I'm sure you would have preferred a different actor as Steed).

I like that Julian Wadham's Steed is not a clone of Macnee's, and that he has gone his own way with the character, but even though I like him in the role I've never thought of him having replaced Macnee or supplanted him and more than I did previously with Donald Monat (who as you know I rate very highly).

These are recreations, textually faithful but which allow the actors their heads in their performances. I don't think they've hit every note correctly, but for the most part I'm very happy with what's been produced in this particular range.

The Steed and Mrs Peel audios, by comparison, seem a mis-step - with my main gripe being the infantile source material which lacks the sophistication of the film era episodes it purports to reflect. I also think Olivia Poulet is seriously miscast as Emma Peel, and consequently I can empathise entirely with your dislike of Wadham, as I'm feeling the same disquiet with Poulet's interpretation.

[Lhbizness]

I think the operative word there is "recreation." And the problem is that, unlike with Monat's Steed, we don't have the originals to make the comparison. This is the only "original." If they were properly recreating the lost episodes, wouldn't the goal be to cleave as closely as possible to the series as possible? And so the changes of characterization, of "going a different way" with established characters, is inappropriate.

The problem might come down to Macnee creating Steed. He took a very sketchy character and fleshed him out, gave him meaning and depth. And he did that over the course of many seasons. But Wadham doesn't appear to have even worked backwards from those seasons to create a reasonable facsimile of where Steed MIGHT have been in Season 1. Maybe it's an impossible task, but from what I have read/heard, the Big Finish writers/directors/actors didn't really think that deeply about the character. They made assumptions: that the scripts said all we needed to know. But The Avengers is more about character than it is about plot (the plots, even early on, are pretty thin and at times ridiculous).

The Comic Strip episodes are ludicrous, I agree.

[Alan]

Big Finish have stressed right from the start that they are recreations based on original scripts, rather than original episodes. We can only guess at what the finished television productions were like, and BF have used photographic evidence including tele-snaps to make those guesses, where they available, but I've never seen the audios as replacements for those missing episodes - and I suspect, neither have Big Finish. They are new adaptations which dramatise the scripts for episodes that we can't access through normal means.

I have no qualms about actors making their own decisions and playing to their own strengths as performers. In fact, I would have more trepidation about audio adaptations which had actors second guessing what the television actors did originally and tried to mimic their style and delivery. Macnee, in particular, was a unique performer with a very identifiable delivery - to have someone trying to channel his performance in their own would be disastrous, in my opinion. Far better, I think, to have someone saying that they are familiar with the essence of the Steed character and Macnee's performance, but wish to interpret the character on the page in their own way.

This is, after all, how every actor who plays Sherlock Holmes and other literary characters approach presenting their fresh interpretation. If you take the script as the literary source, which is what Big Finish have done, I don't see why Steed has to be entirely like Macnee's, or those lines delivered as Macnee would have done.

Obviously Girl on the Trapeze (though a script does exist) and The Frighteners (no script survives) have probably been produced just to defeat my argument.

[Spaceship Dispatcher]

Viewing the script as a literary of source, with the original cast's performance as the first interpretation, is how I view film and television too; not just the Avengers, but generally.