Episode 14 - Silent Dust

Episode Rating

The Cars

Who's Killing Whom?

Victim	Killer	Method	click a name to see the face
Quince	Juggins V*	strangled

continuity and trivia

1. 1:30 - the first few birds to fall are obviously stuffed, the rest seem to be thrown in the air and let fall.
2. 1:36 - those are bats!
3. 3:00 - the punting scene on the river or lake may have been filmed at Tyke's Water Lake, as it looks very like some of the shots in The Hour that Never Was.
4. 3:06 (2:55) - Steed quotes Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 6 - "the temple-haunting martlet".
5. 5:09 - Quince's spectacles have holes in the middle of the lenses so the actor can see normally, just as Harold Kasket's do in Stay Tuned.
6. 7:00, 24:02 et passim - it's the same old barn buildings used in the location shooting as in Man-eater of Surrey Green - the interior shots confirm it beyond doubt (now Deeves Hall Cottage, near Ridge).
7. 9:51 - Silent Dust is described as an organo-chlorine fertilizer that went wrong, killing first the earthworms, then the birds. The minister says it has it's own built-in early warning system - the birds disappear.
8. 13:42+14:12 (14:00) - Clare says her father died in the cold snap at the end of March, then tells Omrod he has been six months dead, putting the events in late September, but filming took place in June/July, so the clothes and exterior shots don't always fit the storyline.

9. 14:50 - The outside is Well End Lodge, Well End, but it's the same pub interior set as in Man-eater of Surrey Green, but the exterior door is on a different wall.
10. 14:50/15:03 - Croft, showing one of his roses to Mrs Peel, quotes Francis Thompson's "Daisy" (1893) stanza 10, and Mrs Peel chimes in with the concluding line :

    The fairest things have fleetest end,
    Their scent survives their close:
    But the rose's scent is bitterness
    To him that loved the rose.

    In reply, she (mis)quotes Robert Herrick's 1648 poem "The Rose", which Croft readily identifies. Misquotes? She says "ne'er a rose without a thorn" but, as printed in Hesperides, the poem is:

    The Rose.
    
    Before Mans fall, the Rose was born
    (S. Ambrose sayes) without the Thorn:
    But, for Mans fault, then was the Thorn,
    Without the fragrant Rose-bud, born;
    But ne're the Rose without the Thorn.

11. 17:00 - Juggin's identifying tattoo looks very fake.
12. 17:39 (18:03) - when Mrs Peel tells Steed about Quince being frightened by Omrod's gamekeeper Mellors, he chortles and, referring to "Lady Chatterley's Lover", says, "Mellors? not the gamekeeper?"
13. 19:00 - Emma looks on as Steed chats up Beryl, playing shove ha'penny.
14. 25:10 - after scooping some unknown powder into an envelope with his bare hands, Steed then takes an apple from a crate and bites into it. Was he paying no attention at Manderley?
15. 23:43 & 26:02 - It looks like Cliff Diggins doing Patrick Macnee's stunts again.
16. 26:10 - This episode is unusual in that it shows one of our normally invincible heroes badly wounded. Steed is shot by a shotgun and caught in a bear trap.
17. 29:45 - the bat that flaps away in annoyance when Mrs Peel lights the lamp is clearly not flying, but being waved about on a set of wires from a stick (even if you don't actually see the wires).
18. 30:35-32:04 - a surreal dream sequence where Emma is a moustachioed, red eye whiskey guzzling, sawbones removing an impossibly large bullet from the wounded sherrif Steed. She uses a bowie knife and pliers to remove the enormous bullet.
19. 32:36 - corrupt frame on DVD.
20. 40:40 - when the horse is scared by Croft's hand raised with the sickle in it, Norman Bird quickly grabs the halter to prevent her running away.
21. 40:59 - stunt doubles for the fight - It looks like Cliff Diggins again for Steed but I don't recognise the man standing in for Norman Bird. Anyone know a thick-set stuntman with short curly hair and a moustache?
22. 41:00 et passim - nice intercutting of Macnee & Bird in CU with the stunt doubles in MS.
23. 41:15 - you can just see that Macnee's hat has already been sawn thorugh before it's shorn off by the sickle.
24. 41:36 - the horse has had enough once Croft ends up in the trough and she skitters away.
25. 43:05 - Beryl Snow & Mrs Peel have morphed into two large stuntmen for the sequence where Mrs Peel leaps from her horse to Beryl's, taking her to the ground - Cliff and Billy, I think.
26. 44:42 - Jack Watson is replaced by double.
27. 46:08 - the stuntman leaps over the barbed wire fence for Diana Rigg, is it Billy Westley?
28. 46:58 - the same stuntman moves around the tree, trying to avoid Juggin's whip.
29. Steed's horse in this episode was previously ridden by Laurence Olivier in Henry V.
30. The often-told story about this episode is that prior to filming, Diana Rigg had never ridden a horse, and was reportedly terrified the first day of filming. After a few bruises, and some swift lessons, she was back in the saddle and they completed filming. However, this can't be true as she's perfectly at home on horseback in the tag scene of Two's a Crowd, filmed two months earlier.
31. Billy Westley does some of Diana Rigg's stunts, crammed into her clothes with an ill-fitting wig, as usual. Patrick Macnee seems to do most of his own stunts, replaced a few times by Cliff Diggins. Macnee is an excellent horseman after all, even the scene where he and Croft fight around and over (!) a skittish horse. Macnee also performs the entire scene where he chases after Juggins on horseback, treating him like a polo ball and using a protester's placard as his mallet.
32. Running time 49'57"