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The Episode Guide to Series 5 (1967) of The Avengers

Episode 2 - The Fear Merchants

continuity and trivia

  1. 6:00 - White and Crawley is (or was) a respectable firm of picture framers, picture restorers and museum providores - they've framed much of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II's collection of renaissance drawings.
  2. 6:00 - Did anyone else notice that Gordon White has the same lamp in his office as Steed has in his apartment in other episodes?
  3. 7:54 - the close shot of Steed checking the unconscious chauffeur, Williams, shows him at the end of a long red brick porch, completely at odds with the previous shot where he's in a small blonde brick garage.
  4. When Crawley's chauffeur (the real Williams) is first seen lying unconscious or dead in the garage, he's lying on his stomach with his arms at his side. However, in the close up when Steed examines him, he's lying on his side and his arms are up!
  5. 8:07 - When Steed takes off in pursuit of Crawley's Rolls, the Bentley is in a completely different location to the previous shot - even on a different street! - chain fence on one side, building site on the other, whereas previously it had been in a car park of an office building, opposite the yellow brick garage where Williams was lying unconscious.
  6. 15:30 - The close-ups of Steed are out of focus.
  7. 18:13 - The door of Raven's automated potter pops back open when he tries to close it.
  8. In the office... ...at the home Anywhere!
    ©1961-9 CANAL+IMAGE UK Ltd All Rights Reserved
    22:00-22:07 - The feather Emma picks up in the office after Gordon White is murdered is significantly different from that which she shows to Steed back at her apartment, and which he proceeds to tickles her feet with.
  9. 26:58 - The chart which Dr Voss holds bears no relation to those taken while Raven was in the seat - the peaks are much larger.
  10. 27:45 - Steed has an answering machine/dictation device (it's an Ansafone), new technology in 1967! Not to be left out, Emma has one in The Bird Who Knew Too Much.
  11. 34:33 - That was quite a long meeting Steed has with the BEB! - an 11am start, and he leaves at 3:35pm? (Right >>).
  12. 38:55 et passim. - the long shots of Steed in the quarry don't look like Macnee. It's fairly clear in the MS at 40:07 that it's Rocky Taylor.
  13. 40:14 - Gilbert backs the bulldozer away from the edge of the pit and puts the brake on, but at 40:27 it's perched right on the edge of the precipice, ready to plunge in and crush all beneath it.
  14. 40:33 - Steed is still buyoing his bowlers from Herbert Johnson & Son, as shown by the milliner's mark inside the crown of the bowler.
  15. 41:25 - Rocky stands in for Garfield Morgan in the bulldozer crushing sequence as well.
  16. 44:47 - When Dr Voss takes Mrs Peel's results from the computer, the INDEX BEYOND CAPACITY notice is in a different place to where it is when Pemberton reads it.
  17. 46:40-47:13 - In the finale, Steed turns off the light, Pemberton yells for emergency lighting, the lights come on, Emma kicks away Pemberton's gun, and Steed throws his umbrella at the lights, smashing one of them (you can see the glass break!) and knocking them both out of commission. Then, after the fight, Steed clicks the light switch and turns them back on!
  18. 47:09 - Dr Voss fires a shot at Steed before Emma collides with her, but it still misses ... of course, she could just be a lousy shot.
  19. 47:18 - At the very end, Steed asks Emma if she was afraid he wouldn't arrive in time, and she replies that the thought never entered her head. The lie detector, which is activated when the arm rests are pressed down, shows she's lying. He then asks her "Never, Mrs. Peel?" Emma then sits up, taking her arms off the activator arm rests, and replies, "Never, Mr. Steed"... and the lie detector keeps working, registering the lie!
  20. 48:03 - The bird sculpture from The Girl From Auntie is decorating Mrs Peel's flat.
  21. Running time: 49'35"

Cast notes

  1. Annette Carell appeared (misbilled as Annette Carrell) as 'B' in episode "A, B and C" of The Prisoner.
  2. Several actors get no credit in the cast list, can anyone identify them? Their mugshots are shown here. ADDENDUM - Alan Hayes has suggested that Patrick Macnee has a cameo appearance as John Tyler, disguised by a beard and a strategically placed chair.

    John Tyler

    David Wallace

    Williams
  3. The comedy weight lifter is Declan Mulholland, but why he gets a credit when he doesn't speak and is on screen for maybe two or three seconds is beyond me.
A note on the timecodes
Where I have listed two sets of timecodes, the first is from the 2009-11 Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD sets, any other timecodes are from the A&E and Contender DVD sets from a decade beforehand.
The new releases have been 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).
These 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 runnning 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). Let's hope the much-rumoured bluray release will revert to native 24fps with soft telecine so we won't have these problems again.
© Piers Johnson 1993-2011