Series 1 — Episode 5
Crescent Moon

Production details

Studio details: Teddington Two
Production No. 3369
Tape No. VTR/ABC/1113 (recorded off TX.)
Transmission: 4th February 1961, 10.00–11.00 p.m.

Schedule

Camera rehearsal would have taken place on 3rd February and 4th February, 1961 in a schedule similar to the other episodes of this time.

Regional broadcasts

ITV Broadcaster	Date	Time
ABC Midlands	4/02/1961	10.00pm
ABC North	4/02/1961	10.00pm
Anglia Television	-	-
ATV	-	-
Southern Television	-	-
Tyne Tees Television	-	-
Television Wales & West	-	-
Ulster Television	-	-
Westward Television	-	-
Scottish Television	-	-
Border Television	-	-
Grampian Television	-	-

TV Times listing

Episode availability

• Video - none
• Audio - reconstruction in The Lost Episodes vol. 5, by Big Finish
• Script - none
• Publicity Stills - none
• Tele-Snaps - none

Continuity and trivia

1. This episode is entirely lost - no scripts, no publicity stills, and no film. The scant information we have is taken from newspaper articles and the TV Times listings of the day, and from Dave Rogers’ researches in the 1980s and 1990s, which seem to have been based on original paperwork from the show which is now missing.
2. Max North’s Telereview for February 4 1961 (Manchester Evening News, p. 7) reads:
   ‘In tonight’s episode of “The Avengers”, Ian Hendry and his comrades-in-arms against lawlessness go abroad for the first time - to the Caribbean Island of Pascala, where a politician’s beautiful daughter has been kidnapped.’
   I have accordingly replaced “Central American” with “Caribbean” in the synopsis above.
3. As the script is lost it can’t be confirmed whether General Mendoza was a non-speaking walk-on part or if the character never appeared on screen at all.
4. Many of the parts in the plot are not attributed to character names, so I have avoided referring to Fernandez, Alvarez and Bartello in my summary. Giving their placing in the TV Times listing, which tended to list actors in order of appearance, they could be either Vasco’s or Paul’s lackeys.
5. I had initially chosen to represent Vasco as one of the general officer’s wanting to take control for himself and his lover, Señora Mendoza, rather than simply taking him wealth. This seems a more likely plot as it is in line with plots for other shows of the era but I have reverted to the “family retainer” wording that seems to be used in every anecdote about the episode.
6. A memo dated March 30 1962 proposed a replay season for the nine episodes not broadcast by ATV and Anglia and also the first two episodes, which had been seen on ATV but not Anglia. This proves that all live episodes had been recorded any may yet be out there somewhere.
   This episode was proposed to be run third so must have been highly regarded by the producers despite being in the second category of viewer ratings when first broadcast.
7. Producer Leonard White originally allocated Don Leaver to direct this episode, planned to be the sixth episode. Delays with Patrick Brawn’s adaptation of Fred Edge’s Canadian TV script for The Radioactive Man saw this episode moved up to the fifth spot and John Knight replaced Don Leaver, who was unavailable. Don Leaver instead directed what became the sixth episode, Girl on the Trapeze.
8. Ingrid Hafner doesn’t appear in this episode, one of six throughout the first series:
   Hot Snow (obviously, as her character had not yet been introduced), Crescent Moon, Death on the Slipway, Toy Trap, The Far Distant Dead, and Dragonsfield