• title card: white all caps text reading ‘TOO MANY CHRISTMAS TREES’ superimposed on a man wearing a Santa mask and outfit
  • Top-down view of a seance, there are four places around a round table at each of which is a photograph of Steed, the seat at the bottom of the screen is empty
  • Madame Guillotine kneels before the guillotine alongside the evil Santa, who holds the rope that will make the blade fall
  • Emma twirls around in her Oliver Twist costume, revealing how much, according to Steed, she has filled out(!)
  • Surreal image of a playing card turning into the scary masked Santa figure
  • Jeremy Wade, dressed as Jacob Marley, sits dead in the cobwebs of Miss Haversham’s wedding banquet; Emma’s hand moves some of the cobwebs aside
  • Mrs. Peel disarms Jenkins as they fight in the hall of mirrors
  • Steed hold some mistletoe aloft as they depart, seeking a kiss from Mrs. Peel

Series 4 — Episode 13
Too Many Christmas Trees

by Tony Williamson
Directed by Roy Baker

Production No E.64.10.6
Production completed: March 1 1965. First transmission: December 21 1965.

Production

Production dates: 18/02 – 1/03/1965

There was no break for the crew and filming of this episode started the day after the previous one, Death at Bargain Prices, wrapped. To contrast with that episode, there were several exterior shots, mostly Steed driving to Storey’s house, as well as the use of the standing set for Steed’s flat and the large mansion set we had seen in Castle De’Ath (both the banquet hall and staircase as well as the bedroom and hallway sets). Once again, Harry Pottle designed all of these sets and the rebirth of Castle De’Ath as Brandon Storey’s house was achieved by replacing the Highland motifs with Christmas decorations. Pottle’s eerie cut-out Christmas trees and looming basket full of presents made Christmas definitely not for children. Once again, Roy Baker lends his extraordinary vision as a director to an episode and exemplifies the Avengers look.

Filming continued until the first week of March, as reported by The Daily Cinema on March 1st, and may have finished a few days later than listed above.

Regional broadcasts

BroadcasterDateTime
Rediffusion London23/12/19659:40pm
ABC Midlands25/12/196510:10pm
ABC North25/12/196510:10pm
Anglia Television23/12/19658:00pm
Border Television24/12/19658:00pm
Channel Television25/12/196510:10pm
Grampian Television24/12/19658:00pm
Southern Television25/12/196510:15pm
Scottish Television21/12/19658:00pm
Tyne Tees Television25/12/196510:10pm
Ulster Television25/12/19658:00pm
Westward Television25/12/196510:10pm
Television Wales & West25/12/196510:10pm

TV Times listing

TV Times listing for December 23 1965, 9.40pm (London edition)
Sydney Morning Herald listing for December 25 1966, 8pm
The Age listing for December 25 1966, 7.30pm
The Canberra Times (December 19 1966) announces the Avengers Christmas special for December 25 1966 at 9.20pm

9.40 The Avengers
starring
Patrick Macnee

as John Steed
and Diana Rigg
as Emma Peel
in
Too Many Christmas Trees
By Tony Williamson

In which Steed hangs up his stocking — and Emma asks for more …

Cast also includes

Brandon Storey Mervyn Johns
Dr. Felix Teasel Edwin Richfield
Janice Crane Jeannette Sterke
Martin Trasker Alex Scott
Jenkins Robert James
Jeremy Wade Barry Warren

Music by Laurie Johnson
Directed by Roy Baker
Produced by Julian Wintle

ABC Television Network Production

International broadcasts

BroadcasterDateTime
ABN2 Sydney, Australia25/12/19669:20pm
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia25/12/19669:20pm
ABC New York, USA11/08/196610:00pm
TF1 France21/09/197312:00am
Suisse Romande, Switzerland17/12/19668:35pm
French titleFaites de beaux rêves
ZDF Germany
German titleDer Weihnachtsalptraum
KRO Netherlands
Dutch title
Italy3/12/80 C51
Italian titleTroppi alberi di Natale
Spain7/03/196710:15pm
Spanish titleDemasiados árboles en Navidad

Italy did not show this episode in the 1960s, the Italian titles are from the Tele Torino International broadcast in the 1980s, and DVD releases. The Netherlands and Germany did not include it in contemporary broadcasts and fRance had to wait until 1973 to see it.

This episode was not shown in France on ORTF2 in 1967 but was finally shown as part of a series of eight previously unbroadcast episodes, shown on TF1 after a run of repeats from series 6 on Sunday afternoons in 1973.

Spain: ABC Madrid listing for March 7 1967, 10.15pm
Switzerland: Journal de Genève listing for December 17 1966, 8.35pm
USA: New York Times listing for August 11 1966, 10pm
France: L’Impartial listing for September 21 1973, 5.15pm
France: L’Impartial episode summary from September 21 1973
USA: New York Times, showing a photo from this episode

Episode Rating

Subject 0–5
Direction 4 stars
Music 4 stars
Humour 4 stars
Intros/tags 4 stars
Villains 4 stars
Plot 4 stars
Emma
4½ stars
Sets/Props
3½ stars
Overall
(0–10)
8 stars

Maybe festive, but not exactly cheerful; the villainous machinations of the disturbingly believable Jeanette Sterk give me the creeps. Welcome relief from the fancy dress costumes, especially Mrs. Peel’s.

The Fashions

Emma’s Fashions Steed’s Fashions
  1. grey wool suit with skirt (knee length, zipped up back), tight at waist with slanted flap-covered pockets on hips, two buttons fastening jacket that has no vents, worn with pale grey rollneck skivvy, black gloves and handbag, black high heels
  2. (1) without the jacket, later with a blue and white vertical striped apron
  3. fur coat (mink?) and matching hood over grey rollneck skivvy and stretch nylon pants, white slippers
  4. (3) without the coat and hood
  5. Oliver Twist costume with tight woolen trousers
  6. white fur(?) coat with ribbed sleeves and three large round furred buttons to close, over white rollneck blouse, white headband and mittens
  1. cotton winter pyjamas, initially with bowler hat (dream sequence)
  2. dark dressing gown over pyjamas
  3. black pullover and dark trousers
  4. brown overcoat with dark collar, brown bowler, dark patterned scarf, over Prince of Wales check jacket, white shirt and dark flower motif tie, dark waistcoat with silver buttons
  5. (4) without the overcoat and bowler
  6. Sydney Carlton costume (briefly without jacket and waistcoat) (also in a dream sequence)
  7. (5)
  8. (6)
  9. black overcoat over black pullover and trousers, later with a black bowler

The Cars

Marque/Model/Type Number Plate
Bentley UW 4887
One-horse surrey -

Who’s Killing Whom?

Victim Killer Method
Freddy Marshall ? V* brain hemorrhage
Jeremy Wade V* ? V* brain hemorrhage
Jenkins V* Emma shot
Brandon Storey V* Steed shot
Click a name to see the face

Continuity and trivia

  1. 1:24 — Steed dreams of styrofoam snow?
  2. 4:43 — Steed keeps his sugar in the canister marked “wild thyme”.
  3. 5:58 — A Bond reference? The folder for Frederick David Marshall and his photograph inside it have the number 0015 on it.
  4. 6:51 – The quality of the prop newspaper shows how far they’ve come, and how much bigger the budget for the filmed series. Gone are the clearly pasted on paragraphs or drawn approximations, it’s a typeset masterpiece complete with half-tone photograph of Freddy.

    The article in the paper reads:

    Mystery death in hotel room

    Screams… then man found dead

    A MAN was found dead last night in a room in the Empress Hotel, Berners – street W.1.

    A chambermaid, Miss D. Holman, heard screams coming from room 106 and when members of the staff gained entry to the room with a pass key the man, registered as Mr. F. Marshall, was found sitting fully clothed in a chair. The hotel doctor was called and confirmed that the man was dead.

    Mr. Marshall had been at the hotel for two days before his death, and had stayed in his room all that time, taking his meals there.

  5. 9:22 — Steed’s Christmas cards:
    • “Come fly with me, Amy”;
    • a card from Carlotta;
    • “Best wishes for the future, Cathy”;
    • “Longing for you, Irma”;
    • a card from Boofums, which leads to the exchange:
      EMMA: Who is Boofums?
      STEED: The Post Office mistress at Ongar.

    The final script version of the scene differs from that in hte draft script:

    STEED: Give me a hand will you?
    EMMA: Mmmm, I love opening other people’s cards.
    STEED: Ha! See who hasn’t forgotten me this time!
    EMMA: (OPENS A CARD) Ah… Come fly with me, Amy.
    STEED: Ah! Chocks away!! … (OPENS A CARD) Carlotta, yes! Car-lotta!
    EMMA: Best wishes for the future, Cathy. (HANDS THE CARD TO STEED)
    STEED: Mrs. Gale! Ah, how nice of her to remember me! (LOOKS AT THE ENVELOPE) What can she be doing in Fort Knox?
    EMMA: Longing for you, Irma
    STEED: Errrgh, charming Irma. I can remember a terrible time in Monte Carlo when …
    EMMA: (ANNOYED) Who is “Boofums”??
    STEED: (SMILES) hah, the post-mistress at Ongar.
    EMMA: (HANDS HIM ALL THE OTHER CARDS) Much more of this and I shall lose my appetite.
  6. 9:38 — Steed receives a Christmas card from Mrs. Gale and comments “Mrs. Gale! Ah, how nice of her to remember me! … What can she be doing in Fort Knox?” (Honor Blackman of course had gone to film Goldfinger which is partly set in Fort Knox. This joke reprises the one about “pussy-footing” on the beach at the end of Lobster Quadrille.)
  7. 10:40-12:00 — Steed’s Bentley is one of the older tourer types, with a large main windshield and two small personal shields. In most of the exterior tracking shots the main windshield is up, but it’s down in all the studio-shot close-ups against the projected background. There’s one exterior with the screen down (10:35–10:37) – the one that actually has Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg in it instead of the stand-ins, so it looks like an error by the Second Unit.
  8. 11:30 — it’s clearly not Patrick Macnee & Diana Rigg in the car as they turn into the driveway, despite them appearing in most of the travelling location shots. I can’t place either stand-in.
  9. 14:14 — The upstairs hall leading to Steed and Mrs. Peel’s rooms is the same set as the upstairs bedroom hallway in Castle De’Ath, the rest of the set – the stairs and great hall is the same as well, just with Dickensian and Yuletide decoration instead of the Scottish props.
  10. 29:40 – the shadow of the boom microphone bobs around over Mrs. Peel’s head.
  11. 36:58 — Steed gives Emma a retractable pen full of tear gas as a Christmas present, she later breaks it during the fight in the hall of mirrors.
  12. 40:07 — Steed sings “The Grand Old Duke of York” when Jenkins delivers his drugged drink and (42:40) – “Green Grow the Rushes-O” and (44:30) “Oranges and Lemons”* to prevent Janice from accessing his mind. Mrs. Peel accompanies him on the last two after he quickly explains what he’s doing.
    * The strange bit about “here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”
  13. 46:00/47:35 — Steed has a gun tucked into one of his boots which Emma removes in order to shoot Jenkins.
  14. The plot bears a great relation to Death’s Door, except that there the dreams coming true is explained rationally (which is much more palatable to my sceptical outlook).
  15. Running time 49′34″
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).
Thankfully, the new blu ray releases for series 4–6 appear to use native 24fps with soft telecine so the running times and pitch all seem to be correct again along with a much grreatly improved picture quality, most notably in the Tara King episodes which are finally back to their original glory.

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