Series 5 — Episode 2
The Fear Merchants

Plot summary

A man awakes in the middle of Wembley stadium and goes mad, but he’s not the only one.
Emma receives a box of chocolates - but it’s empty except for a card from Steed declaring they’re needed.
All of Jeremy Raven’s business rivals are going mad or dying, through one fear or another. The Business Efficiency Bureau have a motto: “our merchandise is fear” - they discover people’s fears and frighten them to death. Steed, determined to get to the bottom of their plot, enrols as a client and Mrs Peel becomes his business rival. The Avengers close down the B.E.B. by discovering the evildoers are afraid of the dark.
Mrs Peel discovers that Steed is afraid she may have run out of champagne.

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Middle-aged businessman Richard Meadows (Edward Burnham) wakes up, dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown, in the middle of Wembley stadium and the shock of his agoraphobia drives him insane, a menacing figure wearing kid gloves watching from the stands.
John Steed (Patrick Macnee) summons Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) to help him investigate with a box of chocolates - the chocolates replaced with one of his Mrs Peel - we’re needed! cards. At the hospital, she’s shown Meadows and told he went to bed in Birmingham, 113 miles away, and ran English Earthenware plc - which won’t run without him. He’s not the first either, and Steed shows her John Tyler, found on a mountain in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and David Wallace, found on a raft in the Channel in a dinner jacket and cummerbund.

Meanwhile, fit young industrialist Martin Fox (Bernard Horsfall) is working out at a London gym while hefty Saunders (Declan Mulholland) flings his barbell about in the background. He goes to change, and is incapacitated by the shock of finding a mouse in his clothes... The Avengers investigate and realise all the businessmen were in the ceramics trade - Fox heading Fox, White and Crawley. Steed visits Crawley (Andrew Keir), who is rattled by Fox’s attack, and a ‘pointless’ visit by a market research firm, the “Business Efficiency Bureau”. He dashes off to try to find a replacement for Fox and the sinister Gordon White (Jeremy Burnham), the third director, enters - there’s trouble at the kiln and nobody has Fox’s knowledge of it. Steed sees Crawley off then notices his chauffeur, knocked out in the garage. He gives chase but the Rolls has already disappeared, the kid glove wearing driver ignoring Crawley’s fear of speed and accelerating until the man passes out from shock...

Steed and Emma investigate and find an offer to merge the companies of all the victims from a Jeremy Raven. Mrs Peel goes to search Crawley’s office for his response, and overhears White filling in a survey for a kid glove wearing market researcher, who disappears abruptly after Mrs Peel makes a noise. He returns to the BEB with White’s questionnaire and is revealed as Gilbert (Garfield Morgan) when he gives the form to Pemberton (Patrick Cargill), president of the BEB. Pemberton congratulates Gilbert and Dr Voss (Annette Carell) on their ‘treatment’ for Crawley.
Mrs Peel tells Steed there was no response at all, so Steed visits Jeremy Raven (Brian Wilde) under the guise of the Monopolies Commission. Raven proves to be a young eccentric with new economics in his head, who tells him his merger proposal was rejected by every party and what matters it if his competitors have fallen by the wayside?

Dr Voss finds White’s weakness - a fear of birds - and Gilbert is dispatched with a hawk in a cage. White is scared out of his top storey window by it just before Mrs Peel arrives and Gilbert makes his getaway by tipping a display case on her. Steed revisits Raven and learns he called in the BEB to improve his results and eliminate his competitors. Steed tells him they’ve done that all right - 6 are insane and the other dead. Raven angrily visits the BEB but is blackmailed into continuing to pay them part of his profits. The lie detector in his chair has revealed he means to spill the beans though, so they plot to drive Raven insane as well - Dr Voss has already run the computer analysis and Gilber puts a thick wooden box containing a large spider on the table... Raven calls Steed to meet him, but when they arrive he’s already been driven witless, a BEB brochure on the floor.

Steed arranges an appointment, claiming to be in the executive travel business, Mrs Peel his only competitor - who is visiting Raven at the hospital, where Dr Hill (Ruth Trouncer) says he’s improving, but only for short periods. The BEB discover Steed lied to every question and Gilbert, following him to the hospital, is told to eliminate him. Steed discovers Raven’s arachnophobia but on the way home is waylaid by Gilbert, who tries to bury him with a bulldozer. They fight and Gilbert is killed when the bulldozer rolls into the pit they’re in.
Dr Voss brings Mrs Peel in at gun point and they interrogate her - to no avail, as she refuses to crack. Steed finds a BEB card with help! scrawled across the back in her apartment and arrives just before they start to use medical instruments on her, as she’d proved beyond their fear detection techniques.
Steed realises Pemberton is afraid of the dark and disables the lights, while the chair-bound Mrs Peel disarms Pemberton and Voss in turn.

At her flat later, Steed carefully searches for any bugbears and Mrs Peel fears the chocolate box - might be empty! She then discovers Steed is afraid she might not have any champagne.

Production

Production dates:		9/1966	Drinks
Transmission dates:		Foreign title	tea and coffee (from a thermos) champagne (Moët et Chandon [?])
UK	21/01/1967
Sydney	9/05/1967
Melbourne	8/05/1967
USA	27/01/1967
Germany	19/12/1967	(Schock frei Haus)
France	9/07/1968	(Les marchands de peur)
Italy	23/11/1973	(i mercanti di paura)
Spain	---	(Los mercaderes del terror)
The Netherlands	17/05/1969	(Handel in angst)