• title card: white all caps text made to look like stone blocks, with perspective from top right, reading ‘EPIC’ superimposed on a close-up of the top of a film award statuette in the shape of a woman holding a cloth above her head
  • subtitle card: white all caps text with black dropshadow to the left reading ‘STEED CATCHES A FALLING STAR
			EMMA MAKES A MOVIE’ superimposed on the close-up of the statuette
  • Youtube video - Steed drops by Emma’s flat but she breezes past him at the door, telling him, ‘I’m needed - elsewhere!’
  • The Avengers break all four walls; Emma’s flat is revealed - to her and to us - to be a set on a sound stage at the movie studio
  • Kirby, dressed as an undertaker with white face and grey hair, calls to Mrs. Peel from the hearse
  • Emma awakens in a bed, finding an Old West holster strapped around her, an ivory-handled revolver inside
  • In a parody of the MGM lion, Emma makes a demure roar as the wording ‘A Z.Z. von SCHNERK PRODUCTION’ encircles her head
  • Parody of ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ in the set design and ‘The Perils of Pauline’ as Emma inches closer to the whirling buzzsaw
  • Youtube video - Steed and Emma decide to relax by going to the movies, then decide to stay in instead. Emma kicks down the wall - they are still on Schnerk’s set- and beckons for Steed to follow her home

Series 5 — Episode 11
Epic

by Brian Clemens
Directed by James Hill

Steed catches a falling star
Emma makes a movie

Production No E.66.6.11
Production completed: February 27 1967. First transmission: March 29 1967.

Regional broadcasts

BroadcasterDateTime
Rediffusion London31/03/19678:00pm
ABC Midlands1/04/19679:10pm
ABC North1/04/19679:10pm
Anglia Television31/03/19678:00pm
Border Television2/04/19678:10pm
Channel Television29/03/19678:00pm
Grampian Television31/01/19688:00pm
Southern Television31/03/19678:00pm
Scottish Television12/01/19688:00pm
Tyne Tees Television29/03/19678:00pm
Ulster Television8/02/19687:30pm
Westward Television29/03/19678:00pm
Television Wales & West31/03/19678:00pm

TV Times listing

TV Times listing for April 1 1967, 9.10pm (Midlands edition)
Sydney Morning Herald listing for June 13 1967, 8pm
The Age listing for June 12 1967, 8pm

9.10 The Avengers
starring
Patrick Macnee

as John Steed
and
Diana Rigg
as Emma Peel
in
Epic
By Brian Clemens

In which Steed catches a falling Star — and Emma makes a movie!

Cast also includes

Stewart Kirby Peter Wyngarde
Damita Syn Isa Miranda
Z.Z. Von
Schnerk

Kenneth J. Warren
Policeman David Lodge
Actor Anthony Dawes

Designed by Robert Jones
Music by Laurie Johnson
Directed by James Hill
Produced by Albert Fennell
and Brian Clemens
Executive Producer
Julian Wintle

ABC Weekend Network Production

International broadcasts

BroadcasterDateTime
ABN2 Sydney, Australia13/06/19678:00pm
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia12/06/19678:00pm
ABC New York, USA14/04/196710:00pm
ORTF2 France6/08/19688:30pm
Suisse Romande, Switzerland15/01/19689:10pm
French titleCaméra meutre
ZDF Germany9/04/19689:15pm
German titleFilmstar Emma Peel
KRO Netherlands17/10/19679:00pm
Dutch titleGevallen steeren
Svizzera Italiana24/05/19749:00pm
Italian titleuna straordinaria avventura
Spain30/10/19674:10pm
Spanish titleEpopeya
USA: Chicago Tribune listing for April 14 1967, 9pm
USA: New York Times listing for April 14 1967, 10pm
Netherlands: Dagblad de Stem listing for October 16 1967, 9pm
Netherlands: Zierkzeesche Nieuwsbode episode summary for 9pm October 16 1967,
Spain: ABC Madrid listing for October 29 1967, 4.10pm
Switzerland: L’Impartial listing and episode summary for January 15 1968, 9.10pm
France: L’Impartial listing for August 6 1968, 8.30pm
France: L’Impartial episode summary and photo
TV Svizzera Italiana: Radiocorriere listing for May 24 1974, 9pm
TV Svizzera Italiana: Stampa Sera listing for May 24 1974, 9pm
USA: Chicago Tribune article and photos of Peter’s various costumes

Episode Rating

Subject 0–5
Direction 5 stars
Music 4 stars
Humour 5 stars
Intro/tag 4 stars
Mastermind
4½ stars
Plot 4 stars
Emma 4 stars
Set Design
3½ stars
Overall
(0–10)
9 stars

This is called the polarisation of your audience. I love this episode - maybe only The Hidden Tiger is better. The use of the same set for outside Emma’s flat, and Schnerk’s representation of outside her flat is inspired, and the symmetry doesn’t stop there. Great acting, great clothes (well, mostly...), a fantastic score and wickedly funny lines. What more could you want?

A man resembling Steed is auditioned for a non-speaking part - a corpse.
Mrs. Peel is already needed before Steed can get in the door, summoned to a remote country lane by an anonymous telephone call. Steed tags along, fearing a trap, but only an old priest on a bicycle disrupts the blustery calm of the country. The priest is in fact an old actor, who has just filmed Mrs. Peel for a screen test as the star of a film, “The Destruction of Emma Peel”. Mrs. Peel is kidnapped by the villains, Von Schnerk, Syn and Kirby - played wonderfully by Peter Wyngarde, who was so excellent as the villain in A Touch of Brimstone. Chased around the set, shot at and attacked with swords and tomahawks, then finally tied to a circular saw, Mrs. Peel looks set to have her dying moments filmed... Steed makes himself the understudy for the actor playing his corpse and finishes Von Schnerk’s plans to make the epic of the century.
Emma decides she would rather not see an old Stuart Kirby film at the Plaza, and the Avengers decide to stay in for the night.

The Cars

Marque/Model Colour Number Plate
Lotus Elan S3 glacier blue SJH 499D
old bicycle black, wicker basket -
Austin taxi black VGF 345
Rolls-Royce limousine black EXY 689
Rolls-Royce Hearse black MUL 296
policeman’s bicycle black -
Bentley Speed Six 1926 British racing green RX 6180

Who’s Killing Whom?

Victim Killer Method
Actor Stewart Kirby V* Pistol
Policeman Stewart Kirby V* Tommy gun
Z.Z. von Schnerk V* Steed & himself V* Shot while struggling for pistol
Click a name to see the face

The Fashions

Emma’s Fashions Steed’s Fashions
  1. lilac jacket, skirt & stockings with purple skivvy
  2. green jacket & trouser with white cotton skivvy & ankle boots
  3. lilac trousers, purple skivvy (jacket not being worn)
  1. fawn overcoat and bowler, black umbrella, white shirt, red cravat, charcoal chalk striped suit, brown gloves
  2. pale grey double-breasted suit, felt collar, flap pockets, 2 very long vents, wide skirt, grey chelsea boots, umbrella and bowler, white shirt, pale grey cravat
  3. dark single-breasted taupe jacket, white pinstripe shirt, gold tie & handkerchief, beige trousers, beige slipon shoes, grey socks

Continuity and trivia

  1. 3:38–3:49 — There’s dust on the caption scanner and probably the acetates as well - when the titles fade in spots appear all over the screen and there’s even more when the Steed & Emma subs appear.
  2. 6:00 — Mrs. Peel appears to record all her incoming phone calls.
  3. 8:27–8:37 — We see Mrs. Peel in the back of the cab, then cut to other angles of the cab drtiving through what looks like Watford. When we cut back to Mrs. Peel, the cab is still passing the same building as it was in the first shot!
  4. 13:00 — the long shot shows the whole side of the set open, so how come Mrs. Peel didn’t react until she opened the door and saw the cameras?
  5. 13:45 — The somewhat unconvincing exterior backdrop from Never Never Say Die (seen through the doorway when Steed is inside the cottage) is in the background of the scenes where Emma encounters Kirby dressed as a priest and undertaker.
  6. 15:56 — there’s suddenly a lot more gravestones on that hill.
  7. 16:46–17:07 — The modernist painting which was being viewed by the millionaire in the vault in the episode "From Venus With Love" is in the props back stage: at 16:46 you can see the silhouette painting down the hall from “Steed” and at 17:07 Emma walks past the full painting. Not only that, but both copies of it - with and without the silhouette - turn up in two episodes of The Saint ("A Portrait of Brenda" and “The Power Artist”). The non-silhouette version reappears in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
  8. 17:15 etc. - The chair and cherubs were last seen in The Murder Market.
  9. 21:30 (21:17) - Why doesn’t Mrs. Peel notice Z.Z. von Schnerk & Damita on the stairs in the saloon scene?
  10. 22:38 — Product placement for Mrs. Peel’s simply enormous Ansafone.
  11. 27:45 — The wagon that Emma hides behind and she and Kirby later fight on top of appeared in From Venus with Love.
  12. 28:02 (27:51) - Mrs. Peel discards the gun loaded with blanks (26:12) just before fighting Kirby. encountering the policeman, but is suddenly carrying it again as she leads him back to the dead body.
  13. 29:34 — The Simon Roberts & Son sign (undamaged version) from "The Winged Avenger" can also be seen in the back lot. David Lodge, playing a policeman, falls on it.
  14. 35:08 — The timing in the second fight scene goes wrong - Kirby swings at Emma before she can finish saying “ah ah ah!” to Damita.
  15. 42:27 — Schnerk tells them he needs more footage of them gloating over her before they throw the switch - but his camera is in the wrong place to film the mid-shot!
  16. 43:40 — The dead stand-in for “Steed” is on the prefab cobblestones from The Correct Way to Kill.
  17. 45:00 — Z.Z. von Schnerk sits down to play “the right music” - rollicking dramatic silent movie soundtrack stuff - with Mrs. Peel as the star of “The Perils of Pauline”.
  18. 45:50 — Emma is already at the control switch for the band saw but when the angle changes to Steed fighting Kirby alongside the saw, she hasn’t quite reached it yet.
  19. 47:15 (47:00) - How did Emma and Steed obtain new outfits for the tag scene?
  20. 48:10 — Steed reflects, “Unbridled passion... why don’t we just spend the evening at home?”
  21. Running time: 49′17″
  22. Isa Miranda suffered a cut to the forehead during filming when she was hit by a chair.
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.

Cast notes

  1. Peter Wyngarde (Stewart Kirby) had been the brilliantly evil John Cartney in A Touch of Brimstone and went on to be the lead in the two ITC shows Department S (see more trivia here) and Jason King. He played the character of Jason King in both.

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