Series 5 — Episode 11
Epic

Plot summary

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. 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 Stewart Kirby film at the Plaza, and the Avengers decide to stay in for the night.

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Prologue

Two washed-up old matinee idols, Damita Syn (Isa Miranda) and Stewart Kirby (Peter Wyngarde) audition an actor resembling Steed (Anthony Dawes) for their director, Z. Z. von Schnerk (Kenneth J Warren). Kirby shoots the actor with a pistol and when he gasps in shock Damita reminds him it’s a non-speaking part.

VON SCHNERK: You were right. Absolutely right,¹ my love. He makes an excellent corpse… excellent.

Act 1

John Steed (Patrick Macnee) rings Mrs. Peel’s doorbell, but she walks out and past him, saying “Sorry Steed, I’m needed, elsewhere”.² Getting in the car, Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) says she’s been 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 Kirby in disguise and he’s just filmed them with a camera hidden in the packages in the basket on the handlebars.

Steed and Emma return to her flat and listen to her recording of the phone call — Steed has a vague recollection of the voice but can’t quite place it; he arranges a dinner date with her that evening and leaves. Meanwhile, Schnerk watches the film and likes Emma’s unwitting screen test:

VON SCHNERK: I like her…
KIRBY: Thought you would!
VON SCHNERK: She has poise… looks… a kind of err.. animal vitality.
KIRBY: Animal vitality! That’s exactly the word I was looking for…
VON SCHNERK: She’s right… Absolutely right…³ I want her Kirby… I want Mrs. Peel…

von Schnerk sabotages Mrs. Peel’s Lotus and Emma finds it won’t start when she goes to use it. Just then, Kirby appears in the lane behind her, disguised as a cabbie dropping off an old woman — Damita in disguise.

Mrs. Peel hops in and when she realises they’re going the wrong way,⁴ Kirby turn on a canister of knock-out gas and drives to the Schnerk Studios.⁵

Kirby calls from the gate to say they’ve arrived and Schnerk delightedly turns on the electric fence. Kirby then drives past rows of prop and set storage⁶ and delivers Mrs. Peel to Stage 4 of Schnerk Studios.⁷ He opens the doors and the unconscious Mrs. Peel tumbles out. von Schnerk and Damita approach and von Schnerk bends down to look at her comatose form and declares:

VON SCHNERK: She is right… Absolutely right…⁸

Act 2

Emma comes to later, apparently in her flat, but the phone is disconnected and the brandy is different. She soon discovers it’s a film set when she opens a door and comes face-to-face with a camera⁹, as is the street ‘outside’ where her Lotus Elan is parked, as she discovers the brick wall is thin plaster. Kirby passes in his taxi cab and gives her a wave so she sets off in pursuit, arriving at the set of a church¹⁰ with a bridal Rolls Royce outside, a wedding invitation on its bonnet and wedding bells pealing. She frowns at the invitation, thinking she has an obsessive admirer, then sees a vicar on the hill of a graveyard beckoning — Kirby again — but when she runs up to him¹¹ he pushes her down the other side.

She gets up to see the Rolls-Royce is now a hearse, a single tailor bell tolling for a funeral and all the confetti turned to dead leaves. On the bonnet is a gilt card: “R.I.P. EMMA PEEL”. All the gravestones are suddenly spot lit, revealed to have her name on each one, and Kirby, now disguised as a Scottish undertaker with dead white skin, has appeared in the hearse. He says, “Mrs. Peel. We’re waiting for you”, then drives off.

Emma runs backstage and is dazzled by an array of coloured spotlights, then sees the dead actor sitting in a chair. Thinking he’s Steed, she runs up only to be horrified to find he’s an unknown corpse.

Hearing talking, she follows the sound to discover Damita casually knitting a scarf, dressed in a Grecian robe and sitting on a throne. She confronts her about the actor but Kirby bursts in, dressed as Alexander the Great.

DAMITA: Can it be? Is it possible? … Alexander!
KIRBY: Mother…
DAMITA: Oh my little Alexander! Home from the wars. Oh, was it so… was it so terrible?
KIRBY: It was hell mother… the noise, the people.¹²
DAMITA: How you must have suffered, Alexander!

"Alexander" decides he will rid them of his ‘evil little sister’, Emma, and attacks her with his bare hands. Emma gets the upper hand in the fight, but Damita hits her on the head with Alexander’s sword and knocks her out. von Schnerk rushes in, happy with the scene and asks Damita to mark it, so she pulls out a clapperboard.

Emma comes to later, lying on a flower-strewn bed with a holster strapped to her thigh. She finds Kirby waiting for her in a Western Saloon set next door, dressed as a bandit propping up the bar and he challenges her to a duel.

KIRBY: Tell you what, I give you three seconds to get out of town.
(EMMA rises on her heels but says nothing. KIRBY moves slowly, menacingly towards her)
KIRBY: One… two… three… draw!

Emma draws first and he falls melodramatically, crashing against the upright piano and collapsing with blood on his chest. She checks the ‘corpse’ briefly and leaves, confused, without spotting Syn and Schnerk filming from a nearby staircase. Schnerk is ecstatic about the scene, and seemingly oblivious to Kirby’s exhaustion after several active scenes.

VON SCHNERK: This will be my — my ultimate masterpiece… a compendium of all my films… a picture with passion, with horror, with danger… and with Mrs. Peel in the lead.

Meanwhile… back at the ranch,¹³ Steed arrives at Emma’s flat and is perturbed by her absence — he plays back the recording again and again, trying to jog his memory but to no avail.

Schnerk reminds his actors they are his ‘puppets’ (and still under contract to him)¹⁴ but promises this film will restore them to their predestals, and make then stars again.
He wants to open up the film, and the stage door opens onto the film lot. Mrs. Peel rushes out — into a hail of machine gun fire from Kirby, dressed as a WWI German officer. She runs from him, only to encounter Damita coming the other way on horseback, dressed as a hussar wearing a plastic mask.

Mrs. Peel ducks behind some props and a while later meets them on the Elstree back lot town set when Damita fires an arrow at her. They’re now dressed as Native American warriors¹⁵ with Kirby brandishing a tomahawk. She defeats his with a karate blow after discovering the gun she has contains blanks. Standing over him, she snaps his arrows in two and runs off, irritating Schnerk immensely.

VON SCHNERK: You’re supposed to win, Kirby!
KIRBY (ANGRILY): Why didn’t you tell her that!
VON SCHNERK: Pink pages Kirby… this will mean pink pages…¹⁶ I will have to re-write the script.

Schnerk is unconcerned that she’s got away again and decides it’s time to plan the climax — the real death of Emma Peel.¹⁷

Act 3

Schnerk watches the rushes¹⁸ in disgust while Damita and Kirby wince at the footage.

VON SCHNERK: It doesn’t flow… and you Kirby, lying there with eggs all over your face…¹⁹
KIRBY: She’s an Amazon!
VON SCHNERK: We will have to retake it.
KIRBY: Retake it?!
VON SCHNERK (OVER): Retake the whole thing… but this time you take care of her. We will make it the last, desperate struggle… but to no avail… she succumbs, she is captured, she is in our power. And then we will kill her. (EVIL CHUCKLE)¹⁷
VON SCHNERK: Well, to work my pets, find Emma Peel for me… find her for me.
KIRBY (ANGRILY): I’m not a stuntman!

Emma meanwhile discovers the fence of the studio is electrified so goes looking elsewhere. Standing behind one of the water tanks, she encounters a policeman (David Lodge) on a bicycle and leads him to the dead actor — a confused Schnerk sees them and says he didn’t cast a policeman.

VON SCHNERK: A policeman? I didn’t cast a policeman.
KIRBY: Well you’ve got one now.
VON SCHNERK: Very well, we’ll write him into the script, and then write him out again — permanently!

Sadly, the policeman is a former film extra reliving his glory days and can’t believe Emma’s there in deadly earnest, and doesn’t think the dead actor is actually dead, until Emma tells him to look closer. When Kirby appears, dressed as a 1930s gangster with a Tommy gun,²⁰ he refuses to heed Emma’s warnings, not wanting to miss his chance of a scene with Stewart Kirby.

POLICEMAN: What? Lose my chance of doing a scne with Stewart Kirby? … Please.
(TURNS TO KIRBY)
POLICEMAN: All right! Throw down that gun!
KIRBY: You make me … cop.
POLICEMAN: Come on, this is your last chance…
(KIRBY SHOOTS HIM, THEN TOSSES A COIN AT THE BODY)
KIRBY: That’s for the wife and kids…

Steed has been replaying the tape and finally remembers the voice — a recollection of hearing Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy — Steed snaps his fingers and breathes, “Stewart Kirby!”

Back at the studio, Emma encounters a US Civil War remake of the Alexander scene from earlier, with Kirby playing a returned Confederate.

DAMITA: Can it be? Is it possible? … Edgar!
KIRBY: Yes ma… it’s me!
DAMITA: Oh my little Edgar! Home from the wars. Was it … was it so awful?
KIRBY: It was hell ma… the noise, the people. Those darned Yankees!
DAMITA: How you must have suffered, Edgar!²¹

This time, Emma anticipates Damita’s strike, but is knocked out by Kirby instead. Schnerk decides the film has reached its climax, “where the diabolical arch fiend reveals his terrifying purpose” — and promptly does just that, telling Mrs. Peel, who has been tied to a padded restraint, they’re making a movie with her the star, but it’s a downbeat piece in which the heroine dies.

VON SCHNERK: A tragedy, Mrs. Peel… A drama that will place me forever amid the ranks of the immortal movie makers — Confusion, desperation, fear, horror… death, and all of it authentic.¹⁷ Filmed exactly as it happened.
EMMA: That’s what they all say!
VON SCHNERK: I needed a woman like you, Mrs. Peel, a woman of courage, of beauty, of action. A woman who could become desperate and yet remain strong. A woman who could become confused, yet remain intelligent. A woman who would fight back!… and yet remain feminine. You, and only you, Emma Peel, had all those qualifications. Your reputation preceded you, and you have lived up to it. I hope you die as bravely. I will make you famous, Mrs. Peel, I will make you a star! … er, posthumously. “The Destruction of Emma Peel”, conceived by Z. Z. von Schnerk, written by Z. Z. von Schnerk, directed by Z. Z. von Schnerk, a Z. Z. von Schnerk pro-DUCTION!
(EMMA does an impression of the MGM lion as the logo appears around her head).

Act 4

Outside, Steed arrives at the studio and looks for a way in, while inside Mrs. Peel has been strapped to the bench of a band saw in true silent movie villain style. A swinging pendulum and gruesome decor, which Schnerk claims he designed himself, set the scene²².

Steed finally finds a way over the fence, using a cinematography ladder which he lines up with a staircase prop inside. He ascends, steps over the wires and then descends the staircase in style.

Inside, Kirby and Syn, dressed as classic horror film ghouls with green make-up, humps, scars, and black clothing, approach and menace Mrs. Peel — who rolls her eyes at the absurdly melodramatic dialogue.

KIRBY: Her death must have more… more poetry. It will take time, and yet be inevitable.
(KIRBY strokes EMMA’S forehead)
KIRBY: What do you think of that, meine liebchen?
EMMA: (LOOKING UP, OFF CAMERA) I think I’m in danger of becoming a split personality.

We now see the end of the table has a huge circular saw, straight out of a silent movie. Schnerk is delighted with her ad lib. and decides to keep it in the film. Kirby’s evil doctor character draws Damita’s disfigured Natasha into an embrace and announces they will do it together…

Steed by this point has made it back stage and finds a copy of the script for “The Destruction of Emma Peel” — with Emma’s name hand-written on the cover, and he begins flipping through it hastily.

Schnerk stops Damita from turning on the saw — “we only have one chance at that!” — and films a close-up of them gloating over her.

EMMA: Gloat all you like, but just remember I’m the star of this picture.

Schnerk sends Kirby and Syn to fetch the dead actor from the other set, but Damita finds the actor too heavy and they go to fetch a wheelchair. Steed has got there just before them, having read the script, and substitutes himself for the body while they’re fetching a wheelchair. They heave him into it²³ when they return then head back to Schnerk.

Schnerk has grown impatient and starts the saw without waiting for them to come back, filming the action to a strident stereotypical silent movie piano accompaniment he plays himself. They enter and Steed causes chaos when he calmly stands up and turns the saw off.

He defeats Damita and Kirby, who battle him with prop chairs and bottles, then Schnerk fires his decidely real pistol at him, declaring he’s changing the title of the film to “The Destruction of Peel and Steed”. Steed quickly flings his trusty umbrella into the lid of Schnerk’s piano, trapping his gun arm and he frees Mrs. Peel in the nick of time.

Schnerk rushes up and they struggle for control of the pistol which goes off, killing the director, who makes one last cry of “CUT! PRINT!” before collapsing.

Now free, Mrs. Peel tells Steed her favourite bit was where Kirby hit Syn with a prop chair, and demonstrates — except she’s used a real chair by mistake, and Steed drops to the floor.²⁴

Epilogue

Steed and Emma sit in the armchairs in her flat, deciding which film to see that night: “I was Napoleon’s Nanny?” (maybe not), “Lasagne 6½?” (I walked out 3⁄8 of the way through),²⁵ “an old Stewart Kirby film at the Plaza?” (Emma frowns).

EMMA: “Nights of Abandon” at the Art — the critics said it was unbridled, full of passion… the screen explodes with sensuality… Hailed as a masterpiece throughout the world. It won a German award… it won a French award…
(PAUSE FOR A BEAT) It closed yesterday.
STEED: Oh dear… unbridled passions — why don’t we just spend the evening at home?
EMMA: Why not? Let’s get back to my apartment.

She kicks at the wall and it collapses — they’re still at Schnerk’s studio! She beckons and he happily follows…

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1. This seems to be Z. Z. von Schnerk’s catchphrase. ⭮
2. Steed turns and gawps at the camera in a slapstick “I can’t believe it!” reaction. ⭮
3. Z. Z. von Schnerk says “…right… Absolutely right…” quite often. ⭮
4. Down through the streets of Borehamwood, along Shenley Road to Cowley Hill then into Gateshead Road. As she's supposed to live in Primrose Hill and heading for Victoria Grove, Kensington, you'd think she would have noticed sooner. ⭮
5. Actually a back gate of Elstree Studios. ⭮
6. This episode is a delight for film fans as it gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the Elstree film studios. ⭮
7. This big door of Stage 4 opens and then James Hill switches to a gorgeous overhead shot of the taxi cab disappearing inside. Stage 4 is the studio that was used for The Avengers. ⭮
8. I told you he said it a lot! ⭮
9. A daily occurrence when filming episodes. This metafictional episode takes post-modernism to new heights. ⭮
10. The Avengers often uses the concept of the set within a set, with obvious painted backdrops and pre-fabricated foam bricks, and here it’s truly accentuated — normally they are saying “this is all makebelieve”, but here they are saying, “it looks make believe, but it is in deadly earnest (despite still being make believe)”. ⭮
11. A beautiful shot, she runs up in slow motion, surrounded by a blizzard of confetti being thrown by a huge wind machine. ⭮
12. Lampooning tired old epic movies with overly dramtic scores, terrible, banal scripts and hammy acting, with an under-current of Oedipus Rex. ⭮
13. Damita walks past a silent film caption slide with exactly that wording as they clear the set. ⭮
14. A reference to the Hollywood Studio system of the early days of film, where stars were signed to exclusive contracts and often buried if they fell out of favour with the public, or a director. ⭮
15. Which is a bit naff, but fitting to the era that Schnerk is portraying. ⭮
16. Alterations to the script were traditionally typed on pink paper to make them easier for the actors to find, and alerting them that the lines they had learnt had changed. ⭮
17. There is an underlying dark subtext to this episode in that they are making a snuff film but the surface is so superficially farcical and over the top you know there is never any element of truth to it. ⭮
18. Interestingly with the same soundtrack that the scenes had earlier. ⭮
19. Accentuating, if his thick German accent wasn’t enough, that Z. Z. von Schnerk is not English as he mangles this idiom. Schnerk was reported inspired by Erich von Stroheim. ⭮
20. Imitating George Raft in Scarface (1932), right down to the flipping coin. ⭮
21. Almost word for word. Peter Wyngarde related a story where he proposed a Cyrano de Bergerac version of this scene as well but the idea was not used. ⭮
22. It’s like a combination of “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” with “The Pit and the Pendulum” and 1940s serials like “The Perils of Pauline” and “G-men vs. the Black Dragon”. The progress reports refer to it as the Caligari set. Peter Wyngarde imitates the Austrian actor Anton Walbrook in this scene. ⭮
23. They don’t notice that Steed subtly half-stands to help them move him or that he grabs his umbrella when Damita puts it between his legs. ⭮
24. Isa Miranda was in fact cut on the forehead during the filming of the scene and I wonder if the accident on set inspired this bit of light-hearted banter. ⭮
25. This is an unflattering reference to Fellini’s 1963 comedy, 8½ which is ironic as that is also a metafictional comedy about film making! ⭮