Series 6 — Episode 17
The Morning After

Regional broadcasts

TV Times listing

The TV Times gets a bit confused and says Cartney is played by Jonathan Cartney instead of Jonathan Scott.

International broadcasts

This episode was not shown in the initial Swiss run of series 6 in 1969, but was the one of six previously unbroadcast episodes shown there in a new run of the series in 1974.

Continuity & Trivia

1. 1:11 — The episode starts with a close-up of the Ministry of TSI sign used in Split!
2. 1:37 — Just who is so obsessed with clowns?
   We have:
   • Maxie and Jennings in clown make-up in Look- (stop me if you’ve heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers...,
   • the gang of mercenaries wearing clown masks in Have Guns - Will Haggle,
   • Merlin wearing a clown mask in The Morning After,
   • and Miranda Loxton wears a clown costume for the first quarter of Requiem.
3. 4:03 — Steed locks the door as he closes it, but when we cut back to the long shot he’s nowhere near the handle anymore.
4. 4:04 — The shadow of the boom dances across the wall above Steed’s head.
5. 5:17 — There’s dust on the opening title captions.
6. 6:00 — Macnee’s suit has a large stain on the back.
7. 7:39–7:52 — That’s a stand-in for Macnee walking out of the building in the long shot and going to the phone booth, probably Paul Weston.
8. 9:47 — The boom itself (rather than the microphone) appears in the top right of the frame as Macnee walks around the front of the car.
9. 12:44 — Brian Clemens’ personal sports car is one of those aandoned in the street.
10. 13:01 — The shot has been flipped horizontally, making the “The Blue Anchor” sign on the end of the building back to front.
11. 13:30 — There’s a jarring switch to the standing set of the street after all that location work.
12. 15:31 — Paul Weston stands in for Macnee for the stunt when Merlin tries to escape. I’m not sure who’s doing Peter Barkworth’s stunt work.
13. 15:45 — The studio set as seen in Killer revealed for the first time.
14. throughout - Brigadier Hansing’s medals are identical to those of Colonel Mannering in The Interrogators:
    Distinguished Service Order, British Empire Medal
    1939–45 Star, Africa Star with 8th Army clasp, Italy Star, France and Germany Star
    Defence Medal, War Medal 1939–45 with oak leaf for being mentioned in dispatches, Korea Medal, United Nations Service Medal for Korea
    General Service Medal (1918–61), General Service Medal (1962), Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal, Croix de Guerre 1939–1945. (Note, the oak leaf might be for a King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct)
15. 20:46 — This is the first appearance of Tara for a while, Linda Thorson must have been on holidays at the time and her scenes recorded separately to the rest.
16. 23:14 — Steed and Merlin escape Sergeant Hearn and his men and steal their Land-Rover (dark green with military markings and the number plate [22 AP 46] - we even see them driving around it (once, hilariously, tearing out of a no through road that they must have entered earlier) [see below]. However, when they pull up in a back street at 24:13, they’re in a civilian Land-Rover (a slightly paler green, with the number plate [KJB 27].
17. 24:05 — Steed drives the Land-Rover out of a no through road and later on, after apparently going to the other side of town (25:02) Steed and Merlin walk out of the same street again.
18. 24:47 (25:14) - The footage of Hearn arriving at the bank from 21:56 (21:37)is repeated, slightly differently edited.
19. 24:49 — Hearn is back in his own Land-Rover, previously stolen by Steed.
20. 25:08 — Hearn finds the replacement Land-Rover.
21. 25:15 — The factory chimney is smoking, so the town hasn’t been completely deserted after all.
22. 28:36 — There are very antiquated cars and buses in Jenny’s footage of the evacuation, it looks like stock WW2 footage, and director John Hough confirms it was stock bought from a library.
23. 31:56 (33:00) - Steed’s security clearance code is KR5.
24. 32:22 — It looks like repeat footage of the door-to-door searching from 27:19 but I suspect they filmed several scenes at once in the same street, the corporal in one scene is a private in the other.
25. 34:05 (35:27) - More repeated footage, this time of the soldiers disembarking from Hearn’s Land-Rover to search houses Hearn shouts, “Right then, on the double, search those houses!” Previously - 28:04- he’s shouted, “Right then [you lot] on the double, move yourself!”
26. 37:30 — It sounds like the dramatic, mysterious nusic from Man-eater of Surrey Green.
27. 43:10–43:30 — Tara wakes, knocks out Hearn and then Merlin puts her to sleep again with another capsule.
28. 45:41 — The trucks outside the commission are the same trucks in which Steed found the unconscious troops in the backstreet.
29. 48:10 — You can see a slight jump in the film as Steed cunjors the key for the handcuffs.
30. 48:24 — In the closing tag scene, Steed has just watched a television programme; we can discern the closing sounds of “Laugh In”, the sound of one person clapping. Steed turns off the television set and reflects, “Sock it to me” - a catch phrase from the same show. “Laugh In” was in the same time slot as “The Avengers” in the USA and easily winning every ratings survey which led to the demise of the show.
31. Running time: 50′14″

Production notes

1. Most of the location work was done at St Albans, with the entire population agreeing to evacuating the town for filming.
2. 18:50 — Regents Park Barracks in Albany Street used as the location for Easter Hemisphere Trade Building.
3. Director John Hough recalls that working on The Avengers was different to working on ITC shows like The Saint. ITC was driven by schedules and finishing on time while Brian Clemens focused on quality output.
4. John had been working on The Saint as a second unit director and more or less swapped jobs with Ray Austin as they each wanted to work on the other’s shows.

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