In honour of Dame Diana Rigg's death, I brought out my complete box set of The Avengers again. I've been watching it a bit at a time, in order, and by chance I had reached Series 4, Disc 4, and a couple of delightful Emma Peel episodes.
In The Man-Eater of Surrey Green, Steed and Mrs Peel are up against an alien plant that can control minds, which gives a lovely excuse for Emma to fight Steed. A plot twist is that the plant cannot control deaf people, so there are three deaf people in the episode. The first is a horticulturalist, and boyfriend of one of the mind-controlled scientists. The second is a fertiliser merchant who Emma meets in the local pub, and the third is an elderly lady scientist who is brought in to analyse the alien plant specimen. To protect themselves from the mind control, Emma and Steed wear hearing aids to get close to the control room where the growth of the plant is being regulated.
Fertiliser is also involved in the next episode, Silent Dust, but this time the formula went wrong and produced a pesticide that wipes out everything it touches. The bad guy in this episode is William Franklyn, most famous for the "Shh - You Know Who" Schwepps adverts - here he's a keen country sportsman, and very involved in the local hunt when he's not trying to hold the government to ransom by poisoning the whole of Dorset. I found it interesting that hunt protestors carrying placards were shown in 1965. Also, Steed gets shot with no blood or marks on his jacket whatsoever - but it does lead to a very funny hallucination scene.
Tonight I'll be finishing off the disc with The Hour that Never Was, which I have no memory of whatsoever, and Castle De'ath, which is one of my favourites.
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