Five Favourite New Avengers Episodes

-- sleeper -- target -- angels of death -- faces -- complex --

Sleeper (1976) (Graeme Clifford, director)

I love this storyline, it has a distinct likeness to the 1968, Tara Kind episode, The Morning After, but they push this one to the extremes.

A demonstration is being held, attended by our triumphant trio, of a sleeping gas, which is spread across the UK by helicopters. Fortunately, our team are vaccinated against its affects, to witness a line up of guinea pigs fall instantly to sleep when the gas is spread. Of course, this gas is in high demand and is stolen by a team of professional bank robbers - they put the City of London to sleep to carry out their dastardly task - little do they know, The Avengers are still awake!

Target (1976) (Ray Austin, director)

Agents are dying of mysterious causes, the only link is the target range they had visited hours before their deaths - little do they know, the target dummies fire Curare-soaked bullets instead of ink! John Steed is the only agent to get a 100% rating - no hits - so Purdey tries her luck, unfortunately after receiving a 99% rating, its the 1% that kills you!

Angels of Death (1977) (Ernest Day, director)

47 top government officials die of what appears to be natural causes! They are all persuaded to go to a nice, peaceful, relaxing health farm, which appears to be perfectly normal - until they receive a coded signal which sends them insane and then they die! The treatment they'd actually been given was a rigorous bout of subliminal messages!

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Faces (1976) (James Hill, director)

Government members are being killed (yes, again!) and being replaced by lookalikes, who all come from less fortunate backgrounds. A little bit of plastic surgery and no-one notices the difference, however, Steed gets a hunch after a close politician friend acts strangely, then dies. How many appendix operations did he have? Who can they trust?

Complex (1977) (Richard Gilbert, director)

The first episode based in Canada and Steed arranges a meeting with a Canadian agent to reveal the identity of Scapina, a very dangerous enemy agent, but the agent gets killed before he gets the chance. No one else knows, or so it seems, who Scapina actually is. It eventually unfolds that our three Avengers had been standing in him for the majority of their stay - Scapina, the high security building was programmed to kill!

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