The Avengers
2.14: The
Big Thinker
With a plot
revolving around a super computer, one would be forgiven for thinking we might
be due a proto-Proteus, a WOTAN, a Colossus or a Joshua. Instead, The Big Thinker is all about a big
performance, and Anthony Booth more than delivers as abrasive, narcissistic,
angry young Dr Kearns, plugging the gap where the teleplay falls short on
outright intrigue.
Cathy: I see
what you mean about the boy wonder... Are you always like this, or haven’t you
had breakfast?
Booth has
the dubious claim to distinction of playing Sidney Noggett in the Confessions… movies during the ‘70s, but
is probably best known as the lefty son in Till
Death Us Do Part. Here he fully embraces the plum, scene-stealing part of a
young scientist vital to the functioning of Plato, a cryogenically powered computer.
Kearns knows his value is intrinsic, so has no compunction in treating his
colleagues like dirt (he’s guilty of “rudeness,
irresponsibility, a lack of maturity”), except for Cathy, whom he attempts
(badly) to charm. He loses interest in her on finding she is married, regains
it on learning she is widowed, even slurs her beloved anthropology and loudly
drops hints in public as to the top secrets things they are doing (“I’m ballistic, sweetheart. I’m ballistic”).
Martin
Woodhouse previously contributed the standout Mr. Teddy Bear to Season Two. The
Big Thinker isn’t up to that standard, lacking clear focus, but it is at
least distinctive. This was director Kim Mills first of ten episodes, and his
work is reasonable, if failing to give a sense that “Plato is this building – the whole building”.
Cathy: Snap!
Would you like me to try for an ace? I expect you’ve trimmed the short side for
the aces.
Much of the
proceedings are preoccupied with the activities of a trio of card sharps, whom
Cathy, professedly intent on using the computer to translated dead languages,
must put off their game (Kearns is racking up debts with them). Broster (Allan
McClelland), Blakelock (Ray Browne) and Clarissa (Penelope Lee) intend to
squeeze Kearns once he owes them a shedload, leading to a satisfying scene in
which Cathy trumps the sharp, immediately figuring out how he is loading the
deck (“Clever, dead clever” responds
Broster, moments before Cathy offers a judo chop to his arm and walks out with
the winnings).
Steed: Oh
dear, oh dear, oh dear. The amateurs are still hard at it.
Later, when
Bakelock and Clarissa break into her flat to snoop around, she handles them deceptively
casually (“Would you like a cup of tea”
she asks Clarissa, before the latter flees). They return for thirds (well,
Broster and Clarissa), and this time Steed is on hand to put them in their
place (“My dear, that is quite ineffective
beyond a range of three feet” he advises of Clarissa’s gas gun).
Steed’s
very much on the fringes here, overseeing how Cathy does on her own, it seems;
he keeps claiming to be off to the Middle East but never actually departs, and
playfully irritates Cathy by referring to Kearns as her boyfriend. He also has
a new pooch, Freckles having been replaced by Sheba, calls the police under the
name Caruthers, and persuades Cathy to cook him a plain omelette. Finally, he
lets her keep the five hundred pounds she recovered from the sharps; having
near frozen when trapped in the main computer room, Steed suggests “Buy yourself a fur coat. You know, you might
have another cold snap”.
The episode
features a range of good performances, from Lee and McLelland to Walter Hudd as
benign chief scientist Dr Clemens, Marina Martin (Drahvin One in Galaxy Four) as Janet, besotted with the
brash boy wonder (Cathy has a scene convincing her she is no threat to her
would-be man), and Tenniel Evans (Major Daly in Carnival of Monsters) as Dr Hurst.
Farrow (David
Garth, Solicitor Grey in The Highlanders,
a Time Lord in Terror of the Autons),
a recent addition to the team, immediately comes across as suspiciously genial (he’s
using Plato to calculate star velocities?) so it isn’t exactly out of the blue
when he’s revealed as the saboteur. Although, his last minute hack attempt with
a crowbar is a rather hasty bodge even for The
Avengers. The motive, Steed surmises, is that the computer is best used for
missile defence – which certainly is
a very common plot motivator – but this isn’t exactly foregrounded. I was also
unclear if he was supposed to be connected to the card sharps.
On the face
of it, then, this is a more of science fiction tinged episode, but it’s
actually very down-to-earth; the characters and performances drive The Big Thinker for the most part, and
it only really falls down in some of the execution.
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