I added sixty on, and now you’re a genius.

The Avengers

4.3: The Master Minds

The Master Minds hitches its wagon to the not uncommon Avengers trope of dark deeds done under the veil of night. We previously encountered it in The Town of No Return, but Robert Banks Stewart (best known for Bergerac, but best known genre-wise for his two Tom Baker Doctor Who stories; likewise, he also penned only two teleplays for The Avengers) makes this episode more distinctive, with its mind control and spycraft, while Peter Graham Scott, in his third contribution to the show on the trot, pulls out all the stops, particularly with a highly creative climactic fight sequence that avoids the usual issue of overly-evident stunt doubles.

This was only the second Emma Peel episode filmed, but the chemistry – and dialogue – between Steed and Mrs Peel is fully-formed. Picking up a regular pattern, Emma works undercover while Steed assumes the role of the outsider making inquiries. In this one, though, an added twist is that Emma falls under the spell of the brainwashing techniques designed to make members of RANSACK somnambulantly carry out thefts of top secret information (in this case “The possible successor to Polaris. Gone. Snatched. Just like that”). As the shallow like us blog notes, this makes for something of a precursor, tonally, to Doctor Who’s Robot, but it also has something of a Prisoner vibe in the pop visuals staging of the grand climax, the fight between Emma and the architect of the scheme taking place in silhouette against footage of jet tests.

Steed: Behind them there must be a brilliant planner at work.

Mrs Peel: A genius.

Steed: A diabolical mastermind.

The plot mixes elements both obvious and clever. It scores when it’s going for the mysterious – what happened to Sir Clive Todd (Laurence Hardy), with unsettling strings on the soundtrack resonant of Under the Skin as he tries and fails to remember his actions, and Steed following the RANSACK members at night as attend a briefing - less so when it comes to obfuscating the engineers of the plot. There’s never any doubt that RANSACK is behind it all, particularly when Desmond Leeming (Bernard Archard) rocks up conveniently and announces himself – it’s almost as if they want to come under suspicion.

Holly Trent’s identity as the ringleader works to the extent that Patricia Haines plays up the oblivious, but much better in this regard is Ian MacNaughton, giving off something of a ’60s Peter Capaldi vibe as Doctor Fergus Campbell, instantly appearing dubious in manner, then proving to be dubious, then proving to have only been dubious because he was under the influence.

Steed: By the way, what did you manage to straighten out in the navy?

Dr Campbell: The seasick.

Steed: Traces of an incipient inferiority complex. I should watch it.

The very best Avengers are often ones where the guest cast are elevated to equal status with the regulars, and I don’t think The Master Minds, MacNaughton’s role in the first half aside, quite succeeds in that regard. It has to be said, though, Steed and Emma are marvellously accounted for here, and Steed’s verbal sparring with the truculent Campbell, brought in to assess the mental status of Sir Clive (who has committed a robbery under the influence and receive a gunshot to the head for his troubles), is great stuff. Campbell launches into Steed’s levity (“Your facetiousness, Mr Steed, covers an edgy temperament. In fact, I’d say your nerves mostly jangle like a wire in the wind”) and receives a casually effective putdown from the gentleman spy in response (above).

Steed: How was your intelligence quotient?

Mrs Peel: Well above average.

Steed: Better than mine?

Mrs Peel: Roughly the same. But that’s hardly surprising since I also did your paper for you.

And Steed’s flippancy is in good evidence throughout, uncensored in front of his superiors (“Caught with his own portcullis down” he notes of Sir Clive’s predicament), who are shocked to find Todd is a member of another gang, “besides your own gang”. One of the most enjoyable aspects, however, is Steed falling into line as capable but inferior to Emma in many an endeavour. The best instance being his blanching at the thought of taking the RANSACK test, only for it to look as if he passed with flying colours and then the reveal the only reason he did is because Mrs Peel did his test for him.

Mrs Peel: There’ll be another test paper tomorrow.

Steed: Oh dear.

Mrs Peel: Here are the answers.

Even with the answers scrawled on his cuff, Steed manages to fail a later test (“I added sixty on, and now you’re a genius”). Not that he isn’t as quick and sly as ever. His digs at Emma’s Florence Nightingale routine, tending Sir Clive, elicits “I don’t think that should concern you, Mrs Peel. You’re only the nurse here” when she asks about the clues he hopes to find in the residence.

Davinia: I’m going to scream in a moment.

Steed: Oh dear, I hope not.

Elsewhere, he’s in full Leslie Phillips mode, right down to the “Hello!” when confronted by Georgina Ward’s Davinia Todd, arriving home in fur coat and bikini, or a bespectacled boffin (Elizabeth Reber) making eyes at him during a test, or Holly asking him out. His reaction to the sign saying “If you can’t sleep ring for a mistress” needs no additional comment either (RANSACK’s training operations are taking place at a girls’ boarding school), while Emma’s “Here’s your cocoa, and if you’re good, I’ll read you a bedtime story” is alive with playful innuendo. There’s even room for the occasional slapstick moment, as Steed, distracted by Leeming, accidentally shoots an arrow through a window.

The Master Minds isn’t quite as brainy as its characters overall, however; the attempts at discussions by members of RANSACK are a bit suss (“Take a word like yoghurt, for example”), and while the brainwashing technique has the mechanism of substance (“We’re all susceptible. It’s the approach which varies, that’s all”), there’s very little to it when push comes to shove (all it takes is a message heard in one’s sleep, and presto, it’s highly effective for all concerned), but it continues the consistently confident quality of the fourth season with commendable flair.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

You can have it. Make the edits.

Little Women (2019)
(SPOILERS) It could be argued, given Little Women’s evergreen popularity, not least as a go-to text for Hollywood adaptations, that Greta Gerwig isn’t exactly stretching herself or giving us a better idea of the kind of directorial career she envisages. Hers is a likeable, intelligent, well-rendered sophomore picture. As such, the awards plaudits are probably no more or less deserving than for your average prestige period piece. Which is to say that Little Women is handsomely mounted and consummately performed (at least, by some of the cast), but it doesn’t absolutely feel like this umpteenth version of Louise May Alcott’s novel demanded to be told, even with the Gerwig’s innovations of experimentation with time frame and metatextual use of its author.

We need somebody to walk the clones.

Jojo Rabbit (2019)
(SPOILERS) Not so much the banality of evil as of taking pot-shots at easy targets, Taika Waititi’s typically insubstantial, broad-brush, sketch-comedy approach isn’t the best of fits for the formulation of this self-styled “anti-hate satire”. The issue isn’t so much that it’s inappropriate or insensitive to broach material of Nazi persecution of the Jews comedically as that the manner in which it has been done here is so obvious as to be redundant. Waititi said his inspiration for making the movie was partly the statistics on those Americans who had never heard of Auschwitz; Jojo Rabbit is as cack-handed a way of going about informing them as Life is Beautiful.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

This popularity of yours. Is there a trick to it?

The Two Popes (2019)
(SPOILERS) Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes joke, in which he dropped The Two Popes onto a list of the year’s films about paedophiles, rather preceded the picture’s Oscar prospects (three nominations), but also rather encapsulated the conversation currently synonymous with the forever tainted Roman Catholic church; it’s the first thing anyone thinks of. And let’s face it, Jonathan Pryce’s unamused response to the gag could have been similarly reserved for the fate of his respected but neglected film. More people will have heard Ricky’s joke than will surely ever see the movie. Which, aside from a couple of solid lead performances, probably isn’t such an omission.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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