Welcome to Feather Dusters at 400 Yards, my blog about the British television series The Avengers. There’s a lot of cool stuff to explore in this groundbreaking series that spanned the entire decade of the 1960s: the characters, the performances, scene and episode analysis, technical aspects of the production, and more. Plus there are Avengers music videos and fanfiction and now even fan art! So click on a tag or a category or something in the navigation menu, or just keep scrolling, and explore along with me.
Finit Amen Finit
I finally finished “Quite Glorious Uncle.” Links to the last two chapters and epilogue below.
Noon in the Garden of Good and Evil
A meditation on good vs evil in Avengers, focused on a comparison of Steed and Beresford from “Return of the Cybernauts.” This originally appeared on my tumblr blog.
First let’s make a list of characteristics Steed and Beresford have in common. They are:
- urbane
- well spoken
- educated
- well dressed
- charismatic
- masculine
- financially well off
- attractive to women
- intelligent
- creative
- masterful
- calculating
- loyal
- willing to kill to protect the people they love (yes, I know Beresford’s brother is already dead, but if Beresford had been there in “Cybernauts” he doubtless would have cheerfully killed both Emma and Steed to protect Anderson.)
So we have these two men who have an awful lot of basically positive characteristics in common, to the point where Emma feels attracted to Beresford even as she is already in a relationship with Steed. But Beresford is evil, and Steed is not. How come?
Steed, Beresford, and the Tie of Death in “Return of the Cybernauts”
This was originally posted on my tumblr in response to celluloidbroomcloset.tumblr.com’s excellent work on the use of color in this episode. I haven’t had much time or energy for non-fictional Avenging lately, so I figured I’d resurrect some of my old stuff for a new audience here on WordPress.
General Notes
The clothing and ties worn by Steed and Beresford (Peter Cushing!), and the ties worn by a few other characters, seem to work as sartorial commentary on the plot in the Season 5 episode, “Return of the Cybernauts”.
When Beresford is interacting with Emma, he always wears the same suit with the same black late-19th-century-style black tie, but Steed’s ties and suits change throughout the episode, and with one exception (grey suit, gold tie), Steed doesn’t wear the same suit twice with Emma.
Steed’s ties change color throughout, but the last one he wears is black. The colors of Steed’s suits also change throughout the episode, ending with the black suit and light-colored shirt at the end.
The use of black and white for the men’s clothing in these situations has symbolic significance with respect to their relationship to one another and the trajectory of the plot, and also harkens back to the original “Cybernauts” episode, which was shot in black and white.
Thoughts on “Obsession”: Part 2
A continuation of my blog on the TNA Season 2 episode, “Obsession.” Read Part 1 here.
⊕ Content warning for discussion of intimate partner abuse
“A Beautiful Woman Belongs to the World”
One of the themes of the episode is whether anyone has the right to possess Purdey, and therefore her status as a woman vis-à-vis Steed, Gambit, and Larry as men. The way each of these men interact with Purdey is different. Larry is Purdey’s former lover and fiancé, but he’s also her former abuser and still thinks she belongs to him. Gambit is Purdey’s colleague and friend. He doesn’t have a romantic relationship with her, but from time to time he hints that he would like one. Steed is Purdey’s friend, supervisor, and mentor. She looks to him for guidance, and in other episodes we see that she would also like a romantic relationship with him, but that this is something that Steed himself does not want and cannot give her.
There are also overlapping needs that drive the interactions among these characters. Larry needs to get Purdey back, and he also needs to make sure his rocket gets launched. Gambit needs to protect Purdey from Larry, and he also needs to catch the bad guys, which in this episode includes a man that he knows Purdey still loves despite her past history with him. Steed needs to help Purdey face her fears so that she can stay on track with her job, he needs to cultivate Larry as a witness and suspect in the case, and he has to stop Larry from carrying out his plan. Purdey needs to navigate her complex and conflicting feelings about Larry while both protecting herself from him and also dealing with him as a suspect and, as it turns out, the villain of the case. All of these needs, personal and professional alike, hinge on Purdey in one way or another.
Thoughts on “Obsession”: Synopsis and Part 1
⊕ Content warning for images and discussion of intimate partner abuse
“Three Bullets and a Fractured Thigh”
Purdey and Larry dream about their future together
It is 1970, and Purdey is a member of the corps de ballet at the Royal Ballet in London. She also is engaged to be married, to a young RAF pilot named Larry Doomer. They seem happy together: Larry already owns some land, on which they plan to build their dream house. Larry hints that he’d like children, and Purdey seems open to the idea.
But then Larry gets word that his father was executed in an unnamed Arab country, purportedly for espionage. He finds out that a leader of that country will be departing the UK that morning. Larry goes to the airport to assassinate him, but Purdey discovers what Larry intends to do. She stops him just in time, saving the Arab leader’s life. Larry does not take kindly to this; he backhands Purdey in retaliation. Purdey is frightened, angered, and hurt by this. (more…)
New Fic
In this new story, the Ministry forces Steed to take a holiday, so leaving Gambit and Purdey to mind the store, he hops a plane and goes to San Francisco.
And that’s all I’m telling you for now.
(I know, I know: I haven’t finished “Quite Glorified Uncle” yet. But this was an itch that had to be scratched. And now that I have done, I’ll finish QGU. Never fear.)
Great Detectives Think Alike: II
In an earlier post, I discussed the apparent confluences between the The Avengers Season 2 episode “Mr Teddy Bear” and a handful of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Well, it turns out that “Teddy Bear” isn’t the only episode that does that, and it turns out that The New Avengers also has a few of these. So for your delectation, below are some more additions to that collection. As with the previous post, the Holmes images are from the Granada television series starring Jeremy Brett.
