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1961 — The Forgotten
Year...
The opening series of The
Avengers has long been a misty, oft-overlooked adjunct to the
much-loved adventures that Steed enjoyed with Emma Peel, Tara
King, Purdey, Gambit and Cathy Gale. There is of course a
perfectly good reason for this: only one episode of Series 1 (The
Frighteners) remained in existence for many years — and it was
only when Girl on the Trapeze and the first act of Hot
Snow were recovered from the UCLA archives in 2001 that
something of a buzz began building around this almost mythical,
lost era of The Avengers.
The situation probably wasn't
helped by the fact that the more vocal of those who worked on the
series would regularly dismiss the first year's episodes as
"rubbish" — and to a certain extent, this dubious accolade stuck.
The Frighteners is a decent and entertaining thriller, but
was it a flash in the pan? Was it preserved because it was the
best of the bunch? When Girl on the Trapeze and Hot Snow
became available, it started to dawn on Avengers fans that
the age-old perception fed by people like Brian Clemens could in
fact be very wide of the mark — both programmes are superb
examples of television drama and certainly comparable in quality
to anything hailing from The Avengers videotape era.
A Remarkable Find...
Despite a heightened interest,
there was a dearth of material available to Avengers fans
which might shed light upon the remaining missing episodes (which
then amounted to 23 full episodes and two thirds of Hot Snow).
Scripts were hard to come by; photographic materials were much
sought after; detail in guide books were always pretty scant. This
all changed when StudioCanal called in Jaz Wiseman to
co-ordinate and content manage their new releases of The
Avengers starting in 2009. As part of his work on the first
volume, Jaz contacted and interviewed Leonard White, who had
produced the first series. During a visit to Leonard's home, Jaz
was rather taken aback when Leonard handed him a set of scrapbooks
that he had compiled during his time on The Avengers.
These contained off-screen photographs from the last fourteen
episodes of Series 1 (from One for the Mortuary onwards). Arranged in strips of four 'contact sheet'
style images, these 'Tele-Snaps' were produced by John Cura
(1902-1969), a
photographer who offered television companies, actors and
production staff this unique way to keep a visual record of their
work.
 John Cura (born
Alberto Giovanni Cura), a name
that has been on the lips of telefantasy fans for many years as he
photographed many now missing Doctor Who stories, ran his
business (called Tele-Snaps) from his home in Clapham, South West
London. Using a
camera he had constructed himself specifically to take photographs
from television transmissions, Cura snapped away unaware that his work would one day be a vitally important element of
research into lost television. By 1964, Cura was on an annual
contract from the BBC to photograph all drama output from the
channel — for which he was paid £1300 per annum.
With regards The Avengers,
John Cura was commissioned directly by producer Leonard White to photograph
the series for his records. White's scrapbooks document the series
on an episode-by-episode basis and the Tele-Snaps form a
significant part of that record. The reason the photographs start up with One for
the Mortuary rather than at an earlier point in the series is because White
had only at this point become aware of Cura's
service. However, due to the ATV London region (where Cura was
based) picking up The Avengers some ten weeks after Hot
Snow aired in the Midlands and North of the United Kingdom
(missing out ten episodes), there were only three additional
episodes that could possibly have been tele-snapped: Hot Snow,
Brought to Book and Dance with Death plus of course
White's earlier series, Police Surgeon. Cura continued
making photographic Tele-Snaps of The Avengers for Leonard
White until the latter left the producership, fourteen episodes
into the production of Series 2.
Leonard White had not been
aware that his scrapbooks would be of such interest and has
enthusiastically permitted the Series 1 scrapbook to be reproduced
in book form as part of the Series 1+2 DVD set. He has also
kindly made available the Tele-Snaps and the caption cards that he
has kept from his time on the series — and these have all been
utilised in an exciting project: The Avengers Reconstructed.
I Wanna Tell You A
Story...
Jaz Wiseman and I struck upon
the idea that it may be possible to reconstruct the tele-snapped
episodes for inclusion on the StudioCanal range. I was fully aware of
the reconstructions produced for Doctor Who episodes and
indeed had even helped out on the ones from Joint Venture and
Change of Identity, and was well aware that they had an advantage
that The Avengers didn't: off-air audio recordings exist
for all missing Doctor Who episodes. There is reputedly one
surviving soundtrack for the missing episodes of The Avengers
— for Tunnel of Fear — and that was sadly not made
available to us. Therefore, we had to come up with a way of
telling the stories without a backbone of audio to lay the images
against.
After some discussion of text
captions backed with atmospheric music (a thought triggered by the
reconstruction of missing A for Andromeda episodes also
available on DVD), we decided on the age-old
ploy of having a reader — a narrator. It seemed a good approach
and hopefully we got it right for the audience. Over the fourteen reconstructions
produced, we've tried to keep it interesting by featuring a
variety of different voices, starting off with undoubtedly the
best and most appropriate, Leonard White — the man who not only
produced the episodes in the first place but whose Tele-Snaps made
the whole venture possible. Subsequent narrators have been David
G. Hamilton, Nick Goodman and... well... myself (things got a bit
too close to deadline on the final batch!).
Once we'd decided on narration,
we had to write them! This proved quite a task, working from
scripts, synopses and using internet sources like Piers Johnson's
excellent
Mrs
Peel... We're Needed! website, which helped us immensely in
identifying actors and characters — Piers' research in this area
was a valuable resource. We hadn't really let on to Jaz that Alys
and I had never actually produced any video programmes for DVD
before, but he seemed confident in our abilities and we got on
with it. To begin with, we overwrote somewhat, but nothing is
wasted — the long versions of the narration scripts ended up here
forming a major part of our book
Two Against the Underworld! We then cut them down to more appropriate lengths
— and
Alys quickly adapted her writing style and wrote to length on
subsequent projects, whereas I never quite got the hang of it. My
chatty writing style almost always brought the narration script
first drafts in at twice the length we wanted!
Further Acts of Kindness...
Obviously, something else had
happened by this stage to allow us to write at those kind of
lengths. Alys and I had purchased a handful of Series 1 scripts —
Brought to Book, Double Danger and A Change of
Bait — and the latter two became the first reconstructions to
be made. The reconstruction of Brought to Book remains
sadly unmade as very few images survive from the story —
not conducive to making a dynamic and authentic programme!
Subsequently, thanks to the generosity of fellow Avengers
enthusiasts
Dave Rogers and Dave Matthews, access was granted to a whole slew
of scripts from other first series stories.
 Even after this exciting
development, there were still a number of episodes where
Tele-Snaps
were in existence, but we had no script. In order that we could
make as full use as possible of the newly-discovered Tele-Snaps, I struck upon the idea of
a second strand of reconstructions — the Mission Brief style.
These would run for between five and ten minutes rather than the
standard fifteen that we'd arrived at for the initial productions.
It would also allow us to make programmes for episodes where
Tele-Snaps were the only existing imagery, as we had been adding
images from production shots, to augment what was available in the
off-screen stills. On average, there are around eighty Tele-Snaps
from each episode and inevitably, there will be important scenes
or shots missed and these are often represented in the
photographic stills taken in the studio in rehearsals or on
location. The Mission
Brief idea meant that we could reconstruct any episode as long as
we had images that would cover the duration of the episode and
enough story information from existing synopses and other sources.
We ended up having a three
point checklist (see below for a graphic illustration). If an episode had (1) a script, (2)
Tele-Snaps and (3) production photographs surviving, then
it would get a 'full' reconstruction. If it had one or two of
those elements surviving, it would become a Mission Brief project.
Of the fourteen programmes we made, only five episodes hit all
three criteria — Double Danger,
Toy Trap, Kill the King, A
Change of Bait and Dead of Winter. The survival rate of Series 1 materials is patchy
at best, although thankfully nowhere near as bad as the survival
rate of the episodes themselves!
Putting The Pieces Back
Together...
Once the scripts were written,
all the images had to be processed. Early on, we made the decision
to add a vignette frame around them all, as all the
Tele-Snaps have rounded corners. We didn't want the outer frame to
keep changing with each shot. All the images — Tele-Snaps and
production shots — have needed a significant amount of cleaning
before they could be used. The Tele-Snaps in particular have a
significant amount of age-related damage and Adobe Photoshop came
in very useful at this stage! I can't deny that even after hours
of work, they still don't look perfect and are often indistinct,
and this is why in some instances, production shots were used out
of preference.
Finally, to make the quality
leap between low-resolution Tele-Snaps and high-resolution
production photographs less jarring, we made the decision to soften
the latter images somewhat and processed all images (including the
Tele-Snaps) with a light monochromatic Gaussian noise filter —
which fitted perfectly with our vision of Series 1 being The
Avengers equivalent of film noir!
We have edited the programmes
in Sony Vegas Movie Studio, a good video editor at the
affordable end of the market. It has to be said that this was the
easiest bit of the whole process. The only problems we encountered
were of the type where we'd suddenly realise that we'd written
something only to find that we didn't have enough images to
illustrate it. Sometimes we have had to be creative and
consequently, there are some shots which are not entirely
authentic.
We decided early on that telling the story was god and
that if we had to rustle up something to do that, then so be it.
This has meant that Steed is holding on to Alys' umbrella in the
final slide of the reconstructed Double Danger, and my
hands and even one of the narrators are now a part of on-screen
Avengers lore!
It's Never Over Till
It's Over...
Fourteen
reconstructions have been produced and released
on DVD by StudioCanal in Great Britain and Germany. It was
certainly a massive thrill to walk into HMV on the high street,
pick an Avengers DVD set off the display rack and know that
it contained our work — so I think it's time for a
round of thanks. Make no mistake about it, the reconstructions are
a group effort and a lot of people have contributed significantly
— aside from myself and Alys, huge thanks are due to Leonard White
for making it all possible and for setting the tone of the
narrations so marvellously; to our subsequent narrators who came
on board when Leonard was unable to continue — our good friends
David G. Hamilton and Nick Goodman; to Dave Rogers and Dave
Matthews for so kindly and generously providing the raw materials
with which to work; to Piers Johnson for all his hard and vital
work at
Mrs
Peel... We're Needed!; to Andy
Marriott for his sterling, patient and skilled work on a very
special project; to Stephen Watts, Aly Goodman and Gareth
Humphreys who all kindly helped out when asked; to Jaz Wiseman for
being the most trusting, encouraging, enthusiastic and gracious
producer we could have hoped to work with; and finally to StudioCanal
for believing in The Avengers Reconstructed as a
continuing project of value to their range and for being committed
to making their DVD release of The Avengers the best it
could possibly be.
Tunnel of Fear Recovered...
Some materials have been
recovered subsequent to the production of the reconstructions,
including a rehearsal script for One for the Mortuary
(found by Tim Trounce). Most significantly, a 16mm film print of
Tunnel of Fear was recovered from a private collection in
2016 by the Kaleidoscope group, rendering the reconstruction at
best a curiosity (and likewise, a Big Finish audio adaptation of
the episode)!
So where to now for the
reconstructions as a continuing project, should someone wish to
take on the mantle of producing them? Well, take a look at the
list below — if you can provide materials where they are missing,
then we can perhaps get nearer to a complete reconstruction of
The Avengers first year. Please drop me a line at via the
email ('e') button at the top of the page.
Reconstruction Checklist
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