Never, Never Say Die

A driver accidentally hits a man on the road with his vehicle. In the local hospital they verify that he is dead but suddenly he gets up and escapes. Emma and Steed decide to investigate the strange event and the clues lead them to a mysterious Neoteric Research Center. Here we have a great episode starring Christopher Lee where the robot theme that had gone so well in the previous season with The Cybernauts is repeated. Lee's walk through the woods in search of victims is frightening, the music and the climate of this story are excellent.

"Never, Never Say Die" features the series debut of Sir Christopher Lee, who would be back for a Tara King classic, "The Interrogators." Boyhood chums with Patrick Macnee, it's a real thrill to see the two friends oppose each other on screen, though not the equal of Lee and Peter Cushing. Cast as Professor Frank N. Stone (a nod to Lee's unforgettable Creature in Hammer's 1957 "The Curse of Frankenstein"), we first see him walking in front of a car driven by the understandably confused Whittle (Christopher Benjamin, "How to Succeed....at Murder" and "Split!"), who has the extreme misfortune of running into the same unstoppable pedestrian twice in a matter of hours, only for him to walk away each time. After a one sided battle with Stone, Steed later discovers him to be the leader of a top secret installation that bans transistor radios because a certain frequency wreaks havoc on their mission. Also appearing are Jeremy Young ("A Taste of Brimstone" and "The Forget-Me-Knot"), David Kernan ("Quick-Quick Slow Death"), John Junkin ("Dressed to Kill"), and Patricia English, a memorable guest performer in both "Mission to Montreal" and "The Secrets Broker."

Although I have long been aware of this classic British TV series – not least due to the championing of that medium's particular period by a former colleague of mine – and have occasionally caught snippets of it in the mid-1990s on the "Bravo" channel, this is the very first episode I have watched in its entirety; Unfortunately, I have had to choose between the lesser evil of a severely cropped print and a corrected but fogged one from "You Tube" for now! This fact becomes even stranger still when I confess here to having actually paid money to watch the much-maligned 1998 film version in a theatre upon its original release!

As with my immediately recent forays into TV land, this particular viewing arose following the death of one of its participants, Christopher Lee – in the first of two appearances he put in the show; the second one, in an episode entitled THE INTERROGATORS (1969), will follow presently. For the record, I had previously only watched an 1976 episode – called THE EAGLE'S NEST – from the series' first reboot, THE NEW AVENGERS (1976-77) featuring, unsurprisingly enough, Lee's frequent celluloid sparring partner Peter Cushing as the guest star de rigueur. While this fanciful espionage series may initially seem to have been conceived in the wake of the James Bond worldwide phenomenon, the truth is that THE AVENGERS (1961-69) actually preceded it by a year and was possibly the first in a long line of similar shows; in fact, like its equally long-running contemporaries THE SAINT (1962-69) and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68; from the other side of the pond), the series originally started out in monochrome before switching to colour for subsequent seasons.

Anyway, the episode under review – the tenth in the fifth season – is an intriguing hybrid of FRANKENSTEIN (one should not forget that the role of The Creature was what brought him fame precisely a decade earlier) and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS featuring a grey-haired Christopher Lee (who was only 42 at the time) as Dr. Frank N. Stone (get the connection?) who is enigmatically engulfed in a series of experiments, ostensibly for the Ministry of Technology, intent on creating a race of invincible duplicates. One of the prototypes (a dead-ringer for its creator) breaks out of the laboratory but is run over by a car in the very opening sequence. However, to the baffled consternation of one and sundry – including the driver, the village doctor and, eventually, the heroic titular duo (Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg) – the apparently lifeless corpse keeps coming back to life, attack transistor radios for no apparent reason and get mown down again by motor vehicles! To be sure, the episode has quite a busy narrative that I will not go into her but, ultimately, both Avengers get inside the laboratory and uncover a typically megalomaniacal plot (albeit with a far-fetched twist – more on that later) to populate the world with duplicates of important people.

On the whole, it proved to be an enjoyable introduction to the show for me, with likable leads and a suitably versatile performance from Lee (in view of the fact that he portrays multiple versions of Dr. Stone). While I found the inherent assimilation between Lee's mindless duplicates and TV viewers in the closing sequence to be very prescient (Macnee and Rigg cannot agree on which channel to watch before settling on a political discussion!), unfortunately I had some real issues with the script which I found to be barely credible at times, namely:

• Given the sheer ambition of the villains' plan for world domination, it was indeed very careless of them to let the runway duplicate quit the top secret facility so often to wreak havoc in full view of the public • Why would a simple village doctor call The Avengers, ostensibly secret agents (with the emphasis on secret) into action from the outset?; one would have thought she would go to the local police first to report the strange events she had been witness to • I can fully understand the need for the villains to duplicate government officials and the titular duo…but a village doctor?! • I found the duplication method – Lee's assistant apparently had a photographic memory! – very far-fetched to say the least, especially since the victims will eventually need to be abducted and disposed of if they are to be successfully replaced • Once they are abducted, Lee's victims are all thrown into the same cell inside the laboratory; however, it takes Peel the longest time to be curious about two cellmates whose bodies are always covered with sheets (and whose identity, ultimately, turns the plot virtually on its head)!

Despite my reservations, I look forward to catching up with more episodes from this series in the long run. For the record, Lee had already worked with director Day in the superior Boris Karloff vehicle CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (1958) and Hammer Films' remake of SHE (1965); Lee and Macnee (reportedly childhood friends) would much later both feature respectively in the abysmal HOWLING II…YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985) and Joe Dante's surprisingly underwhelming 1980 original – incidentally, footage from this very episode where later incorporated into another AVENGERS entry, HOMICIDE AND OLD LACE (1969) which was directed by John Hough, who later himself helmed the fourth entry in the lychanthrope saga!; besides, both actors – along with Rigg – will all appear in official James Bond extravaganzas.

John Steed and Emma Peel are called in to investigate when Christopher Lee walks out of the hospital after he is pronounced dead after being struck by a car. I had never seen an episode of The Avengers before, or if I had I was too young to remember it, but this was a fun viewing experience.

When a man hit by a car suddenly comes alive again, Steed ad Mrs Peel investigate the government Neoteric Research Unit, which is harboring a deadly secret.

Never, Never Say Die proves that the Avengers must have been a hot property in 1967 because Christopher Lee is the guest star. He doesn't get much to do except lumber around and look menacing, but his presence adds to the episode.

Overall, the plot is a bit of a rehash of The Cybernauts, but involving robot duplicates. Christopher Benjamin has a small role as a motorist who keeps running Lee's "Professor Frank N. Stone" over.