The Last Journey

David Burke played a very good Doctor Watson in the first two series of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett.

Burke's portrayal of Stalin was memorable for all the wrong reasons. He was saddled with a bad wig and he just came across as unconvincing. Up against Tom Bell's Dzerzhinsky, you think that this Stalin would not want to rile him up.

One person who certainly riles up Stalin is Reilly.

Stalin has discovered that Dzerzhinsky has created the highly successful organisation "The Trust". It has Russian operatives all over the world keeping track on people who want to harm Russia. It brings in funding, the money people think they are giving money to depose the government. It goes into the state's spying activities.

It is a success that Stalin does not appreciate as he thinks one day it will turn on him.

Another person with a memorable scene is Savinkov who is thrown to his death from a top floor window. A kind of Russian goodbye from The Trust. It leads Reilly to come to Russia himself, almost tempting fate now that Stalin wants him arrested.

Russia has moved on by 1925, Lenin is gone and Stalin is in charge. Reilly: Ace of Spies still continues, it should been done with by now but there is still one more episode to go.

After his failed attempt in 1918 to overthrow the new Bolshevik revolutionary government, Sidney Reilly escaped from Russia and into a personally painful period of several years in exile. Because of his highly visible counter-revolutionary activities, the Bolshevik government tried Reilly in absentia and sentenced him to death. The question posed by this fact is why in 1925 did he plan a return to Russia? The answer is twofold: (1) he was asked to go and (2) he wanted to go.

The British Secret Service was anxious to thoroughly vet The Trust, which held itself out to the world as a credible anti-Bolshevik alternative government waiting to take over Russia and depose the Communists. Actually (and unknown to England), The Trust was a fake organization under the total control of Cheka head Felix Zherzhinsky. Captain Cumming of the Secret Service asked Reilly to make a quick clandestine trip to Russia to clarify The Trust situation. Reilly agreed to go because he believed The Trust was not legitimate, and he wanted to completely discredit it.

Notwithstanding his seven year old in absentia death sentence, Reilly and Cumming both believed that the trip involved little personal risk to him, since at the same time The Trust was also seeking international credibility and monetary support. What neither apparently realized was the full extent of Stalin's megalomania, his rage at not initially being told of The Trust's existence and his overarching fear of Dzerzhinsky's encroaching power.

The episode emphasizes Reilly's compulsive hatred of the Bolsheviks, his obsessive belief that they murdered his friend Savinkov while in Cheka custody and his driven need to test The Trust by seeking its commitment to launch anti-government terrorist activities including the assassination of Stalin! It is rich in largely unfamiliar historical detail, and suggests that Stalin's absolute focus on Reilly clearly influenced the events that followed.

This episode provides a clear example of how one can actually be entertained and educated at the same time! Highly recommended.