"The Pieces of Fate Affair" (ep. 3/23)

This, Harlan Ellison's second and last script for the series, is fun.  Though it's a little simplistic in some of its details, and its pacing is oddly slow and measured, the Ellison Wonderland touch is evident in the great lines.

Theo Marcuse's Ellipsis Zark (cf. Count Zark of "Bat Cave"; it would have been interesting had they been related) is not as colorful, despite his Reynolds Wrap hand, as his Season Two characters Valetti and Rollo.  Zark kills one of his henchmen, to show us how tough he is, and we find that he and Solo have encountered each other before; and that's all.

Nice detail, that April Dancer was an Enforcement agent in 1965.  "Moonglow," which appeared to be her first mission, aired in 1966.  If we take the view, as some fans do, that the events chronicled by the episode occurred earlier than the episode’s air date, then the previous year could be correct.

I loved having Mr. Waverly go undercover in the adventure, with his "Mission: Impossible"/DC Comics mask.  Unfortunately it comes as no surprise.  If they'd planted the character a little earlier, had another actor, not Carroll, dub the voice, and given some reason why Waverly was away from the office, we'd have had a thunderbolt for sure.

Despite the almost comic music, the sequence where a turtleneck-clad Illya and windbreaker-clad Solo take Jacqueline back from Thrush is well done, with a Season Two flavor.

Once again we are shown that Illya's English teachers were, well, English.  He pronounces "clerks" in the British fashion, as "clarks."

Besides Zark and his punctuational first name, we get the strangest character names ever, in a series not noted for bland monikers: Oedipus Buck the bookseller, for instance, and Judith Merle (a play on the name of SF author and critic Judith Merrill, a friend of Ellison's -- the source of the legal flap that kept this episode off the air until the 1980s).  "Jacqueline Midcult" is no doubt a play on best-selling author Jacqueline Susann of "Valley of the Dolls" fame.  "Joe White," the abrasive interviewer in the teaser, is probably based on Joe Pyne, who pioneered the confrontational style of talk show and frequently insulted his "guests."  Intriguing, too, that, in the episode, White's show is being broadcast live -- which would have been rare by 1967.

The names Charles and Jessie Coltrane sound horribly familiar, but I can't Google up anybody famous with those names, now or back then.  (Except John Coltrane the jazz artist.)  Leave it to Ellison to make you think he's working in a gag when he's really not.

Verdict:  Despite slow pacing -- in some scenes it appears the actors are trying to remember their lines -- and a lack of real suspense, it features satire, colorful settings, and deft exchanges like those between Solo and Illya in Act IV.  (Illya: "I wonder if I'm not in the wrong business.")  This would have been a good "change-of-pace" story if sandwiched between strong episodes with danger, say "Concrete Overcoat" and "Thor," or between "Project Deephole" and "Very Important Zombie."

Memorable lines:
Announcer (at the Joe White show): "Joe will have as his guests . . . an American Nazi; a man who claims to have spent last weekend in a flying saucer . . ."
Solo: "That's what I like about Joe.  He comes to grips with the burning issues of our times."

Zark (reminiscing): "When I was thirteen years old, I made my first genuinely original decision.  I killed a playmate because he wouldn't trade me two bubblegum cards to complete my collection. . . .  [T]here are two kinds of people in this world, Spinard . . . those with bubblegum cards, and those without."

Zark (to Judith Merle): "You usually work in bed?"
Judith (striking a languorous pose): "Only in the daytime."

Solo (in the "coal" cellar): "Well, we're not dead yet."
Illya (through his gag): "I'm overcome with awe at your grasp of the situation."

Solo: "If ten tons of coal comes down on us, it's likely to muss up my hair a little."
Illya: "It's unlikely."

Illya (as they sit in the Turkish bath): "Humor is the gadfly on the corpse of tragedy."
Solo: "Pushkin?"
Illya: "My grandmother."
(A truly great exchange, character and humor at once)

Illya: "With a mentality like that [of a seven-year-old], she could really write a best-seller!"

Solo: "It took you long enough to get here; what took you so long?"
Illya (grimly): "Someday I'm going to leave you on your own, just to see how you do."
Solo (equally grimly): "Well, into each life a little rain must fall --"

"The Sort of Do-It-Yourself Dreadful Affair" (ep. 3/2)

With this one, a Harlan Ellison script (!), we are skating on thin ice.  Any misstep could send us plunging into the dark Silly depths, and sometimes we can see how eroded the ice is.  But -- it's often quite funny.  And as with "Indian Affairs," the bones of a serious plot poke out here and there, too.

It opens with atmosphere, as Solo (wearing his shoulder rig outside his windbreaker, as he did way back in "Fiddlesticks") breaks into a Thrush-front pawn shop, only to fight for his life with the first of the Thrush cyborgs.  Good stuff:  We see him reload.  The bad, of course, is the Karloff-as-monster pose of the A-77 fembot, who seems too easy to dodge, and the save-money-at-all-costs shooting day for night when Solo emerges.  Directed differently, with the A-77 kept more to the shadows and simply striding purposefully like Schwarzenegger's original Terminator -- and with less comic music -- this could have been exciting.  (Kind of scary to think we might have some of James Cameron's inspiration for the Terminator right here.)

The idea that Thrush, despite their assets (that $1.6 billion = $10.6 billion in 2008), must float a loan from a Swiss bank, is the sort of imaginative springboard you'd expect from the series and from Ellison.  In contrast, why do both Waverly and Illya refuse to believe their top agent and friend, respectively, after all the wild things they've seen in the Command's service?  But then this scene, and the characters' byplay, are going for laughs.

Our blonde Innocent, Andy, is Jeannine Riley, most famous for her role on "Petticoat Junction."  We can understand her taking off after her late roommate Muriel, though she'd certainly be fired from the commercial and lose more income than Muriel owed her.  That giant phone bill ($1300 smackers today) sounds like a clue . . . but it's never mentioned again.  I'm certain that Ellison, when he has Waverly murmur at Solo, "Cease the flummery," is tipping his cap to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.

The U.N.C.L.E. medical examiner looks like he's having fun delivering lines like "This cupcake hasn't got an appendix."  So this A-77 was Muriel, the original.  Are the others pure robots?  Or did Pertwee tack together some more human pieces with his colloid plastics and circuits?  Lack of body parts would be a serious bottleneck in producing the robot soldiers.  (Well, maybe not for Thrush.)

The captain of Thrush industry, Mr. Lash, is played by Barry Atwater, who holds a special place in all "Star Trek" fans' hearts as the famous Vulcan Surak.  Here his delivery and mannerisms seem terribly inhuman, so much that I thought he would be revealed as a robot himself.  Some of that scenery he chewed up in Act II may have given him heartburn.

Woodrow Parfrey is fun to watch as the absent-minded if cliché professor.  (His answering machine is interesting; did those exist in our world then?)  Also, Pamela Curran's Margo has a nice chemistry with Solo as he beams the Solo Charm right at her.  Not to mention the comic turn by Madame Hecubah the fortune teller, which wouldn't have been out of place in a private-eye story.  Solo's ploy of wishing to join Thrush, in order to get closer to Miss Margo and thus to the heart of the operation, is smart, too.

Nomination for Worst Line in the Series:  Solo's "Call me Nappy."  It's supposed to be funny, but . . . good grief.  Imagine the howls of laughter in England, where a "nappy" is a diaper.

Nice Detail Dept.:  Solo uses a code name, "Sheep's Clothing"; Waverly arrives armed with the U.N.C.L.E. Special carbine.

Verdict:  This isn't U.N.C.L.E. as we know it, Jim.  Had it not been for the change in tone this year, this episode could have been an interesting and more believable SF story with some clever lines and good action scenes.

(More) Funny Lines (than Usual):
Solo (attempting to explain his experience with the A-77 to Illya):  "She just twisted the head off [the dummy] and walked away."
Illya: "No offense, Napoleon, but she probably thought the dummy was you."
Solo: "That's not funny. It's true!"
Illya: (oddly dismissively): "After you put two full clips of bullets into her?  Seems reasonable.  She did it in a fit of pique."

Waverly (at Illya's reading of Thrush billion-dollar balance sheet):  "I think we can dispense with the tone of naked greed, Mr. Kuryakin."
(If Illya is a good party-line Communist, wouldn't he be disgusted instead?)

Medical Examiner (about the A-77): "A living creature with artificial parts.  A composite; something Burke and Hare might have gathered in graveyards if this were Edinburgh, eighteenth century.  A sort of do-it-yourself dreadful!"

Toeffler: "Punctuality is the blood and gristle of our [banking] business."

Madame Hecubah: "That'll be a finif, five bucks.  [At Andy's protest] I'm tellin' ya the past, ain't I?"

Illya: "Miss Francis and I were detained by the Thrush Welcome Wagon."
Solo: "Ah, you've been captured."
Illya: "It's amazing how you grasp the picture with such unerring clarity."

Solo (to Margot): "Do you think I want to be a white-collar worker all my life?  An appraiser for foreign banks -- a toady for totallers?"

Waverly (to technician Miss Townsend, re: her umbrage over Solo):  "Triangulation, Miss Townsend, not alienation of affections."