"The Man from Thrush Affair" (ep. 4/12)

This, the last Solo-only script and the first to dispense with even a mention of Illya since "Yellow Scarf," feels oddly rushed and first-draftish, but features a strong performance by Robert Vaughn as Solo carries off an undercover mission into the enemy camp.  As in "Summit-Five," the agents must operate out of touch with Waverly.

The Season One flavor is here in the opener.  We not only get an exotic scene in the Greek countryside involving a low-tech method of communication (the carrier pigeon), but we see two agents who are not Solo and Illya -- driving the U.N.C.L.E. car, no less.  Moreover, they're not hapless.  While they do die at the hands of Thrush, it's not before they get their information back to Waverly.  And the steel-nerved driver roars right into the thugs' rifle fire (the car must have had an early version of run-flat tires!) and swings neatly around their roadblock.  We get to see the car's high-tech weaponry, too.

Why couldn't we have had Illya in this one?  It makes sense that Waverly would tap agent Andreas Petros for his knowledge, however imperfect, of the Irbos dialect.  But we with inquiring minds want to know how this came about -- it suggests he has ties to the place.  Solo also implies ("Welcome aboard, Andreas") that this is Petros's first mission, or first out of New York.  Petros might well have been the Innocent in this story, if this mission were to cause a conflict with his past.  But none of this is tackled.

Similarly, the relationship between locals Marnya and Marius is never explored.  We needed a scene between them to show his hostility, and one later to show their rapprochement.  (Well, okay, we get to see them embracing in Act IV.)

Interesting technology abounds, though.  We have the invisible barrier; kudos to the actors for making it look tough to squirm underneath it.  (About time that old acting exercise of miming being trapped in a glass box came in handy.)  Plus the jamming field keeps our heroes from calling HQ.  Then, in the Thrush complex, Filene's ID card operates doors and elevators, which we see every day now.  Did our world have that so long ago?

The production staff had a lot of fun with the back of the Thrush ID card, didn't they?  Exclamation points ("Death, Torture and Terror!") and the three-pronged optical illusion as one of the symbols.

An earthquake machine?  Thrush tried that two years ago in Japan ("The Cherry Blossom Affair"), and it didn't work.  And The Voice of Armageddon rushes to deliver his ultimatum to the world without even testing Killman's device?  Killman, however, has neat character tags.  He constantly refers to himself in the third person, cheerfully admits to being cruel, and loves the Lepidopterae.

We haven't seen this blur-out to show the passage of time in a while.  It's also a superb touch that, when Solo and Andreas are burying their scuba suits, their hair is still wet.  But they should have landed by night.

Solo's performance as efficiency expert Filene (no doubt named for the Boston department store) is the delight here.  He's the perfect corporate drone, one of the fedora-topped, button-down Company Men who swarmed the halls of IBM and BBDO in those days.  The bit where he faces the captured Andreas, and has to try to save him without blowing his cover, is terrific, as is his putting the pieces together about the earthquake machine.  And for once, he's not rumbled instantly.  Killman suspects he's not authentic Hierarchy, but is not sure, and Solo is only revealed by Thrush's examination of his voiceprint.  His efficiency methods work well, even as we see that they are more humane -- putting the workers on shifts, for example, so they are rested.  (Why is it necessary to have so many workers polishing things, though?)

Killman's blackmailing Solo, to continue with the project to save the lives of the islanders, works.  Our Napoleon's sense of honor would never permit him to sacrifice the locals.  But Solo doesn't seem to have much to actually, you know, do before the project is complete.

Verdict:  Possibly rushed before the cameras before the script was really ready, the all-action climax and the tag scene seem hurried.  If there was a story this year that deserved more time, this was it: to show us about Marnya and Marius, Andreas's connection (if any) with the islanders, and Solo's dilemma of having to appear to help Killman as he waits for a chance to sabotage the operation.

Memorable Lines:
Solo (as he and Andreas pause in their scuba gear): "Let's get out of these wet things and into a couple of dry hopsacks."
(Always suspected Solo was a Brooks Brothers man!)

"The Yellow Scarf Affair" (ep. 1/17)

I'm a Solo-phile, and so "Yellow Scarf" has been one of my favorites since the '80s reruns. It's the last Solo-only story, I think, until "Deadly Smorgasbord" in the third year, and the last to dispense with even a mention of Illya until "Man from Thrush" in the fourth.

It has several charms even for Illya fans, though. "Yellow Scarf" features some good detective work by Solo. It's the only episode, as far as I know, to show the backpack in which Enforcement agents carry the carbine attachments for the Special. And it's one of only two (along with "Hong Kong Shilling") in which Solo extracts his ID disc from the back of his watch. This is so much better than a card with a name label on it, or the flimsy ID he shows Fran in "Deadly Decoy"! I imagine the disc as a special alloy, and secret services and large police forces would be furnished with a testing chemical. One drop, and if the alloy reacts correctly, they know it's an authentic Command ID.

Beyond that, the story was rather original for its time, updating the Thuggee cult for the 20th Century two decades before "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" used them as antagonists.

It was unusual back then to see members of an ethnic group portrayed by actors of that ethnicity. (Of course people were not as obsessed with political correctness as we are today.) But Kamala Devi, born in Bombay, plays the Maharajah's niece here. An Indian actor also plays the clerk at Solo's hotel. And none of the locals are portrayed as buffoons, or as evil, because of their ethnicity. Matheson's Maharajah? Evil, yes, but he comes across with a certain dignity and majesty. The hotel clerk and Vito Scotti's airline manager may be willing to take bribes, but so are public officials everywhere. (I know; I live in New Orleans. Ever hear of "Dollar Bill" Jefferson?) And David Sheiner's Inspector Darwa would fit right in with the NYPD or LAPD's best. Much as he wants to bury Solo under the local jail, he still follows procedure to check him out. One tough and honest cop!

Neile Adams, the overconfident Thuggee agent Sita Chandi, was once married to Vaughn's old buddy Steve McQueen. She looks authentically Indian here, but was born in the Philippines.

Ever read Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu thrillers?  Today Rohmer has been forgotten, when he isn't being castigated (not always fairly) as a racist for portraying a Chinese as evil.  But he was a master of atmosphere.  The Fu Manchu stories have a shivery air of unseen menace, of silent wheels moving behind the scenes, of sudden exotic death by night. And the Libott-Ingster script captures this spookiness perfectly: from the opening with McAllister's murder on the plane, through the attempt on Solo's life on the balcony, his stalking by the Thuggees, the discovery of Sita Chandi's body, and the maharajah's cavern.

Interesting acronyms here.  HAT, I guess, stands for Hindu (or Hindi, or Hindustani) Air Transport?  And "Unified Northern Casualty and Liability Exchange"! Ha!

I love Solo's reference to "your own [India's] secret service in New Delhi."  The "Feast of Lights" the Inspector mentions, Diwali (thanks, Google!), is real and is held during October/November.

With all this going for it, the episode falls down on a couple of points.  You might ask how the Maharajah manages to strangle Mac on the plane without detection.  Well, his men, and women, were on board, and could keep the passengers quiet while the Maharajah disposed of Mac.  (I'll bet they were all in first class anyway. Anything goes up there, right?)

Simpson the Thrush (Linden Chiles) is obviously some satrap's nephew or son-in-law, sent in at the last minute or to allow him to make his bones.  He's sneaky, yes, but in the long run he's so ineffectual, nepotism is the only answer.

Somebody on the production crew wasn't paying attention.  Several times, the stock establishing shots of India are daylight shots; but the very next scene is set at night at Solo's hotel, the maharajah's palace, etc.  Normally I don't notice technical slipups, but this is jarring.

I've always wondered why the Maharajah's Thuggees kill the Thrush sniper after his attempt on Solo.  It's not like they were punishing him for failing the Maharajah; he'd been sent by Simpson! Maybe the Thuggees were out on patrol, thought the sniper was planning to kill their boss, and rubbed said sniper out as a precaution.  Then the rifle and his suspicions of Solo tell the Big Guy his cult is in danger of exposure.

The biggest glitch, for me, is that the lie detector's case has been rigged to explode . . . and yet Solo uses it as a weapon in the rather silly fight at the climax, bashing the Thuggees as if it were only a typewriter case.  True, Waverly implies that the nitro will only go off when you try to open the case.  But then, when Solo has the maharajah's man bring it over to "buy [his] life," doesn't he expect the thing to blow up in his face?  (Or still lower, given that he's kneeling right by it?)

Verdict: A-plus on atmosphere and mystery, B-plus on execution.

Memorable lines:
Inspector Darwa: "India is a very poor country.  Its jails reflect that poverty."

Solo (eyeing the statue of the goddess Kali):  "I must say she is a . . . demanding . . . mistress."

Solo (regarding Sita Chandi's lifeless body):  "It seems the goddess Kali has called for one of her own."

"The Dove Affair" (ep. 1/12), or "Spy vs. Spy"

As a major-league Solo-phile, I've always found this Robert Towne script, the 11th filmed, to be one of my favorites.  (Since the `80s, that is; I barely recall its first run.)  It's the most Bond-like story of the series.  If you were to trim out the humor -- say, Satine's fear of the kids -- you could imagine this as a Bond novella, with the ace British spy on the run in East Berlin and desperate to get back into the American sector with a microdot.  Here we see, possibly more than in any other script, how Napoleon Solo stays on balance and twists events to his will -- in other words, why he is, and deserves to be, U.N.C.L.E.'s Chief Enforcement Agent.

Bill Koenig mentions in his episode guide that Towne's "Mission: Impossible" movie script contains story elements from "Dove."  An eastern European country, seen at night; someone is dumped off a bridge; the heroes move among diplomats at a party; and the climaxes involve trains.  (I was on Channel_D when it was but a poor downtrodden mailing list, and I do believe I was the one who noted that when the movie came out in '96.)  Of course it's perfectly okay for a writer to cannibalize his own work, as long as he does something different with it, and the Channel train climax of M:I is very unlike the "Von Ryan's Express" flavor here in "Dove."

As we saw in "Iowa Scuba" and "Neptune," the communicator must be linked to the electrical grid for power.  Also as in those stories, Solo's gun is the Mark I Mauser Special, though in the first act he uses a P-38 with long silencer.  Unusually, when he contacts Waverly after Satine dumps him off the Ramar Bridge, he uses the phrase "Open Red Line," then informs Waverly he's on the overseas relay.  Nice touch, that New York is in daylight while Sernia, six to seven hours later in the Balkans, is dark.

The details of the Sernian government, bureaucracy, politics, etc., are well worked out and plausible.  And the Jack E. Leonard-like Thrush, seen in shadow or with his back turned, is creepy.  (Better still, though, if they'd had him seated in shadows in a dark office.) 

There's a misty rain falling at the train station, and Solo's hair is damp.  Nice detail!  His gray suit is damp and wrinkled, too, after his dip in the river.  Where did he get the dark suit, you ask?  Maybe the American ambassador had an aide who was just Solo's size.  Certainly the dark suit, and the dark trench coat we saw in "Finny Foot," work well in this grim, film noir-like atmosphere.

June Lockhart has always charmed me, both when I was a kid and now.  This fell between her "Lassie" and "Lost in Space" gigs.  Though she's too cute to be entirely believable as a spinster, her scenes with Solo on the train are very affecting.  ("Who's going to want to blow open my grave?")  I wonder if Solo ever looked Miss Taub up afterward?

It would be simpler to list the shows Ricardo Montalban wasn't in during the `60s and `70s.  He was a rare thing back then, a successful ethnic actor who didn't anglicize his name.

It's not the same actor -- but doesn't Kirk, the blond teenager with the walkie-talkies, remind you of Eddie Haskell on "Leave It to Beaver"?  The same smarmy passive-aggressiveness that makes you want to smack them both?  "You want my dinner to get cold??!!" I'd have told him I didn't give a damn, and to get that *$%^%*&* walkie-talkie NOW!

You might ask, "What good would a picture of the dove do U.N.C.L.E.?"  Well, with their advanced  microphotography techniques, they could pull up at least half the names of the "countless Thrush agents" and their order of battle in Sernia.  Half a loaf is better than none.

Verdict:  The best pure "spy" story in the first season, and possibly in all four.  The black-and-white photography lends itself to this story perfectly.

Great Lines:
Satine (nervously): "[The teenagers] think I am interesting!"
Solo: "Well, so you are -- I wouldn't deny that for a minute."

Satine: "Are you going to kill me?"
Solo: "Unfortunately I'm a professional.  I can't just because I want to. I have to know why."

Solo (grimly, as the Sernian soldiers surround the train): "Come on, Satine.  It's time to go home."

"The Iowa Scuba Affair" (ep. 1/2)

I saw this one when it was rerun in spring of '65, and for years remembered nothing of it except the shower scene.   (I was eleven, and it convinced me, weirdly, to start showering instead of taking baths.)

I don't remember the little orientation intro when the shows were new, since my first episode was "Finny Foot."  I've never liked it much. Imagine if we'd had a similar intro to "Star Trek":

(Narrator) "This is the United Starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission is to find new life in our galaxy.  We've entered via the hangar deck, and are now rising through the turbolift elevator to the bridge."  "Hello, I'm James T. Kirk.  I'm the captain of this vessel, current complement 430 men and women."  "I am Spock, Science Officer. . . ."  (You get the idea.)

For the first (but not the last) time, Solo takes on a cover identity.  We're not shown the special conditioning process (see "Neptune" and "King of Knaves") here, though I doubt he'd have needed it.

Jill is charming, and Slim Pickens is very disarming as the farm boy who's made good.

The scene with the three no-goodniks in scuba gear on the hill has always disturbed me.   It's daylight, right? Shouldn't they have worried about being seen?

The jet takeoffs and landings, and close shots of the pilot's hand, imply that Solo is flying himself.  We see several times later that he can pilot a helicopter, so I suppose this is consistent.

The scenes with Waverly at HQ were cut from the CBN airings, so they came as a terrific surprise to me.  And very welcome, as they explain things important to the plot.

The little infrared Polaroid-style camera Solo uses to photograph Carmen Miranda (or Lola Montez or whatever her name is) in the darkness -- that must have been ultra-science fiction for those days, as much as Solo's plug-in communicator was.

The scenes as the nylon-masked baddies hunt Solo and Jill were filmed in the daytime with a filter to simulate night.  It's a shame they couldn't have actually been shot at night, as the opening scene with Solo and the saboteur appears to be.  However, the scene in the silo, when Solo tells Jill his real name as he field-assembles the Mark I Special, makes up for it.  (I do think they'd have a hard time breathing under that grain, though.  And I suspect that when the MPs pour into the tunnel at the climax, they'd arrest everybody, Solo and Jill included, and sort things out afterward.)

Verdict: An effective little story.  Norman Felton, the show's executive producer, and Sam Rolfe (creator and line producer) probably had several scripts, such as "Brain Killer," "Neptune," and "Shark," ready to go once production started.  What led them to pick this one, I wonder?  And to schedule it second in broadcast order?  Or did the network guys decide that?

Great Line:

Solo (levelly, to Jill, about her late boyfriend): "His name was Edward Friedlander . . . and he was one of the most expert saboteurs in the world."