"The Seven Wonders of the World Affair, Part II" (ep. 4/16)

"And now, the end is near;/ And so [we] face the final curtain . . ." The last episode of the series opens with George Fenneman, once Groucho Marx's announcer, summarizing the events of Part I.

More neat visual shots here: the conference room with the Himalayan peaks in the distance; a focus on first Kingsley, then the General, up through the glass table, so that the telephones seem to float in mid-air; again Kingsley's vast installation, invoking Shangri-La in "Lost Horizon"; the white-robed acolytes peering down at Solo.

Erikson's daughter Anna is a step above a lot of the blonde Innocents we've seen.  Despite our being told she's a teenager, she seems older and more mature, at least in the scenes at Kingsley's installation, and is level-headed enough to shoot one of the white robe guys.

The scene where Solo attempts to convince the other experts to bail on Kingsley's plan is remarkable for the series.  Like Captain Shark,  the antagonist is not an evil monster, displaying his grandiose plan to Solo as a prelude to killing him.  Kingsley the deluded idealist is trying to win Solo over to his side.  It gives writer Hudis a chance to bring up some ethical questions.

As sometimes with the two-parters destined to be movies, though, we get very little actual time for Solo and Illya.  I'd have liked to hear them talking in the guest quarters before Kingsley's men take them out to be gassed.  Here, even more than in "Bridge of Lions," they seem like minor figures dwarfed by the titanic events roaring over their heads.

Something about the way Kingsley's and Erikson's hands scrabble over the white buttons on their control panel is almost funny -- which I'm sure the actors and director didn't intend.

Thankfully, the voiceover -- "The seemingly endless battle against evil . . . the battle ends once and for all in favor of good" -- that introduces the final scene is a quote from Kingsley to Solo, spoken earlier, as if Solo is remembering.  Having a nameless narrator tell us this would have been awkward and confusing. 

Verdict:  Though a weak entry, vastly unlike any previous story, it makes a definite statement about the nature of man and leaves us with powerful images: the shattered control dome at 49:21, looking like a Forties cover for Astounding Science Fiction; the General an expressionless robot, waiting for orders (and reminding us of what humanity has escaped); the corpses in the control room; Kingsley tenderly arraying the body of the wife who has betrayed him . . .

Memorable Lines:
Kingsley: "General, you are a strange mixture.  You pursue a merciful ideal . . . mercilessly."

Solo: "Your plan denies humanity its freedom to find its own way to better times. . . .  Professor Garrow, you're a geneticist.  Your life work is the biological improvement of man.  Will you pervert that science into the creation of a -- a generation of robots?"

Kingsley: "Join us, leading a new world.  Let there be eight wonders."
Solo: "In your new world, Kingsley, there won't be any wonder."

Margitta (to her husband): "Don't look so startled, Robert.  Where else did you think I raised a hundred million dollars?  An overdraft at a drive-in bank?"

Margitta: "Humanity is dirt.  And it always will be."

General: "And don't call me Shirley."
(Oops, wrong movie --!)

"The Seven Wonders of the World Affair, Part I" (ep. 4/15)

The penultimate episode . . . ah me, oh my . . .

Right at the start we plunge into a gunfight at Thrushman Webb's HQ.  It takes a while to figure out what's going on, but scripter Norman Hudis and director Sutton Roley are painting on a big canvas here, so we need to be patient.  In the meantime the story moves, and we get wonderful action shots like Webb's leap into the cockpit of Mrs. Kingsley's Jaguar E-Type.

At last, something we've wanted to see for so long: a regional U.N.C.L.E. officer, Grant, played here by Hugh Marlowe, with an exercise bike (?) in his office.  He's completely unimpressed by the two hotshots from New York, huh?

Margitta Kingsley and Mr. Webb don't seem to have much to do with the installation behind the meat plant.  They spend a lot of time lazing around Webb's red-carpeted office, smoking cigarettes and smiling suggestively to each other.  Neat, though, when she plugs Mr. Veeth and Miss Carla from Thrush.  That's one way of eliminating pesky competition.

When Solo and Illya approach the ship with Anna Erikson on board, and the officer with the deck machine gun shoots at them, it would have been smart of them to simply hang back astern.  They'd have been shielded by the cabins and wheelhouse.

Another drunken ship captain, as in Hudis's Season Three "Bottle of Rum"!  One point, though:  He couldn't have touched the searing-hot barrel of the just-fired deck gun without burning his hand.  What happened to him and his crew when Kingsley and Erikson left the ship?  Also, where is the ship -- off Hong Kong?  If Anna was in Berlin, it would have made more sense for her to fly directly to the vicinity of Kingsley's Seven Wonders installation, and for her father to meet her there.

The disappearances of Kingsley's other six Wonders, and the theft of personal items, harkens back to "The Shark Affair."  Yes, why would you need a public-relations man?  Once the world's been made docile, you won't have to convince people to buy, prefer, or vote for anything.  You'll just tell 'em what you want 'em to do.

Smart, and pro-active, of Solo and Illya to co-opt Dr. Garrow.  Unfortunately Kingsley sees through their plan.

The sequence as Solo's plane is hit and he bails out, and then staggers across the high desert, is exciting.

Verdict: One of the most vividly photographed episodes, almost humorless, considerably different in tone from everything that's gone before. (Cf. "Mad, Mad Tea Party" or "Ultimate Computer.")

Memorable Lines:

Illya: "How do you inject dignity into the word `help'?"

Steve Garrow: "It's Mr. Solo's plane. He must be dead."
Illya (clearly upset): "Listen, if you don't have anything positive to say, why don't you just keep quiet?"