The Avengers: Box of Tricks
The first was that Mitchell Hadley commented how much he likes early Steed. Well, so do I. I love that early Steed is a much more mutable character than the later bowler-hatted agent employed by the ministry: we never really know who he is, he comes across as louche and could even be a criminal. Particularly he treats Venus Smith like dirt and she hates it but he carries on. In fact I think this is one of the reasons the Venus Smith episodes are unpopular.
Then I came across something else which reminded me of this episode (more anon). I see that I last opined about this episode nearly a decade ago (you can see the post in a series I did about Venus Smith by clicking the relevant tag in the menu). It's a pretty good blog post, even if I do say so myself, and reflects when I was younger and had more energy for these sorts of things. I particularly commented that I think viewers are made uncomfortable by the way Venus Smith looks positively childlike and yet is placed next to dodgy, possibly even criminal, Steed, and we all wonder where her mother is. Venus's role in this one is very much that of the inquisitive child, who insinuates herself where she's not welcome and says things she shouldn't, yet strangely sings with a mature woman's voice.
I commented before that I didn't really have much to add to the standard criticisms of this episode, namely that it's blindingly obvious what is going on and that the number of blondes and boxes get very confusing, and that is still the case. I don't think this episode half deserves the critical drubbing it gets on the internet but I think all the criticisms are realistic.
What made me think of the episode, though, was that in reading a book by James Randi I think I found a possible inspiration for Dr Gallam and his little boxes, in the shape of Dr Albert Abrams (1863 to 1924), who was actually a real doctor but instead became a millionaire practicing his self-invented pseudoscience called radionics. I don't think I have seen this possible inspiration anywhere before so in line with the usual high standards of this blog you may again be getting original research here. Abrams was far from being the only one to practice similar pretend therapies, in fact they continue to day in all those magnetic bracelets you see and in any pseudo science referring the 'energy', but he was the inventor of the approach. Most significantly with relevance to this episode he made his money by leasing out a succession of little boxes (one of them is pictured including the Radio Disease Killer which I think might be by someone else but is the same idea) he invented, some used purely for diagnostic reasons and others that the patient actually had to carry around with them. They looked different to the little box in the episode but nonetheless the idea is there. In fact I would highly recommend reading about his ideas for a frisson of amusement mixed with embarrassment at our fellow humans and disgust at Abrams. He thought he could 'diagnose' people, including their religion, from a sample of their handwriting, and the most bizarre was a set-up where you would have to have a subject deemed healthy as well as the patient. They would both be wired up to one of his boxes, facing west (that was absolutely essential) and Abrams would diagnose the 'ill' one by listening to the abdomen of the 'healthy' one. Not gonna lie, but rather than have Steed as a masseur this episode would have been much improved by dramatising this procedure, possibly in the nightclub.
Actually on watching this again I'm finding I like it better. The things I appreciate are the contrast between the rather seedy nightclub and the General's world. I particularly like that the nightclub set is much more like a theatre behind the scenes than I would have expected, and you can't beat a theatre for an illusion.