The Avengers Cybernauts trilogy

The Cybernauts, written by Philip Levene, was a very popular and highly acclaimed episode from the 1965 black-and-white season of The Avengers. The idea obviously had further potential and Levene wrote a sequel for the 1967 colour season, The Return of the Cybernauts. Nine years later Brian Clemens penned a further sequel, The Last of the Cybernauts...?? for The New Avengers. I thought it might be quite fun to take a fresh look at all three of the Cybernaut adventures.

The Cybernauts has a rather complex plot involving attempts to secure some kind of electronics contract but the real story is centred on a scientific genius, Dr Armstrong (Michael Gough), who has a grudge against the government and now plans to make all government obsolete, by means of an incredibly compact super computer and a race cybernetic servants. In the hands of a full-blown mad scientist these cybernetic servants could be used as high tech unstoppable assassins and Dr Armstrong is very definitely well on the way to full-blown mad scientist status.

Michael Gough is always a delight to watch and he’s in fine form. Rather than just chewing the scenery Gough makes him very sincere and very idealistic and really very sympathetic, his evil being the sort of misguided and deluded evil that idealism so often leads to. The guest cast also includes an entertaining turn by Bert Kwouk as a Japanese electronics mogul.

The cybernauts look creepy and menacing even though the costumes are obviously very simple and very cheap. In fact the whole episode is a fine demonstration of the principle that a modest amount of money well spent will always produce better results than a lot of money ill spent.

A major plus is the cybernaut vs cybernaut fight.

This episode seems to be very highly regarded indeed by most aficionados of the series but while I did enjoy it I don’t see it as one of the great episodes. It’s all very well executed but it’s let down by the meandering and rather incoherent script.

The Return of the Cybernauts on the other hand has a rather poor reputation among hardcore fans. I seem to be very much in a minority here but I actually thought it was somewhat better than The Cybernauts.

The plot is a standard revenge story but this time Philip Levene comes up with a taut and very witty script. The urbane Paul Beresford (Peter Cushing) has become very friendly with both Steed and Mrs Peel but what they don’t know is that he is the brother of the inventor of the cybernauts, Dr Armstrong, and he wants revenge. He doesn’t just want to kill Steed and Mrs Peel, he wants them to suffer as much as possible. He could probably come up with a method of doing this himself but he is determined to make his revenge suitably high tech so he kidnaps scientists and forces them to devise the most fiendish torture possible.

A major bonus is that the minor characters all serve a purpose and all have actual personalities. Each one of the four kidnapped scientists has a different response to the difficult situation in which they find themselves, reflecting their own character flaws and their own strengths. Levene really put some effort into this teleplay.

Another clever and amusing touch is that Steed is clearly jealous of Paul’s attentions to Mrs Peel, and she is aware of his jealousy. It makes for some sparkling dialogue moments, and it makes Paul a more interesting villain.

Peter Cushing was a fine actor but he was always especially good playing a mad scientist. In this case Levene’s script gives the character enough depth and Cushing really sinks his teeth into the part.

He is almost overshadowed by Fulton McKay’s deliciously twisted performance as one of the kidnapped scientists who turns out to be just as evil in his own way as the chief villain.

Mention must also be made of Aimi MacDonald as the gloriously ditzy secretary Rosie. This is an episode in which every single character pulls his or her weight.

If there’s a fault to this episode it is perhaps that the cybernauts themselves are not quite as central to the story as one might have wished but this is a minor quibble. I really loved The Return of the Cybernauts. 

Now we turn to The New Avengers, and to the final installment of the cybernaut saga, The Last of the Cybernauts...?? This time Brian Clemens is the scriptwriter. The New Avengers did have a different feel compared to its predecessor, but then The Avengers had reinvented itself just as radically on several previous occasions. It’s the nature of the transformation that puts some people off. By the mid-70s British television had changed, and not for the better. In order to be commercially viable The New Avengers had to do conform to the new era which meant a lot more action and a lot more violence. The challenge was to incorporate these unfortunate requirements whilst still retaining at least some of the flavour of the original. In my view the first season of The New Avengers manages to do this with reasonable success.

Initially it seems that The Last of the Cybernauts...?? has little connection to its predecessors. A double agent has been uncovered and when Steed, Gambit and Purdey move in to make the arrest the traitor, Kane, dies in a fiery car smash.

Except that Kane didn’t quite die. He lives, but he is less than half a man, confined to a wheelchair and hiding horrible facial injuries behind a mask. All this has nothing to do with cybernauts, except that by various devious means Kane has been able to find the secret storehouse where Dr Armstrong had concealed a small army of cybernauts. Kane has also  found a man, one of Dr Armstrong’s assistants, who knows how to operate the cybernauts. Kane intends to use the cybernauts to take his revenge on Steed, Gambit and Purdey.

While the connections between the various plot elements seems tenuous at first the plot gyrations are necessary. Gambit and Purdey played no part in the previous cybernaut adventures but somehow the villain has to be given a reason for having a grudge against them as well as against Steed and somehow this has to be connected with the cybernauts. Clemens ends up tying these disparate elements together quite successfully.

The Last of the Cybernauts...?? still has some authentic and characteristic Avengers flavour. Kane is a typical Avengers villain, megalomaniacal and insane and inclined to come up with ludicrously but entertainingly complicated means of trying to achieve his objectives. Robert Lang as Kane is masked for the entire episode but he has no trouble persuading us of Kane’s malevolence and very palpable menace. Having multiple masks is a fine idea and makes the performance even more disturbing.

Kane is supplied with a very amusing henchman in the person of the polite but ruthless Malov (Oscar Quitak). 

The action sequences are mostly extremely good. The fight against the cybernaut on the staircase is superb. There’s plenty of humour and it works (the scene in the lab with the lady in the cupboard is particularly amusing) and the banter between Gambit and Purdey is cleverer than usual.

The main set representing Kane’s lair is excellent, conveying very effectively a sense of his obsessive madness.

The ending doesn’t quite come off. It’s too whimsical for a final confrontation with a villain as menacing as Kane.

There’s a great deal to enjoy here. A great villain, plenty of well-executed action, witty dialogue.

I hadn’t seen any of the three episodes for some years and I’m pleased to say that they all turned out to be very much worth seeing again.