‘Has Gene gone over to the dark side’ is the question that hangs over this episode of The Adventurer. Whether it is a reflection of Gene’s unpopularity with the cast and crew, or just a coincidence, the tail end of the series is rather fond of calling Gene’s character into question and flirting with the idea that he might be a bad guy. It is a theme repeated in at least two upcoming episodes ‘Make it a Million’ and ‘Mr Calloway is a Very Cautious Man’. The intro to this episode sure doesn’t paint him as the hero of the piece, with Gene ignoring calls for assistance from Mr Parminter, frivolously throwing his money around and mocking the way Oriental people speak.
As much as Parminter worships Gene, even he is forced to concede that Gene’s behaviour is worthy of further investigation and reluctantly puts Diane and Gavin on the case. ‘Going, Going…’ is a real jigsaw puzzle of an Adventurer episode, nothing makes much sense to begin with, and only over time do all the pieces come together and the bigger picture becomes more clearer. The most important part of the puzzle is a Ming vase that Gene has bought at auction, outbidding several other characters including German bad guy Eisen (Arnold Diamond) and Japanese bad guy Koji Taiho (Burt ‘let’s hope nobody realises I was also in episode 12’ Kwouk). The Ming vase turns out to be a fake, but Gene insists on the sale going ahead anyway. Once in possession of the Ming, Gene traces its design onto paper, then smashes it into bits and disposes of some of the pieces…but not all of them. Gene’s phone is then bugged by a fake telephone engineer, confusing Gavin who shows up at Gene’s place posing as another fake telephone engineer…and while he too, had intended to bug Gene’s phone ends up removing the bug left by the previous fake engineer. Confused? You will be. In fairness ‘Going, Going…’ obviously wants to play to the audience’s inner-sleuth, by offering up the challenge of deciphering Gene’s seemingly illogical behaviour.
Gene might dominate ‘Going, Going…’, but I’d still classify this as a New Adventurers episode. A shared sense of confusion tends to bond the audience to Parminter, Diane and Gavin here, whereas Gene’s actions only alienate and arouse suspicion. Come to think about it, this would have been an ideal point to have written Gene out of the show and continue on with the New Adventurers formula…and it often feels as if that was the episode the series’ creators wished they were making. Exposing the lead character as a bad guy 20 episodes into a 26 episode series would have certainly shaken The Adventurer up quite dramatically…but it was not to be. Instead the off-screen balance of power tipped in Gene’s favour and ‘Going, Going…’ spelt the end for the New Adventurers, this episode marking the last time Parminter, Gavin and Diane are seen together onscreen.
Cracks in Gene’s ‘bad guy’ act begin to show and it comes as no big surprise when its revealed he has just been pretending to go rogue, and the plot finally begins to make some sense. The person who put the Ming up for auction was Lynsky (Norman Ettlinger) a defecting Russian chemist who had disappeared while seeking asylum in Britain. The vase was in fact a smokescreen for what he was really auctioning off which was a chemical formula of great value to the world of big business. When traced onto paper the design on the vase could be placed over a map of London which then reveals when and where the winning bidder could meet Lynsky and receive the formula. Good God, what a hyper-paranoid lot we were during the cold war.
Despite having been outbid by Gene at the auction, his rivals in the field of big business aren’t prepared to take defeat lying down. While the Russians bug Gene’s phone, German businessman Eisen pays Gene’s butler to double cross Gene and deliver the broken vase to him. Incidentally, the deceitful butler in question isn’t ‘Brandon the Butler’ rather it is ‘Brooks the Butler’ (Norman Bird) who has temporarily been filling in for Brandon. Brooks and Brandon are so strikingly similar characters, both having an air of untrustworthiness about them, that you do have to wonder whether the series’ original plan was to have Brandon go bad and end up betraying his employer. An idea possibly nixed due to the series’ aversion to story arcs and a desire to keep Dennis Price around, resulting in this facsimile character Brooks being drafted in for one episode. Should anyone wonder what has become of Brandon, a brief dialogue exchange between Gene and Parminter reveals that Brandon has been called away to visit his ill sister, a piece of dialogue that ushers in Dennis Price’s return to the series in next week’s episode.
Going, Going…’s script by Gerald Kelsey boasts a number of clever plot twists but overall this is an Adventurer episode that spins way too much of a complicated web. One that can never be satisfactorily unravelled within a 25 minute running time. It is never explained what exactly Lynsky’s formula is or why it should be the subject of such a hard fought battle for its ownership. Why Gene chooses to exclude the other Adventurers from his plans is also something of a mystery, especially as it needlessly turns characters who are meant to assist Gene, into obstacles who inadvertently hinder him. In light of all the backstage drama it does however feel rather fitting that the final New Adventurers episode should be one that pits Gene against his colleagues. Life mirrors The Adventurer …and all that.
This series does become more of a homebody towards the end, preferring London settings to overseas ones, as the wintery months rob Europe of much of its appeal. The cheque Gene signs for the vase indicates this episode is set in October 1972, and since the episode was first broadcast in January 1973, ‘Going, Going…’ was likely filmed in Oct 1972 as well. Should anyone be interested, the time between the filming and broadcasting of Adventurer episodes appears to have been just over two months (‘Thrust and Counter-Thrust’ was filmed in early August 1972 and first shown in October of that year) illustrating just how quickly ITC were knocking these episodes out. It is easy to see the logic behind that kind of scheduling, with those early, sun drenched episodes first being unveiled during the closing months of 1972, and having tremendous appeal on chilly, dark British nights. Alas, by the time of episodes like this, winter had caught up on the series, and the world of The Adventurer looks no more inviting than the day to day reality of the cold, early months of the year that they were broadcast in. Where is Gene’s Paddington Bear coat when he needs it?
All the positives to this episode tend to rest on the shoulders of its co-stars, Bridget Armstrong raises a few laughs as Gene’s all fur coat and no knickers love interest who keeps calling the Ming vase a ‘mink’ and has lines like “all that money for a pot”. Burt Kwouk is always a welcome presence in anything, even if nether of his Adventurer episodes are exactly what you’d call series highlights. In order to differentiate him from the character he played in the ‘Deadlock’ episode, Kwouk here sports a fake moustache and dyed grey hair. Unlike his Deadlock character, which played around with Oriental villain stereotypes, ‘Going, Going…’ wholeheartedly embraces them, giving Kwouk broken English speech patterns and a fondness for sub- Confucius nuggets of wisdom like “man who has hen house does not buy eggs”. Kwouk’s character, Koji Taiho, also has a habit of injecting the word ‘honorary’ (or slight variations thereof) into every other sentence, rivalling the likes of ‘frightfully’ and ‘Astrid’ when it comes to overused words in an Adventurer episode.
Unfortunately the writer of this episode must have been blissfully unaware of the Gene-Catherine Schell situation, as ‘Going, Going…’ breaks the unwritten law of New Adventurers episodes that ‘thou shall not write scenes featuring Catherine and Gene in the same room together’. A faux-pas that finally alerted Gene to the fact that Catherine had been secretly co-starring in the last several episodes. Based on what Catherine Schell has to say on the matter in the DVD extras, Gene wasn’t pleased “obviously the writers hadn’t been warned (and) I had to do a scene with Gene Barry. So I’m walking down the corridor towards my dressing room and Gene Barry is coming opposite and he looks at me and says ‘what are you doing here’ and I said ‘well, I’m working Gene’, ‘no you’re not, you’re off the picture’ and I said ‘no, I’m not, I’ve been written back into the picture’. So he was in not the best of mood when we had to do the scene together and I remember he kept fluffing his lines, which he did very, very often”.
Of course it is impossible to look at the scene in question in the same light, once you’ve been clued in on the behind the scenes drama. It is always amusing to watch people buddying up on screen, when you’re aware they couldn’t stand each other in real life. Gene and Catherine…the Mike and Bernie Winters of the ITC world. Ever the pro, Catherine does her best to sell the idea that Diane loves being in Gene’s company. Gene on the other hand gives the impression he’d rather be anywhere else. His dialogue ironically includes the jokey suggestion that “I could get you to resign”. An awkward moment…captured on film forever.
So with ‘Going, Going…’ Diane Marsh was cast out into the cursed earth, never to be seen in The Adventurer again. If there is a slightly positive spin that can be put on the raw deal Gene’s co-stars got from the series, it is that the experience didn’t destroy anyone’s career. If anything those involved went from strength to strength afterwards, and their best years were still ahead of them. Catherine herself went on to delight cinema audiences in 1975’s The Return of the Pink Panther, and built up a solid resume of film and television credits. Returning to the ITC fold for the second series of Space:1999, it would be that series that truly made Catherine Schell a household name. Thanks to the ironic role of Maya, a shape shifting extra-terrestrial who –in a scenario right out of Gene’s nightmares- had the ability to transform herself into all manner of creatures, including some really, really tall space monsters. Not only did those crazy cats who made Space: 1999 allow the Hungarian giantess to get away with that, they even allowed her to pose for publicity photos wearing high heeled boots….avert your eyes now Gene.
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