This is an episode list for the 1960s British television series The Avengers. The series was aired in Britain, on ITV, between 1961 and 1969.
The first four series were made in black-and-white. The first three were pre-recorded on videotape (except where noted) with occasional filmed inserts. Beginning with series 4 the series moved to all-film production, shot using the single-camera method. From series 5 onward, the episodes were filmed in colour. The sixth series was broadcast in the US before it was shown in the UK.
Note: The only episodes from the first series known to exist in complete form are "Girl on the Trapeze" (which does not feature John Steed), "The Frighteners" and "Tunnel of Fear"; additionally, the first 14 minutes—the first reel—of the premiere episode, "Hot Snow", have been rediscovered and released on DVD.[citation needed] The most recent discovery was in 2016, when "Tunnel of Fear" was found intact in a private collection.[citation needed]
Cast: Unless noted in the table below, all episodes in the first series feature Ian Hendry (as Dr. David Keel) and Patrick Macnee (as John Steed).
Following series 1, a lengthy Equity actors' strike prevented development of the second series, and Ian Hendry decided to leave the show. When The Avengers eventually returned, Macnee had become the show's lead, accompanied by a range of male and (predominantly) female co-stars.
Series 2 (1962–1963)
Cast: Series 2 featured Patrick Macnee as John Steed in all 26 episodes. Either Jon Rollason (as Dr. Martin King, in 3 episodes) or Julie Stevens (as Venus Smith, in 6 episodes) accompanied him as noted in the table; with all of the other 17 episodes featuring Honor Blackman (as Mrs. Cathy Gale) accompanying Steed. All episodes intact.
Steed and Dr. King are assigned a mission to recover a microfilm containing the stolen plans of a missile early warning system. Shipboard, they meet knives and a drunken film star.[41]
A philatelist is murdered after discovering an extremely rare and valuable stamp on sale. Steed and Cathy investigate and encounter a naughty dentist.[45]
Steed, though under suspicion himself, leads an operation to flush out a traitor plotting to assassinate a foreign dignitary.[49] Dr. King initially refuses to be involved, but comes to Steed's aid.
In Wales, a new satellite tracking system is being jammed every time it is used. Steed and Cathy search for the traitor who is passing on information about the project.[53]
A new cryogenic missile defence system computer, Plato, springs a deadly leak. Sabotage? Murder? Steed investigates while Cathy plays cards with sharks.[55]
Mrs. Catherine Gale takes on the identity of an assassin to infiltrate a criminal gang. However, things get complicated when the real assassin escapes from prison.[61]
A company invents an unbreakable ceramic, the secret of which others try to steal. Following the death of an industrial spy in a vat of liquid clay, Steed and Cathy mount an undercover investigation.[63]
The death of a nightclub magician's assistant leads through a crippled general and his quack, to employment opportunities and secret documents. Steed enlists the help of Venus to root out the criminals by becoming the new assistant.[65]
During a spate of suicides at a university, a burglar seeks a note to Venus. Steed uncovers a sinister plot to blackmail students into espionage activities.[71]
A cipher expert commits suicide at an amusement park; however, Venus Smith discovers that she has taken a photograph of the man several days later, apparently very much alive. Steed investigates the mystery.[75]
Steed takes a vacation to Greece. While there, he is asked to investigate the death of Greek deep-sea diver and smuggler, who was part of a group of part-time agents known as "the Frogs".[79]
Cathy becomes romantically involved with shipyard owner Oliver Waldner, blissfully unaware that he is masterminding a dastardly plan to gain control of most of Britain’s shipbuilding industry. After she nearly dies in an apparent accident, Steed sets out to prove that Waldner has murdered a business rival.[81]
Why are they coming for people who aren't dead yet? A dodgy retirement home is being used as part of a scam to avoid inheritance tax. Steed and Cathy investigate.[87]
An agent who has been given multiple personalities reveals a plot to assassinate key government scientists and officials and replace them with doppelgangers. Cathy has to identify the real Steed and eliminate his imposter.[3]
Steed and Cathy investigate espionage by a pretty burglar in "The Nutshell", codename for a top-secret underground nuclear shelter.[90] They are not telling each other everything, and somewhere a traitor lurks.
Steed attends his wartime batman's funeral and discovers that the deceased has unexpectedly left a very substantial sum of money. Cathy's photography leads to violence and electronics. The answer to the mystery involves illegal insider trading.[92]
Newly elected Member of Parliament, Michael Dyter, fakes his own death only to reappear later in possession of a nuclear bomb which he threatens to detonate on 5 November, in London. Steed and Cathy go into politics, during a race against time to hunt him down.[94]
Steed and Cathy set out to snare criminal mastermind John P. Spagge using a gold bullion robbery as bait.[96] Postal cards and a gas figure prominently.
A multi-millionaire is about to receive a corneal graft to treat his blindness. Steed is tasked with escorting the live corneas from Switzerland to London. However, when the eye surgeon involved expresses concerns about the operation, he is murdered, causing Steed to mount his own investigation.[98] Mrs Gale plays a doctor.
A megalomaniac food manufacturer who is obsessed with ancient Rome, is deliberately tainting his company's grain with ergot. Steed and Cathy are brought in to investigate.[102]
Steed accidentally picks up the wrong coat when leaving a Chinese restaurant and discovers a cheque for £5,000 in the pocket. Further investigation reveals that the restaurant is being used as a front for illegal gold smuggling. An unexpected twist to the plot is that part of the proceeds is being used to assist needy ex-servicemen.[104]
Cathy is invited to the stately home of Sir Cavalier Rasagne, only to find that she has been lured into a trap by Martin Goodman, a deluded criminal who believes that she broke his heart.[106]
Steed and Cathy are assigned to protect the Emir Abdulla Akaba during his trade visit to London, but despite their best efforts in food service he is assassinated. The Avengers must discover who and what killed him.[108]
A false alarm triggers all but one of the nation's nuclear attack early warning systems. Steed and Cathy go undercover to investigate and are invited to a fancy dress party on a train. As guests die one by one, it becomes apparent that one is their killer.[110]
Five British agents are eliminated in rapid succession on an Austrian "pipeline" escape route. Steed goes to investigate and finds himself wrongfully accused of betraying them.[116]
A large number of prominent businessmen are buried in a Cornish graveyard near to a tin mine. Steed suspects foul play after a close friend meets the same fate.[118]
Steed finds himself protecting a British defector, formerly Steed's target and now an enemy diplomat, from an assassin. Selling a used car is part of the scheme.[126]
After a number of Soviet agents are murdered by an unknown third party, Steed and Cathy co-operate with their Russian counterparts to find the assassins.[128]
Steed and Cathy investigate the murder of a soldier and uncover a plot to stage a coup d'état against the British government.[132] The regal Mrs. Catherine Gale meets a strangler who's not a true gentleman.
Steed and Cathy investigate an illegal drug smuggling operation.[134]
NOTE: The episode "Don't Look Behind You" was later re-made for series 5 as "The Joker", "The Charmers" was re-made, again for series 5, as "The Correct Way to Kill" and "Dressed to Kill" was in large part re-made, once again for series 5, as "The Superlative Seven". At the end of the third series, Honor Blackman left The Avengers to star in the James Bond movie Goldfinger.
Series 4 (1965–1966)
Cast: Series 4 starred Patrick Macnee (as John Steed) and Diana Rigg (as Mrs. Emma Peel). It was the last series to be made in black-and-white, but also the first series to be shot entirely on film as opposed to mainly on videotape.
Episodes of this series were first broadcast in the UK on Tuesdays by Scottish Television, before ABC Weekend broadcast them four days later on Saturday.[136]
Steed and Emma, on the trail of several murdered agents, visit Little Bazeley by the Sea — a town that strangers rarely leave alive — and discover that it is being secretly infiltrated by enemy agents.
The murder of an agent carrying a receipt from a department store leads Mrs. Emma Peel to join its sales staff, where she stumbles upon a sinister plot involving nuclear terrorism.
After an apparently respectable politician is caught trying to steal top-secret documents, Steed and Emma discover a plot by renegade intellectuals to steal a nuclear missile.
Dr. Wadkin is one of seven scientists to go missing. When he reappears and attacks his wife, the trail leads Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel to a shady tycoon -- and to Room 621 of the Chessman Hotel.
Mrs. Emma Peel inherits an electronic key to the house of her late, unknown uncle — and finds herself trapped in a maze, target of a former employee's mind-bending revenge.
A genie brings Steed and Emma to a fantasy world of cricket, harem dances, and creative assassination.
Starting with this series, the production budget was increased considerably, and location shooting was used extensively. With an eye toward getting the series shown on US television, the show was now shot using 35mm film instead of being videotaped, leading to an increase in picture quality. This brought The Avengers in line with other contemporary ITV series such as Danger Man (airing in the US as Secret Agent) and The Saint.
Actress Elizabeth Shepherd was originally cast as Emma Peel; one complete episode, "The Town of No Return", was filmed. Partway through filming of the second episode, "The Murder Market", the producers closed down production in order to recast the part. The Shepherd footage has never been televised and is believed to be lost. Canal+ once claimed it had the original footage, and then later retracted this claim. Publicity photos of Elizabeth Shepherd as Mrs. Emma Peel survive.
For American broadcast, all episodes of the 1965–1966 series included a specially-shot prologue preceding the main credits, showing Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel walking across a giant chessboard while a narrator introduces the characters and the concept of the series. This opening never aired in the UK and wasn't widely seen in the show's home country until the DVD release.
The closing credits of all episodes of the fourth series credit the production company as "Associated British Productions Limited", the name of ABC Weekend's parent company's film production wing in Elstree, but at the very end, the triangular logo of ABC Weekend TV appears with the caption "ABC production", as in previous series.
"The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse" was filmed in colour on the set of "Honey for the Prince" and was, as Brian Clemens originally wrote it, intended to be tagged on to the end of the final b/w episode transmitted in America to advertise the upcoming colour episodes (though the b/w sequence titled "Preamble for USA", written by Brian Clemens to introduce the item, which was to have featured Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg explaining/introducing this short colour test film, is either lost or was never filmed). It was also cut down into a trailer for the colour episodes coming soon to ABC Network in America. Just like the prologue to the b/w Macnee/Rigg episodes, it was never meant to be screened anywhere but the US. There is a myth that it was to have originally been a twenty-minute mini-episode, but the version presently available on video is three minutes long and doesn't appear to be missing any substantial narrative content.
Series 5 (1967)
Cast: This series featured Patrick Macnee (as John Steed) and Diana Rigg (as Emma Peel). From this series onwards, all episodes were filmed in colour, but as ITV did not begin colour transmissions until November 1969, all were originally broadcast in the UK in black and white.
Production of this series occurred in two batches. The first 16 episodes were broadcast in both the UK and the US from January to May 1967. The remaining 8 episodes were broadcast in the UK as a continuation of the fifth series from September to November 1967, but in the US they were delayed until January 1968 where they formed the first half of a new season.
9 January 1967 (1967-01-09) Southern14 January, ABC
20 January 1967
E.66.6.4
2–1
Astronomers studying the planet Venus are being killed, by what appears to be a death-ray, as Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel investigate reports of an invasion from space.
Seeking an organisation of murderous City gents, who are assassinating both British and enemy agents, Steed gets a glamorous but tall Russian partner, and Emma a short-lived one.
A motorist finds that wherever he goes he's involved in yet another traffic accident, repeatedly killing the same pedestrian – Dr. Frank N. Stone (Christopher Lee).
In a spoof of the movie "The Lady Vanishes", a bride and groom keep catching the same railway train, to a station that doesn't exist. Steed starts to suspect that a novel espionage network is being created when the agent following them vanishes.
A pair of assassins changing their minds (for Steed's and Emma's) bring double trouble.
"The Fear Merchants" was the first episode of The Avengers to be produced/filmed in colour, although "From Venus with Love" aired first.
The closing credits of all episodes of the fifth and sixth series credit the production company as "A.B.C. Television Films Limited", and at the very end an animation reveals the letters "ABC" to stand for "Associated British Corporation", a name apparently invented for ABC shows exported to the US to avoid confusion with the US ABC network.[138]
27 September 1967 (1967-09-27) Grampian30 September, ABC
21 February 1968
E.66.6.18
3–6
Scientists are being kidnapped. Mrs. Emma Peel is to be the next victim after she receives a new wristwatch that the Cybernauts can home-in on, from a deceitful admirer.
25 October 1967 (1967-10-25) Grampian28 October, ABC
24 January 1968
E.66.6.21
3–3
Millionaires are being blackmailed into paying a mystery enemy not to murder them, as he repeatedly demonstrates how vulnerable to assassination they are.
15 November 1967 (1967-11-15) Grampian18 November, ABC
10 January 1968
E.66.6.24
3–1
In a spoof of the television series "Mission: Impossible", a new ray machine, which makes everything smaller, miniaturises Steed!
Series 6 (1968–1969)
Cast: All episodes feature Patrick Macnee (as John Steed) and Linda Thorson (as Tara King). In episode 17, ("Killer") Tara makes a brief appearance before going on holiday. For the remainder of "Killer", Patrick Macnee as John Steed is paired with Jennifer Croxton as Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney.
In episode 1 ("The Forget-Me-Knot"), Diana Rigg as Emma Peel makes her final appearance.
Patrick Newell (as "Mother") features in twenty of the episodes, with his mute sidekick "Rhonda" (Rhonda Parker) joining him for the latter eighteen.
The episode numbers in the table relate to the order in which they were first broadcast by Thames Television in the UK. Different ITV regions broadcast episodes on different dates and in different orders, so the Thames order does not match the order of first UK broadcast. Nearly all episodes in this series were shown, in a different order, in the US before they were shown in the UK.
A new drug that causes instant amnesia makes his fellow agents forget Steed. Diana Rigg bows out as Mrs. Emma Peel and her replacement, Miss Tara King (Linda Thorson), is introduced (the two women pass each other on the stairs, and Mrs. Emma Peel advises Tara King about how to prepare Steed's tea), together with Steed's new boss: a plump, jovial man, code-named 'Mother' (who, in a spoof of the US television series "Ironside", runs the department from his wheelchair).
An ex-soldier, thought to be dead, takes his revenge on Steed and five other former Army officers who helped to court-martial him, by trapping them into participating in a series of deadly games that invariably end in death.
An espionage ring is stealing secrets from the Government's top secret Cypher HQ, by posing as window cleaners. MI-12 is assigned to the case. When its man Jarett is murdered, Steed takes over, to investigate Classy Glass Cleaning -- but Tara, posing as a new secretary inside Cypher HQ, swears no one has penetrated its security.
Empty envelopes are delivered to top Government officials, who are then found dead. The only clue is that each man seems to have died from a fit of sneezing. Steed investigates a clinic for researching the common cold, which seems to have purchased some unusual stationery supplies.
When agents in Lord Barnes's department at the Ministry of Top Secret Information are murdered, all the evidence points to an enemy agent named Kartovski. The snag is that Kartovski was killed by Steed five years earlier.
17 October 1968 (1968-10-17) Ulster30 October, Thames
9 December 1968
E.67.9.7
4–10
A mystery enemy is targeting Britain's most important government computer with a series of sabotage attempts. Steed investigates the machine's designer, following up a clue the computer has provided, and plants Tara in his household as a spy.
When all the witnesses involved in the prosecution of Lord Edgefield, suspected of blackmailing key security and foreign service personnel, suddenly start lying – including Tara – Steed must discover how they have been got at. Meanwhile, Tara becomes suspicious of DreemyKreem Dairies, but discovers she is literally incapable of telling anyone.
Secrets are leaking from a defence research establishment, thanks to a new invention: an eavesdropping device, which can use any shiny surface to reflect and amplify sound waves. But with Steed unavailable, Tara King must investigate with only an inexperienced new agent for support.
For revenge on Steed, an old enemy leaves him a deadly legacy in his will: a jewelled oriental dagger worth a million dollars, known as the Falcon, which various dangerous men are anxious to acquire. Steed is cast in the role of Sam Spade, in a spoof of The Maltese Falcon, with dead bodies piling up in his apartment as one man after another tries to kill him to get hold of the item. Ronald Lacey guest stars as Mr. Green, and Stratford Johns as Mr. Street, in a homage to Humphrey Bogart's co-star, Sydney Greenstreet.
An injured Steed is being treated in a top secret hospital, with an assassin named Kafka, the former head of Murder International, on his trail. With the aid of an accomplice on the inside, Kafka penetrates the security guarding the hospital, and Tara finds herself in a race against time to save the helpless Steed.
139
11
"Look — (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) — But There Were These Two Fellers..."
Two old-time music hall performers dressed as clowns (one played by real-life music hall star Jimmy Jewel), with assistance from a group of ex-vaudeville acts, are killing the businessmen they blame for closing down the variety theatres which were their livelihood.
Enemy agents disguised as Steed penetrate a peace conference for which he is in charge of security, to assassinate the delegates. With Steed also present, trying to stop them, chaos arrives because no one can tell the real Steed from the imposters. As Tara investigates, she finds herself falling over dead Steeds wherever she goes!
Agents in Steed's department are being fooled into giving away secrets, by men posing as Army officers at a fake Government training establishment -- and their next victim will be ... Tara King.
Steed investigates a firm named WormDoom, whose proprietor, a businessman widely thought a bit of a rotter, is killing off his business competitors, all experts on timber decay. To get at his victims, he has stolen a new chemical that, while simulating dry rot, causes wood to rot instantaneously: turning doors, walls and windows all to powder.
While Tara is on leave, Steed takes on a temporary new partner, the aristocratic Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney. Together they confront REMAK: the Remote Electro Matic Agent Killer – a computerised assassin.
10 January 1969 (1969-01-10) ATV29 January, Thames
27 January 1969
67.9.20
4–15
A double-agent, codenamed Merlin, steals a new sleep gas and tries it out on Steed. Awaking 24 hours later, with Merlin his prisoner, Steed can find no one to hand him over to: everywhere he goes the streets are completely deserted.
31 January 1969 (1969-01-31) ATV5 February, Thames
3 April 1968
E.66.6.27 / E.67.9.1
3–11
In a spoof of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Doyle (Peter Jones) – equipped with pipe, cape and deerstalker hat – is investigating a seemingly careless criminal, who leaves masses of clues wherever he goes ... but no one can solve the crimes, not even Steed, because all the clues are fakes: left behind by a blackmailer, who is planting them to incriminate wealthy men, as part of a sophisticated extortion racket.
7 February 1969 (1969-02-07) ATV12 February, Thames
18 November 1968
E.67.9.16
4–7
In a spoof of The Prisoner, Tara finds herself trapped in a posh prison without bars or guards, which, on the surface, appears to be merely an elegant hotel in a quiet English town.
14 February 1969 (1969-02-14) ATV19 February, Thames
3 February 1969
E.67.9.21
4–16
Steed investigates a publishing house which specialises in romantic fiction, when looking into a mystery in which top civil servants are unexpectedly falling in love and betraying military secrets in 'pillow talk'.
21 February 1969 (1969-02-21) ATV26 February, Thames
24 February 1969
E.67.9.23
4–19
Steed returns from holiday with no memory of where he has been or what he has been doing for the past three weeks. He is behaving oddly and seems to have been brainwashed -— implanted with a post-hypnotic suggestion to kill someone in the department.
Steed and Tara are tracking the movements of a red attaché case containing money and documents intended for a top enemy agent. The case also contains taped messages that inform a series of couriers where to take it.
The Gaslight Ghoul, a Victorian mass murderer similar to Jack the Ripper, strikes again a century later. In a fog-shrouded London, the Ghoul is intent on assassinating all the foreign delegates attending the international disarmament conference. Steed invents a fictitious additional Gaslight Ghoul murder in order to investigate a gentlemen's club, dedicated to uncovering the identity of the Ghoul, which Steed suspects is involved in the new killings.
Whilst on a top-secret security assignment, Tara comes under suspicion of being a double agent. She must cast similar suspicion on Steed if she is to prove that she has been framed. An enemy agent, Gregor Zaroff, hopes to put the Government's new anti-missile defence system, codenamed 'Field Marshall', out of action by convincing Steed and Mother that Tara has betrayed the system's secrets.
Mother's two elderly aunties are all a-twitter over an improbable tale that he spins them: a dastardly plot to steal the Crown Jewels, illustrated with clips from earlier episodes.
A fiendish, and lethal device that eats electricity, designed as the ultimate killing machine, gets loose in a rural English village and electrocutes everyone it comes into contact with.
Acme Precision Combine's directors are dying. A series of quite ordinary men have been hypnotised into committing the murders—by making them believe it's all a dream.
Tara finds herself attending a Requiem service for Mother, when Steed inaugurates a one-man witness protection scheme for a key witness against Murder International: taking the witness to Fort Steed, a hiding place supposedly known only to him. However, agents bent on murdering the witness boobytrap Steed's apartment. When the bomb explodes, Tara is severely injured and Mother is killed. Now Tara must find Steed in time to warn him.
Steed is spending the weekend with two of his oldest friends, Bill and Laura Bassett, who, unknown to him, are being held prisoner in their own home by the other house guests. If they reveal this to Steed, or the reason why, he will be murdered: but he nevertheless begins to suspect something is amiss. Then an unsuspecting Tara blunders in.
Tara is kidnapped by two brothers, who drug her and seek to brainwash her into believing that she is Pandora, a young woman she closely resembles, who was once engaged to their elderly father—a retired spy, codenamed the "Fierce Rabbit". He had been a British agent in the First World War, and Tara has to be convinced that she is now living in the year 1915.
27 December 1968 (1968-12-27) Yorkshire14 May 1969, Thames
24 April 1968
E.66.6.29 / E.67.9.27
3–13
Three captured Russian spies, one of whom is assigned to assassinate Steed, escape from a seemingly escape-proof prison hidden in Oldhill Monastery. Steed investigates a suspicious consignment of vodka recently delivered there, while Tara finds a clue in a magazine article about camouflage.
When a man who was buried a year previously is found newly dead, Steed investigates the cemetery where the dead man was supposed to be. One exhumation leads to another, as more and more discrepancies are uncovered. Steed then has himself buried alive — to see what transpires.
John Bryce replaced Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell as producer for the start of series six. By the time Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell returned, three episodes had been filmed: two 90-minute episodes, named "Invitation To a Killing" and "The Great Great Britain Crime", as well as a standard-length episode, "Invasion of the Earthmen". These were considered to be extremely flawed episodes; they would likely have been scrapped, except that time did not exist in which to film new episodes and still meet the American contract. Hence, "Invitation To a Killing" was heavily edited and had several new shots filmed to become "Have Guns — Will Haggle", while "The Great Great Britain Crime" was heavily edited and had some old footage from previous episodes added, as well as some new footage, to become "Homicide and Old Lace". "Invasion of the Earthmen" was slightly edited as well. No known copies of the original versions of these episodes exist.[citation needed]
This series was produced in two batches: seven episodes (mostly without Patrick Newell as "Mother", and none with Rhonda Parker as "Rhonda") were added to the last eight Diana Rigg episodes for broadcast in the US in the spring of 1968: this made up the third series on ABC in America. On the original American broadcasts, these episodes featured the original 'Shooting Gallery' opening/closing titles featuring Tara in a tight-fitting tan outfit with a short skirt, and gunshots as Steed and Tara are shot at by an unseen gunman, which was filmed by Harry Booth. The seven episodes that aired in the US in the spring of 1968 aired in the following order:
20 March The Forget-Me-Knot
27 March Invasion of the Earthmen
3 April The Curious Case of the Countless Clues
10 April Split!
24 April Get-A-Way
1 May Have Guns — will Haggle
8 May Look- (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers..."[141]
These seven episodes were added sporadically into the 26 episodes produced in the next block, and the whole was transmitted in Britain as a single 33-episode run. The standard title sequences, the 'field/suits of armour' opening and 'playing card' ending, were filmed by Robert Fuest, originally for the first US transmission of the final 26 episodes, which made up the fourth series on the ABC network in America. These ones were tacked on to all 33 episodes when broadcast in the UK, apart from "The Forget-Me-Knot" which retained the amended Emma Peel opening credits and its original Tara King 'Shooting Gallery' end credit sequence.[citation needed]
By the time the sixth series came to be broadcast in the UK, ABC Weekend TV had ceased to exist: it had merged with Rediffusion London to become Thames Television. However all episodes of this series were still credited to A.B.C. Television Films as had the previous series.
Notes:
In the episode "Killer", Tara King is only seen departing for and returning from holiday. Steed's fellow agent for this episode is Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney (played by Jennifer Croxton).
In the US, the field/suits of armour opening title sequence was re-edited to 23 seconds (the UK sequence runs 49 seconds), to accommodate more commercials.
The original 1968 German-dubbed episodes of this series had the field/suits of armour opening titles, but the 'Shooting Gallery' end titles.
The original 1968 French-dubbed episodes of this series featured a variant in the opening title music: a gunshot sound is heard during the shot of Tara King running between two rows of suits of armour toward Steed, and the sound of the sword swipe at the beginning is missing.
The original title music for the opening 'Shooting Gallery' sequence featured gunshots. The version of the episode "Split!"—the only episode featuring this title sequence—that is included in the current DVD release (and aired on TV channel True Entertainment in the UK) nevertheless retains the standard title music, with the opening sword swipe sound effect where the first gunshot should be.
