Last Orders Please...

Here's something about me: I like putting things in order. (By which, I don't mean I'm some sort of vigilante, nor do I correct historical events like Sam Beckett out of Quantum Leap.) If you've followed any of my online activities, you'll see that I devote an awful lot of time to devising sequences for things. Doctor Who – The Complete Adventures is obviously the most extreme example of this, and you may also have seen my suggested re-sequencing of the episodes of Space: 1999. This is a borderline autistic tendency of mine, and it can be seen in the way I place any two related items together – as the book and DVD shelves in my home would bear witness. Everything is carefully arranged in a very precise order, which may not be the more obvious alphabetical or publication orders, but instead reflect my personally preferred reading or viewing orders. The shelves are also divided and sub-divided into numerous sections, grouped variously by medium, genre, director, studio, nationality – all dependent upon a complex formula I keep in my head. It bewilders many, but it makes perfect sense to me, and I know instantly where anything might be.

Well, that's an insight into my peculiar mind. But I want to return to the subject of tv shows and their running orders – and reflect on just how I first got started with that. I personally think that any tv show without a continuing storyline is fair game for a re-sequencing. Mainly this applies to the sort of genre shows that used to populate American television: cop shows, spy shows, sci-fi shows and so on. Now, in most cases, you get a new story every week, the status quo is restored by the end of the episode, there's no continuity to speak of and no consequences. And for most people, myself included, watching such shows in any broadcast order is just fine – Kojak or The Incredible Hulk or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or The Six Million Dollar Man work in just about any order – although it's probably best to watch the episodes in each season as separate blocks, as cast and format changes usually occur at the season breaks, and occasionally you get sequels to popular episodes from previous seasons. (In the case of one of my favourite shows, Mission: Impossible, I might even argue that you could watch the episodes from any season interchangeably – other than the first, which had a different lead actor – since the very premise of the show is that Jim Phelps goes through his dossier of agents and selects those who are right for the particular mission at hand. Having Leonard Nimoy and Lesley Warren one week, then Martin Landau and Barbara Bain the next, reinforces that concept – as long as you can overlook the clothes and longer hairstyles on display in the late sixties/early seventies episodes!)

But there are occasions when being a fan of a show leads one to have a more direct engagement with it, and indeed a more interactive relationship. A desire to recontextualize the show is very much part of that – that can include writing fan fiction, doing video re-edits, or re-ordering the episodes to something more satisfying. In a lot of cases, it may just mean going back to the production order rather than the network broadcast order. This works for the original Star Trek for instance. Sometimes though, a series requires a much more radical approach. Where a show has little to no continuity between the episodes, re-ordering them becomes a creative act in itself – you are devising a new ongoing narrative, using the discrete episodes as building blocks, positioning them in such a way as to strengthen the storyline you're trying to tell. (For instance: asking yourself whether a character makes a certain choice in episode X because of his experience in episode Y?) It's this sort of engagement that takes the fan above and beyond being a mere passive viewer, and it's to be celebrated.

As an aside here, I should point out that this generally applies more to American series than British ones. British broadcasters have traditionally not been as afraid of ongoing plotlines, continuity and character development as the American networks seem to have been, and generally speaking the series reset has not been a thing in this country. Whilst each episode is clearly its own story, it contributes to an ever-ongoing storyline for the characters. (Obviously, I'm not thinking about serials and literary adaptations here, and soap operas have always done this.) But it's just a given that British tv proceeds in order – you can look back at pretty much any long-running show from the sixties onwards and see this. The Power Game, The Brothers, A Family at War, The Onedin Line, Hadleigh, Warship, Callan, The Main Chance, Colditz, Man at the Top, When the Boat Comes In, Upstairs Downstairs, Sam, The Duchess of Duke Street, The Sandbaggers, Secret Army, All Creatures Great and Small, Enemy at the Door, By the Sword Divided, Nanny, Tenko, The House of Eliot, Survivors, Wish Me Luck, and Blakes 7 are just some examples that I can see on my DVD shelves right at this moment. What I'm trying to say is, it's just normal for Britain.

And yes, Doctor Who is just such a show – to the extent that I would never question the broadcast order of the episodes. (Arguments have been made for re-ordering seasons 25 and 26, which had their sequences changed from the original intended order quite late in the day. I might almost concede the former, since the alteration was forced by an unexpected scheduling change, and does lead to a minor visual continuity error. The change to season 26 was an artistic decision made by the producer, so I think should be respected. It doesn't mess up continuity, though it may change the emphasis on certain lines of dialogue. Ultimately though, the notion that broadcast order is the right order for a BBC drama of this type is so ingrained in the consciousness, that I find I cannot disagree with it.) The point of The Complete Adventures is not to re-arrange the tv show itself, but to go beyond into all the panoply of spin-off media. The creative act here is to create the narrative for the Doctor's entire life (as far as we know it) using the various disparate stories to construct that – it's the same principle as an episode re-ordering, but on an infinitely larger scale.

In contrast, the American networks seemed to prefer the “new story every week” format for most of their drama shows, and this held true up until the 1990s, when story arcs became a thing. The legal drama Murder One is usually held up as the first show to really push the envelope with a season-long arc, although this probably just demonstrates how sci-fi was a neglected poor cousin in those days, since Babylon 5 was already half-through a five year arc when Murder One came along and excited the critics with its “innovation”. (And hell, I could point out that the original Battlestar Galactica in 1978 had a very definite arc plot running right through it.) Since then, the age of the box set and binge-watching has come upon us, and continuing plotlines are very much the norm in America now. So they finally caught up with us!

And that, in a roundabout way, brings me back to my subject. I've stated that ongoing plotlines are very much a British thing, but there are exceptions – for example, some cop and detective shows, where each episode is a new case (but even those often have underlying character arcs running through them) – and most obviously, filmed adventure series such as The Avengers, the Gerry Anderson shows and various ITC action thrillers. These were designed to be sold to America, and so aped the “new story every week” formula. In the majority of cases, as with the US shows, any order works just fine. But there's one ITC series where the running order has long been a subject of intense debate and the cause of much anxiety. That show is The Prisoner, and that's really where this story starts.

Like many people of my generation, I first discovered The Prisoner through the Channel 4 repeats in the early 1980s – before that, it was something you'd heard of (it was occasionally mentioned in the pages of Starburst and Doctor Who Monthly) but had no real idea what it was. I was 14, which was probably the right age to discover The Prisoner. To a teenage boy, it seemed like the best thing ever, in a way it probably wouldn't to a man in his forties. And indeed, I can't put my hand on my heart 35 years later and say it's the best tv show I've ever seen, because it patently isn't – not when you've read proper books and seen things like Edge of Darkness or Secret Army or I Claudius. Indeed, it's a show that demonstrates most of the tropes of the ITC action shows – although it's trying to do something more intellectually worthwhile with them. I still applaud it, and gain a great deal of satisfaction when I watch it again.

But one thing that surrounded the show right from the outset was the question of the running order. I remember back in 1983, a man called Roger Goodman (one of the original founders of the Six of One appreciation society) appeared on Did You See? to review the repeats, and made much of the fact that Channel 4 were showing the series in the wrong order. He seemed certain that if the show had been broadcast in the right order, it would all make a lot more sense. And some of things he pointed out made sense. But let's face it, The Prisoner was shown in the “right” order back in the sixties, and it didn't make a lot of sense to the viewers back then either.

Anyway, as a insanely keen teenager, I sent off my money and joined Six of One, and that's where I discovered the controversy around the running order. What I particularly loved about it was that a healthy debate was encouraged, and there was no official fan club position. It was an eye-opener to this teenage mind, who'd joined the club expecting to be given some answers. And yet, it really does befit The Prisoner that there are no easy answers – and that the rights of the individual to place their own interpretation on the series is encouraged and celebrated. (This seems to have changed in later years, and Six of One eventually endorsed a particular running order for the series – this was used for an American DVD release, which also described it as the “fan preferred” order. It didn't say which fan preferred it though! Six of One seems to be a shadow of its former self, with a dwindling membership, so I'm not sure how representative of fan opinion they can be these days. Even Roger Goodman has denounced them.)

There's a Wikipedia page listing Prisoner episodes, and various attempts at ordering them, which contains the statement that “everyone agrees on the first and the last three episodes of the 17 produced shows”. I'm not sure that's true – in the old days of intense debate, I knew several people who shifted The Girl Who Was Death out of the fifteenth slot for various reasons. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that even the opening and closing episodes don't have to be set in stone. It's a fact that the final sequence of the last episode is the same as the opening sequence of the first, suggesting that the whole series goes round in a loop, and you can leap in anywhere. It's like the televisual equivalent of Finnegans Wake or Dhalgren. So perhaps the episodes can be viewed in any order – perhaps a non-linear narrative is the whole point. You could even open the series with Fall Out if you wanted, and treat the rest of the episodes as flashbacks.

My own preferred order – though it's changed and developed over the years – is a bit more conventional than that, and attempts to construct a more or less linear narrative. I did this by looking at the production order, the original UK and US broadcast orders, and assimilating the good and bad points of each. And then applying those to the story I wanted to tell. I set out certain narrative strands that I wanted to follow through the series, and arranged the episodes to reflect those. There are clearly some episodes where the Prisoner is fairly new, and the Village authorities are treading carefully with him so as not to risk damaging him – so there are simple psychological tricks, deceptions and manipulations employed. Also, of course, it's in these earlier episodes that he makes all his attempts to escape. Later on, we see an escalation of the threat, with mind control, brainwashing and dangerous drugs being used. At the same time, the Prisoner seems to give up the idea of escape and concentrates on trying to fight the Village from within. This in turn leads to a change in the power dynamic between the Prisoner and his adversaries, and he eventually brings about the downfall of several of the Number 2 characters in the process. Synthesizing the narrative progression from all that leads me to this order:

Arrival

Free For All

Dance of the Dead

Checkmate

The Chimes of Big Ben

The Schizoid Man

It's Your Funeral

Many Happy Returns

Living in Harmony

The General

A. B. and C.

Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

A Change of Mind

Hammer into Anvil

The Girl Who Was Death

Once upon a Time

Fall Out

That's a fan preferred order, and I'm the fan who prefers it! Seriously, it's the order I tend to stick to whenever I rewatch the show. It enhances my enjoyment of the show, and that makes it worthwhile intellectual exercise in its own right. Make of it what you will. (I's aware I haven't gone into a detailed justification for my reasoning here as it's outside the scope of this article – that's something to follow up another time.)

As I said earlier, The Prisoner is something of a special case, and the majority of the ITC thriller shows are watchable in almost any order – I say “almost” because many of the shows have an opening episode that sets up the format and backstory, and in most cases should be watched first. But sometimes even that is mutable. The Champions for example shot additional footage to wrap around its first episode, turning it into a flashback where the heroes look back to how it all began – which meant the episode could now be dropped anywhere into a repeat run, and indeed that the series could go round on a loop forever. Conversely, although Man in a Suitcase has a first episode (Man from the Dead) it was actually shown sixth on the initial transmission – because it isn't the beginning of McGill's story, which starts in media res – rather it's where he finds out why he's in the situation he is. Placing it sixth does cause a few continuity problems, such as where dialogue in other episodes refers back to a situation we can only understand if we've seen Man from the Dead. In that case, I'd recommend sticking with the production order, which is how the show is sequenced on the DVDs.

A few years after The Prisoner, another show got me vexed over its running order. The much-missed TVS started to repeat UFO as part of its Late Night Late slot. (Strange to think now that 24 hour broadcasting was once a new and exciting thing.) I didn't catch all the episodes initially, but those I did see had a few weird juxtapositions that leapt out at me. The disconnect between the end of Exposed, where Foster has just been recruited into SHADO, and the start of Survival, where he's already been made Commander of Moonbase didn't sit well. And some episodes that seemed to me to belong early in the series were screened quite late in the run. Obviously, I wasn't the only person who noticed this: the host of Late Night Late, David Vickery, mentioned that they'd received a few comments that they were playing the episodes in the wrong order. (An in-vision continuity announcer – you don't see many of them any more!) He then explained that when TVS had announced they would be screening UFO, the station had received a letter from a fan who'd listed the order they ought to run the episodes. Since I'd already identified a few anomalies, I wondered quite what rationale this fan had employed to devise his sequence. I'd caught up with more of the episodes by then, and I began to piece my own order together. (Something else |I'll come back to in more detail at a later date.)

Funnily enough, around that time I caught with an old school-friend, Alec Baker, whom I hadn't seen for a while. He shared my interest in The Prisoner and UFO, and I remarked to him grumpily about the fan's letter to TVS, and how it had got the running order completely wrong. You can imagine how embarrassed I was when Alec revealed to me that he was the one who'd written in! He was gracious enough to concede that he probably hadn't gone into the series in quite as much forensic detail as me, and had gleaned his order mainly from things he'd read in the Fanderson magazines. Well, there's a lesson there probably. Looking back with three decades' hindsight, I realize what an insufferable prig I could be at times, especially when I'd decided I was an expert on a particular topic. These days, I hope I'm more relaxed about it all. I try never to lambaste another person's pet theories, instead I just suggest a possible alternative, lay out my own arguments for consideration – there's nothing wrong with a bit of healthy debate, and frankly we should do all we can to oppose the development of an ossified fan consensus. I do try and take care not to present myself as some definitive authority just because I've got a website – and I'm frequently at pains to point out that The Complete Adventures is just my own take on the Doctor Who timeline, and encourage others to develop their own ideas.

I don't always get the same courtesy in return, but I guess that's the internet for you. I was once accused in a Google group of trying to “rape” Space: 1999 (yes really!) for suggesting a different running order. My critic, who also said he wanted to throw up after reading my site, went on to state that the production order was the only correct order – not that he offered any sort of argument to support his position. (I'd already explained why I found the production order unsatisfactory.) As I've said, I'm all for discussion and debate, and an amicable difference of opinion. But is there any need for such inflammatory language, especially over something as trivial as a tv show? I don't know, some people... On the other hand, there's a Space: 1999 themed wiki that's adopted my running order as its standard – without any prompting from me, I might add. (And with proper acknowledgement too.) So what started as an intellectual parlour game, a creative exercise for my own amusement, ends up being something of benefit to others – and that makes it all seem worthwhile.

Anderthon: Fireball XL5 episodes 25-28

The Forbidden Planet

2062 is interplanetary astronomical year, and in preparation all the scientists of the “neutral planets” have been working on a great new project. (And straightaway, it seems, they're still just making this stuff up as they go along, as we've suddenly got a new political grouping to swallow – wonder what happened to the “United Planets”...?) The project is a space observatory, a space station from which they hope to look further into the universe than ever before – which seems like a cool idea, prefiguring things like the Hubble Telescope. But unlike that, this isn't an automated machine in planetary orbit – it's a manned station far out by itself in space. (At least several hours flying time for Fireball XL5, as we'll discover later in the episode.) And yet, despite the contributions of all the neutral planets, the observatory is manned only by Earthmen: Professor Matic and a Dr. Stamp. The interior of the space station is rather spacious for just the two of them, but the control room also doubles as a tv studio, with automated cameras filming their work and beaming a special broadcast back to viewers across the neutral planets. Back on Earth, Venus is tuning in with Steve and Commander Zero. Steve has a very low opinion of television (which is a bit like biting the hand that feeds!) – but Venus seems to approve of the medium, saying that the programmes have a lot of educational worth, and that Steve only ever bothers to watch the interplanetary ball games. (A throwaway line that hints at great social developments in the galaxy – we've got political affiliations and now even sports leagues – a far cry from the parochial patrols of local space and occasional contacts with aliens that we saw in the earlier episodes. In a modern series, this stuff would be part of a great world-building story arc.  Here it just seems like random inconsistency.) Unfortunately, the picture breaks down just as Matt is unveiling their latest scientific breakthrough to the watching audience. Whilst the tv company try to get the picture back, they stick on an episode of Four Feather Falls as a stopgap. Steve though is worried about the loss of contact, and decides to take Fireball XL5 to the space observatory to find out what happened.

What happened is that Matt and Dr Stamp used a new long range device called an ultrascope to observe Nutopia, the so-called “perfect planet” – which they point out has never been seen before by anyone in “all the universes”. (How many do they think there are, then? And how do they know Nutopia is so perfect if no one's ever seen it?) On Nutopia, the observation is detected, and the Nutopians use an ultrascope of their own to look back at them. As with so many worlds before, the entire planet seems to have a population of two – human-looking but with exaggerated characteristics. Perfectos has a monk's tonsure, whereas his superior Privator (the Guardian of Nutopia) has a pointy nose. They are outraged that the Earthmen have been spying on their world, which no one can be allowed to do and live. Their secret weapon is something called the protector ray, which they beam at the observatory and render Matt and Dr Stamp unconscious. Then they use a travel transmitter – what you or I would call a teleporter – to travel to the observatory and bring the scientists back as prisoners. (Interestingly, the ultrascope device allows instantaneous viewing across vast interstellar distances, but the travel transmitter is a bit slower – though still faster than the speed of light, of course – and allows the subject to remain conscious and aware of the sensation of motion through space. They're also rendered invisible, which Privator says is “convenient” as it allows them to travel around space without being seen.) The Nutopians keep Matt and Dr Stamp in a glass case labelled as a specimen jar. Meanwhile, Fireball arrives at the observatory, and Steve and Venus space walk across – which makes me wonder why on Earth you'd build a space station that didn't have the capacity for a spaceship to dock with it! Inside, Steve and Venus are waylaid by the image of Privator on the monitor screen, who explains to them exactly what the great secret of Nutopia is: they possess eternal life.  Why blab it so readily?  Well, it seems that he's just keeping them talking until Perfectos can beam in and take them prisoner as well.

The presence on Nutopia of the “beautiful Earth woman” Venus causes some distraction. Privator and Perfectos discuss the fact that there are no females on Nutopia – it's implied that this was a deliberate choice in the creation of their perfect world. (I'm not sure what that says about the gender politics of the time!) I suppose if they have eternal life, they don't need women around for reproductive purposes. Nevertheless, Perfectos visits Venus and says that he will allow the others to go free if she will stay and be his bride. He has to hastily mumble an excuse when Privator catches them together – but as soon as Perfectos has gone, Privator makes Venus the exact same offer! Perfectos overhears however, and there's nothing for it but for the two of them to fight a duel over Venus. And this is where the absence of other inhabitants on the planet really shows itself up – for they have to get Steve to act as umpire of the duel. He switches the ammunition in their guns for some sort of knockout drug – and while the two Nutopians are unconscious, the prisoners escape. They use the travel transmitter to return to the space observatory – but Matt has to guess how to operate the machine, and manages to leave it on overload. By the time Perfectos and Privator get back to their control room, the transmitter explodes, showering them in debris. (But does this put paid to them? I can't believe they wouldn't have another transmitter or the ability to rebuild it? Will they come seeking revenge against the Earthmen? Isn't their secret now out? There's a lot of loose ends here...)

The Granatoid Tanks

Planet 73 is being checked out for colonization by a small scientific research party consisting of Professor Becker and his assistant Zamson. Everything seems to be fine, and they're going to recommend the planet – when suddenly Zamson notices the instruments are detecting something moving on the other side of the planet, which as the planet is supposed to be uninhabited, is something of a surprise. What's causing the disturbance is a phalanx of heavily-armoured tanks advancing inexorably on the research station – they've got some serious cannon on them and amusingly, two radio aerials on each tank that wave around like deely-boppers! Professor Becker recognizes the tanks at once as belonging to the Granatoids, a race of robots out to conquer everything in their path. For such a terrible threat, the Granatoids are rather silly-looking robots with square heads and moulded caricature human features – and their leader has a head shaped a bit like a crown. (They also speak exactly like Robert!) They are virtually unstoppable – the only thing that has an effect on them is the mineral Plyton, which acts to repel the Granatoids in some unspecified way. Of course, there's none to be found on Planet 73, so the scientists are forced to call Space City for an evacuation. (And again, I have to reflect upon the wisdom of leaving people stuck out in deep space, in potentially hazardous situations, without their own means of escape.)

Back on Earth, Steve and Matt have gone to Space City's shopping arcade. It's Venus's birthday tomorrow, and they're after a present. They visit a music shop run by Ma Doughty, a little middle-aged Irish woman. The shop makes no effort whatsoever to be anything other than a 1960s record emporium. They're not buying downloads for their ipods. No, my suspicions are confirmed: Ma Doughty is selling 12 inch records in card sleeves. There's even a listening booth into which Steve and Matt can listen to the latest disc before deciding to buy. The record in question is a rather cool Dave Brubeck-style jazz piece. Also in the shop is a massive keyboard-based musical instrument, which Matt calls an electrorchestra – it can simulate the sounds of all the instruments of the orchestra, enabling one person to play all the parts of a composition himself. (I suppose we'd just call that a synthesizer these days – as such a thing had hardly been invented in 1962, I'll forgive them for making up a silly name for it – it seems a bit of a shame though that they didn't realize the electronics would make such a thing small and portable, rather than the size of a church organ!) Matt proves to be adept at tinkling the ivories as he sits down to bash out a tune. Steve is impressed, and decides to buy the electrorchestra for Venus. Ma Doughty says she'll have it delivered tomorrow. Ma, it turns out, is always pestering Steve about wanting to take a trip into space – her father was one of the first ever astronauts, it seems, and she's always wanted to honour his memory by following in his footsteps. This is a well-worn argument for Steve, who tells her again that it's simply not possible for her to go for a trip in Fireball XL5. At that moment, Commander Zero's voice booms from a tannoy, announcing that the Granatoids are attacking Planet 73 and calling Fireball's crew to launch stations immediately. There's some nice throwaway bits of sci-fi world-building here, as the characters talk of the Granatoids as a past enemy that they'd hoped they'd seen the last of. It helps to give a sense of depth and history to the story, rather than just making the Granatoids seem like this week's random hostile aliens. Ma Doughty says that her father told her all about the Granatoids – so it would seem that the earliest space travellers came into conflict with them – and that she didn't need to be afraid of them. She also mentions that her father gave her the necklace of rather roughly-hewn stones that she wears. I think I can see where this is going.

Fireball XL5 takes off for Planet 73. Matt works on building a gadget that might be able to simulate the effects of Plyton on the Granatoids. Meanwhile, Venus checks the hold, where she discovers the crate containing the electrorchestra – but when opened, it actually contains Ma Doughty, who's taken the opportunity to smuggle herself on board and finally get her trip into space. Needless to say, Steve is not best pleased. When they arrive on Planet 73, he confines Ma to the lounge. Outside, there are clouds of dust looming on the horizon as the Granatoid tanks approach rapidly. Matt tries to deploy his gadget, which proves to have no effect on the Granatoids whatsoever. By this time, the tanks have surrounded the research station, and they find themselves cut them off from Fireball. But as all seems lost, Ma Doughty emerges from the ship (through a hatch in the side I don't think we've seen before – she has to climb down a rope ladder) – and tells the Granatoids to leave the planet in peace. Her necklace glows with an inner light, and the robots retreat. It's not a surprise when Matt discovers that the necklace is made from Plyton. Back on Earth, the crew take over the Space City control room to throw a birthday party for Venus. Somehow they even bring the electrorchestra for Matt to play, despite the fact it's far too large to get it in the lift...

Dangerous Cargo

Fireball XL5 calls in at Pharos, the “derelict planet”. It's the site of a Ciluvium mine, now worked out and abandoned. We're told that the mine was built and worked by robot miners in 1998 – which doesn't explain why it looks like an old Western town, with run-down wooden shacks. The planet is so riddled with mine shafts that it's literally falling apart. The ground is continually caving in, and structures collapsing. Steve and Venus land in Fireball Junior, and take a look around on their jetmobiles. It's clear that the planet could break up at any moment, so Steve is going to recommend to Commander Zero that it be destroyed as a hazard to navigation – which is sad for Venus, who discovers some beautiful flowers growing amid the rocks. However, there are a couple of random aliens secretly watching them, who seem to have some sort of grudge against Steve Zodiac. (It's not really explained – though obviously Steve has pissed off any number of aliens during the course of his adventures! The lack of any proper motivation is just lazy writing here – especially coming after last week when a few well-chosen lines filled in a bit of background history to the Granatoids). The aliens plan to wait until Steve returns, and then take their revenge upon him. Back at Space City, Zoonie has been left to wander around unsupervised. (Venus mentions that Commander Zero is supposed to be looking after him, but I guess he's a busy guy...) Zoonie manages to get into the city's power plant. Incredibly, there are no guards (and, it would seem, no locks) on the doors, and no one working inside, so there's nothing to stop the lazoon getting inside and tampering with the controls. When Zoonie overloads the power output, the control tower starts to speed up its revolutions, eventually careening around like some crazy fairground ride and leaving Zero and Ninety pinned down by centrifugal force! As you'd imagine, the Commander is not pleased with the lazoon, and wants him out of his sight.

Steve reports the condition of Pharos to Commander Zero, who agrees that the planet should be destroyed. It's too close to the space freight routes from them to use normal missiles, as it would take years to clear the resultant debris. The only option therefore is to completely vaporize the planet, using an explosive called Visevium 9. This is a ridiculously-volatile substance, which is delivered to the launch site inside a large packing case that's winched aboard Fireball. It's stored in Matt's lab, which causes the poor Professor some consternation, as he's afraid of even the slightest jolt that might set it off. Meanwhile, Venus has the problem of what to do with Zoonie. Since she can't leave him with the Commander again, Steve agrees that she can bring him aboard Fireball, but only if the lazoon is confined to the space jail. (Though once they arrive on Pharos, he relents and lets Zoonie out, although insists he remain confined to Fireball.) Steve and Matt take the Visevium into one of the old mine shafts, where Matt works to assemble a bomb. With an hour to go until detonation, the aliens use a large boulder to seal the entrance to the mine shaft, trapping Steve, Venus and Matt inside. The bomb has already been activated, and there's nothing they can do now to stop it detonating. They'll all be killed. (Honestly, do these people never think about safety measures?) The aliens meanwhile scarper in their own spaceship, and that's the last we see of them in the episode – wonder if we'll see a rematch? Steve suddenly thinks about calling Robert on the radio to come and help them, but even the robot can't shift the boulder. What they don't realize is that Zoonie followed Robert outside, and goes off into the rocks to pick some of the flowers Venus admired earlier. Steve tries one last desperate thing – removing the power pack from his ray gun and overloading it to blast the boulder to fragments – despite the risk that an explosion in such close proximity might set off the Visevium early. Fortunately, it succeeds and they get back to Fireball with just seconds to spare. It's then that Venus discovers Zoonie is not on board. He must have been destroyed on the planet. Hearing the news, even Commander Zero is upset and regrets his earlier harsh treatment of the lazoon. But in Fireball's lounge, as everyone is mourning Zoonie, they suddenly find him asleep behind the couch, with one of the flowers he's picked for Venus. All I can say to that is: Venus couldn't have looked for him very hard before jumping to the worst conclusion!

1875

Matt Matic has sealed himself away in his workshop for days, with only Robert for company, while he works on some new invention. The whole thing is played like a surgical procedure, with Robert handing Matt the tools as he requests them – cue some heavy-handed slapstick moments with hammers dropped on feet, and so on. Security seems to have been stepped up in Space City, maybe as a result of events last week – there’s now a security guard patrolling on a jetmobile, checking on the outlying buildings. (Despite his futuristic uniform, he’s written and played as the stereotypical Irish cop familiar from US police dramas of the period.) Anyway, what’s Matt been working on? That's what Venus would like to know – she's got Steve and Commander Zero round for dinner, but Matt never bothered to turn up – his dinner's still in the “atom oven”. (There they are again, thinking that atomic equates to futuristic – I've no problem with Space City being powered by atomic energy, but what that does is generate electricity, which you'd use to power your oven in the normal way – it's hard to imagine an oven directly powered by its own nuclear reactor, which seems ridiculously wasteful and dangerous.)

Matt's invention is finished – and it's a time machine. It has a large control panel, with a dial that can select specific years, and a glass booth into which the time traveller is placed. Matt decides to test it by sending Robert back to the year 1875, where he arrives in a Wild West town. (Interesting that there appears to be a movement in space as well as time – since we've previously established that Space City is on an island in the Pacific...) I'm prepared to forgive this, though, since it gives the producers the chance to revisit the milieu of Four Feather Falls – and indeed, this is all a very familiar setting, complete with puppet horses tied up outside the saloon, and harmonica music coming from the town jail. Playing the instrument is Deputy Dodgem. He decides that he wants some coffee, and is rather startled by the appearance of Robert from the back room with a coffee pot. The Deputy thinks the robot must be a ghost, and locks himself in his own jail cell. Around this time, Matt decides to bring Robert back, and the robot fades away to reappear in the time machine's booth. The time machine seems to work by projecting the subject into the past – certainly no part of the machine actually travels there – so the fact that Matt can subsequently retrieve his subject suggests to me that the machine could also be used to snatch people from the past. The fact that Robert returns still carrying a coffee pot from 1875 might seem to support this hypothesis. But I'll return to this theme later. Matt locks up his lab and leaves the key with Lieutenant Ninety, telling him the lab is not to be opened until the assessors from the interplanetary patents committee arrive in the morning – which is an amusing twist. I can't imagine anyone inventing time travel in any other series, and their first concern being to secure the intellectual property and commercial exploitation rights – although it strikes me as what would probably happen in the real world. A neat touch by the writer.

Overcome by curiosity, Commander Zero demands that Ninety hand over the key to the lab. He goes with Steve and Venus to investigate, fearing that Matt has been wasting public money on some useless invention. Unable to work out what the machine is, the three of them enter the glass booth. The only trouble is that Zoonie has followed them into the lab, and starts fiddling with the controls. This isn't going to end well... Sure enough, the three interlopers are dematerialized. The process of time travel is depicted from their point of view as a sensation of travelling through the stars whilst intangible and invisible (which is so similar to the way they were transported by the Nutopians, I found it rather disappointing). But then something strange happens. When he arrives in the Western town, Steve is dressed as a cowboy and doesn't remember anything about being a space pilot from the future. Seeing that the town is in need of a sheriff, he takes the vacant position. Meanwhile, Venus and Zero have arrived at an encampment some way from the town and believe themselves to be a couple of bandits, keen to hit the town while it has no resident sheriff. (So the people going back don't realize they're from the future – it's a very odd take on the time travel concept. I wonder if it's what Matt intended.) Sheriff Zodiac discusses his new responsibilities with the Deputy and Doc, who runs the town bank – unaware that Frenchie Lil and Zero are already breaking in. They use dynamite to blow open the safe, and then capture Steve and his friends when they come to investigate, locking them up in their own jail. Meeting Lil stirs a strange memory in Steve, who suddenly feels that he knows her... But before anything can come of that, Zero knocks Lil out and escapes the town with the loot – which is only fair enough, since Lil had been planning to double cross Zero too!

Back in 2062, Lieutenant Ninety wakes Matt and tells him that the others went to his lab, and have now vanished. Matt rushes to the time machine – but Zoonie has fiddled with the controls and changed the year setting to 1066, so Matt can't be sure where they've ended up. I was expecting a trip to the Battle of Hastings, but Matt decides to gamble that the machine was on its original setting of 1875 when the others left. He manages to retrieve Steve and Commander Zero, who come back to the present in their WSP uniforms, with only the vaguest memories of what's been happening to them. But Matt can't seem to retrieve Venus, and surmises that she must be unconscious. (So perhaps the machine can home in the subject's brain waves.) He tries to turn up the gain to find Venus, running the time machine to overload – and manages to extract Venus just moments before she would be caught in a second dynamite explosion! But the strain is too much for the time machine, which blows itself up. Then the two assessors from the patent office turn up, and appear to be Doc and Deputy Dodgem! They seem to feel that they've met Steve and co before – a very long time ago, Steve tells them. I'm not really sure what this ending is supposed to mean. I suppose, theoretically, they could be descendants of the original Doc and Dodgem, but why would they remember Steve? This, as well as the odd and inconsistent way in which the time travel process seems to work, suggests to me that the writer hasn't really thought it all through. (I suspect they wanted to do a Western, and weren't too bothered about the question of how it was going to work.) I'm also wondering, now that they've invented time travel, whether they'll be using it again in future episodes...

Peter Graves RIP

It's a fact that time catches up with us all. People get old and they die. That's just how it is. But it does seem in the last few years as if everyone of my heroes has been shuffling off this mortal coil, and that suddenly seems to make one aware of mortality a bit more. I've tried to think why this should be; and I suppose it's down to the fact that I love tv shows of a certain vintage - particularly those of the sixties and seventies - and inevitably, the stars and producers of programmes made 30 to 50 years ago are nowadays going to be in their 70s and 80s; I'm not surprised to see them dying, and really I'm not saddened. I like to celebrate what they gave us in life, so today I commemorate the passing of Mr Peter Graves.

To me, he will always be the mastermind behind the Impossible Missions Force: the star of America's greatest ever television show. Mission: Impossible is a show I love to watch and rewatch. I'm amazed by the complexity and subtlety of the plots. The nonsensical and frankly insulting movie franchise can't detract from the magnificence of the original. Mr Graves played the role of Jim Phelps with a great sense of gravitas and dignity - it's a show that perhaps teeters on the edge of self-parody, and the straight-ahead and serious performances are what holds it all together. To compare with a more recent example: Hustle has essentially the same premise, a team of sophisticated conmen setting up the perfect sting operation - it's a fine show, but I find all those knowing little winks to the camera annoying - they really detract from the drama of the situation. The IMF conversely are playing for high stakes - the safety and security of the free world - and one doesn't doubt the commitment and dedication of those agents. Peter Graves does a magnificent thing at the beginning of each episode, when he's listening to the tape of the mission briefing - tiny little flickers of thought and intelligence can be read in his face, suggesting that Jim is starting to put together the basis of the plan right there and then. A masterclass performance. He won a Golden Globe for the part in 1971.

Peter Graves 1926-2010