Donald James

30th March 1969 (IMDb) or 30th September 1969 (epguides.com)

It opens on the 16^th of April and the transmission order would make this 1972 already.

A bustling pub in a perfectly ordinary English village. A pretty girl who wants an early night because she’s taking part in a beauty contest the next morning. She takes some sleeping pills but awakes in the middle of the night as a light shines through her bedroom curtains. She gets up and sees the villagers being taken away by men in chemical protection suits. She tries to stay awake and find out what is going on but collapses onto her bed when the pills reassert their authority over her system. The next morning she gets up and finds the entire village deserted.

The plot thickens

The girl is duped by a phoney doctor and given an injection. But when Department S have her blood analysed they discover that the syringe contained nothing but water.

Later, we get two more clues – a freshly painted gate post and an area of grass which has been burned by sulphuric acid.

We wait eight and a half minutes for Jason to appear. He’s drinking wine and flirting with a girl who looks to be about an eighth of his age.

Richard Vernon – that stalwart of British television from the 60s to the 90s – plays Colonel Loring, an apparently barmy old army officer. Surprisingly then that he also seems to be the village doctor. There is more to him than meets the eye.

Gina Warwick plays Susan Lewis – the pretty young thing who is confidently described by one villager as "the best looking girl in Hambledown". Aside from an uncredited role as a harem girl in "Carry On… Follow that Camel", the only other notable entry on her CV is an appearance in "On The Buses".

Jeremy Young plays Doctor Brogan – a man who would blend effortlessly into the background if he didn’t have the world’s largest sticking plaster across his forehead for the entire episode. He will be familiar to us all as Kal in the very first Doctor Who saga.

Annabelle first appears wearing a pale green hat. I supposed this was to hide her location double’s face as she walked from the car to the hotel but we get a good face shot and it is the star herself. Under the hat, she has the Anita Harris hair. She doesn’t take the hat off until she’s got changed and by then she’s back to the Tara King. Being female, she’s naturally brought an awful lot of luggage with her to Hambledown and the half dozen suitcases are left for Stuart to bring in. She even gains an assistant in this episode – someone to bring her even more facts than she can assemble herself. And we already know, that’s a lot of facts.

An English village is hardly the place for swimsuits but both Susan and Annabelle wear extremely short dressing gowns. Susan going that little bit further by wandering round the village green in said mini-gown. We also see her getting into bed in a very slight negligee. Stuart gives the ladies and gay gentlemen something to look at by wearing his hippy shirt undone as far as the fourth button down.

He drinks an awful lot during this episode. It must be something to do with Department S being based in the village pub. During one fight he is obviously drunk and, having pushed a bad guy down the stairs, Jason falls down right after him. At least, that’s what we’re meant to think. In reality the stunt double looks more like Bobby Ball than Peter Wyngarde and we aren’t fooled for a second.

The fight leaves him with a black eye and Jason opts to wear an eye patch for the rest of the episode.

Earlier, he takes Susan to the doctor’s and while waiting for her he has a moment of hypochondria. He sticks his tongue out, thinks it looks ill and starts examining his eyes.

Sir Curtis is off on a voyage and has a whole stack of Mark Caine novels to read. The one we see is "Index Finger Left Hand". By an odd coincidence (or because they’d mocked the cover up and were going to get their money’s worth) Susan’s father is seen reading the same book three quarters of an hour later. Sir Curtis remarks that King’s books have sold 60 million copies and been translated into 18 languages. Stuart quips that they might’ve got the numbers the wrong way round. Giggle.

While examining the facts of the case, Jason notes that "Dead Dames Don’t" features a bunch of people who are gassed and abducted from their homes. But even he admits it isn’t strictly relevant. I think he’s just showing off.

Jason remarks at one point "Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I sit down until it goes away". Stuart says it sounds like a Mark Caine line. Jason replies that it will be.

He wears his usual brown for most of this adventure. First a brown suit, then an ensemble of brown coat, brown jumper and brown trousers. When going undercover as an American tourist he dons a garish shirt. Jason even catches him trying on one of Susan’s wigs while getting into character.

Apparently this is considered one of the best episodes in the series. It is also the first one they made so it’s obviously downhill from here. The mystery doesn’t quite work because we see too much in the teaser – why not just open with her not knowing how or why the village has become deserted? Why do we have to see chemical suits in the first two minutes and thus we know roughly what has happened? It has a twist at the end which gains it an extra point but thus far we’ve been limited to either a good pay off or a good opening – this episode could’ve had both if they’d realised that less is more.