Philip Broadley

27^th April 1969 (IMDb) or 28^th October 1969 (epguides.com)

26^th May 1973

A man is visiting the opera. He’s dropped off by a cab driver, goes in and apparently enjoys the show. He wakes up three days later in the Mexican desert with no memory of where he is or how he got there. Even under hypnosis the only thing he says about those missing three days is "turtle in the shell".

7 minutes in we find him listening to a tape of Skelton’s hypnotherapy. He has an unspeakably huge knot in his tie and looked very tanned. Possibly even varnished. He does immediately pick up on the "turtle in the shell" reference – he’s not only familiar with it – he knows exactly where to find it.

Richard Caldicot plays the chef, Robin Skelton, and the scientist Peter Sinclair. An hilarious case of mistaken identity. You’ll laugh when you see it. Caldicot is best known for playing Captain Povey in the long running radio comedy, The Navy Lark.

Neil Hallet plays Doctor Lang – a thoroughly charming man who keeps his girlfriend docile by making her take some kind of obedience drug. It doesn’t stop her shagging his sidekick though. Hallet would go on to play Maylin Renis in Timelash.

Sue Lloyd plays Brigitte – this week’s feisty female. Sue was fresh off playing the glamorous sidekick in ITC’s The Baron. Here she looks like a young Jill "Gentle Touch" Gascoine. At one point she rather oddly describes Department S as "three aliens".

David Sumner is the strangely named Wolf. He has an extremely straight fringe and looks not unlike a man whose mother still cuts his hair.

She starts with the Tara King during the hypnosis scene. She wears a very strange watch during that sequence.

She cleverly works out that Skelton and Sinclair resemble each other by drawing on Sinclair’s picture. But not a moustache, glasses or beard as you might expect. She draws a hat on him and suddenly he looks like Skelton.

She and Stewart have a strange conversation about honeymoon destinations. She ends on Hamburg. They exchange meaningful looks. I don’t know if the scene is meant to suggest they’ve each been married several times or not.

She changed to the Anita Harris before dining out (alone) on turtle in the shell. She looks appalled when the waiter uncovers her dinner. I’m not surprised – it looks disgusting.

There is lots of stock footage of girls in bikinis to set the scene when we reach the Bahamas. In her hotel room, Annabelle looks as if she’s unpacking in the nude. Later on, Annabelle wears a see through yellow dress which gives a nice look at her bra.

Jason’s date, Billie, wears a very small bikini. She leans forward at one point and gives Jason (and us) a right eye full.

Jason tries to chat a girl called Billie up but she ignores him. I’m not surprised – he’s wearing a pink shirt and sounds very drunk. The scene goes on so long that we almost start wondering if she’s deaf and that the payoff will be that only a handicapped woman could resist Jason King.

During his beach date with Billie, Jason keeps the wine cool by leaving it in the sea. The date doesn’t go quite according to plan as she ends up shot in the back by a sniper.

"People in Glass Houses Should Not" – Mark Caine went to the Bahamas and only found turtle in the shell served in one place. So obviously that is all the excuse they need for a fact finding mission to the Bahamas.

He wears a very sombre suit while probing the hypnotised Skelton. He changes into a blue check with brown tie while looking through Sinclair’s apartment.

Sir Curtis objects to them going to the Bahamas but Stewart talks him round with some marvellous logic – the lead is so flimsy and unlikely that it will take all three of them, on the spot, to check it out. God that’s good.

Rather oddly, Stewart walks with a stick for some scenes and not during others. His leg problem is even mentioned at one point but we never see or hear of a cause and it is soon forgotten. Until it returns of course. Then it’s forgotten again.

Stewart rather bravely hides behind a curtain and lets Wolf shoot Strobel. He sees him get the gun out, sees him aim it and does nothing. He then has the nerve to check on the body with a look on his face which says "Oh balls – another lead down the drain."

He makes himself up to look as if he’s been in a car crash (not very convincingly as he has only a trickle of blood and one smudge of oil on his face) and goes with the deception for five whole seconds before breaking cover and threatening Brigitte with a gun.

This week he’s not resistant to all drugs – he’s given the obedience drug and spills all his beans.

The entire opening sequence – the hook to get us watching the episode – is little more than a fraud. A case of mistaken identity – they meant to kidnap the scientist and they got the chef who looks like him. So we can discount that entirely. Using a brainwashing drug (~!) they make Sinclair help them in their fiendish scheme to knock a rocket off its course.

A well known government is willing to pay a hefty sum to anyone who can disrupt America’s space programme. Sinclair is an expert in telemetrics and is ideally suited to man the controls in Doctor Lang’s private space control room and guide America’s latest rocket to its doom.

Luckily, Department S save the day – not through an act of great cleverness or courage – Jason turns up at the last second and shoots his pistol at the computers until they blow up.

A brilliantly executed teaser sequence leads to a very fortunate clue (there is no explanation as to if or why Skelton was given his turtle in the shell during his ordeal) which leads to a million to one shot which comes good which builds up to a final reel in which the baddie actually says he’s going to kill Stewart but first he’ll explain his plan because Stewart’s persistence deserves to be rewarded. The whole thing is a mess of hugely unlikely coincidences – some lucky, some unlucky.