The Secret Service – 2. A Question of Miracles

It’s worth noting that these reviews are now working strictly from Network’s 2005 DVD release of The Secret Service, rather than a high definition source, until we reach episode 13. Fortunately, the standard definition episodes still hold up well. My DVD box is the original release in cardboard packaging designed to look like a copy of the Minimiser which is an awfully nice touch.

Already I can sense that the special effects team are a lot happier this week. We’re in much more familiar territory as we gaze across the water at the Habiba Desalination Plant complete with big tanks and random sticky-out bits. This is The Secret Service straying as far as it can towards a futuristic look without breaking out of its 1969-ish setting.

I’m going to share the description of the plant from Donald James’ original script in full to give you some idea of what the model makers’ brief would have been:

FADE IN:

1 EXT. HABIBI DESALINATION PLANT – DAY

COME UP on a high barbed wire fence. Uniformed guards stand outside the wooden gatehouse.

Two flags fly over the gatehouse – a Union Jack and a gold and green banner decorated with crescents and stars.

Across the maingate a sign – “HABIBA DESALINATION STATION – STRICTLY NO ENTRY”. Below that – the same in Arabic. HABIBA is somewhere on the North African coastline.

Beyond the fence we SHOOT the length of a gently curving bay. The pebbled beach slopes up towards sand dunes and broken, rocky terrain.

Set back from the shoreline, but following its curve are a series of vast stainless steel spheres on metal frames. From each sphere a complex of pipelines runs down into the sea.

A white concrete control building stands among the dunes behind the beach.

There’s some interesting items to note when comparing the script to the finished establishing shots on-screen. Firstly, it took a moment for Donald James to decide whether the spelling was going to be “HABIBI” or “HABIBA”. Secondly, the finished sequence is slightly less ambitious than its original description from the script. No camera movements at all, no Arabic writing under the main sign, no gatehouse, and most of the plant and shoreline is kept very far off in the distance so we can’t inspect the details too closely. The control building itself is a great model which attempts to capture the scale of the puppet set we’ll see in a moment…

Gotta love a split-level Supermarionation set. Maybe the art directors were getting more ambitious, maybe the ceilings in the new studio buildings were taller, or maybe they did away with building the sets on raised platforms, but there are some tall-as-heck control room sets seen across Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, and The Secret Service that look amazing. The technical gubbins all look mighty impressive but, rather cleverly, everything just about fits in with the look and feel of contemporary late-60s technology. It probably helped that late-60s technology was starting to look pretty slick what with the computing developments being made by NASA to put a man on the Moon.

Some nerds read out some numbers and it all sounds very complicated and important. If you’re having trouble keeping up, basically they’re pumping in salt water and pumping out fresh water. Desalination dates back hundreds of years and is the process of extracting all the minerals from seawater to, primarily, produce drinking water fit for human consumption. The construction of great big plants to handle the process was concentrated in the Middle East around the 1930s and the technology continues to be developed and implemented globally to this day.

Anyway, history lesson aside, I should probably point out that Brook, the director of the Habiba plant, is the re-wigged Colonel White puppet from Captain Scarlet who had already played a number of guest roles across Joe 90.

Here’s the desalination process just doing its thing. They have a clock on the wall of the control room to spell out for us nice and clearly that the plant has been running for 249 hours so far. So we’re talking about roughly 10 days since someone plugged in those pumps for the first time. I bet the whole place has that lovely new desalination plant smell.

As we can see from this chap’s badge, the production team definitely hadn’t settled on the spelling of Habiba vs. Habibi either. The sign over the front door says “Habiba” but that badge clearly says otherwise.

The 250-hour mark rolls around and apparently that’s quite a lucky turn up for the books. Of course, once that clock reaches 9,999 hours in just over a year’s time, it’ll be completely useless.

Guess they won’t have to bother replacing that clock. Yup, we’ve finally reached our first big explosion of the series. Now, compare this to the likes of the Australian Atomic Station from the Thunderbirds episode, The Mighty Atom going up and you might be forgiven for feeling like the fireworks show isn’t all that spectacular. However, compared to last week’s disappointing output from the special effects team (through no fault of their own), this is a big step-up. It’s safe to say that blowing up giant water tanks would have been beyond the budget of Ken Turner’s location unit.

The contrast between this pre-titles sequence and the one we saw in A Case For The Bishop last week is pretty startling. The all-live-action approach has been replaced with the more familiar all-puppet-and-models approach. Instead of near-silent shots of the not-so-picturesque Slough Trading Estate at night, we’ve got a big and bustling and ultra-modern plant which explodes spectacularly without warning. I’m not really saying that one is better than the other because they’re setting out to achieve different things, but I do think it’s fascinating how different those goals are considering this is supposed to be the same show. This episode’s opening is much, much, much more in-line with what we’ve seen from previous Supermarionation shows both in terms of content and production methods.

Bong! The opening titles are looking much brighter and more sumptuous now we’re watching the colour-corrected DVDs of the show. The live-action Stanley Unwin is looking very out of place since we’ve seen nothing but puppets so far this week.

Gabriel is back out on location with its roof up for the first time in the series. Shooting for this episode began on August 29th 1968 so we’re in the final days of an idyllic British summer in the countryside. Specifically we’re in Burnham Beeches, a frequently-used location for the series located between Slough and Beaconsfield.

As the roof of Gabriel is up, this puppet of Father Unwin is controlled from underneath. The script indicates that Father Unwin is so gripped by his radio conversation that he’s not doing a very good job of staying on the road. This minor comedy moment is absent from the finished episode, and I’m going to be needlessly catty and say it’s because Stanley Unwin actually sounds bored stiff by the conversation he’s having. A Case For The Bishop was slightly geared towards Unwin’s larger-than-life persona, while A Question of Miracles doesn’t give the comic actor much to work with in amongst the technical dialogue and corporate espionage. The result is a Stanley Unwin who doesn’t exactly sparkle much during this particular episode outside of a few quirkier moments.

The Bishop is serving up a hot dish full of info-dump. It boils down to the super-advanced desalination plants designed by British engineers getting sabotaged by foreign companies to ensure the business flops and the Americans order their plants from said foreign competitors. So we’re in the realm of pure espionage again but with the stakes raised slightly higher than they were in A Case For The Bishop. I don’t quite know why BISHOP, specialised outfit as they are, were assigned to this particular case. It made sense last week because of the need for discretion and Father Unwin’s deep cover. I struggle to believe that Unwin and Matthew are the most qualified people out of the whole British Intelligence Service for the job of investigating complex desalination plants and their foreign rivalries. Then again, who am I to judge?

The Big Apple. Yes, The Secret Service is taking a rare and brief trip to the land of the free just in case any American broadcasters bothered to take an interest in the series. Although taken from a different angle, Thunderbirds fans may recognise this particular section of the New York skyline from The Duchess Assignment. It’s stock footage filmed from under the Brooklyn Bridge facing the southern tip of Manhattan Island.

Suddenly, the blue sky turns much more… well, British. Yes, the grey clouds match the grey concrete of New Zealand House on Haymarket, London.

The penthouse office of Mr. Nielson is an ecclectic mix of modern and traditional design. In the foreground, viewers can spot the spiral staircase and living room rug stripped out of Professor McClaine’s cottage from Joe 90. Meanwhile the colourful translucent cutout on the wall is sourced from the Mysteron Complex seen in the Captain Scarlet episode, Crator 101. For several years, the Slough studios had been building up a healthy library of very futuristic set elements. Not much of that could fit comfortably in The Secret Service‘s contemporary sets, so art director Keith Wilson probably had to get quite clever with how he recycled different pieces from the archive.

Hartley has the word ‘SCHEME’ above his head just in case you needed an indicator regarding the villain for this week…

In the blink of an eye, some ornaments vanish from the shelf behind Hartley. Thief.

Greg Hartley advises Nielsen, the Vice-President of whatever corporate entity he represents, to proceed with extreme caution over the purchase of desalination plants from the British. In fact he suggests not proceeding at all. Nielsen wants to wait it out and see whether the two remaining plants at Burgossa and Port Trennick explode after 250 hours of operation before backing out of the deal. Very sensible. The camera creeps in on a very shifty-looking Hartley.

This scene could have been lifted straight out of the Andersons’ favourite board room drama, The Power Game. All it’s missing is Sir John Wilder lying to his wife’s face about where he’s sleeping tonight.

This is the Burgossa plant. Funnily enough, it looks pretty much identical to the Habiba plant which blew up earlier. In fairness to the effects team, that’s exactly how James’ script suggested it should look except now there should be dark jungle in the background because we’re in South America. Burgossa is likely a name made up from the Spanish city of Burgos. To fit the South American setting, the main sign for the plant has been translated into Portuguese. Flying to Brazil really would have stretched Ken Turner’s location budget so probably fair enough that all this is done with models.

As you were probably expecting, the interior of the Burgossa plant is just like the one we saw earlier except the technicians are wearing different-coloured jumpers and new badges. Joining Plant Director Mr. Green (named after his suit?), is the project’s engineer, Tom Williams – a man you’ll probably recognise as the dashing Captain Grey from Captain Scarlet. Mr. Green is extraordinarily laid back given that the plant is about to hit the cursed 250-hour mark. But he’s confident that nobody will be able to get in and sabotage the place what with all the guards on patrol. If Burgossa’s security team is anything like the twerps who work at Marineville, I’d start running now mate.

These nighttime shots of the plant are really quite nice. Sam Loover’s car from Joe 90 appears to have been modified to represent one of the patrol cars guarding the perimeter. A minimal amount of work has gone into transforming the Habiba control building into the Burgossa variant with the original sign covered up, one of the big windows changed, and a Portuguese flag slapped over the previous one, even though the script says we’re supposed to be in a Portuguese-speaking nation of South America, rather than in Portugal itself. Not really important seeing as Burgossa is a made-up place anyway, but it just suggests that in the day-to-day production shuffle, the model makers probably didn’t feel too bad about glossing over certain nuances in the script.

Williams cheerfully celebrates when the plant doesn’t explode after 250 hours. If you don’t like disappointment, go and make a cup of tea during this next bit.

Spectacular as these effects shots are, they don’t necessarily match the “holocaust of flame, black smoke and gushing, spouting water” described in the script. I’d also argue that they’re not necessarily up to the standard of cinematic devastation seen in the likes of Thunderbirds. The camerawork here compared to, say, Atlantic Inferno is very distant and pedestrian. Almost every shot of these tanks looks exactly the same. Their sense of scale isn’t really expressed because every angle is taken from the edge of the water tank far away from the action. In close-up they look much more impressive, but those moments don’t happen often. None of that is helped of course, by the fact we’ve already seen a very similar sequence just a few minutes ago. I’m loathed to suggest that the effects team might have been a bit bored of blowing up these silver balls over and over again, but I do start to get that feeling when watching this unfold.

Over at the Vicarage, it turns out that Unwin and Matthew haven’t done a whole lot since being briefed by the Bishop. They’ve just been twiddling their thumbs waiting for Burgossa to explode before springing into action to save the final plant at Port Trennick. This one is located in England which is probably a tad more convenient for BISHOP and a lot more convenient for the Century 21 location unit. Unwin’s map of the plant is surprisingly well-detailed but technically innacurate. It shows the water tanks dotted about on-land rather than in the sea which is closer to how real-life desalination plants are built, and how Donald James described them in the script. The effects team presumably chose to put the water tanks in the middle of the sea because it looked cooler… which is fair enough.

A short scene prior to this one between Father Unwin and Matthew was cut from the script, and would have featured Unwin inviting Matthew inside to discuss plants, but not the sort Matthew was expecting. Get it? Because Matthew’s a gardener… yeah I don’t blame them for cutting that side-splitting quip.

The dialogue for the rest of the scene is swapped around slightly too in order to make Unwin sound a bit more like an expert on the whole business, rather than Matthew. The scripted lines have Matthew assume that the sabotage was “an attempt to ignite a flash chamber.” This indicates that Donald James was intending for the plants to operate on the principles of old-fashioned distillation, rather than the up-and-coming reverse osmosis principle which was being developed at the time. Cor, I’m such a bleedin’ expert on desalination now. Time for a spin-off blog?

London, England. Exactly the same establishing shot of Parliament that we saw last week. Instead of the “Modern Office Block” suggested in the script, at some stage the decision was made to set this scene in an old-school private members club complete with a snooker table, busts of old gits, booze on hand, and Williams smoking his pipe. I can’t watch this scene without picturing Sir Humphrey Appleby conspiring with his civil service chums during an episode of Yes Minister.

Neither Hartley nor Williams have changed clothes since we last saw them but I won’t hold that against them. Hartley has come from New York to share the news that Burgossa blowing up has pretty much knackereed the deal for more plants being built in the US. But Williams musters up some of that good old British wartime determination and makes an empassioned speech about keeping the final plant at Port Trennick running past 250 hours just to prove it can be done. Then he whips off his trousers to reveal his Union Jack underpants and stands on the table singing God Save The Queen…

Meanwhile, Father Unwin and Matthew still haven’t quite managed to spring into action. Sipping tea in a vicarage while studying maps is exactly the sort of thrill-ride you’re after when sitting down to watch an Anderson production. Curiously, Unwin doesn’t appear to know what a random infrared check is, very much implying that he’s relying on Matthew to understand all the technobabble behind the plant’s security. Of course, in 1968 when this was written, infrared security cameras were a pretty new thing, but it still makes Unwin sound like a bit of an old fuddy-duddy when he can’t remember what they’re called. Anyway, it sounds like the gang have figured out how the sabotage is being carried out but are going to need some help putting a stop to it…

Enter this ridiculously familiar face. Basically the fifth Beatle in The Secret Service group, Agent Blake is a semi-regular character seen in three out of the thirteen episodes of the series. He’s a hit with fans for two reasons. Firstly, he’s a bit of a bumbling twit which is utterly charming. Secondly, and rather noticeably, he is Captain Scarlet. Yup, for reasons unknown, an original Captain Scarlet puppet was pulled out of retirement, givens specs and a brown wig, and cast as Blake. Folks love to speculate that Blake is actually Scarlet’s grandfather. Personally, I can’t quite believe Blake has the time or emotional intelligence to start a family.

It’s an intriguing bit of puppet-based casting for a number of reasons. After the Captain Scarlet series ended, the likes of Colonel White and Captain Black were immediately adopted into the cast of revamp puppets to appear as guest characters in Joe 90, while big stars Scarlet and Blue were kept off-screen. By the time The Secret Service came around, someone must have decided that Scarlet and Blue were now at a low enough point in their careers to be inconspicuous when playing guest roles. We’ll see Captain Blue later in the series in a quite well-disguised form playing a couple of guest characters. But why was Scarlet given such a prominent role in The Secret Service and his features concealed so poorly?

Well, one answer might be that Blake wasn’t originally billed in the script as a returning character for the series and it may have only been planned for him to appear once in A Question of Miracles. The script for Blake’s next appearance in Last Train to Bufflers Halt actually assigned his lines to an entirely new character initially – an agent named Carstairs. In The Cure, Blake is named in the script but still kept on the “new” guest cast list rather than a series regular. So, perhaps it appeared to be such a small role that the puppet team assumed no-one would notice who was under the wig. Themeatically speaking, it’s also quite apt for the puppet of the indestructible Captain Scarlet to appear as a character who dies and comes back to life at the end of this episode. There are also practical considerations which we’ll come to later on. Ultimately though, the Century 21 team were probably just having a bit of fun and didn’t expect anyone to read much into the unusual casting choice.

The Bishop’s lavish office continues to dazzle. Some readers have suggested that The Bishop’s big globe is hiding a well-stocked liquor cabinet, which might explain why he’s gripping it so tightly today.

Presumably Blake is another agent of BISHOP, and yet he is kept in the dark regarding Father Unwin’s identity and the grand plan to save Port Trennick. The dialogue between Jeremy Wilkin as the Bishop and Keith Alexander as Blake is beautifully played. The Bishop has his mischeivous twinkle and cool head while Blake is flustered and quite put out by the lack of detail. Apart from turning up at Port Trennick tomorrow evening wearing a cross and swalloing a pill at 19:30, he hasn’t got a scooby what’s happening. It’s really terrific humour and the voice cast are clearly loving it.

You can take the man out of Spectrum but you can’t take the Spectrum out of the man.

The next scene re-uses footage of the submarine from the Joe 90 episode, Business Holiday. There’s even a note in the script for any readers to refer to producer Dave Lane for details. With Hartley signalling the sub, it’s basically confirmed that he is somehow involved in the whole sabotage plot… just in case you hadn’t worked that one out yet.

Finally, Unwin and Matthew are getting going and the Minimiser makes quick work of shrinking down the heroic gardener. It’s a very similar sequence to what we saw in A Case For The Bishop but this time Matthew is in his regular clothes instead of a fire suit, and the flowers and ashtray by the curtains have swapped positions…

But uh oh! This time Mrs Appleby has arrived in search of Matthew. She’s probably come to tell him off for weeing in the petunias.

Instead of hopping into the case which is wide open and therefore allowing Mrs Appleby to see all the top secret equipment inside, Matthew hides behind a chair. That’s a trained spy for you.

Mrs Appleby goes to look for Matthew in the garden by standing in the middle of the shrubs and acting like a disgruntled pelican. Curiously, the script has this scene preceding the one we just saw with Matthew and Unwin. It was presumably swapped around to just shift the emphasis somewhat.

Time for another alternative shot of Gabriel blasting off. This time, the car turns left with the roof up. Great insight, I know. Just imaagine how exciting it must have been for the location unit to film Gabriel coming in and out of the driveway several times to cover all eventualities.

Gabriel drives onto the sandy beach overlooking Port Trennick. As you might have expected, Port Trennick looks almost identical to the other desalination plants we’ve seen. The episode’s script originally placed these beach picnic scenes quite a bit later, after the commercial break, to sit alongside the pipe mesh being sabotaged.

The ultimate purpose of the picnic remains the same regardless of its placement in the sequence of events. However, it does come across as more of a comic interlude than a useful part of the plot.

Never mind, here’s Matthew struggling to eat an obnoxiously big sandwich. Get it? Because he’s small.

Meanwhile, Agent Blake is entering the back entrance. Steady on now.

I must confess, I don’t like this shot very much. It really looks like a tiny miniature set. The edge of the water tank is clearly the edge of a water tank and not a horizon line. The plant itself is a bit of a cluttered mess of shiny plastic balls filmed from entirely the wrong angle to make them look big and imposing. The choice of camera angle doesn’t really play to the strengths of shooting model effects. Instead of trying to make small things look big, keeping everything in the far distance likes this makes the tiny things look even tinier.

Back at ground level, the tunnel entrance to Port Trennick looks a bit more impressive. Blake is driving Sam Loover’s car. This might be one of those practical reasons why the Captain Scarlet puppet was chosen to portray Blake. A version of the puppet would have already been available with the under-control mechanics necessary for him to be operated without wires from inside the car. Incidentally, the guard’s helmet would have been pinched straight off the head of one of the police officers from the final scene of the final Joe 90 episode produced, Viva Cordova.

Meanwhile, the “isn’t Matthew small?” gags continue with Matthew drinking a massive cup of tea and reminding himself to put an egg cup in the case… which doesn’t make sense because during the previous sandwich debacle, Father Unwin had an egg cup on the picnic table holding his beloved boiled egg. So basically the whole episode loses all credibility for me. Minus a billion stars out of five. Would not recommend.

Over in the bonkers-massive control room, the usual technical gubbins is being checked and double-checked by a new bunch of nerds in different-coloured jumpers. Williams chats with Shaw, the latest in a long line of unfortunate Plant Directors. Let’s hope this one doesn’t unexpectedly lose his job like the last two.

With everything set up for some tense drama in 6 hours time, all we can do now is head for a commercial break and wait for Matthew to save the day again.

Part two begins back on Hartley’s submarine. I assume it’s his submarine. He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who would rent a submarine.

I guess because they can’t be bothered to swim, two frogmen leave the sub on the back of an underwater mobility scooter. Incidentally, Hartley’s submarine re-uses the same models in long shots and close-ups that have been used for several Century 21 subs such as the USS Panther II seen in the Captain Scarlet episode, White As Snow.

Back on the surface, Unwin is fed up of Matthew’s small talk and decides that now is the perfect time to leave him behind in the case after their crazy long picnic. Oh, and on that subject, did Father Unwin prepare the picnic or did Mrs Appleby put it together for him? These are the important questions.

Presumably tugged off the set by an unseen wire, the entire puppet-sized Gabriel prop with Father Unwin inside drives off the beach. Either that or its the remote-controlled version seen more prominently later in the series. This shot really is the sort of thing that the location unit was intended for, but clearly nobody could be bothered to drive the real Model T all the way to Skegness or wherever and risk getting it stuck in the sand.

Unwin zips along the road through Burnham Beeches at high speed, apparently having learned nothing from his brush with the law last week.

Underwater, the two baddies have found the main inlet pipe. Shame nobody thought to guard that. Imagine somebody sabotaging a water purification plant… from the water. What a novel idea. No actually, it is really dumb that all this extra security was added to the plant but not a single person or camera or scanner or anything was designated to keep an eye on the bleedin’ sea. How did nobody at this top security facility notice a whacking great submarine roaming around underwater? A submarine which even had the audacity to put up its periscope and survey the surface earlier!

Well gosh, what a shocker, somebody just sabotaged the water pumping station by blowing up part of the thing that pumps all the water to the station. Seriously, could an explosion that significant not be picked up by the banks of computers or nerds in white coats filling up that control room with body odour and desperation?

Hartley announces that it’s time for stage two of the plan. What’s that? Knock on the front door and ask for some spare dynamite?

Don’t worry, Matthew’s got a net and a tiny scuba diving suit. He’ll sort everything out. Last week Matthew was an aircraft engineer, and today he’s an expert diver. Quite the impressive CV.

Meanwhile, Father Unwin has parked up in Burnham Beeches to do nothing particularly useful. Unless you can think of an upstanding reason for an old vicar to be parked in a secluded area in the middle of the night with his headlights off…

We establish that Matthew has just half an hour to save the plant from whatever awaits him under the water. It must be said that now we’re not switching back and forth between live-action and puppets constantly, I’m much more engaged with the story than I was with A Case For The Bishop last week. That could also just be because there’s a little bit more at stake here. I mean, I love a KX20 minicomputer as much as the next man, but to be honest I couldn’t care less if the Dreissenberg Ambassador takes it home with him. Exploding water tanks are marginally more captivating. Although it’s still not at the same level as 600 people trapped aboard an atomic airliner with a bomb strapped to its undercarriage.

It’s 19:30 and Captain Scarlet is lurking about in the control room ready to take back the Supermarionation spotlight.

Say no to drugs, kids. Even if you’re indestructible.

Captain Grey doesn’t even recognise his former colleague and orders for a doctor to be brought in to help. I hear that desalination plants have the best doctors.

Matthew dives down and because these are the people who made Stingray, the underwater sequences for this episode look great. In fact, they’re an improvement on Stingray in the sense that an effort has been made to lower the lights and make the deep water as dark and murky as it really would be. It’s not the case for every shot, but it’s very effective when it does work. Combined with Barry Gray’s tense soundtrack and what you have here is a really eerie and foreboding sequence as Matthew swims out to sea in a vast ocean where even the plant life is bigger than he is.

The underwater mobility scooter leaves the sub again as Matthew reaches the end of the pipeline and starts putting his handy net to work. A few fish are present in the water tank in front of the camera but the production team probably didn’t want too many swimming around messing with the already warped sense of scale. It’s worth noting again that compared with the original script, many of these scenes have been swapped around into a timeline which I daresay makes the danger feel more imminent. The sequence of events in the script feels slightly more laboured.

Meanwhile, things aren’t looking good for Blake. He’s on the brink of death as a matter of fact. If this is all part of the plan, poor Blake definitely got the raw end of the deal.

Doubtful that medicine will save Blake, the doc calls upon the services of a priest, presumably to perform last rites. Blimey, this just got heavy. I’m not quite following how this helps the plan to save the plant exactly but I sure know where you can find a good priest… well, I don’t know if he’s actually a good priest… or good at anything come to that… this is supposed to be his show but Father Unwin really hasn’t exactly done very much yet.

Just as Unwin kicks into action, he’s intercepted by an MG MGB. The script specified a Lamborghini but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.

A Model T enthusiast, let’s call him the Rupert, starts babbling on at Father Unwin. This fella really needs a good slap, but as a man of the cloth Unwin is forced to use different means of escape from the time-wasting ninny…

Cue the Unwinese. As discussed last week with the policeman scene from A Case For The Bishop, although a rough approximation of the gobbledygook dialogue was scripted, Stanley Unwin ultimately did his own version and Gary Files improvises around it as the confused driver.

To be honest, our starvicar probably could have just driven off without using the Unwinese. This is where the gobbledygook gimmick of the series starts to weigh the whole thing down. All the action was slowed down just for that arbitary exchange. At least in last week’s episode the police officer that was introduced turned up again later to serve the plot. Rupert the car pedant and his silly green hat contribute nothing else to this story. Writers must have had such a frightful time crowbarring an Unwinese moment into their scripts. But, the alternative would have been sprinkling little bits of it throughout the episodes and that would have gotten irritating. I do enjoy Stanley Unwin and find his unique mastery of language impressive, but the series’ format doesn’t carry it well enough to justify having it there. Either an addtional element was needed that would cunningly require the character to speak Unwinese to achieve more important story-driving goals, or it shouldn’t have been included at all. It’s not the end of the world though because, as mentioned last week, it barely takes up a minute of screen-time, but it does interrupt the flow of the whole thing just a bit.

Back at Port Trennick, Matthew is still under pressure to fix the inlet with his magic net while the nasty frogman approaches. In the control room, Blake is in urgent need of divine intervention. Why Blake has been unconscious for 20 minutes without anyone phoning an ambulance to take him to a proper hospital is beyond me. I guess this particular doctor just really likes working on the floor of a desalination plant.

Look who finally bothered to show up…

This guy has been put in charge of priest-hunting because goodness knows security isn’t important right now. He’s called the hospital but declines help from anyone who isn’t a priest which means Blake won’t be getting that ambulance any time soon.

Eventually, the penny drops as the security guard finally bothers to do his job and look at the person sitting in front of him. I adore the coy delivery of the line, “Did you want me for something, my son?” I love the idea that Father Unwin can turn on and off his pastoral powers to charm and persuade people. That’s why you make a priest into a secret agent.

Down below, the enemy is still on his way to the pipe, Matthew is still fiddling about with that net, and Hartley is still hanging out in his home from home. It’s possible that this episode could have benefitted from a wee bit more tightening up to improve the pacing because the action is starting to get a tad repetitive.

Unwin’s finally made it to the control room. One brief bit of dialogue is cut from the script: Looking directly at the dying man on the floor he asks, “Is this the man?” Of course, Williams should have childishly responded to that, “Oh no, that’s just Kevin, he’s always passing out on the floor in the middle of his shift. Probably all that gin what does it.” Fortunately Tony Barwick used the common sense that all good script editors should be blessed with to remove dialogue that points out the bleedin’ obvious.

Apparently Unwin is medically confident enough to remove Blake’s oxygen mask. Matthew announces that things are about to get spicy. Not in those exact words, of course.

Time for the nasty frogman to drop his topedo and swan off. Thanks for your contribution.

Rather than give the dangerous explosive device a firm kicking, Matthew does the sensible thing of letting his magic net catch the torpedo securely.

Well, almost securely. The main distinguishing feature of an inlet pipe is its ability to let stuff in. So despite Matthew’s illusive net of destiny, the torpedo is still getting sucked off by the mouth of the pipe…

Matthew informs Father Unwin that he can’t do anything about it while the pumps are still apumping.

After pretty much an entire episode, Unwin at last does something to contribute to the operation and asks for the pumps to be shut down. Yes, that was the sole purpose for Unwin getting into the room under the pretence of giving a dying man last rites. Never mind the fact that literally any British Intelligence operative could have just used their authority to shut the plant down immediately. We had to go through that whole song and dance just so the central character of the series would have something to contribute to the plot of an episode. It’s one of those things that slips by unnoticed as you watch until you stop to think about just how difficult it would be for a writer to construct an espionage plot which puts a priest of all people at the heart of the action without breaking their cover. That’s why it takes a little while for The Secret Service to get going as a series in my opinion. The writers were still learning the ropes in these early episodes, and the Andersons hadn’t necessarily given them much rope to work with in the pilot script.

While Matthew’s struggle continues, Unwin tries all the spiritual smoke and mirrors at his disposal to convince Williams and Shaw that disaster is truly imminent… even though it isn’t actually because, as the dialogue suggests, Matthew is merely saving the mouth of the pipe at this point. But time is running out so the tension, mercifully, manages to stay high despite Unwin highlighting that there is basically nothing to worry about now.

In an attempt to salvage the series’ format, Father Unwin’s plausible deniability as a complete outsider who just happened to get an unprompted vision of doom seals the deal for Williams. The order is given for the pumps to be shut down seconds before the 250 hour mark. Meanwhile, that doctor is just standing around like a lemon.

Matthew continues to risk getting an explosion in his face while the nerds, including Captain Magenta, get to work shutting down those pesky pumps. Meanwhile, Barry Gray’s soundtrack is milking the drama for all it’s worth and thank goodness it is.

Then, just to risk his life further, Matthew straddles the giant rocket as if he’s compensating for something.

Next up on Matthew’s agenda, a touch of attempted murder. I think Mr. Harding is getting a bit too big for his boots if he thinks he can just chuck missiles at anyone he happens to take a disliking to.

Okay, so Matthew doesn’t end up actually killing anyone but that was probably down to luck rather than judgement. If Hartley was renting that submarine he probably won’t get his deposit back now.

Father Unwin gets to enjoy looking smug for a moment. But, more importantly, I’m mystified as to how this set can have a ceiling while the puppets are standing and moving about on it. I think it’s some clever perspective trick with the camera and the placement of the large central ceiling panel which therefore hides the gap where the puppets’ wires and the bridge above would be positioned. It’s a remarkably sophisticated shot.

Father Unwin continues to play upon his supposed state of religious mysticism as Blake wakes up bang on cue. So, presumably BISHOP have developed some kind of pill which can bring about the symptoms of death without actually killing you… the kind of thing Shakespeare was writing into his scripts to string along his audiences some 500 years ago. Of course, we all know that Blake is actually just an indestructible hero fighting a war of nerves against the Mysterons in his spare time.

In the original script, the “miracle” aspect is laid on pretty thick in the dialogue. Father Unwin really was keen to inspire everyone with the concept of divine intervention. Ultimately, the episode is probably better off letting the plant personnel make up their own minds.

The survivors of Matthew’s missile attack float to the surface and are met by a police helijet. You know… those helijets that you’d always see flying about in 1969…

Instead of ending the episode with a sermon in Unwin’s parish church as the script details, we instead have the doctor confirm that Blake is indeed still alive against all odds. “It’s a miracle!” he declares. And we all know that really, Father Unwin is a fraud and Matthew quite enjoyed trying his hand at a spot of murdering.

And on that cheery note, we’ve reached the end of episode two. Quite a different specimen from A Case For The Bishop, A Question of Miracles tries to bend the quirkiness of the format into something much more straight down the line. The result is a story that maybe lacks the necessary tongue-in-cheek charm that a good episode of The Secret Service needs in order to carry viewers through the absurdity. The episode’s resolution is clever enough, though not entirely watertight. The characters and the puppets themselves continue to hold up nicely. The model work gets to carry a lot more weight this time around but it still lacks a certain vitality and ambition compared to the special effects of earlier Supermarionation series. I actually would have welcomed more location material just to broaden the visuals a little bit. Now that filming on location has been established as a part of the series, the show feels a little empty without it. So much of The Secret Service‘s premise is structured around going out on location that things fall flat when that element is removed. It just goes to show that love ’em or hate ’em, The Secret Service just isn’t The Secret Service without all it’s weird quirks and gimmicks.