The Avengers Dossier, Page Fourteen

It's time for another look at one of the many actors and actresses who guest-starred in an episode of "The Avengers".




ISOBEL BLACK
In "Silent Dust", Isobel Black plays the daughter of a scientist who was wronged... and who may or may not be out for revenge.

Isobel Black was born in Scotland in 1942, and she landed her first professional acting roles while still in her teens. She spent most of her career playing supporting roles in historical dramas and police procedurals and action-adventure series on television, with a few excursions into horror and science fiction along the way.

Black's major television credits include starring roles in "Witch Wood" (1964), "The Rise and Fall of César Birotteau" (1965), "This Way for Murder" (1967), "The Rebellious Red Gauntlets" (1970), "Castaway" (1970), "The Capone Investment (1974), "The Brief" (1984), and "Tygo Road" (1990); and key recurring roles in "Emergency-Ward 10" (1962), "Mogul" (1967), and "The Castle of Adventure" (1990). Both her big screen appearances were in Hammer Studios gothic vampire films "The Kiss of the Vampire" (1962) and "Twins of Evil" (1971).

Black married director/producer James Gatward in 1969. From that point forward, her acting career began to slow down. Several of her major roles were in series that were either produced or directed by Gatward. As the 1980s came to a close, Black grew increasingly involved with the administrative side of high educaton. In 1994, she served as a governor of the Southhampton Technical Collection as it was being transformed into Solent University. She has also been heavily involved with the Mayflower Theatre Trust in Southhampton since the mid-970s, and she was awarded the British Empire Medal for that work.

The Avengers: Silent Dust

Silent Dust (1965)
Starring: Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, William Franklyn, Jack Watson, Isobel Black, Joanna Wake, Charles Lloyd Pack
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

An investigation into the use of a banned pesticide puts a pair of government agents (Macnee and Rigg) in the crosshairs of a group of land owners intending to blackmail the British government.

The best things I can say about "Silent Dust" is that it never gets boring--one can almost always rely on Roy Ward Baker to keep things moving--and Steed has some funny exchanges with a scientist he consults during the investigation (played by Charles Lloyd Pack, who perhaps Great Britain's hardest working bit-player during the 1950s and 1960s.). Diana Rigg also has some amusing lines when Peel is expressing opinions about the episode's villains to Steed... but they are nowhere near as witty as what can found found in other episodes.

What is also better in many other episodes is the villains. Not only are the ones in "Silent Dust" mostly bland, but their scheme is absolute nonsense and one that had no chance of success (or even resulting in long-term benefit to the villains if anyone had bothered to think things through). And yeah... that's how bad it is--I am complaining about something in an episode of "The Avengers" that doesn't make sense.... 

One interesting aspect of the show is how fox hunting figures in the show, even if it becomes a bit lame toward the end. It's one of the many times when the societal changes that were shaking the long-standing British class system and gender roles in the mid-1960s. It's also one of the reasons that this episode is still worth watching today--it's something of a historical artifact.