The Avengers Dossier, Page Eighteen

Here's another mini-profile of a supporting player from "The Avengers".


PATRICK ALLEN

In "The Thirteenth Hole", Patrick Allen is a golf pro who is keeping a dark secret.

Patrick Allen was born in 1927 to tobacco farmers in what is now Malawi, but spent his teenaged years and early 20s in Canada, having been evacuated to there because of World War 2. After briefly studying medicine, he turned to acting. His earliest professional roles were in radio plays and doing voice overs for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, but in 1952, he moved to Hollywood and subsequently appeared in bit parts in movies and television series of various genres, including Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder".

Allen moved to England in the late 1950s where he joined the Shakespear Memorial Company in Stradford-on-Avon while also steadily working as a voice actor on radio, doing voice-overs for television series, and appearing on-screen as policemen, military officers, and other authority figures or villains of every stripe.

Over the course of his busy career, Allen acted in some 150 television series or made-for-television movies, including playing two different characters on "The Avengers", one in Season One and one in Season Four. He also appeared in dozens of stage productions and countless radio plays. No matter how big or small the role, Allen could always be relied upon to give the part everything he could. His distinguished voice  led him to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for 14 years at the annual West London Christmas concert, Advent in Knightbridge. During the 1970s, he was also the narrator heard in a series of disaster- and nuclear war-preparedness films produced by the British government, and his voice was later sampled from these by Frankie Goes to Hollywood on a mix of their hit song "Two Tribes".

Allen worked up until shortly before his death at the age of 79 in 2006.

The Avengers: The Thirteenth Hole

The Thirteenth Hole (1966)
Starring: Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Patrick Allen, Victor Maddern, and Francis Matthews
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When a government agent is murdered, John Steed (Mcnee) and Emma Peel (Rigg) are charged with bringing the guilty parties to justice. Their investigation leads them to an exclusive golf club where a traitor is passing state secrets to the Soviets.

"The Thirteenth Hole" is one of the weaker episodes in Season Four, if not the weakest. The problems are many and severe, and they all originate with the sloppy script.

First, the scheme of the bad guys is complex to the point of ridiculousness. Although I sit down expecting an over-the-top espionage or criminal conspiracy yarn that sometimes is only believable or sensible in the pulp-fictiony, cartoonish universe in which the Avengers exist, what I got in this episode was so over the top that it didn't even work as a spoof of the 1960s spy movies where bad guys had elaborate secret hideouts in the weirdest places. Maybe I could have been more forgiving if the script had been better.

Second. something needed better editing here, be it the script or the final product. The story just doesn't hold together, even by the sometimes fast-and-loose logical standards of "The Avengers". This is mostly because characters who seem significant are introduced, only to vanish without further development or explanation, but it occurs to me that maybe that wouldn't have bothered me so much if the characters that do stick around were more interesting. No one seems particularly menacing or amusing... even some comedic antics by Steed on the golf course fall flat.

One saving grace of the episode is that director Roy Ward Baker kept things moving as quickly as possible--perhaps a little too quickly, as touch on above--but that still doesn't make up for the lameness of the characters and the writing in general. Second, there's a gun that fires golf balls' I really like this idea, and it was perfect for causing "accidental deaths" on a golf course. (Well, except for when the dimwitted bad guys star shooting people with it after the course is closed and in the middle of the night.)

All in all, a disappointing outing for the Avengers.... but they can't all be good when you're on the grueling schedule of episodic television.