The Experiment

DVD, The Champions (The Experiment)

Perhaps my earliest definite memory of watching the series was staying at a relative's house in the mid-Nineties and seeing this particular episode, which understandably stayed in my mind. It's the inevitable moment when our champions' skills, strengths and abilities come up against equals in a test of daring and quality. At least, that's what you'd think a story about mentally adjusted humans designed to… do something or other, would mean. Watching as an adult, unfortunately, shows up a vast array of flaws in this stylish entry in the series that I'd never thought about before. It doesn't live up to its premise, for starters. It's supposed to be a collection of four intensively trained opponents for the champs to take on. We see from the opening sequence how powerful and ruthless just one of Dr. Glind's specimens can be: the Craig lookalike jumps clear over a tall fence at The Ministry of Technology Research Unit, bounds through the grounds taking on both unsuspecting, and fully prepared, guards, with no trouble, chops a gun in half, dodges rifle shots in a narrow corridor, and shows himself to be practically unstoppable. The numbers are on Glind's side, with four against our heroes' three, but there really isn't much of a match, except when all four take on Craig and Richard when they come to rescue Sharron.

As usual, one of the team is separate and ends up being caught in a web of intrigue, Sharron lured in by the curiosity of testing her unique abilities against similar competition, something she apparently can't refuse (note that she's ordered on leave by Tremayne without a warning about what he's suspicious of, and just has to react as it unfolds!). Cranmore's plausible explanations about the whole project lead her on, but this is where one of my questions come in: we're told the four trainees Sharron meets are from some of the world's top intelligence agencies (Marion Grant of DI6, British Intelligence, Susan Francis of CIA, Paul Lang of DI5, and Jean Girou of the French Sûreté), discovered by their files, it suggests, and handpicked to take part in this special project. But if they really were from these organisations then surely they'd have far more compunction than to work with a man whose end goal appears to be some kind of global domination. I say 'some kind' because he never makes it clear what his intents and purposes are, perhaps that was for the best. And perhaps they were from the agencies, but didn't have all the facts. They were, after all, almost guinea-pigs that Glind felt he could dispense with in his quest to create something that wouldn't burn out after a short while, and they certainly hadn't been told of the impending brain-dead conclusion they'd be facing, as that's what turns them on Glind.

The pitifulness of the aftermath of each of Glind's experiments gave the episode a chilling twist and added depth to what otherwise would have been a simple super-soldier plot. The fact that these vibrant, unstoppable specimens could go from fully charged action heroes to childlike drooling on the floor, and finally, in the case of some, dropping into brain death, gave them a tragic edge of shock and showed how superior the champions are. Because they didn't merely have some mental gymnastics done to the brain (explained as a modified electroencephalogram!), or intense physical training, but some deeper surgery that completely altered them. We don't really know exactly what happened to them, which I suppose is why Sharron was able to fool the lie detector when she's asked how she got her powers. But I was never sure whether she was fooling it or just telling the simple truth because technically she doesn't know exactly how she got her powers, yet she does know she got them from a special, secret civilisation in Tibet, so it becomes semantics over whether that constitutes knowing how you got your powers. I tend to assume she had the ability to lie without a machine being able to see through it, as it's basically about controlling the respiration and heart rate, biological things that we can assume she does have power over, whether consciously or not.

The question remains over how Dr. Glind managed to find out about the Nemesis agents' powers, when even Tremayne and his staff don't know, and they have access to all the mission records! Maybe you can fudge an explanation that because of Glind's interest in such studies, which he'd carried out, he'd been allowed limited access to all agent files, or maybe he had a mole in these organisations and he was just looking for evidence to prove his theory before stumbling across some unexplained happenings, his suspicious mind putting everything together to make… a bit of a mess! Because his motive for taking Sharron, while it could be said to partly be the ultimate test for his new recruits to go up against her, was to use her as bait for Craig and Richard who would inevitably come and rescue her. But how would he know that? There must be other Nemesis agents when you see the size of their building! And why does he want them all to come to him? So he can kill them, as they're apparently the only thing standing in his way when he uses his experiments for whatever nefarious plans he has. How would he know they are the only agents with such advanced powers? It is pretty ridiculous when any thought is put into it. It's more of the modern thing of manipulating story so it can reach climaxes or set-pieces, rather than being a logical progression.

Those set-pieces, where we see the various powers used, were worthwhile to get to, just as the opening sequence showed us some superhuman action. My favourite moment in the whole thing is actually relatively simple, but it shows off a power in a very unique way: when Sharron plays high-speed catch with her fellow trainees, Craig and Richard are outside and they all carry out a fleeting conversation where the camera zooms in on Sharron's face during a moment after or before she's thrown or caught the ball, and has milliseconds where she can pause to make a quick answer. It's so good because it's superhuman but in a subtle way. It shows the other agents don't have the super-hearing or split-second skill to hear or speak in the way she does. I'm not sure why it's not just telepathically done in the mind rather than having to actually speak, but in this case they were in proximity so it made sense, though I'd have thought mental speech would be more useful in the kinds of escapades they get up to. There's the usual Sixties obsession with telepathy, clairvoyance and ESP to explain how Glind chose his subjects, but they never really display any of that. It's said to be what these people had that made them stand out, but it doesn't go any further than that.

The icy unfriendliness Marion displays toward Sharron makes for some interesting dynamics, but the four agents in the experiment aren't very well defined, to the extent that only she is even credited at the end! I've noticed this as a trend in the episodes that not every speaking character gets their name in the credits, which is a shame. David Bauer, who played Glind, is awarded the honour of appearing on the same slide as the main cast, usually reserved for just them, so perhaps he was a special guest star, or the equivalent. But there are others who don't get a credit at all: Renfrew, the Nemesis tail sent by Tremayne to keep an eye on Sharron (with a nicely filmed car scene where Cranmore loses him in the built up streets), along with the soldier in the control room whom the credited 'Officer' talks to about the intruder. I don't know how they worked out the hierarchy of the credits since the Barman is credited, while the first super-spy we see is not. And Dr. Farley, played by the great Nicholas Courtney (of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart fame in 'Dr. Who'), does get his name in the credits. Perhaps it's merited on the number of lines a character gets?

This is a good episode for Sharron as it shows her gamely going along with the tests and the oddity of it all, while also knowing her powers are suspected. She doesn't fly into a panic when her taxi driver, Cranmore, turns out to be more than that (he claims he's from DI6, but if he really was why would he be helping Glind?), nor does she refuse Marion's challenge to a peremptory fencing match - she seems to be at a disadvantage in that, but whether that was because she was ill-clothed for the match, wearing heels and a skirt, or she was purposely trying not to show her abilities, I don't know. It could be that we're supposed to be surprised that Sharron could be shown up by this 'ordinary' woman and it does show how advanced Glind's training is, but it wasn't filmed in a way that made it certain one way or another, and the doctor himself bursts in to stop it in short order as deviating from his specific instructions (I imagine the fencing was done by a stuntwoman under the headpiece as Sharron moves expertly and has a very professional stance, and I'm not sure Bastedo was that terrific an actor to be able to change so much!).

Another Sixties trope is the all-powerful god of the computer. Just feed it information and somehow it will be able to extrapolate a solution to any problem. I can see that computers must have seemed magical back then, and they've proved amazing, have changed society in the following decades, but all Glind's faith is in the unerring power of this computer to devise the perfect way in which his new breed can kill the champions, and what does it come up with? Knives! It makes sense from an action perspective as we want to see our characters engage the enemy in hand to hand combat, and Richard gets a gash from the sting of a knife blade, but it makes no sense at all for the story! Glind would have been better off, if his main goal was to kill them, by just having assassins hunt them down and shoot them! Instead, we see how flawed is this computer's idea of the best, most efficient mode of dispatch, by the way Craig and Richard survive. Okay, so they were trapped in a room, and only Sharron's cleverness in opening the mic while Glind expounds on the throwaway nature of his people, saves them, but they apparently killed Paul Lang in the fight (which takes place in the ubiquitous staircase room), so I'm sure they'd have pulled through eventually.

The violence, while sometimes cartoonish (in the fight it's really quite funny when one of them jumps at Craig, swings on him, then is thrown off again!), can sometimes be quite surprising: the most memorable example being when the first spy under the care of Dr. Farley, is killed by Cranmore with a silenced pistol and you see him arch and writhe in pain with red holes on his chest where he's been plugged multiple times. The collapse of the brain-dead trainees is also mildly disturbing, although the 'Swan Lake' finale of Susan was a little melodramatic, if a flourish that somehow fitted with the episode. Interestingly, this 'American' loses her accent once her mind is broken as she sings 'London Bridge is Falling Down' in an English one. This mirrors when the first spy is found in the lift at the Research Unit, a squad of guards ready for action and you're wondering what's going to happen, only for the doors to open and reveal a childlike man singing 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and pointing his gun in mock shooting. It's very well done, as are the use of filming tricks to emphasise the abilities of these people: in the first sequence the guy is sometimes shown in slowed down form which adds grace and fluidity, and a sense of power to his movements as he dashes around the Research grounds. Later, when Sharron and the others are doing high-intensity activities like catch, it's sped up to silly proportions to demonstrate their agility and reflexes. One thing the episode fails in is that by showing us artificially created 'champions' it makes the main cast look less special. But then they've never been portrayed as superheroes, they are just very good agents that now have an edge that make them even better than they were before. It was their training and experience that made the difference, not just powers. The new agents have only been training for three months, but apparently were selected for their 'nose for danger' and a sixth sense. I like that the series doesn't go the (now) expected route of lauding their powers as the thing that makes them who they are, as too many superheroes do, but rather their abilities leavened with their innate goodness and hard work is what gives them their status.

Drama is what helps the episode overcome its many questions to create something pretty good, whether that be the extreme reaction Craig has when Sharron is gassed, the car he and Richard are in squealing to a halt (just as in the first episode we saw Richard's stumble on the rock face mirrored in one of the others losing their balance), the death of Cranmore as Glind's servant when the new breed surround him and his time is up, or the subterfuge of Glind, it all makes this stand out as a good story. It's nice to see Tremayne out of the office when he travels to Oxford to visit Dr. Glind as being an expert on people with abilities, and also the taxi ride where Sharron's being tailed is clearly all filmed for real, none of that back-projection, whether it was in the taxi or the external shots, which helped lend the episode an air of quality that some failed in. Glind is always plausible, even when his motivations are ridiculous, he has a manner about him that has authority in it, but also he doesn't come on too strong. If only he'd modified his ambitions and plans he might have got somewhere. He even puts Tremayne off by saying that film can lie: the angle of the shooting, the lighting, the speed of the filming, and that it was this that influenced the guards' impressions of a super-spy at the Research Unit. Exaggeration, an overly dramatised version of what they thought they saw, he breezily dismisses, having had experience of such matters, while secretly being at the heart of it all.

I'm not sure why Craig and Richard had to travel all the way back to Nemesis HQ to report to Tremayne when they could just as easily have made a phone call, but I'm not surprised there was no usual end cap in his office where the three agents fob him off about something, because it would seem too much for even him to ignore. He was already wondering why Sharron had been picked for the experiment so an intelligent man like him, when faced with the report of what Glind had achieved, couldn't fail to begin to see the light regarding his people. That may be one reason why this story was done a little too early in the run, because now what can they come up against? They've defeated opponents of equal strength and agility (although it's never explained how these people could do the physical things they were capable of - three months training, no matter how rigorous, would seem preposterous as a preparation for superhuman feats of physical performance!), so where else could they find an equal threat, except from each other, which they got around to eventually. I wonder if 'The Interrogation' should have been a direct follow-up to this episode as it would amply warrant such an investigation after all that had transpired here. And much did transpire - I couldn't keep track of all the powers we see exhibited by both our characters and the guests, but strength (Sharron pulling open a locked drawer or ripping off the straps binding her to the chair), agility (dodging bullets!), mental powers (fooling the detector; communicating), all get their dues. And Richard gets grumpy after Craig beats him in a Judo match where they wear coverings over their heads as a test of instinct.

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