The Iron Man

DVD, The Champions (The Iron Man)

Nikko is quite a fun character, as he should be for an episode being based entirely around him. Sorry, I mean El Caudillo. Actor George Murcell gets to be in his own skin tones for this, his second appearance on the series, and the first guest star to play roles in more than one episode. Not the first to play more than one role, because that honour went to Clifford Evans for twin brothers Franz Reitz and Colonel Reitz in 'The Survivors,' but there's more prestige in being asked back to play a completely different character in a separate episode because it means the people at the top liked what he did. I'm not sure what made them choose Murcell since Nikko is a very different role than El Caudillo (which, in Spanish-speaking regions means 'leader,' though sometimes in the dialogue it's pronounced 'Cor-dee-o,' and sometimes 'Cor-dee-sho'), apart from both having a catchphrase. Nikko (from 'Reply Box No. 666'), was a much smaller role, and the iron man, I imagine, would have been a more enjoyable character to perform with all his petulant, childish ways. There could be a question mark over whether Nemesis is right to get involved with internal politics of countries, rather like the 'Mission: Impossible' team tended to ignore the subtleties of interference because they're the good guys, so of course they know what's best. In this case, though El Caudillo is hardly the best of leaders, being neither wise nor possessing many good qualities (that we see, anyway), he was considered harmless in comparison to the murderous ways of the regime that had seized power during his absence.

In his own way El Caudillo is a loveable rogue, and we can surmise that his enforced exile has brought out the weaknesses within and magnified them, where his military discipline may have tempered them in office. He excels in showing off to the women, whether it be the maid or Sharron's secretarial position, doing pushups on his knuckles, always trying to impress as if to convince himself he's still a man and not some coward. Yet he is cowardly - he reacts very poorly to the attempt on his life, and his behaviour in the extreme is quite comical: he crosses the room holding Richard in front of him as a shield, not the actions of a bold military leader. His psychology is the most fascinating part of the episode, the way he can't control himself, eventually giving in to his fears and thrusting open his veranda shutters to present himself to any potential assassin and shouts for them to get it over with. Having gone to the edge this actually gets rid of his fear and he can face people again. Not that he's a timid sort, as we see in the manner in which he deals with each of our agents. He makes sure to pose grandly for Craig, setting an affected stance which he clearly desires to exemplify his authority and dignity. Unfortunately Craig easily bests him in a duel, though has the presence of mind to heed Colonel Pedraza's warning that El Caudillo doesn't like to be beaten or look a fool, and makes it seem as if Craig was the one who lost his sword.

With Sharron, he's all sweetness and light, attracted like a moth to the flame, while she remains very professional, yet polite, refusing his advances without being rude, and he has enough of the gentleman in him to enjoy the game rather than force his unwanted affections upon her. And Richard gets the short end of the stick, treated very much as the servant, which his own nonchalant attitude to the appearance of his master, didn't help, and showing the harder side of El Caudillo that demands respect and demonstrates he isn't all foolish pomposity, but possesses some genuine bite and gives us a glimpse of how such a man could be the leader of a country. I'm not entirely sure of the reasoning behind bringing the agents in under cover rather than being open about the need to protect El Caudillo from an immediate threat, but Pedraza knows his superior well enough that we can imagine he might have refused Nemesis' help (unless they showed him a photo of Sharron, I expect!), or behaved differently than he did, and Pedraza didn't want to remove his peace of mind. It's mostly about Pedraza being set up in the narrative as a potential insider for the villains since he seems disappointed when El Caudillo doesn't smoke the cigars which we know to be booby-trapped. All a case of a bit of misdirection directing the narrative there.

The setting is a bit of a mixed bag. Rather than being a lot of location and some studio work, there's a bit of both, with some outdoor scenes created internally: any moment where the enemies are on a hill rife with foliage is obviously not really external, but the house itself was a good find as it has the look of some continental villa surrounded by trees and fields, and has some suitable areas to use for the action, such as the courtyard which boasts some nice filming (such as the shot looking up at Craig silhouetted against the darkening sky, or the camera looking at the villains through the cast iron gate, then pulling back to reveal that gate as they come through). The indoor scenes also complement the exteriors so it feels like being a part of the same house (though they love to use that clay tiled flooring that would become as synonymous with the series as the main staircase room, though that wasn't used this time). There are flaws - you can tell the view Sharron looks out on, all rolling green fields and hedges, is a painted backdrop, and whenever we see through binoculars it's clear that it's just filming as normal with a cutout blocking out the rest of the picture, which is the standard way of doing it in those days, but always looks off (they'd done it before on the series, 'Operation Deep-Freeze' to name one example). And while we're on the subject of flaws, you can see the wire the clay pigeons were used to hang from for closeups, though there was also genuine footage of clay pigeon shooting.

That became a running joke, used as a way of expressing El Caudillo's mood: when he's happy and secure he enjoys it, but when he's frustrated he goes about it angrily. The best part of that is it sets up a very fine way to laugh out the episode - rather than showing the agents' return to base for a confused talking to by the boss, they imagine how Tremayne might react to hearing of El Caudillo's wish to decorate them all with the 'Order of La Rivada,' and so we see Tremayne in hunting gear shooting clay pigeons with a perturbed look on his face! It has the advantage of being one of the few endings to actually be amusing. And to bookend the episode, we get another post-credits sequence in which one or more of the champions show off their powers, which is actually connected, however loosely, to the episode, rather than being completely divorced from it as many of them have been. We find all three in a casino with Sharron winning big. It's not clear at first whether she's using some form of precognition to predict the winning numbers on the roulette wheel, or some other unfair method - you can't help but laugh when the voiceover talks of them using their powers to their best advantage, because it surely can't be right to do what she's doing. Except we find out that she was actually using her advanced cognitive skills to calculate the odds, and then failing to take into account a change in the wheel operator. Richard wisely notes that, "Gambling's the one racket you can't lick, whatever you've got going for you," which brings her back down to earth when we see the addiction starting to take hold.

Actually, I don't know why they couldn't have used their powers to predict the number rather than advanced mathematics. But because it's more to do with effort it's not such a morally grey thing she's doing, because she's working at it, like card counting, though it could be interpreted either way and I'm sure isn't in the spirit intended by the lost civilisation that gifted them their powers in the first place! I assumed the operator was going to cheat somehow (as Quark would always do if someone was winning big on the Dabo wheel on 'DS9'), so I liked that it was as simple as a different man making the difference to Sharron's workings-out. I think this could be the first time we've seen all three of the agents in the post-credits demonstration, and though it doesn't technically have anything to do with the story, it segues quite neatly into it as Craig gets a phone call from Tremayne, calling them back for their next assignment. And it's just nice to see the three of them socialising together.

Aside from Sharron's extracurricular activities at roulette, we get a lot of powers used in the episode by all three. One early example is the speed at which Richard (as the personal chef), and Sharron (as a secretary learning shorthand), read the books Tremayne gives them to make their covers work. They read as fast as turning the pages until Sharron realises she doesn't actually need to know shorthand because she can rely on her impeccable memory. This proves to be so when El Caudillo dictates his memoirs and she makes nonsense squiggles on the notepad which baffle him, but then when he loses his train of thought she repeats verbatim the last few sentences, accidentally including a compliment about her eyes because she's not really thinking as she does it, just speaking in a monotone, like one reading a script, which is funny in its own way. Richard, too, when his credentials are questioned, repeats passages out of his cookbook like a robot, satisfying the demanding El Caudillo, at least on his knowledge. I wonder what that monstrosity was that he was preparing for El Caudillo's meal, it looked a bit like a cake, but had tomato and other things decorating the rim. He got that wrong, though, as El Caudillo informs him that tonight, as in five out of seven days, he eats simply, dropping Richard's pride and joy creation into the bin, much to the amateur chef's dismay!

The humour over how they interact with El Caudillo, and how he deals with each of them, is one of the draws of the episode, and it had to work because there wasn't much else going on: they were largely waiting for the enemy to make its move and hanging around in the villa until that time, so it's a much more stationary episode than we're used to, more in the manner of 'The Experiment,' which also took place in and around the grounds of a large house. Not that it's claustrophobic with the wide open greenery all around, and it doesn't try to do more than the budget could afford, as some episodes do, trying to show various countries and geography. I don't know if General Tornes, the 'mastermind' at work behind the three assassins that are tasked with taking out El Caudillo, was supposed to be directing events from an office in South America, or near where things were actually happening, on the Costa Brava, the location of the villa, but he and his superior (or the man he's trying to impress, in any case), Callezon, remained in an office for their scenes, so it made no odds either way. The villains themselves were okay, Tornes and Callezon coldly talking of killing El Caudillo (I liked the little touches in the episode, like the soldier standing behind getting visibly nervous after Tornes has given Callezon a cigar with a needle inside that administers a deadly poison, taking it out of his hand just before it activates!), but the three amigos who actually carry out the assassination attempts were not fleshed out.

One thing I enjoy is that the main one, Carlos, was played by Stephen Berkoff, a rare connection to my favourite series, 'DS9,' since he played a villain in that, thirty years later. Patrick Magee, who played Colonel Pedraza, was in a lot of things (I'd only recently seen him in a Stanley Baker film), so they were able to dig up some quality guest cast when they wanted to. I don't know what role 'Cabello' was - a name in the credits that I didn't recall hearing in the episode, though I'd assume it was Carlos' second since that was the only other credit-worthy role. Again, a few characters aren't credited: the guards at El Caudillo's villa, but more importantly, the maid who has a few scenes, and the old woman that works in the kitchen and doesn't have a word of English, just laughing genially at everything Richard says to her! But what we all want to see is what abilities our agents use, and there were plenty, from the physical (Craig beats up two of the three assassins; Sharron knows exactly when to move aside, just as El Caudillo goes to pinch her behind; she also bodily pushes him out of the way before the sniper shot slices through his grand portrait; Craig moves super quickly to place his own sword in El Caudillo's hand to seem like it was his own sword that went flying), to the sixth sense (Sharron feels enemies are watching - maybe they were too far away even for champion-level eyesight; Richard and Craig sense danger from the cigar), to the mental (Craig talks to Richard across the house without anyone else hearing - Richard pretends he's too far away and tries to go back to sleep!).

I don't know if Craig and Richard were on the scene so fast after the sniper attack because Sharron called for them in 'mind-speak,' or whatever you want to call it, or whether they were already on the way, responding to the sound of the gun, but one thing's for sure, their abilities are as nothing compared to those of El Caudillo himself: mainly the fact that he can make the grey in his hair appear and disappear, seemingly from scene to scene! I don't know whether there actually was more or less grey in his hair, or whether it was a trick of the light (he did have shiny hair). He also had an uncanny knack of being unable to see himself in his true manner. At least until the end where we do see some kind of an arc for him, going from pretensions and preening to being in fear of his life, and the real man showing itself. The soft life couldn't keep him down forever. "El Caudillo. Always! You understand? Always!" It was like a statement of his true place as leader of his nation, something he needed to remind himself of continually through telling others. Certainly he was a good character, a shame they couldn't have done a sequel where they assist him in his own country at some later date, but having three appearances in the series might have been too much for any actor outside of the main cast.

So why don't I rate this episode as highly as some others? I've mainly had good things to say about it, and it's true that it features the three of them well, all working together (no one gets kidnapped or separated!). The location shooting looks good, the interiors are fine, there's plenty of comedy and little touches that work… Maybe it's the scope of the story being so relatively small? They're protecting one man and staying in one place and we're used to seeing them on the move. They use their powers well, but there isn't the full scale raid on the villa that you'd like, just three men, and they were never going to prove a problem for the champions. I think it's also that the story is treading water a lot, and as charming as it is (aside from the innuendo which we're not used to on the series), it's not going anywhere fast and it's up to the enemy to bring it to them. It's a different approach, and it is close to being up there, but it's a 'nearly' episode for me.

**