The Interrogation

DVD, The Champions (The Interrogation)

We come to a point in the series when they felt they could break the format and use a different approach. In production terms they'd passed the halfway point, and whether they thought they'd be coming back for another year or the series had always been planned as one batch of thirty episodes, they addressed some issues and put in place the potential for further exploration, while at the same time satisfyingly putting our minds at rest, with only the hint of doubt that Tremayne always has, but is too practical to question far. In a way, the format wasn't broken: all too frequently, as I've commented many times before, the stories involve one or more of the champions being captured and held prisoner for the others to rescue, not to mention exotic foreign travel and missions in far parts of the world. Both these elements are integral to this episode, but twisted on their head for a unique experience within the series (inspired by 'The Prisoner' according to the Special Edition DVD booklet, which you can certainly see parallels with, even if I don't know that series beyond what has trickled down through pop culture). Though it was a money-saving endeavour, it just shows how unimportant finances are for strong drama, as the reliance on a single cell to provide the location for the 'action,' led to creativity in both dialogue and use of clips from previous episodes, not to mention some of the best working in of stock footage used on the series in its entirety!

When I first saw the episode in the previous decade (I have no idea if it was one of the ones I saw as a child in the 90s), my first thought was to be wary as it seemed to be a potential clips episode that too many series' over the years have put out in the need to save money, without losing an episode from the total run - one of the worst offenders being 'Shades of Gray,' the 'TNG' Season 2 finale. But 'Star Trek' had also shown the possibilities inherent in such a device when Gene Roddenberry cannibalised his unaired original 'TOS' pilot, squeezing it into an 'envelope' of new story to create one of the best of that series. And it doesn't always follow that clips episodes have to be bad, as 'Starsky & Hutch' proved with their Season 3 instalment, 'Partners.' I needn't have worried, though, as 'The Interrogation' proved to be one of the best of the series and far from cramming in overlong clips from old episodes, they were used sparingly and to great effect whenever they were employed: it even opens with the plane crash from 'The Beginning,' played out over Craig's bewildered and guilt-stricken face as he relives those moments, quite a striking way to begin an episode with no explanation and no resolution, just the worried closeup of a man on the edge.

We have to wait over the opening titles, the post-credits sequence, and another scene where Richard and Sharron rather brusquely question their evasive and noncommittal boss, bearding the lion, perhaps, in his den before we get back to Craig's plight. It only increases our concern for his safety and wonder at what's happening to him, where, and by whom. He wakes in what at first appears to be a featureless multi-sided cell with no natural light, only the glaring artificial orb hanging in the centre like the great eye of some unblinking creature glowering down at its prey, this impression only encouraged by the harsh struts going out from the centre where the bright light leaves hard shadows and makes them look like the legs of a giant spider encroaching on its prey. It's an excellent study in atmospheric production design, and as we see the room we learn there are more and more features. A bed, a bedside chest of drawers (which, strangely, Craig never thinks to open), a chair, a sink, a thermometer, a clock, a cabinet, a waste bin and serving hatch, as well as a grille in the wall above. The room is ripe with possibilities, like some kind of puzzle in those old point and click adventures, and though Craig begins to explore, he's interrupted before long, and so begins the other dimension to his incarceration.

Any ordinary prison would have been empty and uninteresting, but by providing a variety of objects and furniture around him, it adds to our suspense about what Craig will do. We already want to know why he's being held, and who's pulling the strings, and we can assume that it's some foreign power, an enemy of Nemesis, but until 'The Interrogator' (as he's credited), appears, Craig's as in the dark as we are. I will refer to him as Colin from now on as that was the actor's name, and the character remains almost as enigmatic at the end of the episode as when we first meet him. There are things about the technology he uses that make it seem more advanced than we would expect in a 60s TV series. The main one being the ability to somehow cloud or make transparent a wall of the cell through which Colin observes and interrogates. You can see that it is just an ordinary wall, yet at other times it's a thick window that Craig can't hammer through (whether because of his drugged and weakened state, we don't know), and there's even one scene where we seem to see a glimpse of it changing from opaque to transparent, though we never see the full transition. It's a mystery piece of engineering, we know that it isn't a wall that comes away to reveal a window because when Craig finally works out how to escape he presses a button that makes it slide to one side, so it's a remarkable thing.

Going on about the fascination of a wall would suggest that the episode isn't very engaging, but far from it! It contains perhaps the best written scenes of the series as the tennis match of barbs, questions and mental games between Craig and Colin serves to confuse the prisoner and put him off balance. You never really know when Colin's being genuine or tricking him and playing a game, and the interplay goes from the philosophical to the psychological as Craig's defences are broken down. Or is that just claimed to be broken down? One of the other mysteries is how Colin got the recording of Craig talking about the Retford case, this question mark mission hanging over the story most of the way through. Was it true that he did talk about Retford at an earlier moment that we never saw, or is it as it appears, and we're with Craig the first time he awakes, in which case is that recording the result of clever technology to simulate a person's voice, or a soundalike? That answer never comes, but the surprise and horror of Craig and the confusion over why he would be there if he's talked, and why would he talk if he's there, starts to get at him, along with the use of the drugs to disorient. Again, I'm not sure if the drugs were always in the water, or whether it was just that last time when he suddenly realises his water is tainted when he'd carefully avoided the food and drink supplied through the hatch.

Nothing in Craig's world is sure, most conspicuously displayed in the promise of hope by the closed door, which is then taken away when he's managed to get it open only to find a brick wall behind (they changed something in The Matrix!). The psychological torture is shocking compared to what the series is usually like, and whether it's the removal of the hope of escape, the disorientation from the drugs, the constant barrage of questions from his interrogator, or the adjustment of the temperature to be freezing cold or unbearably hot, it all adds up to a strain until Craig is hoarsely and pitifully pleading, "No more… no more…" His memories and dreams intermingle, and it's done so well: after his harried recollection of the plane crash, during his exploration of the grille he suddenly feels unbalanced, gripping the wall and falling back into his experience as one who almost jumped from a tall building in Rome (seen in 'A Case of Lemmings'), returning to his surroundings to find the same bloodied knuckles he got from pounding the wall to try and regain sanity, and now he's done the same thing. His sudden violence, flinging the chair to smash into the transparent wall where Colin quizzes him about why he didn't jump, doesn't faze his accuser one bit. For most of the episode you see the chair remains in its dismantled state on the floor, but eventually it's no longer there, and the bin is removed, too, after Craig has discarded the meal. So we know someone is coming in.

This prepares us for when Colin actually does come in, presumably to give Craig another dose, and a strange, but enthralling scene ensues where Craig sees himself in Hong Kong, taking a rickshaw ride, while Colin tries to gain his trust as a fellow agent sent by Tremayne as a contact, to discover what happened, until he pushes his prisoner too far and Craig sees him as an enemy, fortunately collapsing before he can betray his superior strength. The whole scene is terrific as Colin playacts to stay with the imagining Craig, and the expert use of stock footage only enhances what was already well acted. The direction of the episode is superb, whether it be the perfectly judged insertion of stock, or the use of wide angle lenses to create an out-of-body experience, sinister, with an impression of unreality (used effectively in that manner in 'Shadow of The Panther'), to more experimental shots such as the moment we're looking up at Craig through the water in the sink which cuts to a memory of him leaping into the lake to escape the ear-splitting weapon used in 'The Invisible Man.' We also see him dream of the time he was pulled along on a sled in 'Operation Deep-Freeze,' and his arm drops from the bed in the exact manner it did from the sled. And he recalls being shot at, both in 'The Search,' by the guy he was following, and in 'The Beginning' when a Chinese soldier leaves him for dead in the snow, as well as the old man finding him after the plane crash and his otherworldly experience in the secret civilisation where he was given his powers.

Struggling through all of this is his meeting with Tremayne when he returned from the Retford mission, though at first I wondered if he was remembering the first time he met Tremayne. That might have been cooler, but when we come to the reveal that it was his own boss that drugged him, the horror of the situation is strong and incites him to a determined escape attempt. Although Craig gets some good pokes in at his interrogator (the best being his parry when Colin gleefully suggests they're making headway, and he replies: "If that's your idea of success, no wonder you never failed!"), and does a little Sherlock Holmes deduction by using his advanced eyesight to spy the date and time from Colin's watch, and that his shoes are wet so it must be raining outside, he's really brought to the end of his tether. Though the real issue is the secret of he and his colleagues' powers and the potential for unknown consequences should they be revealed, from Tremayne and Colin's point of view it's about the circumstances around so many successful missions. I wonder why Craig was picked on specifically rather than all three of them, but he is the unofficial leader and perhaps he was either less adept at making up solutions in his reports compared to the others, or he had more suspicious single missions that played on the head of security's mind. Whatever the reason for selection, and it could have been that the Retford case was the final straw, he was on his own.

That's the only downside of the episode, really, as there's no payoff to the drama shown here. This story is a payoff of sorts to the first episode and all subsequent times when Tremayne showed suspicion and confusion over how his agents got the results they did, but I sensed that he'd come to an acceptance that as long as they got the jobs done, he wasn't going to pry. He comes across as a neutral bystander neither advocating on Craig's behalf, nor supporting what Colin does, beyond sanctioning it. But he has to listen to the guy who claims security is his responsibility (where was this Colin when the thieves broke in and stole Richard's file in 'The Gilded Cage'? Is this a reaction to his security failure there, that he was looking for a scapegoat to hide his own failure?), and as leader of the organisation he has to go along with the testing of his agents if there is any suspicion. But I think he always believed in Craig and the others, which is why he signs off the case as satisfactory to Colin's disgust (I'd love to be able to read what it says on the first page we see in the Retford file Tremayne closes - I don't know if even in HD or 8K that would be readable!). What I mean about the payoff never coming in episodes after this is that Colin is still unsatisfied, saying so much is unexplained and they can't just leave it at that, so he could have become a regular thorn in the champions' side.

There's also the sense of betrayal that Craig feels so acutely and we see in his conversations with Tremayne and Richard how deeply he's been hurt. He can at least understand his boss' need to ensure security in the organisation, as unpleasant as it was, but it's much harder to forgive Richard and Sharron - one of the most expressive scenes is when he wakes for a second, lifts his head and sees Richard and Sharron standing in the room, flanking Colin, before he falls back again. It's a shocking and excellently created moment, but as Richard said, they couldn't risk revealing their powers by doing anything to help. Maybe they could have sent a telepathic message or something, but they couldn't chance that in Craig's drugged state he might react in a way that would put Colin onto them, there was no safe way to help Craig except for him to go through the punishment and take it. Not that I'd have liked the champions to become bitter and angry with each other, walking on eggshells and being upset all the time (as the main cast did in the final season of 'BUGS,' turning it from an upbeat series to one that was overly soapy and negative), but it would have been good to have seen some bitterness in a future episode to show that not all wounds heal immediately. But it was surprising enough that we got what we did, with that intense scene between Craig and Richard. I was wondering how they could cut to the triumphant theme tune after this, but they found a way by having Tremayne show his suspicions were alleviated and that he was convinced Craig wasn't a double agent.

Powers are almost banned in this episode since Richard and Sharron daren't do anything, while Craig is too disoriented to know what to do. We get the usual post-credits scene where their abilities are reintroduced, but disappointingly for such a good episode we're given another montage of clips from other episodes (Craig gets his hole in one again from 'The Dark Island,' the third time part of that scene was used; also from that episode was Sharron karate chopping a soldier into a balcony; and Richard brakes on a premonition before the little girl runs into the road, from 'Operation Deep-Freeze'). If only we could have had a great new demonstration to complement such a good episode. The first use of powers during the episode is when Craig listens in on Colin's phone conversation through the wall - I think we can assume there's no hidden camera keeping an eye on Craig, and he can only be seen when the wall is transparent, though that isn't definite. But that was the impression I got, otherwise they would have known everything he did, perhaps been alarmed when Craig found the escape button and got out, though I imagine the cell was bugged. Then again, Colin tells the doctor he's going to put the drug in his food, Craig listening in and consequently not eating, yet the drug was in the running water, so did they know he listened in, or was the drug in everything?

Craig uses his strength to prise the hinges off the door, and that's really as far as his abilities go unless we count fighting off the drugs for so long without revealing anything important, staying with it enough to deduce things, and trying out experiments to keep some semblance of control over his reality. But he's really put through it, by the end he has bruised knuckles, reddened eyes and is sweating all over, so it's no wonder he reacted so badly. Though it wasn't such a good experience for him, we get a number of facts that add detail to his character: reading from his file Colin tells us that he joined Nemesis in November 1965, has an excellent record, was born in New York on 1st December 1939 (making him about twenty-eight at the time of the episode), went into the air force service and trained as a pilot, before he trails off, sadly, during one of Craig's memories of meeting Tremayne - it would have been fascinating to hear more, but it is quite interesting to know that he can only have been a Nemesis agent for a couple of years as he gives the impression of being with them for much longer through his confidence and experience. Maybe that's why he was the one selected as a possible double agent, since he's American and everyone else appears to be English?

We also learn more general information about how Nemesis agents operate under Tremayne's leadership: allowed to tackle missions their own way, he says he doesn't keep them on a string, although if they require advice or help he's there to give it, but doesn't ask for daily reports. In the past this has been a boon to the champions, and it's all quite true, but now that Craig's missing Tremayne's vagueness and flexibility become a double-edged sword. He remains noncommittal, and they never ask outright if he knows where Craig is, and even if they did I get the impression he wouldn't have lied, but would have diverted or got angry with them, as was his right since he is the boss. His role in the episode is probably Anthony Nicholls' most nuanced performance as he walks a line between having to respond to the concerns of his security, but remaining above any side, which is why he's able to be evasive, but unrepentant even when the truth comes out, though you can tell he regrets what had to happen and was no happier about it than Craig. The whole thing is made more sinister by Craig's 'abduction' occurring within the usually safe environment of Tremayne's office, and that's why you could file this in the horror category since that is often about the subversion of what is normally safe and secure. When you factor in the strange music, so different from that usually heard in the series, with its alien, muffled sounds, like an orchestra tuning up or the TARDIS dematerialising in old black and white 'Dr. Who,' it cements the impression of discord in a series usually so bright and bombastic.

Though the sets are limited by the nature of the story, you never feel constrained in production terms, partly because of the good use, and shooting, of the cell, and also because of the clever integration of stock footage and clips, but there is one shot we never saw before, which is Craig leaving a real Pan Am plane (the champions' airline of choice!), and more importantly we get to see inside the corridors of Nemesis once again, with Craig entering Tremayne's office through the same door which the thieves used in 'The Gilded Cage' - I love to see whenever they show more of Nemesis, like when you see part of a starship in Trek, that hadn't been shown before. The credits are unsurprisingly empty except for Colin Blakely as The Interrogator, though I wonder why the doctor he speaks to on the phone doesn't get a credit? But it's a unique situation and a unique episode, with Blakely ably pulling off his role and creating another memorable semi-villain, albeit one revealed as a fellow member of Nemesis. I enjoyed Craig's facetious explanation for the success he's had, claiming he polishes a small lamp at home and asks the genie for help. It's a very Craig thing to say. There's also the creepy central case which is a whole other side to the episode as we learn scraps of information about this whole Julius Retford business: famines in India are apparently being caused by Chinese scientists breeding locusts and subjecting them to radiation. It's all very science fiction, but when you have this dark shadow at the corner of everything it only adds to the atmosphere in what is unquestionably one of the standout examples of the series for breaking the formula wide open and showing the potential so strongly.

****