Production order: 03 | ITC code: 5116 | Airdate order: 03 | DVD order: 19
Those Responsible
Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gilling
Where & When
London, England: June 20th
The Inexplicable Mystery
Four men in fancy dress - a cowboy, a clown, Frankenstein's monster and a devil - drive through London to the cellar of a derelict house. They start to celebrate... only to be machine-gunned by someone hiding in an adjoining room.
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| Just another day behind closed doors at Tory Party HQ. |
The Mystery Explained
The four men were in disguise so they could pass unnoticed through the streets during a student rag week event. They had been hired by gangster Victor Kent to deliberately fail to crack a safe in a mafia safehouse, instead secretly planting a bomb in the room set to go off several days later during a meeting of other mobsters so that he can take over their operations.
Review
Terry Nation's second and last script for Department S is much less effective than his first, 'The Man In The Elegant Room', which itself was far from perfect. 'A Cellar Full Of Silence' has a simple idea at its core - an organised crime boss wants to get his rivals out of the way - but piles on layer upon layer of doublecross and blackmail and murder until the whole thing collapses under its own weight.
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| As ever, subtle and understated. |
At times, it almost feels as if you need a flowchart to keep track of who is betraying whom. London mafioso Kent is plotting to kill his fellow gangsters; underworld broker Kyle hires the four men on his behalf to carry out the fake robbery, but secretly records all his dealings with Kent in order to blackmail him; Kyle's bodyguard Pally steals the recording to sell to Kent; Kent intends to blow up Pally to silence him but almost gets Jason instead; mafia underling Tronson covers up the fake robbery and imprisons and drugs young witness Libby to keep her quiet; and we're never actually sure who killed the four costumed men in the first place.
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| Beans and campfires: a dangerous mix. |
More to the point, we ultimately don't care. The only innocent in the whole affair is Libby, and there's no explanation of who she is or what she was doing in the safehouse. Everyone else is a criminal, and most of them end up killing each other at the climax, leaving our heroes nothing to do but walk out of the smoking building with bemused expressions while Jason witters on about a similar situation in one of his novels. The bad guys all dying because the writer doesn't have a better way to end the story is an annoying cliche of Department S, but this is probably the most egregious example.
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| "My my, he must have taken two little blue pills before dying." |
Another cliche of the series is the villainous info-dump to explain to Jason, Stewart and/or Annabelle (and the viewer) exactly what the hell is going on, and 'Cellar' is just as egregious here. First the two male leads have Kyle's half of the entire plot conveniently explained to them by a recording, followed by Annabelle getting all the remaining exposition about the mafia meeting from Tronson as he ties her up! All that's missing is a "Since you're going to die anyway, I may as well tell you everything", but 'Last Train To Redbridge' had that covered in spades not too long ago.
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| "Sing after me, doh ray me..." |
It's not all bad. Nation gives Stewart several solid scenes as he pays a visit to underworld broker and closet Nazi Kyle, easily besting the dull-witted Pally before treating the crimelord to some good old-fashioned two-fisted questioning. Joel Fabiani wasn't given many chances to show off his physical presence, but here it's easy to see why the average crook would be less than keen to tangle with him. Jason is also on fine quipping form while playing the comic foil to his straight man (and woman), Nation's background as a comedic writer being put to good use.
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| Bed linen from the Hermann Goering Collection. |
But that's really all the episode has going for it. Like 'Elegant Room', most of the plot complications exist solely to provide excuses for fisticuffs and explosions at regular intervals and draw out the running time. The most interesting part is the way Kyle conceals his blackmail information: an innocuous length of wire wrapped around a military baton that actually holds an audio recording made with a then-antiquated, now-forgotten dictation system. That's the kind of gimmick that would actually be even more effective in a modern show, because what investigator would even remember that such a technique existed? Only someone with as knowledge as esoteric as a certain Jason King...
Fancy Quotes
[Seretse assigns Stewart the job of investigating Kyle]
Sir Curtis: You're not bound by the restrictions that govern the British authorities. But I don't want to hear that you put your arm on him.
Stewart: Is that a warning?
Sir Curtis: It's not anything. I just said I don't want to hear.
[Stewart tricks Kyle's bodyguard into braining his boss with a drawer]
Stewart: Just the luck of the draw.
[Following his clonk on the noggin, Jason sports an ice pack to dull the pain]
Stewart: How's the head?
Jason: Superfluous.
Annabelle: Why didn't you take a couple of aspirin?
Jason: I couldn't bear the noise I'd make swallowing them.
[Asked what Kyle's stolen baton might contain, Jason has only a shrug in response ]
Stewart: Got any more ideas?
Jason: Yes, let's make this the case we couldn't solve, and let's quit.
Jason: My dear Pally, I never carry a weapon, let alone a knife. It would fray my cuffs.
[After two sticks of gelignite in the next room have just exploded]
Annabelle: Did someone knock?
Cheers!
• Jason puts the contents of his ice pack to more beneficial use, dropping several cubes into a drink as Annabelle runs through the case notes.
• Stewart passes a leathered-up Jason (his clothing, not his face) a hip flask after a chilly trip on a motorbike.
• Jason's doctor prescribes “the finest painkiller known to medicine” after his near-miss with an exploding telephone box. To our hero's delight, it's whisky.
Fight!
Stewart slams the fingers of Kyle's bodyguard Pally in a drawer, roughs up his boss, then punches out the leather-jacketed thug before delivering a pun so awful it makes even him wince. Just like a true action hero should.
While investigating Kyle's office, Jason gets clubbed from behind by Pally and knocked out cold. KO!
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| Jason 9, Stewart 5. |
The scribe gets his own back when he confronts Pally at his squalid flat and bamboozles him with a Mark Caine tale before hurling him through some furniture.
Author! Author!
Vote For Caine was another of Jason's books to get the movie treatment. Pally walked out.
Epilogue To Hong Kong is all explained in the prologue.
