Production order: 06 | ITC code: 5101 | Airdate order: 01 | DVD order: 01
Writer: Gerald Kelsey
Director: Cyril Frankel
Where & When
Astrair Golf-Alpha-Zulu-Echo-Bravo, Karachi to London: July 17th
The Inexplicable Mystery
An Astra Airlines flight from Karachi approaches Heathrow airport, its pilots and passengers pleased that they are thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Their arrival causes consternation on the ground, however, and when the plane touches down the reason becomes clear. They're not half an hour early - they're six days late!
The Mystery Explained
The plane was hijacked and diverted to Albania in a plot to brainwash British government official Hallet into handing over military secrets to the East. The stewardess - and girlfriend of Walsham, a British spy on the flight who is really a double agent - drugged all the in-flight meals, and then pilot Borowitsch took over the controls while accomplice Durres acted as navigator. The passengers and crew were kept drugged and unconscious for the six days it took for Hallet to be 're-educated', then Borowitsch took the plane back up, set the autopilot, and let the passengers and crew wake up without any memory of what had happened.
Review
'Six Days' is an odd choice with which to start the series. On the one hand, you can see why it was picked; the central mystery is intriguing with a solution that makes sense (within the bounds of the genre), jet travel at the time was still exotic enough to make for an interesting backdrop, there's plenty of action, violence and danger, and the female lead parades around in her underwear on the flimsiest of pretexts, all of which would be strong selling points to a television executive.
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| In the days before the internet, this was practically hardcore. |
But on the other, and unusually for an ITC show of the late Sixties, there's no setup. Department S's contemporaries, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Champions, both had pilot episodes that established the premise and characters, explaining that one is about a detective whose recently-murdered partner comes back as a ghost to help him solve cases and the other concerns a team of three secret agents who gain superpowers.
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| "So unless I've read this wrong, one of us is a ghost with superpowers." |
Unless the audience in 1969 had read the pre-publicity material, however, Department S's setup was limited to the flash-frames of teletypes in the super-stylised opening credits, which on a typical 1960s TV might not even have been clearly legible. Instead, viewers are dropped into the story with no knowledge of the premise, or even the identities of the lead characters. Given that this is the first time they'd seen the show, they would have to be paying really close attention to realise that one of the passengers on the plane is also credited in the title sequence. Sir Curtis doesn't get a namecheck until six minutes into the episode, Stewart (first seen only from behind and then also partially obscured by another character) has to wait another two minutes before his formal introduction (by surname only), Annabelle shows up over eight minutes in but isn't named in dialogue at all (!), while to meet Jason - the first-billed star of the show - the viewer has to wait almost ten minutes, a full fifth of the episode, and even then doesn't learn who he is until the seventeenth minute. As for any explanation that he's actually a bestselling thriller author who works for Interpol on a freelance basis... well, you have to do your own detective work based on Annabelle's mockery of Jason near the end!
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| Special effects by Industrial Light and Tragic. |
This lack of background on the characters or situation dates the show as much as Jason's fashion sense or the surprisingly traffic-free streets of London. If Department S were remade today, it's almost certain that the first episode would be an origin story a la Castle, showing how Jason King became involved with the Department by getting mixed up in - or even the prime suspect of - a bizarre crime, which he solves by using his intuition, imagination and esoteric knowledge, aided by Annabelle's forensic data analysis and Stewart's dogged detective work. For that matter, the show as a whole would likely make full use of ongoing story arcs, recurring characters and continuity breadcrumbs; all the tools of the 21st century television writer's trade. But in 1969, with ITC's sausage-factory mentality behind it, Department S suffers perhaps more than most from the mindset of the time that episodes ought to be viewable in any order and the viewer shouldn't need (or be expected) to remember anything that might have happened previously. Each episode stands in total isolation, save for a single non-regular character who makes a repeat appearance. (Returning actors are another thing entirely.)
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| To The Manor Born... and to the runway died. |
As for the story itself? It's a solid enough debut, the Cold War brainwashing concept a little risible now but in keeping with the show's arrival at the tail end of the Sixties 'spy-fi' trend exemplified by the likes of James Bond, Danger Man, The Avengers, The Man From UNCLE and ITC's own The Champions. The villains' plan may be flawed - the sheer strangeness of the plane's late return would guarantee an investigation, which is the last thing any spy trying to implant a sleeper agent should want - but it unfolds well enough with no implausible leaps of logic by any of the detectives, and all three leads contribute to the breaking of the case with their own distinct skills.
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| Making The Champions look like chumpions. |
Stewart shows that while he may be the most traditional investigator on the team, he's far from a conventional plodder; trying to crack a suspect's resolve by sending an airliner into a crash dive before donning a parachute and threatening to bail out without him is not exactly standard interrogation procedure! Annabelle too proves her worth by locating the hijacked flight's unscheduled stopover, then later showing off her lockpicking and improvisational skills to break into Walsham's flat and bluff her way out of it when discovered - to say nothing of saving the life of the team's third member.
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| "Really, Jason? A whoopee cushion?" |
But even in just a single episode, Jason King is established as a different kind of hero. His clothing hasn't yet reached the outrageous peacockery that it will later in the series, and especially his own spin-off adventures, but the mere fact that he drives a Bentley to a stakeout hints as to how detached he is from the mundanity of regular police work. He's also Dorothy Parker-ishly bitchy towards Annabelle (possibly a reflection of Wyngarde's own feelings towards Rosemary Nicols, whom he reportedly disliked), and in his one action scene gets knocked out by a single blow - hardly the typical tough guy of a regular adventure show. Yet this, allied with Peter Wyngarde's unfailingly magnetic performance, is what makes Jason stand out. No mere Bond clone, he's already on his way to becoming one of the most unlikely sex symbols of the era.
Fancy Quotes
Jason: One of the cankers of science is its incestuous obsession with itself - science for science's sake.
Annabelle: Science isn't doing too badly.
Jason: Enlighten me.
Annabelle: The mud from the underside of the fuselage contains a red volcanic dust.
Jason: Astounding.
Annabelle: It didn't come from Karachi, or Rome, or any other airport where they officially landed.
Jason: So all we have to do is look for an airport that's buried with red volcanic dust.
Annabelle: [smugly] I found it.
Jason: Fancy.
[To prove that Borowitsch is a trained pilot, Stewart punches out the captain and sends the plane into a dive, then dons a parachute!]
Borowitsch: What are you doing?
Stewart: She's all yours.
Borowitsch: No, you are crazy! I tell you, I am no pilot!
Stewart: Then your luck's run out.
Borowitsch: No, it is a trick. You would not kill a man!
Stewart: He's expendable. We play for high stakes.
[Walsham's girlfriend Janet finds a near-nude (and blonde!) Annabelle in her boyfriend's bedroom]
Janet: Who are you?
Annabelle: I might ask you the same question.
Janet: What are you doing here?
Annabelle: Use your imagination!
Cheers!
• Starting as he means to go on, Jason has a glass of whisky as he tells Annabelle how he found out the backgrounds of Borowitsch and Duras.
• He eases the tedium of listening to the air traffic control tapes with another glass of Scotland's finest.
Fight!
Jason tries to charm Janet into giving the game away by using a risible "Albanian" accent. Amazingly she falls for it, but the returning Walsham doesn't, and he knocks Jason out with a single karate chop. KO!
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| Jason 1, Stewart 0. |
That Looks Familiar
The Department S corridor makes the first of its many, many appearances in the series right after the opening credits as the flight crew walk through the airport. It actually appears to be the only corridor in the whole of Heathrow.
Stewart chases a suspect along this distinctive covered passage, with which we'll become very familiar: the Ancillary Building at Borehamwood Studios.
