Avengers '66: Vol. 1
"Where have all the martlets gone?" That's the not particularly  intriguing mystery that gentleman spy John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and his partner,  Mrs. Emma Peel (Diana Rigg), root out in "Silent Dust," one of three  episodes on this DVD from the 1966 season ofThe Avengers. It has something to do with a fertilizer that "went wrong" and a plot to defoliate all of England "if necessary." A highlight is a wounded Steed's delirious fantasy in which a mustachioed Mrs. Peel, garbed in Old West duds and clutching a jug of Red Eye, removes a bullet. The climactic chase has horsebacked bad guys tallyhoing after Mrs. Peel, giving new meaning to the phrase "fox hunt." "Room Without a View" is better, as Steed and Mrs. Peel check out a hotel in which seven guests--all physicists--have mysteriously disappeared from room 612. Steed gets the episode's best line. He informs  Mrs. Peel that a by-the-book bureaucrat requires everything in triplicate. Regarding his ravishing partner, he smiles, "I wonder what he'll think of you." In "Small Game for Big Hunters," Steed and Mrs. Peel do the voodoo that they do so well. Local farmers are in comas. Is it "the curse that follows one across continents"? Why has the Kalayan jungle been re-created in the English countryside? And what's with those incessant and infernal tribal drums? James Villers makes a diabolical villain as hunter Simon "That's not all I've shot" Trent. All three episodes are in black and white.--Donald Liebenson