d6a2afd33b Venus Smith&#39;s camera and film are stolen at a fair. When Venus develops the one roll remaining in her possession she discovers she has taken a photograph of a man thought to have committed suicide days earlier. Agent Trevelyan has been found dead on the railway tracks; a note on his body suggests he killed himself because his wife was leaving him but because of his knowledge of codes Steed must make certain he wasn&#39;t compromised. The only clue is a ticket to a funfair; not the sort of place one would expect to appeal to Trevelyan. Steed gets his friend Venus Smith to go there are take a few pictures while pretending to be looking for a dog. She takes a few pictures before being thrown off the site; she doesn&#39;t realise it but she accidentally took Trevelyan&#39;s picture in a mirror. Those hiding Trevelyan attempt to protect their secret by stealing the camera but Venus has already had the pictures developed. Now Steed must work out whether Trevelyan is a traitor or has been kidnapped. Before the truth comes out Venus is captured and then both of them are in real danger.<br/><br/>This isn&#39;t the best of the Venus Smith episodes but it is still rather fun. There is a good central premise with some suitably unpleasant villains not all of whom are obviously villains and some who aren&#39;t quitebadthey initially seem. Julie Stevens does a fine jobVenus; a character who has developed somewhat over the course of her episodes she is now slightly less naïve even if she still manages to get captured. She has a couple of songs which to be honest are a bit of a distractionthey take place in a recording studio rather than somewhere involved in the case. The rest of the cast are pretty solid too. The finale is fairly exciting although it ends a bit too abruptly before switching to the epilogue in Steed&#39;s flat. Overall a decent enough episode that could have been a bit better. Steed catches hell from his latest superior, &quot;One Six&quot;, for showing up late for a briefing, and for having a &quot;lone wolf&quot; attitude. A cipher clerk has (ALLEGEDLY!) committed suicide, and Steed&#39;s job is to find out if it was really that or murder. Re-doing all the secret codes (or not) hangs in the balance, though Steed wisely suggests they should probably be changed anyway.<br/><br/>Now, because Steed found a ticket for a &quot;funfair&quot; (combination penny arcade &amp; haunted house) in the dead man&#39;s effects, he convinces (CONS!) his attractive singer friend Venus Smith into taking his dog Sheba for a walk there, and snapping some pictures while she&#39;s at it. Andluck would have it, WHO should turn up in one of the photos, but the man who supposedly COMMITTED SUICIDE a week earlier! <br/><br/>I&#39;ll be honest here… while I find myself getting into these early videotaped stories more and more, even I found this one a bit on the dull side. Had this been done on film (and possibly on location), the funfair at the very least could have made it quite visually interesting. But on video in a cramped studio, it&#39;s reduced to being a too-serious, somewhat twisted character study. <br/><br/>A few bits of business involve, will the wife of the funfair owner run off with the foreign spy when he gets the traitor out of the country? Is the wife of the traitor being up-front with Steed after she confides that she knows her husband is alive? And why DID Venus go back to the funfair ON HER OWN, anyway? <br/><br/>As usual for these 6 oddball episodes, it&#39;s Venus Smith that makes it worth sitting through. By this point, it&#39;s clear she knows what Steed does for a living, they just don&#39;t discuss it. &quot;I believe you– I BELIEVE YOU!! –THOUSANDS wouldn&#39;t.&quot; (Hilarious.) So when she finds the recording studio has been burgled while she was working, or when someone later starts pointing a gun in her face, she&#39;s notsurprisedshe might have been a few stories ago. WORRIED, yes, but not surprised.<br/><br/>Steed shows a lot of what appears to be very genuine warm affection for her. I have no trouble understanding that. The more I watch her episodes, the more I find myself thinking, of all the &quot;Avengers girls&quot;, Venus is the one I&#39;d probably most like to have for a girlfriend.<br/><br/>Among the guest cast are Ray Barrett (the voice of &quot;Commander Shore&quot; on STINGRAY and &quot;John Tracy&quot; on THUNDERBIRDS)the villain, and David Graham (&quot;Dr. Beaker&quot; on SUPERCAR, &quot;Prof. Matic&quot; on FIREBALL XL5, various voices on STINGRAY, &quot;Gordon&quot;, &quot;Tracy&quot; and &quot;Parker&quot; on THUNDERBIRDS, and Professor Kerensky in the Tom Baker-Lala Ward DOCTOR WHO story, &quot;City Of Death&quot;)Venus&#39; record Producer.
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