Man in the Mirror

After taking snaps at a fair, Venus Smith's camera and brooch are stollen, she had however developed the roll of film from that night, she discovers she's snapped a man, who's supposed to be dead.

There are some really nice elements in the mix here, but ultimately it just doesn't quite come together, it just feels as though something is missing.

I believe this is the penultimate episode for Julie Stevens as Venus Smith, I haven't always been blown away by her episodes, nothing to do with her acting skills, she's good, it's just that some of her episodes have felt a little flat, sadly this one does as well, I find myself missing Blackman.

Some good fight sequences, some of the more realistic looking ones from this series.

Some more horrendous music to endure, I love the sixties, but some of that music was horribly corny.

6/10.

"Man in the Mirror" was the fifth of the six episodes featuring Julie Stevens as nightclub singer Venus Smith, a slight comedown from the previous two. Two songs get shoehorned into this entry, performed in a perfunctory manner at a recording studio, and totally unnecessary. Venus brings Steed's dog Sheba (making its third of five appearances) to a carnival funhouse, taking some pictures that show the face of a recently deceased cypher clerk (Haydn Jones) whose wife (Rhoda Lewis) identified him as a suicide the week before. Steed is assigned to the case by his latest superior, One Six (Michael Gover, who would appear in one other, "A Chorus of Frogs"), and their heated exchanges are easily the standout here. The secret meeting place for One Six turns out to be a strip joint, with a girl named Iris (Frieda Knorr) scaring customers away out front (Steed tells her he'll be back!) Ray Barrett, star of Hammer's 1966 "The Reptile," has no competition as Strong, the head villain, with Julian Somers as Mike Brown, the funhouse owner, and Daphne Anderson as Brown's sneak thief niece Betty. Venus winds up a captive midway through when she foolishly demands some stolen property back, and some eerie atmosphere is generated in the haunted tunnel, populated by skeletons and skulls, and other denizens of death. It's intriguing that this AVENGERS story has something in common with the 1995 James Bond thriller "GoldenEye," as both center around a traitor who fakes his own death, both of whom share the name Trevelyan; otherwise, no connection. The next, and last, episode with Venus Smith would be "A Chorus of Frogs."