User Reviews

I remember I did not like this episode when I first saw it when I was 9 or 10. No overseas action, no quirky villains, not much of Sharon or Richard and no jokes.

Seeing it again two or three times in the last dozen years it now seems like one of the best episodes. The obvious comparisons are with the Prisoner and Man in a Suitcase which were made by the same company but there are echoes too of The Ipcress File and The Manchurian Candidate ( and I suppose 1984 and even the Trial). But it is well done and Colin Blakely is superb as the interrogator whilst Stuart Damon - who can sometimes be a bit hammy- plays it pretty well too.

I don't mind that there is little of superpowers- this show , like Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), is often better when the daft, if enjoyable, premise is not too high in the mix. I think there are episodes I prefer such as the Fanatics and Nutcracker but this is definitely one of the better ones.

It is common practice in a long running television series to try and reduce production costs by making what is called a 'bottle' show, one composed mainly of clips from previous instalments. 'The Interrogation' is just such an episode. It features clips from 'The Beginning', 'A Case Of Lemmings', 'The Invisible Man', and 'Operation Deep-Freeze', stock footage of Hong Kong, and newly-shot scenes featuring the regular cast and guest-star Colin Blakely.

NEMESIS agent Craig Stirling is trapped in a strange room from which there is no escape, where he is ruthlessly interrogated by an unnamed man ( Blakely ), who wants to know all about 'the Retford case'. Stirling is being broken a bit at a time. The water is drugged, and the exit turns out to be fake. The only people who can help him are Richard and Sharon, but they dare not intervene for fear of revealing the existence of their super powers...

One of the best episodes of I.T.C.'s 'Man In A Suitcase' was 'Brainwash'. 'The Interrogation' has virtually the same plot, and Blakely played an interrogator in that too. It is easily Stuart Damon's finest work on the show, and Blakely gives him powerful support as the leather-jacketed, bespectacled captor. Dennis Spooner's well-written script has a strong 'Prisoner' feel. It is the ending which makes the story, though. Stirling has attracted the interest of the interrogator because he has completed so many successful missions using his super powers. As the Interrogator notes: "Even a double agent could not get the results you get!". As this is largely Craig's show, there is not much much for the others to do, but there is a good scene with Richard and Sharron demanding that Tremayne tell them where their colleague is. 'Bottle' shows tend to go out near the end of a series, but this went out mid-way through the show's original U.K. run. It was later combined with 'The Beginning' to form a feature film entitled 'Legend Of The Champions'.

Well directed by Cyril Frankel.

Craig awakens to find himself held prisoner by an unknown man in an unknown location. He is drugged and interrogated. He is repeatedly asked about the details of his most recent mission. Craig is able to resist, but for how long?

I'll keep this short. As my rating would indicate, I am not a fan of The Interrogation. The whole plot doesn't make sense given what we've seen in prior episodes or what would come after. I don't see any way that Craig (or even Richard and Sharon for that matter) would have stayed on with Nemesis after this episode. I could easily see all three walking out in protest. I know they have a certain amount of loyalty, but loyalty is two way street. Also, as I've said any number of times, I prefer episodes where all three are involved. For all practical purposes, Richard and Sharon are not in The Interrogation.

I will say this, however, Stuart Damon is very good in The Interrogation. It's probably his best work in the entire series. And Colin Blakely, the unknown interrogator, is just as good. It's some of the best acting you'll find in The Champions. Too bad it comes in an episode I care so little for.

To get straight to it, Nemesis is attempting to find out why Stirling is so impossibly brilliant at his work, so they interrogate him in an episode that might have fit in well with The Prisoner series. It mostly makes sense, but the point of Stirling's resistance to the interrogation is to both hide what he knows about his last job (he doesn't realize he's being interrogated by his own organization) and to hide his superpowers.

And that's where it fell down. At one point he uses his super strength to break through metal door hinges in an escape attempt. Right there he's given away a superpower with clear evidence of his ability left behind; yet somehow the folk doing the interrogation fail to notice the implications of ruined steel door. Worse, they appear to have anticipated the attempt, because the door leads to an immediate dead end. You'd have to assume the hinges were made to fail under perfectly normal human tugging, but if they'd been that fragile, Stirling would have noticed that during the attempt. It doesn't quite work.

The other thing the story fluffs over - this is treatment by an employer that would not have flown even in the 60's. Stirling should have, and in character, would have, quit after this and used his powers elsewhere.

Also, this is a bottle episode - lots of largely pointless and somewhat annoying flashbacks to previous scenes to pad out the show. On the plus side, both the interrogator and Stirling had good lines and the interrogator was played very well.

It's an episode that had to exist - it's not reasonable that the Champions would have had a series of impossible successes and no one would have wondered at it - and if they'd just handled the episode a little bit better it would have been fine.