User Reviews

THE MISSING LINK is a pretty interesting episode of the Colonel March TV show, at least for this viewer; I've always been interested in prehistoric skeletons, the Piltdown Man hoax, etc. and this skirts familiar territory. The plot is straightforward - a museum housing a rare and contested specimen known as the 'Missing Link' is broken into and the skull stolen - but the plot thickens when it becomes apparent that the skull wasn't there in the first place.

Various human intrigue surfaces, and it's left to March and Ames to unpick the plot strands and work out what really happened. Although THE MISSING LINK lacks the kind of recognisable faces in the cast that made other episodes interesting, the story is enough to see this one through and the life-or-death climax is a fun, pulp-style one.

Skullduggery is afoot at a Museum when a priceless and rare skull, that of Damascus man, a key figure in evolutionary terms is stolen.

It's a decent episode, if not one of the best. It has a Man from Uncle vibe to it, opposed to a traditional case for Scotland Yard. You can guess pretty quickly who the miscreant here is, said person(s) gives themself away in spectacular fashion.

It always surprises me how much content they managed to pack in to these episodes, they're only thirty minutes long, but they're so rich with characters and story, even the lesser episodes such as this one are still good. Karloff as always is a delight.

Helen Cherry is delightful as Miss Innes, a quality actress.

It's a decent epsiode, 6/10.

Episode 20, "The Missing Link" begins as a guard (Douglas Herald) prevents Tom Grafton (Peter Coke) from stealing a skull called 'Damascus Man,' known around England as 'The Missing Link,' from the museum owned by Sir Henry Danier (Stuart Lindsell). Sir Henry recognizes Grafton as a chemist working with Evelyn Innes (Helen Cherry), who believes that Danier's 'Damascus Man' is a fraud, and was subsequently fired by Danier when she sought to disprove his discovery. Scotland Yard is shocked to learn that the attempted theft failed to come off because the precious skull was already missing! Braden (Joseph Tomelty), the museum curator, tells Colonel March of their expedition to Syria that uncovered the skull, and how a third member died in a landslide. The climax finds our heroes caught in a sealed room pumped with poison gas, with Inspector Ames (Ewan Roberts) saving the day by cracking the safe!

The skull of the Damascus Man, commonly called 'The Missing Link' is stolen from the Danier Museum. A man and a woman are fleeing from the museum and the guard, who doesn't see the woman, takes a shot at the man. I was surprised that the guard actually had a gun and moreover actually fired at the man. Later, Sir Henry Danier, owner of the museum and discoverer of the Damascus Man (a discovery that earned Danier his knighthood) identifies the young man as a chemist, Tom Grafton. The woman who got away is Evelyn Inness, Danier's research assistant who he had just fired. The couple claim that the skull had already been stolen by someone else and further, Innes claims that the skull was a fake and that she tried to tell Danier this and that's why he fired her. The museum's curator provides March with some background information on the expedition that led to the discovery of the skull and that one of the members of the expedition had died before the discovery was made. While a solid enough episode, there is nothing particularly special or interesting about it except for the scene where Ames and March are trapped in a locked room with poison gas flowing into it. Nonetheless, a fairly pedestrian outing.

Skullduggery at the museum when the skull of the Damascus Man is stolen. Commonly regarded as the missing link.

Colonel March is called in to assist Inspector Ames when one man is apprehended. Later his girlfriend Miss Inness hands herself in.

Both claim that the skull is a clever fake and Sir Henry Danier who took all the glory for discovering it knows this.

You have to swallow a bit that a skull was validated without much peer review.

There is blatant sexist attitudes towards Miss Inness. Then there is the latitude shown to her boyfriend for such a serious theft. No one handcuffed him as he took a swipe at Sir Henry.

The episode those packs a punch with a few twists although one of the baddie is obvious.