The Avengers Forever: Website News Archive

	Website News Archive January 2000

New trivia. Tony McKay passed along an interesting continuity problem for "Take Me To Your Leader," 30 January.

New toys. Amazon.com has some model vehicles that are very similar to ones that appeared in The Avengers. See the Toy Page for details. Added 29 January.

John Franklyn-Robbins New Fan Tale. Francis Hui describes meeting Linda Thorson, added 27 January. There's also a bit added to the International Scene: Argentina concerning dubbing. Plus, Gilbert, the unbilled Ministry official who visits Steed in "The Cybernauts," has been identified by John Costello (a recent photo of the actor, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, is at right).

New actor bios & other stuff. Pete stopped by on 26 January with a bushel of new material. New bios include Kenneth J. Warren, David Bauer, Lois Maxwell, Harry Landis, Caroline Munro and Norman Chappell, as well as expanded bios for Steven Berkoff and Donald Sutherland. He also passed along a superb bit of trivia about some of the dialogue used in "The Little Wonders." In other news, with the kind permission of DVD guru Jim (the Frog) Taylor, I've added an entire page devoted to the DVD Region System. This should help people who are just getting into DVD to understand some of the issues concerning this new but quickly growing format. Plus, there's a wee blooper added to "The Gravediggers." And finally, a new page has been added to the encyclopædia: AvengerLore, a repository for trivia, legends, rumors, assorted facts, or other interesting bits of semi-useless, hard-to-categorize information (as suggested by David Bruce).

Mission statement. In keeping with the vogue toward the end of the twentieth century, I've added a mission statement to this website on 24 January, lest anyone misinterpret my intentions! As such statements may very likely fall back out of vogue sometime in the twenty-first century, one could accuse me of being a bit anachronistic, but that is also one of the charms of the series, no?

Avengers '64 Videos! A&E has made the first Cathy Gale videos available on NTSC VHS tape and DVD in two sets. Note that the twelve episodes released are from the second half of Season 3; it would seem that A&E is sticking to their naming convention and using the year of original airing—which means the first half of Season 3 and the second half of Season 2 ought to make for one big, strange "Avengers '63" series (strange because it will presumably feature episodes from two different seasons with different titles, etc.), and using this logic, the first half of Season 2 would then be Avengers '62. They seem to be sticking to their reverse-order releasing, too, since they're starting with the last of the Cathy Gale era, just as they did with Emma Peel. Also following previous form, A&E is obviously making the most of Honor's (ahem) attributes as a marketing tool on their colorful, excellent packaging. At any rate, these sets now make a number of outstanding Cathy Gale episodes available for Americans to see for the first time in nearly a decade, and the first time ever to own. See this page for details on the videos, ordering info and shipping dates as of 23 January. (Thanks, Bill!)

More guest actor bios. Mark Stevens is lending Pete Stampede a hand with the Canadian crew. Look for two new mini-bios added for guest actors appearing in "Complex." Also, a visitor from Germany takes issue with the German title for "Noon Doomsday" as listed in the (much-bedraggled of late) Dossier.

From A&E's Box. Inspired by comments from visitor Mike Cheyne, I've added the synopses from A&E's video packaging to all of the Emma Peel episode reviews on 18 January. If nothing else, they add a spark of color to the pages, particularly the monochromes.

Book blooper parade. Caroline and Mark Wightman have passed along a heap of errors noted in Dossier (plus one more for Toby Miller), added 17 January.

A new metaphor. A new visitor to the site, who at first didn't even like it that much, casually remarked that (based on the fact that it has more pages than many books) it ought to be called a "virtual encyclopædia." Well, I liked the idea so much that, as of 16 January, many of the site's graphics and some pages have been redesigned to achieve this metaphor. I think that it adds a certain "warmth" to the site. Thanks, Fran!

New page: International Scene! The Avengers was a hit all over the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, it still is. Thanks to a flood of response from fans around the globe, this new page, added 15 January, will highlight the show in the international scene.

Spanish Episode Titles. Visitors from Argentina, where the show is being broadcast, have actually been competing to provide episode titles in Spanish as well as other information. Spanish titles have been added for all Season 4 episodes as of 10 January. Season 5 titles are beginning to trickle in.

Avenging Vehicles updates. I knew that as soon as I posted a major update to the Avenging Vehicles section, there would be automotive aficionados champing at the bit to offer more details. I was right. Revised information on Steed's first two vehciles, as well as Cathy's only two, has been added 10 January.

AND TO START OFF THE NEW YEAR/MILLENIUM...

HEY, WHAT HAPPENED? THE SITE WAS OFFLINE FOR A WEEK! Answer: Transferring a domain from one ISP to another should only take 24 hours, 48 tops. But all parties involved conspired to prevent this from happening. If you emailed me between 2 and 7 January 2000, the email is lost.

BUT you didn't come here to read the ranting of an old fart who believes that "tech help" is an oxymoron. So, here's what's new. The site may look pretty much the same, but rather than give it just a style makeover for the new millennium, I concentrated on enhancing what matters—the content.

OVER 100 NEW PAGES.
OVER 150 NEW IMAGES.
EXPANSION. REORGANIZATION.
PLUS MORE ON THE WAY.

More and better-organized biographies. Pete Stampede's love of the subject of television personalities—plus loads more new material he's provided—inspired me to split his guest actor biographies off of the already burgeoning episode review pages and onto their own pages, complete with "mug shots" and new information. They are accessed three ways: through linked actor names in the review page credits, through linked actor names in the guest actor directories, and directly—you can scroll through them all since they have their own navigation links. The regular cast and character bios have all been updated, and Brian Clemens now has a biography. The reorganized Who's Who??? page provides access to all of this, plus revised Production Credit pages, too!

Book reviews. The mini-reviews have been pulled from the merchandise pages, revised and expanded (complete with bowler ratings), and placed on a new page of their own, the Bookshelf.

Expanded automobile index. Avenging Vehicles has been reorganized, now split into five pages, with loads of images and more information.

New merchandise offerings. Lots of new videos added featuring all of the regular cast, original and new, plus videos from Brian Clemens. Start with the reorganized Merchandise site.

More images. The increased server space has allowed me to add lots of new images, most of which are divided between the revised vehicles pages and Pete's new guest actor bio pages. And all of the episode review page images for the latter half of Season 4 have been updated.

More AvengerNews. The news certainly didn't stop during the holiday season. Catch up on the latest.

And finally, Thank you! Obviously the site regulars made good use of the Amazon.com links over the holidays. The response was unbelievable, and the site has officially broken even. It's nice to know the system works. Please keep it up!