The Avengers Forever: Website News Archive

	Website News Archive June 2001

Rest of Tara Kings coming soon in France. 30 June. 5 September 2001 is the release date posted at Amazon for the balance of the Tara King season videos. Also, all episodes will be available on DVD and VHS. Pre-order here. (DVDs available in sets and individual volumes; VHS in 3-tape sets only. With thanks to John Howells for the heads-up.) Oh, and here's a new website to check out: Quite, quite mad for The Avengers. The webmaster explains that the small tribute is under construction, so do forgive the mess and watch your step.

Jumping the gun? 28 June. A&E has confirmed that, unlike their European counterpart, they will be releasing the Tara King episodes in UK transmission order. Which means that I may have more or less shot myself in the foot by reordering them in production order. At this point, however, I'm not changing them back. A&E also indicated they have not decided when they will be releasing the remaining Cathy Gale episodes.

New site and other stuff. 25 June. Sam McCallie has launched The Nitpicker's Guide to The Avengers, a great way to get a fun fix of fluffed lines, continuity errors and other bloopers. Since it is so new, there are lots of opportunities for visitors to contribute, so click on over! In other news, thanks to Holly Keichel and Joan Stout, there are two new Trivia Questions.

TheAvengers.TV continues growing! 18 June. It is with great pleasure I welcome aboard Mike Noon and his two indispensable sites: Noon Doomsday and The Avengers Illustrated. (Mike was suffering from similar "free webspace" troubles that had Alan and Alys Hayes constantly scrambling for new hosts. Now Mike's sites have a permanent home.) Not only will you want to update your links, but you'll also want to jump right over to his sites and check them out—Noon Doomsday in particular has had a makeover, with a new look and new content. Congratulations, mate! You'll also notice a makeover for TheAvengers.TV main page in order to squeeze in all of the sites more efficiently.

Prepare for a major reorganization. 14 June. After much deliberating (literally for years), I have decided to reorganize the Tara King episodes into production order. I fully realize this will mess up more than a few fans' episode indices and likely get some folks royally steamed, but I did it for the following (hopefully rational) reasons. There has been a fair amount of discussion among fans regarding the fact that production order allows one to better follow and understand the changes that took place during that rocky season. I apologize in advance to those people who have followed my site's organization religiously, but I believe it will be better this way in the final analysis. By the way, you'll notice the ordering oddity wherein "The Forget-Me-Knot" is second in the list after "Invasion of the Earthmen," which creates an obvious continuity problem that video distributors solved by including "Knot" with the Emma Peel sets. In other news, the Avengers fan network has once again responded in record time and answered Jackie Greenberg's trivia question regarding "The Correct Way to Kill."

Back to the site. 13 June. Finally getting around to some long-overdue updates. Thanks to John MacDonald, the Season 5A, 5B & 6A first US rerun dates have been added to the Emma Peel US TX and Tara King US TX pages of Appendix A. Dustin Wallace provided the lyrics for two songs about Emma Peel. Gregory McVey-Russel has spotted a similarity between "What the Butler Saw" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station." David Morrill has provided the following interesting link. Sue Lloyd's bio was updated by Jeff Rosenthal. Stephen Brooke spotted a curiosity in "Conspiracy of Silence." Lots of visitors have been providing some lovely feedback, including the grandson of Ray McAnally. And Jackie Greenberg of Pennsylvania wonders, in "The Correct Way to Kill," what does Emma say to Steed when she leaves with Ivan?

The word from Contender. 8 June. Good news to all who have problems with the Definitive Dossier Set 1: the DVDs are to be remastered in the UK. Anyone who wishes to exchange them for replacements may do so at no cost, and may return only the discs themselves to save postage. One minor wrinkle is that Set 2 is being placed on hold until it too is remastered, but it should be worth the wait. This report is in advance of a formal announcement from Contender; keep your eyes on this space for further reports. Eternal thanks must be given to Lee Binding, who patiently endured the vitriol of frustrated fans and convinced the powers that be it was in everyone's best interests to stop press. Thanks also to Alan and Alys Hayes, founders of TheAvengers.TV Forum, unquestionably the force responsible for Contender's landmark decision.

New DVD woes. 6 June. Contender's much-anticipated release of their DVDs has hit a snag, to put it mildly. Several issues have arisen: First and most troubling, the tag scene for "Escape in Time" would appear to be missing. Canal+, from whom Contender received the masters, claims it does not exist—which is a patent lie, since it appears on the A&E DVDs and just about every VHS tape ever made. Second, a few certain players apparently have a difficult time playing the DVDs—there have been reports of everything from French captions that keep reappearing to whole episodes that are rendered as colored squares or won't play at all. However, the "problem players" would seem to be in the minority, as there are plenty of reports of perfect playback with terrific image quality—missing tag notwithstanding.

That the home country of the show is the last to get DVDs makes a bad situation seem worse! But take heart. Contender has been listening very closely to fans via TheAvengers.TV Forum, and may be making some decisions about how to deal with the problems. I encourage all fans—even my fellow Americans—to join in the discussions: the UK deserves the same quality products that the US has had since 1998, and the more voices that are heard, the more likely something positive may result. As an additional incentive to get Americans involved in the discussions, be aware that Contender's DVDs have a number of "extras" that A&E's do not ("The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse," for instance). More discussion may bring pressure to bear on A&E to include such extras in upcoming releases! Please join in at TheAvengers.TV Forum. Thank you.

A brilliant new light on the internet! 2 June. It is with immense pleasure that I announce a stunning new Avengers website has joined TheAvengers.TV: Los Vengadores, the internet's first Avengers website in Spanish! Designed by Carlos Pagés (Avengers Forever regulars will recognize him as the creator of great Avengers themes and wallpapers) and co-written by a troupe of five talented fans from Argentina (most of whom I've met), the site is a veritable feast of radiant text and brilliant original artwork.

You'll notice right away the "look and feel" of Los Vengadores is very similar to that of The Avengers Forever. This was a deliberate design decision to make visitors familiar with my site feel comfortable navigating around Carlos' site. But this is where the similarity stops; the all-original text—over 100 pages of it—and Carlos' jaw-dropping artwork make my own site look positively dull by comparison! Even if you cannot read Spanish, you owe it to yourself to browse through Los Vengadores! While you're there, send Carlos an email—he has no trouble with English and he loves hearing from fans. Hats off to Carlos and his crew, and welcome aboard!

In other news, concurrent with Carlos' new site, The Avengers Forum has become TheAvengers.TV Forum in honor of its official inclusion in TheAvengers.TV website family. Thanks to Alan and Alys for the suggestion.