The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Series) The Man from THRUSH Affair (1967) User Reviews

Solo Joins THRUSH!

[ShadeGrenade · 10/10 · 17 June 2009]

A pair of U.N.C.L.E. agents have obtained information, but THRUSH gives chase. Luckily the former are driving the U.N.C.L.E. car, so they escape. The evil organisation is up to no good on the Greek island of Irbos.

Solo and agent Petros ( Robert Wolders ) travel there to find out what THRUSH have spent $3 billion on. The local population has been turned into a slave force. They witness the arrival of Filene ( Don Hamner ), a V.I.P. from THRUSH Central. Filene is told by guards to walk the short distance to the base. En route he and Solo fight and the former is killed in a rockfall.

Solo takes Filene's place. The base belongs to one Dr.Killman ( John Larch ) who has been building an earthquake machine for the past thirty years...

Back in Season 1's 'The Double Affair', THRUSH constructed a double of Solo, here he returns the favour by impersonating one of the organisation's efficiency experts. Robert Vaughn brings to 'Filene' the same cool, detached arrogance he later brought to his many villainous roles.

No Illya here; his absence goes curiously unexplained.

John Larch, who plays 'Dr.Killman', was 'MacDonald' in the final 'Matt Helm' picture 'The Wrecking Crew'. The character is a bit of an oddball, referring to himself in the third person and owning a butterfly collection, and one suspects he, like 'Gurnius' in the previous episode, is ready to turn on THRUSH as soon as he feels the time is right. Barbara Luna plays his girlfriend.

It is hard to think the show would be cancelled only four episodes later. On the basis of this alone, it deserved another year at the very least.

Useful, entertaining reminder of tongue-in-cheek 60's spy dramas.

[jamesraeburn2003 · 9/10 · 2 November 2022]

UNCLE chief Mr Waverley (played by Leo G Carroll) assigns Napoleon Solo and a fellow agent, Petros (played by Robert Wolders), to investigate suspected THRUSH activity on a lonely island off Greece. Solo takes the place of a THRUSH official, an "efficiency expert", and discovers that the island has been taken over by mad scientist Dr Killman (played by John Larch) who has developed a machine that can cause devastating earthquakes. THRUSH intends to use it to destroy a major city before holding the world to ransom. Meanwhile, Petros has been captured but Solo is able to save him from execution because he has won the complete confidence of Dr Killman. In addition, he stops the islanders from being used as slave labour to construct the weapon. Solo also discovers that Killman's girlfriend, Marnya (played by Barbara Luna), is the daughter of one of the prisoners who upset Killman and, in consequence, is marked for death. He attempts to reconcile her with her family and friends who have turned against her for siding with the ememy. But for how long will Solo be able to keep up his deception and, ultimately, can he and Petros save the world from Armageddon?

No Illya Kuriyakin this time around, but apart from that this is a highlight of season four and a useful, entertaining reminder of tongue-in-cheek 60's spy dramas with outlandish plots. Napoleon Solo's impersonation of a THRUSH "efficiency expert" is funny and allows for some more serious human drama too where the agent takes advantage of having won the enemy's trust to save the islanders from slavery and inhumane treatment. The climax looks dated - yes! - but in an amusing way and it shows how audiences of the period were invited to suspend their disbelief and ask "What if this really could happen?" And what could be funnier and more gloriously absurd than a madman interrupting the world's TV viewing via satelite to say "This is the voice of Armageddon" and "We will control the world" before being rudely cut off?

The Earthquake Machine

[profh-1 · 9/10 · 5 October 2023]

On a tiny Greek island, Thrush has spent 3 BILLION dollars so that obsessed mad scientist "Dr. Killman" can build a device that-- it turns out late in the story-- can cause earthquakes and destroy major cities, which will allow the crime syndicate to blackmail and take over the world. But Killman's project is running behind schedule, so Thrush sends an efficiency expert, Mr. Filene, to speed things up. There's mutual contempt between the madman and his bosses, so much that he records Filene's voice and sends it to Thrush central for identification. Doing so violated their rules, causing the "Thrush Authority" to announce he's CANCELLING the entire project, and everyone on the island will be killed within 12 hours! But before this happens, "Filene" actually manages to speed up the project, via the simple act of having the slaves working in shifts so as to not tire themselves nearly to death. ("You should have thought of that yourself long before this.", Filene tells Killman.) So now Killman is thrilled with Filene-- until 3 other Thrush agents show up to announce that "Filene" is really UNCLE's #1 operative-- Napoleon Solo. "OOPS!"

There's so much more to this plot, but just what I've already described would be enough to fill a feature film. This is genuinely one of the VERY BEST episodes of the show I've ever seen. It's criminal that by the time it aired, UNCLE had no doubt already been cancelled and there were only 4 more weeks to go.

Top of the guest list is John Larch as "Killman". As I mostly remember him from the movie DIRTY HARRY (1971), it's hilarious that in the MAD magazine parody of that movie, the hero is named "Killerman". We've seen lots of mad scientists on this show, but how many of them refer to themselves in the third person?

Barbara Luna is "Marnya", Killman's reluctant girlfriend who betrayed her own people into slavery and now deeply regrets it. It takes most of the story before she comes to realize that "Filene" (Solo) is actually on her side. I'll always remember her for THE OUTER LIMITS ("It Came Out Of The Woodwork") and STAR TREK ("Mirror Mirror").

Jan Arvan is "Thrush Authority", who is in too much of a HURRY to take over the world, and his own violent mood-swings wind up sabotaging his organization's biggest effort to date. Are we to believe this guy might actually have been Thrush #1? He seems kind of non-descript to me, but then Thrush was often portrayed as operating like a modern-day international corporation more than a run-of-the-mill crime syndicate. Arvan had, oddly enough, played 2 earlier roles on UNCLE, and his portrayal in this role makes it seem like they could have cast anybody in it. But maybe that was the idea?

A surprise for me was in the pre-credits scene where 2 UNCLE agents we've never seen before (or after) get ahold of some info, but are tracked down to a photo lab while in the process of reporting to Waverly. One of them was played by Jack Bannon, who I recognized from 114 episodes of LOU GRANT, where he played reporter "Art Donovan".

I'm guessing David McCallum had the week off. It happened... even on THE AVENGERS.

My favorite moment in the story is when Killman is SO obsessed with getting his project completed AT ALL COSTS, he has his men KILL the 3 Thrush agents, even though they just told him that the man he's taken into his confidence was Solo. That's when I thought to myself, "This is BRILLIANT!"

As I've found myself saying in a few other instances... "THIS is NO TIME for the show to be cancelled!"