646f9e108c Sir Andrew Boyd, the British delegate at a European peace conference has a dream in which he is run over and killed by a car. The dream comes true. The Avengers are charged with the safety of his successor, Lord Melford. He too is beginning to have bad dreams, involving a sinister man who turns out to be a member of the Eastern bloc. There is a plot afoot to derail the conference and Steed and Mrs. Peel intend to foil it. "Death's Door" is another Philip Levene classic, featuring Hammer veteran Clifford Evans ("Dial a Deadly Number" and "Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?") as Sir Andrew Boyd, head of the British delegates for a top secret conference, whose premonitions of death become reality as he is struck by a passing car and killed, just as he mysteriously predicted. Things take an even darker turn when Lord George Melford (Allan Cuthbertson, "The Deadly Air," "Death at Bargain Prices," and "Super Secret Cypher Snatch") takes his place and begins to suffer the same kind of nightmares. Wonderfully atmospheric story, aided by a sterling cast, especially the menacing Marne Maitland, best remembered as Scaramanga's munitions manufacturer in the 1974 Jmaes Bond feature "The Man with the Golden Gun." Also featuring William Lucas ("Invasion of the Earthmen"), Paul Dawkins ("Death on the Slipway" and "Death a La Carte"), Peter Thomas ("Small Game for Big Hunters" and "All Done with Mirrors"), and William Lyon Brown ("Fog"). John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel provide security at a conference intended to "unify" Europe. The discussion is delayed, however, when the British chair panics, and runs away before he even enters the door. His phobia is that he will die at the meeting this resulting from a premonition he had the night before.<br/><br/>The minister is replaced with a good friend of Steed's. He starts having similar supernatural forebodings. This sets off John and Emma into performing dream analysis, with dangerous diagnosis resulting. <br/><br/>By far this is the best of the Color Avengers: all of the Peel's, The King's and the New Avengers. The Producers dropped the formula, including the irksome "Mrs. Peel, we're needed"; kept the wit, and returned to the suspense of the Dr. Cathy Gale era. (Why they did it, is a speculation that I'm not going to delve into at this moment. I'm just glad that they did.)<br/><br/>It's strange watching this episode 50 years after it was produced. This fictitious conference is reminiscent of the real one that set up the EU, the European Union – which as we know didn't occur till the seventies. (No one ran from the door out of fear at the real meeting.) With the struggles over the last five years of Greece, Spain and Italy trying to pull out – and the British public recently voting to dump it – it's clear that the alliance is as fragile today as Phillip Levine wrote it would be in the late sixties. This is clearly one of those science fiction pieces that is so dead on that it is predictive – eerie since its science subject IS premonition.<br/><br/>The production design is sort of hokey, with the obligatory surrealistic images inside the dream world. None of Salvador Dali's films were this iconic, which reveals how over the top the design was. (Was it Christian Metz inspired? Who knows!) It is the only dated part of this story. This lame imagery would become commonplace during the King era.<br/><br/>Unlike the earlier Dr. Gale adventure, "The White Dwarf", Levine balances this procedural so that both Steed and Mrs. Peel uncover important information that could be considered "scientific". Steed is more than just muscle here as he was in the earlier Gale adventure. This is not to say that this makes "Death's Door" better. It just shows how far Steed has come from the out of his league denier of "The White Dwarf" to this embracer of odds. How? Maybe he denies the parapsychology as much as he did the solar big bang theories of the earlier episode. (Steed doesn't strike me as a big statician.) In truth, the development and progression of John Steed from the cad, user and science doubter to Steed the common sense man & loyal friend is probably the underlying appeal of The Avengers' storyline.<br/><br/>This is my first time seeing this episode in thirty years. It really holds up well. I give it a 9.0 even. It has bested time for nearly fifty years. No, it is not as inventive as "The White Dwarf", nor as satisfyingly surreal as "Too Many Christmas Trees", but very thought provoking.
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