The Unorthodox Shepherd

"The Unorthodox Shepherd"
Joe 90 episode
Episode no. Season 01
Episode 13
Directed by Ken Turner
Written by Tony Barwick
Cinematography by Paddy Seale
Editing by Harry MacDonald
Production code 08
Original air date 22 December 1968
Guest appearance(s)

Voices of:
Gary Files as
The Reverend Joseph Shepherd
Police Constable Lewis
David Healy as
Kline
Martin King as
Mason

Episode chronology

"The Unorthodox Shepherd" is the 13th episode of Joe 90, a British 1960s Supermarionation television series co-created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Written by Tony Barwick and directed by Ken Turner, it was first broadcast on 22 December 1968 on ATV. In this Christmas-themed episode, the discovery of counterfeit dollar bills sees WIN investigating an unusual suspect – a church vicar. "The Unorthodox Shepherd" incorporates live-action location filming to an extent that was unprecedented for an Anderson production, and influenced the hybrid format of the following, final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service (1969).

Plot

A series of forged United States dollar bills have been traced to an unlikely counterfeiter – the Reverend Joseph Shepherd, vicar of the village church St David's. WIN's suspicions are raised, and Professor McClaine (voiced by Rupert Davies), Sam Loover (Keith Alexander) and Joe 90 (Len Jones) are dispatched to investigate in the days building up to Christmas. Equipped with the brain impulses of a World Bank vice president, Joe confirms that the bills have been printed within the last two weeks, despite the facts that the last official printing in Washington, D.C. was 17 years ago and the plates were subsequently destroyed in a fire. The trio decide to confront the Reverend, who is apparently half-deaf, at his vicarage. There, the suspect amazes the WIN agents by identifying the make of Loover's concealed gun based on nothing more than the click of the safety catch.

The Reverend reveals that his deafness is an act, and that the plates were not destroyed – they have been smuggled into Britain by two criminals, Kline and Mason, who are using them to print $6 million in forged bills. The plates arrived in the coffin of Mason's uncle, Clem Mason (known on the West Coast of the United States as a cunning racketeer, Carlo Masoni) who wished to be buried in the village of his birth. Kline and Mason's hideout is the crypt underneath Clem's tomb. To divert attention from the counterfeiting operation, Mason has installed electronic devices inside the church, causing the bells to ring at unusual hours and the superstitious villagers to believe that the building is haunted. The verger, Thomas, has been kidnapped and will be killed if the Reverend betrays Kline and Mason; desperate for money to save St David's from dry rot, he had no option other than to comply.

Loover conceives a plan to thwart Kline and Mason's scheme by using Mason's fears against him. That night, with the $6 million target fast approaching and the church now empty of gadgets, the criminals are puzzled to hear the bells ring out across the grounds. Searching for trespassers, Mason is horrified when Loover, hiding in the darkness with a megaphone, declares himself the spirit of Carlo Masoni and warns that the Angel of Death will shortly arrive to avenge his "desecrated" memory. Holding Thomas at gunpoint, Kline and Mason emerge from the crypt to confront the "ghost"; under Mac's instruction, Joe, wearing a jet pack underneath white robes, takes flight and moves towards them. While Mason flees, Kline fires repeatedly at Joe until he is knocked over. At the Reverend's request, Police Constable Lewis has stationed himself nearby and is on hand to arrest the counterfeiters.

By a snowbound Christmas Day, the combination of two rewards for assisting in the recovery of the plates - £8,000 from WIN and £2,000 from Interpol – has given the Reverend the funds necessary to restore St David's. The episode closes with the sounds of the carol service congregation singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing", the hymn's final lines dubbed over shots of the snow-covered fields surrounding the village.

Production

The exterior and interior of St Mary the Virgin, Harefield, appear frequently in the episode

"The Unorthodox Shepherd" contains extensive location filming of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Harefield, Greater London; the building doubles as St David's, the Reverend Shepherd's parish church.[1] In early 1968, shortly after the completion of shooting for the film Thunderbird 6, episode director Ken Turner and production designer Keith Wilson travelled to the village to carry out a location recce on Church Hill.[1] During pre-production at Century 21 Studios in Slough, Wilson built a scale model of the church's interior for puppet scenes, based on photographs from the recce.[1]

Returning to Harefield, the production staff filmed a life-sized puppet of the villain Mason on the church path, and entered the building to film a series of insert shots.[1][2] After a snowfall, they captured a panning shot of the blanketed village fields for the ending.[1] Clem Mason's monument, concealing an entrance to the counterfeiters' crypt, was based on a block tombstone that Turner and Wilson uncovered during their initial visit to the St Mary the Virgin churchyard.[1][3] In September 1969, the Century 21 crew re-visited the location to film the concluding scenes of the UFO episode "The Square Triangle".[1][3]

Music for "The Unorthodox Shepherd" was recorded in two parts. Church organ and harp music was recorded in a two-hour session on 26 March 1968 at series composter Barry Gray's private studio,[4] the rest of the score, running to two minutes and 24 seconds, in four hours on 10 April at CTS Studio.[5] The score for the episode "Big Fish" also originated from the second session.[5] In a scene deleted from the finished episode, Constable Lewis arrests Mason and Kline following the encounter with the disguised Joe.[1]

Reception

Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, writers of What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson, judge "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to be one of the best episodes of Joe 90, praising it as an example of a spy adventure that "explored the series' unique formula to intriguing effect".[6] The frequency of live-action sequences was received positively by the production staff, who considered the overall effect convincing;[2] Archer and Hearn write that the episode demonstrates the "seamless integration" possible in mixing scale puppetry and live-action settings.[7] In this aspect, "The Unorthodox Shepherd" serves as a precursor to the Andersons' final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service (1969),[2] which combined puppet sequences with more substantial location footage featuring live actors (a hybrid format that, according to Archer and Hearn, "saw Supermarionation through to its natural conclusion").[8]

Alasdair Wilkins of the entertainment website io9 argues that "The Unorthodox Shepherd", besides being "bonkers in the way most Joe 90 episodes are", is "one of the oddest Christmas episodes ever made".[9] He considers it highly innovative in comparison to similarly-themed episodes in earlier Supermarionation productions – namely, "Give or Take a Million" (Thunderbirds) and "A Christmas to Remember" (Stingray).[9] Wilkins describes Mac and Sam's plan involving the Angel costume and the jet pack as "[taking Mason and Kline's] idea of scaring people with a fake haunting and [cranking] it up to 20", also commenting that the dependence on horror tactics in the face of armed opponents constitutes "a seriously insane risk to build a plan around".[9] He ranks "The Unorthodox Shepherd" as "one of the more quietly religious Christmas episodes I've seen, if only because there's no talk of trees or presents, but the story does end with a trip to the church for the Christmas service".[9]

Ian Fryer of FAB magazine compares "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to the series finale of The Secret Service, "More Haste Less Speed", commenting that both episodes "centre on the production of counterfeit dollar bills in old basements, and feature a vicar who isn't what he seems to be."[10] Along with "See You Down There", he perceives "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to be an "early flowering of the whimsy that was to be the defining feature of The Secret Service".[10] The choice of title has been criticised by sources including the website TV Cream[11] and the magazine SFX, the second listing "The Unorthodox Shepherd" as the 21st "worst TV episode title" with a verdict of "bleating rubbish".[12]

The Region 1 Joe 90 DVD box set, released by A&E Home Video, contains an audio commentary for "The Unorthodox Shepherd" with director Ken Turner.[13]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Joe 90 Collector's Edition DVD Box Set: Disc 2 Special Features: "The Unorthodox Shepherd" Location Recce (DVD). London: Carlton. 2002.
  2. 1 2 3 La Rivière, Stephen (2009). Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future. Neshannock, Pennsylvania: Hermes Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-1-932563-23-8.
  3. 1 2 "The Gerry Anderson Location Guide". Bradford, UK: Fanderson. Archived from the original on 17 May 2009. Retrieved 14 April 2007.
  4. ↑ de Klerk, Theo (25 December 2003). "Complete Studio-Recording List of Barry Gray". tvcentury21.com. Archived from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  5. 1 2 Joe 90 Original Television Soundtrack (Media notes). Barry Gray. Silva Screen Music. 2006. p. 13.
  6. ↑ Archer and Hearn 2002, p. 170.
  7. ↑ Archer and Hearn 2002, p. 171.
  8. ↑ Archer and Hearn 2002, p. 180.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Wilkins, Alasdair (25 December 2013). "Behold the Bizarre Wonder of a Supermarionation Christmas". io9. New York City, New York, United States: Gawker Media. Archived from the original on 26 December 2013. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  10. 1 2 Fryer, Ian (2011). FAB. Bradford, UK: Fanderson (69): 29. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ↑ "'J' is for ... Joe 90". TV Cream. Archived from the original on 14 February 2014. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  12. ↑ "The Worst TV Episode Titles". SFX. Bath, UK: Future Publishing. 1 January 2009. Archived from the original on 29 October 2012. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  13. ↑ Frampton, Andrew (9 April 2009). "2000 and Beyond – DVDs". bigrat.co.uk. Archived from the original on 28 October 2007. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
Bibliography
  • Archer, Simon; Hearn, Marcus (2002). What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson. London: BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-53481-5. 
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