The New Avengers had finished production more than a year before it finally showed up in the United States. In September 1978, “The Eagle’s Nest” debuted on The CBS Late Movie, which had started as a showcase for old and interesting films but had become the dumping ground for all sorts of heavily-edited repeats. In many markets, the local affiliate delayed it until after midnight, or left it to another channel entirely. In Atlanta, Late Movie often turned up not on what was then the CBS station, WAGA, but on one of the independent channels, WANX… which later became WGCL and is today Atlanta’s CBS station, oddly enough.
In late 1987, I traded with a guy who was probably Earth’s biggest Maverick fan for three episodes of The New Avengers. These came from The CBS Late Movie broadcasts and holy anna, they weren’t kidding when they called these heavily edited. In Mark Dawidziak’s excellent book The Columbo Phile, Richard Levinson is quoted as being really unhappy that each seventy-five minute Columbo episode was pruned by twenty minutes for that show. The New Avengers is, of course, a fifty minute program, but CBS hacked them down to forty. No wonder I had such disinterest in this show for so long. They were barely coherent, sloppily edited, and the CBS version of “The Last of the Cybernauts…??” gave the villains a lot less screen time. The entire scene in the photo above was never shown in America.
So when I got a complete copy years later, I liked this story a whole lot more. I still wouldn’t call it great, but it’s a really entertaining ride, and while the diabolical mastermind of the piece, Robert Lang, may not be in Michael Gough or Peter Cushing’s league, he’s memorable and creepy with his gaudy jacket and plastic masks. Also, the fight on the staircase, when Gambit and Purdey have a desperate brawl with a Cybernaut, is just phenomenally well shot and edited. Our kid enjoyed the almighty heck out of this one, and claims to be happiest with a huge explosion early on, but when Gambit rounds a corner on the stairs and misses having the Cybernaut karate-chop his head off by about two inches, our son was so startled that he just about jumped off the sofa.
This is an appropriate place to pause and talk about the DVDs I’m using. I picked up A&E’s Region 1 releases of this series around 2005, but decided against upgrading because while certain European releases are said to be somewhat better, they are all said to have some notable flaws. But help should be on the way. Network always keeps things a little secret, so everybody was very pleasantly surprised when just about three weeks ago, they announced a brand new restoration of all three Cybernaut episodes – the two from 1965 and 1967 and this one – for Blu-ray. They haven’t formally announced that a full remaster of The New Avengers is coming, but if you click that image above to go to Network’s site and watch that trailer – especially just after you’ve watched this episode in the acceptable/tolerable quality that A&E released – your jaw will probably hit the floor when you see just how vivid, bright and amazing the staircase fight looks.
Money was a little tight when I sprung for my multi-region DVD player and I couldn’t justify the cost of going multi-region for Blu-ray too. I’m sure Network will find it in their hearts to put out their beautiful remasters on DVD as well… right, viewers?
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 
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