An early pinnacle in this premier 1960s spy series, the elaborate artifice and ominous atmosphere don't just distinguish "Colony Three" but provide a full-dress rehearsal for Patrick McGoohan's subsequent series "The Prisoner." Like that landmark series, this setting for John Drake's "Danger Man" is a bucolic "village" that features much more sinister machinations beneath the surface--and from which it is exceedingly difficult to leave once someone has arrived. Donald Jonson's engrossing script keeps the overall framework vague but emphasizes the sense of quiet oppression that director Don Chaffey (who directed four "Prisoner" episodes) exploits to strong effect.
John le Carré's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" also shades "Colony Three" as Drake poses as Robert Fuller, a British defector, and journeys behind the Iron Curtain to an isolated village that resembles an English village named Hamden. It's an induction center for enemy spies trying to infiltrate Britain, featuring actual Brits as villagers to help the spies assimilate, either like electrician Ed Randall (Glyn Owen), an English communist discontented by the West, or young librarian Janet Wells (Katherine Woodville), who came East to rejoin a putative lover. (Incidentally, Alec Leaman, the protagonist in le Carré's novel, took a lover who was a librarian and a member of the British Communist Party.)
Drake's unassuming clerk persona enables him to surreptitiously catalog the potential infiltrators although he soon encounters friction with his roommate Randall, who grows suspicious of Drake even as he becomes disillusioned with "the other side." Meanwhile, Drake's seemingly upbeat handler "John Richardson" (Peter Arne) also becomes wary of Drake, pushing the agent into danger in the remote, unknown village.
A seemingly far-fetched premise exhibits chilling plausibility as "Colony Three" explores the interpersonal psychology of the inhabitants (another "Prisoner" trademark), including the poignant denouement for Wells, a captive of love who becomes a victim of Cold War ideological fanaticism, rather than the mechanics of subterfuge that underpin village operations--and security.
Building to a tense climax, "Colony Three" ratchets up the suspense while previewing the deception, regimentation, and oppression that McGoohan would later explore in "The Prisoner" while Drake's final scene with the Admiral (Peter Madden) underscores the cruel zero-sum game espionage and covert operations plays with human lives; as war criminal Henry Kissinger, upon betraying the Kurds to Iraq in the 1970s, blithely remarked, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
John le Carré's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" also shades "Colony Three" as Drake poses as Robert Fuller, a British defector, and journeys behind the Iron Curtain to an isolated village that resembles an English village named Hamden. It's an induction center for enemy spies trying to infiltrate Britain, featuring actual Brits as villagers to help the spies assimilate, either like electrician Ed Randall (Glyn Owen), an English communist discontented by the West, or young librarian Janet Wells (Katherine Woodville), who came East to rejoin a putative lover. (Incidentally, Alec Leaman, the protagonist in le Carré's novel, took a lover who was a librarian and a member of the British Communist Party.)
Drake's unassuming clerk persona enables him to surreptitiously catalog the potential infiltrators although he soon encounters friction with his roommate Randall, who grows suspicious of Drake even as he becomes disillusioned with "the other side." Meanwhile, Drake's seemingly upbeat handler "John Richardson" (Peter Arne) also becomes wary of Drake, pushing the agent into danger in the remote, unknown village.
A seemingly far-fetched premise exhibits chilling plausibility as "Colony Three" explores the interpersonal psychology of the inhabitants (another "Prisoner" trademark), including the poignant denouement for Wells, a captive of love who becomes a victim of Cold War ideological fanaticism, rather than the mechanics of subterfuge that underpin village operations--and security.
Building to a tense climax, "Colony Three" ratchets up the suspense while previewing the deception, regimentation, and oppression that McGoohan would later explore in "The Prisoner" while Drake's final scene with the Admiral (Peter Madden) underscores the cruel zero-sum game espionage and covert operations plays with human lives; as war criminal Henry Kissinger, upon betraying the Kurds to Iraq in the 1970s, blithely remarked, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?