I'm rewatching the 1960s spy series, The Man from UNCLE. The Take Me to Your Leader Affair is the inevitable outer space episode, and it doesn't make any sense. An ultra-wealthy tech bro named Simon Sparrow (played by Paul Lambert) has a plot to pose as an alien to convince everyone on Earth that he should be put in charge of the planet. It's a flimsy plan, to say the least, and the road he takes to set it all up makes even less sense.
The story starts when a reclusive astronomer named Dr. Adrian Cool (played by Woodrow Parfrey) detects an unidentified flying object millions of miles out in space. His astronomy computers, incidentally, were all designed and built and paid for by Simon Sparrow. Dr. Cool believes he's found an alien spacecraft headed straight for Earth, so he calls UNCLE in for help.
Solo and Kuryakin arrive, and then Dr. Cool's daughter, Coco Cool (played by Nancy Sinatra) is kidnapped. (I don't know what's going on with the names in Man from UNCLE in season 3, but I don't think much of them.)
It's hard to discern exactly what's happening in the plot, but I think Simon Sparrow built the computers such that they would misinform Dr. Cool by spawning objects in space that aren't really there. It's unclear why he needed to do this. He has the evil Dr. Trebush (played by James Griffith) on his payroll, so it's not at all clear why Dr. Cool is in the picture at all. You might think that in the UNCLE universe, Dr. Cool has an authority that Sparrow wants to leverage, but at the start of the episode everybody is skeptical of Dr. Cool's findings and by the end of the episode it's Dr. Trebush making all the assertions and everyone takes his word for it. Dr. Cool, as far as I can tell, is a liability from the start.
But I guess we're meant to believe that Simon Sparrow really wants the unwilling Dr. Cool on his team. To ensure that he stays in line, Sparrow has Coco Cool kidnapped (and Kuryakin, as he tries to rescue Coco) and sent to his Louisiana mansion. They mill around for a while and discover designs for a high-altitude plane.
Some other stuff happens, and to the episode's credit it does mostly feel like the plot is advancing. It's never totally clear what the plan is until the very last act, so that at least keeps you guessing. You may not care about the story, but if you want to stay engaged with the story then the writing is competent enough to let you do that.
If you think you might want to watch this episode, stop reading now. I don't recommend watching the episode, unless it's exclusively for Nancy Sinatra. She doesn't have an amazing part to play in this episode because all the characters are pretty weak, but she gets through it and she does get to do a tiny little bit of singing for a very brief scene.
In the end, Simon Sparrow launches himself (and all his captives, for some reason) into the atmosphere. Posing as the spacecraft that Dr. Cool has detected, he calls down to the United Council of Nations. He says he's an alien, and that his race has decided that Earth's governments are inadequate, and that what they really need is a single leader. Just off the top of his head? Simon Sparrow seems like a great candidate, so let's just make him president of Earth from now on.
That was as far as he'd planned, so his job here is done. If it feels anticlimactic, imagine how Sparrow must feel. We don't get a chance to hear his thoughts on the subject, because after he's made his demand, the UNCLE agents spring into action and force him to land the plane. He's arrested, or whatever, and the good guys win again.
Kuryakin has a petrol-generated saw in his shoe (he has to rev it with a shoelace).
Kuryakin rips the elastic off his underpants so he can fashion a slingshot to hit a guard with a rock. I don't know what they were making underpants out of in the 1960s, but in the 2020s I don't own any item of clothing with elastic that would propel a stone farther and harder than I could throw it.
Napoleon Solo marches into Sparrow Dynamics, posing as an engineer looking for work, exclusively to deliver himself into the hands of Sparrow. Solo, having surrendered, is immediately placed in a wind tunnel, and Sparrow attempts to blow him to death. It doesn't work because Sparrow's fiancée, Corinne (played by Whitney Blake), shows up and lures Sparrow away and then returns to rescue Solo.
I think the writer of this episode thought there was a plot, because the story does have the feeling of some momentum. It's not interesting or good, but at least it's not Solo and Kuryakin wandering around aimlessly through the jungle or dancing the Watusi with a man in a gorilla suit. This was not an enjoyable episode.
Lead image by Anthony DELANOIX under the terms of the Unsplash License. Modified by Seth in Inkscape.