Editing The Avengers (TV series) (section)

====Move to colour====
After one filmed series (of 26 episodes) in black and white, ''The Avengers'' began filming in colour for the fifth series in 1966. It was three years before Britain's ITV network began full colour broadcasting. The first 16 episodes of this series were broadcast concurrently in the US, in colour, and the UK, in black and white, from January to May 1967. Eight further episodes were broadcast in the UK beginning in late September, while these episodes were withheld in the US until early 1968, where they would be immediately succeeded by the first batch of episodes featuring Diana Rigg's replacement, [[Linda Thorson]]. The American prologue of the fourth series was modified for the colour episodes. The show opened with the caption ''The Avengers in Color'' (required by the US [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] for colour series at that time), followed by Steed unwrapping the foil from a [[Champagne|champagne bottle]] and Emma Peel shooting the cork away. Unlike the "chessboard" opening of the previous series, this new prologue had no narrative voice-over, and the scene was also included in UK broadcasts of the series. At the end of the closing credits, all previous series had ended with the ABC Weekend TV logo, but the fifth and sixth series — now made by ABC's sister company A.B.C. Television Films — instead featured an animation where the letters "ABC" were revealed to stand for "Associated British Corporation", a name apparently invented for ABC shows exported to the US to avoid confusion with the US ABC network.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Beaumont |first1=Ian |title=The Avengers |url=http://abcatlarge.co.uk/the-avengers-2/ |website=ABC at large |date=11 January 2001 |publisher=Transdiffusion Broadcasting System |access-date=16 May 2022}}</ref> (The legal name of ABC Weekend TV was originally "Associated British Cinemas (Television) Ltd",<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sendall |first1=Bernard |title=Independent Television: Present and future policy on development |journal=[[Kinematograph Weekly]] |date=29 September 1955 |volume=462 |issue=2518 |page=xi |url=https://www.transdiffusion.org/2022/02/14/independent-television-present-and-future-policy-on-development |access-date=17 May 2022 |series=Studio Review |publisher=Odhams |issn=0023-155X |oclc=1127175701}}</ref> later shortened to "A.B.C. Television Ltd".)

The first 16 episodes of the fifth series begin with Emma Peel receiving a call-to-duty message from Steed: "Mrs. Peel, we're needed". Emma Peel would be conducting her normal activities when she unexpectedly received a message on a calling card or within a delivered gift, at which point Steed suddenly appeared (usually in her apartment). 
The series also introduced a comic [[tagline]] caption to the episode title, using the format of "Steed [does this], Emma [does that]". For example, "The Joker" had the opening caption: "Steed trumps an ace, Emma plays a lone hand". "The Joker" was to a large extent a rewrite of "Don't Look Behind You", a black-and-white Cathy Gale episode. Three other colour Emma Peel episodes were rewrites of Cathy Gale episodes.

The "Mrs Peel, we're needed" scenes and the alternate taglines were dropped after the first 16 episodes, after a break in production, for financial reasons. They were deemed by the UK networks as disposable if ''The Avengers'' was to return to ITV screens (Dave Rogers' book ''The Avengers Anew'' lists a set for every Steed/Emma Peel episode except "The Forget-Me-Knot").

Stories were increasingly characterised by a futuristic, science-fiction bent, with [[mad scientists]] and their creations wreaking havoc. The duo dealt with being shrunk to doll size ("Mission... Highly Improbable"), pet cats being electrically altered to become ferocious and lethal "miniature tigers" ("The Hidden Tiger"), killer automata ("Return of The Cybernauts"), mind-transferring machines ("Who's Who???") and invisible foes ("The See-Through Man").

The series parodied its American contemporaries with episodes such as "The Girl From AUNTIE", "Mission... Highly Improbable" and "The Winged Avenger" (spoofing ''[[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.]]'', ''[[Mission: Impossible (1966 TV series)|Mission: Impossible]]'' and ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'', respectively). The show still carried the basic format: Steed and his associate were charged with solving the problem in the space of a 50-minute episode, thus preserving the safety of 1960s Britain.

Humour was evident in the names and acronyms of the organisations. For example, in "The Living Dead," two rival groups examine reported ghost sightings: FOG (Friends of Ghosts) and SMOG (Scientific Measurement of Ghosts). "The Hidden Tiger" features the Philanthropic Union for Rescue, Relief and Recuperation of Cats—PURRR—led by characters named Cheshire, Manx and Angora.

The series also occasionally adopted a [[metafiction]]al tone, coming close to breaking the [[fourth wall]]. In the Series 5 episode "Something Nasty in the Nursery", Emma Peel directly refers to the series' storytelling convention of having potentially helpful sources of information killed off just before she or Steed arrive. This then occurs a few minutes later. In the tag scene for the same episode, Steed and Emma Peel tell viewers—indirectly—to tune in next week.

Diana Rigg's stunt double was stuntwoman Cyd Child, though stuntman Peter Elliot doubled for Diana Rigg in a stunt dive in "The Bird Who Knew Too Much".