The Tour’s larger perambulations chanced across an episode of ‘Return of the Saint,’ a 1978-79 reboot of the classic from the 60’s which was a fundamental pillar of what became known as the ‘ITC Encyclopedia of Adventure.’ The Tour has odd feedings about this series, which we’ll perhaps address somewhere down the line, but, as you might have guessed, we’ve once again trod upon someone from Doctor Who, in this case very close to their time there, elsewhere.
In the episode ‘The Debt Collectors’ Mary Tamm appeared as the (fitting for this type of show) WIP (woman in peril) Gerri Hanson who Ian Oglivy’s Simon Templar gets swept into her danger. Also, and not atypical for this type of show, it turns out in the final act that the ‘innocent’ WIP wasn’t quite so innocent after all.
Also appearing the story was veteran ‘heavy’ character actor Neil McCarthy. McCarthy appeared in two Doctor Who stories, The Mind of Evil, and The Power of Kroll–alongside Tamm.
Given the sprawling and, we imagine at the time, expensive nature of ROTS, it’s obvious that Tamm made this story just before being cast as Romana for Season 16 in Doctor Who.
‘The Debt Collectors’ was broadcast on December 17, 1978, just six days before The Power of Kroll began airing on BBC1. Not quite the serendipity as shown a bit earlier in these pages, but we’ll take it.
