Tara King: The Worst Of All?
Page 5 of 6

Part Two

Steed rests under the Tree of Glory
Tara offers him an apple!

Tara King-Linda Thorson, a poor scapegoat regarded as the sole reason for the collapse of her season, wound up literally repelled thanks to the puerile deceits and arguments coming from the manipulation of public opinion. This sort of superficial consideration, propagated at the speed of light, constitutes the preferred food for those who resist changes and develop simple conclusions supported by massive consensus.

I could choose innumerable examples to refute, one by one, the crude accusations that tried to attribute to Linda Thorson not only the failure of her character in The Avengers, but also the fate of the entire series; that she was unable to return a dialogue; that she couldn't maintain a scene for more than two minutes... (a long list follows). However, instead of counter-attacking, by way of standing up for the person who gave life to Miss King, I intend to thoroughly analyze the creation of her character—if such a creation took place sometime.

One of the main arguments supporting the expulsion of Tara King-Linda Thorson from The Avengers paradise, falls upon Linda's (assumed) poor acting skills. Is this true? Well, let's see... First things first: you don't need to be a genius to realize that Linda Thorson is not an extraordinary actress, in the mould of a Katharine Hepburn or an Ingrid Bergman. But is it necessary to be such a great actress to fit in a TV series like The Avengers? Could we say, for instance, that Honor Blackman's correct performance as Cathy Gale can be attributed to a matchless interpretative talent? Personally, I don't think so.

Before, during and after her work in the series, Diana Rigg always was susceptible to her participation in The Avengers, knowing that a performance like this, was something "smaller" in relation to her theatrical career. It is possible that prejudices concerning the values of a "cultured" art over a "popular" art, have affected her views directly or indirectly. But also it is obvious that playing a Shakespearean character on stage, demands a ductility, versatility and emotional commitment that are not essential to shoot "Small Game For Big Hunters".

Maybe Diana Rigg's background and indisputable talent as an actress, contributed to forge a legend around her role of Emma Peel and had an effect on the creation of a "standard" to beat. We don't know it for sure. What indeed is evident, is that an Avengers episode is not a Shakespearean drama. To act in The Avengers, you don't need to dive in the depths of the human soul, and surface with a performance that deeply shakes the viewers' sense of security. No. You just need to play your role as well as possible, and to have a touch of charisma and creativity to make it work. Linda Thorson had all these attributes, yet they weren't enough to ensure the success of Tara King, because the character was ultimately fragile.

Cathy Gale, for example, was skilfully and gradually built around a revolutionary idea that went against the traditional role of women in this kind of series. Honor Blackman took what was an already extraordinary character, and made it her own. But the creativity and good fortune that blessed the birth of Mrs Gale, wasn't made available to Linda Thorson, whose role of Tara King will probably be remembered as one of the more inconsistent creations in television history. On balance... who is Tara King, anyway? That plump, weak girl we see in "Pandora"? That pious lass of Steed's in "Thingumajig"? Or that clever, independent young woman in "All Done With Mirrors"? We don't know. On account of a plethora of incompetent people—creators, scriptwriters and most directors, among others—Miss King is a character struggling to find herself, frequently playing an incomprehensible part in the storyline. At other times, she is relegated to the background in scenes, without any dialogue nor action for minutes, almost as if she was part of the set. Even though her performances weren't superlative, it would be mean or ingenuous to reproach Linda Thorson such a calamity not of her making. Do you think Diana Rigg could have excelled in quite deplorable scripts like "Pandora" or "Requiem"? When their role in a spy-action series is confined to napping in an armchair, knocked out by sleeping gas, stumbling around drugged, or laying in bed with a leg in plaster for whole episodes, most likely no actress in the world would manage to stand out.

We'll never know for sure the true reasons why Linda Thorson was hired to play Tara King in the new version of The Avengers 1968. In fact, it doesn't matter. What jumps out at us, is that either for financial, aesthetic or "bedroom" demands, no one could have thought of her as a replacement for Diana Rigg. There is a simple, blunt reason for this statement, and one which outweighs any concerns over any lack of acting experience: Rigg was a woman, Thorson was a girl.

Until then, age had been an important consideration in designing every central female role in The Avengers. And this goes for Emma Peel and Cathy Gale as well. At the time of their respective highest points in the series, Honor Blackman was 37 and Diana Rigg, 28. None of their characters' basic traits—authority, independence, knowledge, experience, sexual maturity, elegance and sensuality, among others, could be attributed to the teenage Thorson (in reality, profession aside, a woman in bloom looking for her identity). According to this, any comparison between Tara King and her predecessors is, from every point of view, as ridiculous as it is invalid from the very beginning, despite her turning out to be the main target for the shooting aimed at the final series.

Anyway, beyond comparisons and the mysteries surrounding her signing up, in the hands of a creative producer Linda Thorson's age would have posed no problem whatsoever. Even though her youth had prevented her to convincingly play the fruits of maturity, it could have been channeled into a much more interesting role than that of a confused, pusillanimous girl; a girl who only appears to hinder all investigations, who ends up caught by any fool around, in spite of conducting herself better and more convincingly than Emma Peel in most of the fight scenes. Nevertheless, those charged with developing her character never satisfactorily dealt with the obstacles that her young age set before them. On the contrary, the producers wound up messing with Steed's character as a result, depriving him of the sexual chemistry he had had with his previous partners, and replacing it with an uncharacteristic puritanical, paternal side as his only bond with Tara. Maybe they were scared that Steed may come over as a 'dirty old man' should the pair have formed a more suggestive association. One might ask whether it might have been much more interesting to depict Tara King as a somewhat distant, enigmatic, decidedly sexual woman, notwithstanding her youth? This doesn't seem to be the idea the producers had in mind when chose that pathetic curly, blond wig she wore during the original shoots of "Invitation To a Killing" and "The Great, Great Britain Crime." Linda Thorson's detractors will surely argue that her pretty face is too explicit for a more mysterious character. But one wonders if such a beauty couldn't have been attenuated by conferring her role a stronger nature? Or removing that idiot, childish, schoolgirl smile she has all the time, giving her a decent hairdo and suggestive clothes? The producers, however, decided to dress her hair and body in the most ridiculous ways imaginable, and designed for her a so unbearably dull and naive role, that no man in his right mind would at least dare to peep at her décolletage. The result of this fabulous and unfortunate comedy of errors is that The Avengers, a series that had made known for its boldness in the definition of characters who transgressed all TV norms, ended up being an ironic face of itself, restoring those things that, intentionally or not, it had improved on.