The Unorthodox Shepherd

Plot

A series of forged United States dollar bills have been traced to an unlikely counterfeiter – the Reverend Joseph Shepherd, vicar of the village church St David's. WIN's suspicions are raised, and Professor McClaine (voiced by Rupert Davies), Sam Loover (Keith Alexander) and Joe 90 (Len Jones) are dispatched to investigate in the days building up to Christmas. Equipped with the brain impulses of a World Bank vice president, Joe confirms that the bills have been printed within the last two weeks, despite the facts that the last official printing in Washington, D.C. was 17 years ago and the plates were subsequently destroyed in a fire. The trio decide to confront the Reverend, who is apparently half-deaf, at his vicarage. There, the suspect amazes the WIN agents by identifying the make of Loover's concealed gun based on nothing more than the click of the safety catch.

The Reverend reveals that his deafness is an act, and that the plates were not destroyed – they have been smuggled into Britain by two criminals, Kline and Mason, who are using them to print $6 million in forged bills. The plates arrived in the coffin of Mason's uncle, Clem Mason (known on the West Coast of the United States as a cunning racketeer, Carlo Masoni) who wished to be buried in the village of his birth. Kline and Mason's hideout is the crypt underneath Clem's tomb. To divert attention from the counterfeiting operation, Mason has installed electronic devices inside the church, causing the bells to ring at unusual hours and the superstitious villagers to believe that the building is haunted. The verger, Thomas, has been kidnapped and will be killed if the Reverend betrays Kline and Mason; desperate for money to save St David's from dry rot, he had no option other than to comply.

Loover conceives a plan to thwart Kline and Mason's scheme by using Mason's fears against him. That night, with the $6 million target fast approaching and the church now empty of gadgets, the criminals are puzzled to hear the bells ring out across the grounds. Searching for trespassers, Mason is horrified when Loover, hiding in the darkness with a megaphone, declares himself the spirit of Carlo Masoni and warns that the Angel of Death will shortly arrive to avenge his "desecrated" memory. Holding Thomas at gunpoint, Kline and Mason emerge from the crypt to confront the "ghost"; under Mac's instruction, Joe, wearing a jet pack underneath white robes, takes flight and moves towards them. While Mason flees, Kline fires repeatedly at Joe until he is knocked over. At the Reverend's request, Police Constable Lewis has stationed himself nearby and is on hand to arrest the counterfeiters.

By a snowbound Christmas Day, the combination of two rewards for assisting in the recovery of the plates - £8,000 from WIN and £2,000 from Interpol – has given the Reverend the funds necessary to restore St David's. The episode closes with the sounds of the carol service congregation singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing", the hymn's final lines dubbed over shots of the snow-covered fields surrounding the village.

Production

"The Unorthodox Shepherd" contains extensive location filming of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Harefield, Greater London; the building doubles as St David's, the Reverend Shepherd's parish church. In early 1968, shortly after the completion of shooting for the film Thunderbird 6, episode director Ken Turner and production designer Keith Wilson travelled to the village to carry out a location recce on Church Hill. During pre-production at Century 21 Studios in Slough, Wilson built a scale model of the church's interior for puppet scenes, based on photographs from the recce.

Returning to Harefield, the production staff filmed a life-sized puppet of the villain Mason on the church path, and entered the building to film a series of insert shots. After a snowfall, they captured a panning shot of the blanketed village fields for the ending. Clem Mason's monument, concealing an entrance to the counterfeiters' crypt, was based on a block tombstone that Turner and Wilson uncovered during their initial visit to the St Mary the Virgin churchyard. In September 1969, the Century 21 crew re-visited the location to film the concluding scenes of the UFO episode "The Square Triangle".

Music for "The Unorthodox Shepherd" was recorded in two parts. Church organ and harp music was recorded in a two-hour session on 26 March 1968 at series composter Barry Gray's private studio, the rest of the score, running to two minutes and 24 seconds, in four hours on 10 April at CTS Studio. The score for the episode "Big Fish" also originated from the second session. In a scene deleted from the finished episode, Constable Lewis arrests Mason and Kline following the encounter with the disguised Joe.

Reception

Andrew Pixley, writing for Time Screen magazine, describes "The Unorthodox Shepherd" as "rather above average" but questions the logic of the episode's conclusion. Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, authors of What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson, consider the episode to be among the best of Joe 90, praising it as an example of a spy adventure that "explored the series' unique formula to intriguing effect". The frequency of live-action sequences was received positively by the production staff, who considered the overall effect convincing; Archer and Hearn write that the episode showcases the "seamless integration" possible in mixing puppets with live actors. In this respect, "The Unorthodox Shepherd" serves as a precursor to the final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service (1969), which combined puppet sequences with larger amounts of live-action location footage (a hybrid format that, according to Archer and Hearn, "saw Supermarionation through to its natural conclusion"). Pixley comments on the Reverend Shepherd's similarity to Father Stanley Unwin of the later series, noting that like Unwin he is a clergyman who "isn't all he seems".

Alasdair Wilkins of the entertainment website io9 argues that "The Unorthodox Shepherd", besides being "bonkers in the way most Joe 90 episodes are", is "one of the oddest Christmas episodes ever made". He considers it more innovative that similarly-themed episodes of earlier Supermarionation productions, namely "Give or Take a Million" (Thunderbirds) and "A Christmas to Remember" (Stingray). Wilkins describes the plan involving the Angel costume and the jet pack as "[taking Mason and Kline's] idea of scaring people with a fake haunting and [cranking] it up to 20", also remarking that the dependence on scare tactics in the face of armed opponents constitutes "a seriously insane risk to build a plan around". He believes "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to be "one of the more quietly religious Christmas episodes I've seen, if only because there's no talk of trees or presents, but the story does end with a trip to the church for the Christmas service".

Ian Fryer of FAB magazine likens "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to the last episode of The Secret Service, "More Haste Less Speed", noting that both episodes "centre on the production of counterfeit dollar bills in old basements, and feature a vicar who isn't what he seems to be." He considers both "The Unorthodox Shepherd" and another Joe 90 episode, "See You Down There", to represent an "early flowering of the whimsy that was to be the defining feature of The Secret Service." The choice of title has been criticised by the website TV Cream and the magazine SFX, the latter ranking "The Unorthodox Shepherd" 21st in a list of "worst TV episode titles" with a verdict of "bleating rubbish".

Home media

The Joe 90 Region 1 DVD box set by A&E Home Video features an audio commentary for "The Unorthodox Shepherd" with episode director Ken Turner.