espionage

“Craig Ster­ling, Shar­ron Macready and Richard Bar­rett These are the Champions. 

“Endowed with the qual­i­ties and skills of super­hu­mans — qual­i­ties and skills, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, to the peak of human per­for­mance. Gifts giv­en to them by an unknown race of peo­ple, when their ‘plane crashed near a lost civil­i­sa­tion in Tibet. Now, with their secrets known only to them, they are able to use their fan­tas­tic pow­ers to their best advan­tage as the Cham­pi­ons of law, order and jus­tice. Oper­a­tors of the inter­na­tion­al agency, Nemesis!”

“The Cham­pi­ons” was a British tele­vi­sion (ITC) pro­duc­tion, star­ring three indi­vid­u­als, Craig Stir­ling (Stu­art Damon), Shar­ron Macready (Alexan­dra Baste­do) and Richard Bar­rett (William Gaunt), all of whom work for a NATO law enforce­ment orga­ni­za­tion named Neme­sis (this being the Cold War era) and its head, Tremayne (Antho­ny Nicholls). who was not aware of the pecu­liar abil­i­ties of his three best agents. On their first mis­sion in Com­mu­nist Chi­na, their plane was shot down over Tibet, where they were res­cued by mem­bers of an advanced, hid­den civ­i­liza­tion and returned to full health and beyond. Their treat­ment gave them extra­or­di­nary phys­i­cal and men­tal abil­i­ties: enhanced sens­es, strength and reflex­es, supe­ri­or intel­lect, a lim­it­ed pre­cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and a psy­chic link between them, among oth­er things they were then unaware of.

Some of the episodes involved ele­ments of hyp­no­sis and mind con­trol, but episode ‘Reply Box No 666’ stands out because of the hyp­no­sis scene involv­ing Macready as the seduc­tive (appro­pri­ate­ly enough, as she did seduce her sub­ject back to her room pri­or to the induc­tion) hypnotist.