The Man from UNCLE novels: An Analysis
Jun. 20th, 2017 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopSo, I've been poking through the library of old licensed fiction from the old Man from UNCLE paperback series and magazine. A few are good, but most (as general fan consensus seems to agree) fail to capture the spirit of the series in any particularly convincing way, or are just not that well written, or (and frequently) both. It's a matter of record that few of the authors were fans (some, one rather suspects, had probably hardly seen the show at all), and were usually working from little more than a few pages of development notes – and it shows, not least thanks to how many seemed determined to pad their word counts by incorporating as much of those notes as possible. The result is a bizarre little series of highly variable tone and quality, existing in its own little parallel continuity, in which writers often referenced their own previous stories, and occasionally referenced one another's, but remained largely ignorant of almost anything that had ever happened in the show. In fact, about the most fascinating thing about it (at least to me) is just how fixated some of those authors were on sharing as much of those original development notes as possible.
The following analysis comes courtesy of my recent acquisition of the entire series in digital format, plus some handy epub-library software. Pick a few key phrases out of the original MGM bios and development notes, and the number of hits that come up in a library-wide search tells one hell of a story – or perhaps more accurately, exposes just how little effort so many authors put into telling a story which would be original. That which was original was frequently an obvious mistake. I’m not honestly sure whether anyone but me is ever going to want to read this many words worth of analysis of who-lifted-what-from-where and who-fucked-what-up, but I am seriously far too fascinated by the train-wreck of error and plagiarism that is some of these novels not to get my thoughts down in full. Possibly you might prefer to skip to the sections on recurring original characters and the conclusion for some of the more interesting parts. If you’re looking for my reviews of those stories I’ve so far read in full, here’s that link.
About a dozen more of the series were first published by a UK imprint. You can often pick their books by the fact they’re frequently set in Britain or Europe, and fixate on a few similar themes.
Meanwhile, over in the magazine:
This isn’t the complete list of authors, just the ones we’re going to be hearing about the most, variously because they were the most prolific, or the least original. Rounding out the list, we also have Simon Latter, who wrote the remaining two Girl from UNCLE books, Richard Demming, who wrote three stories for the GfU magazine, Charles Ventura, who wrote one more, and finally, Richard Curtis, Talmage Powell, and Frank Belknap Long, who each wrote one story for the MfU magazine. Two last titles in my collection, both by Brandon Keith, were never published by ACE at all, but in hardcover by a Whitman imprint. These were shorter (both under 30K) and nominally aimed at a younger audience, though the actual content reputedly still maintained the dark, violent tone common to much of the main paperback series.
For all that I’m about to snark at these guys for not doing their homework, I should point out up front that it may not be that fair to expect much better. The quality of tie-in novels and games is notoriously bad in most franchises, and one of the primary reasons is that creators aren’t recruited for love or skill nearly so much as for speed. Authors of the UNCLE books seem to have made about $1000 a story, and those writing for the magazine perhaps about $500, with no royalties from sales – and even though this was a lot more in the 60’s than it is today, it still wasn’t a lot for a novel-length work. There’s a limit to how much time you can afford to spend on getting the details right when you’re writing for a living, and only get paid on completion.
It’s also worth remembering that in the days before home video, fans generally got one and only one shot to see each episode, mayyyybe two if it happened to be one of the ones that scored a repeat later in the year, so it’s hardly as if the authors could simply rewatch an episode for reference, the way those of us writing fanfic can today. Though they were provided with development materials, they don’t seem to have received any scripts, so they were largely working with what they had on paper – and what you’ve got in written reference format is almost always going to trump your memory of what you think happened on screen last season. Editorial oversight clearly wasn’t anything to write home about either. As one final note, I think we’re all well aware that not even the greatest super-fan on the planet is necessarily going to have the talent to convincingly recreate character voices on page. By those standards, 1 basically-decent author out of 21 probably ain’t that bad.
And on that not-wholly-uplifting note, time to get down to some specifics.
In The Beginning, the Authors from UNCLE were provided with a copy of Sam Rolfe’s original development notes, and then apparently told to fuck off and write something already. No-one involved in the show had any further input in vetting the result. Probably nothing characterises most the books that resulted better than their obsession with sharing as much of those notes as possible.
Charitably, one might suppose the authors had guessed fans would love to hear more about the inner workings of the UNCLE world. Less charitably, one might suppose a lot of these guys had simply found a convenient way to pad their word-counts with minimum effort.
The subtlety with which different authors went about working these sorts of details into their stories varied. Some, like Avallone in the very first novel, front-loaded their books with a preface introducing UNCLE HQ, which tended to be a slightly abbreviated copy of the same notes they started with. This isn’t actually a bad technique, given that the average person finding these books on the shelf might or might not have seen the show (which itself did much the same thing with the “welcome to UNCLE” sequence which opened the first few episodes, for much the same reasons).
Most, however, made at least some token attempt at working the information into the story, if not necessarily with much more grace. This typically meant that when Napoleon and Illya first step into Del Floria's shop in the early chapters, the reader would be treated to an extended info-dump detailing exactly how many other entrances they might have used instead. Some of the more prolific authors did this only in their first book, while others would find a way to work the same information into almost every story. John Jakes, who wrote several stories for the magazine, came up with an introductory spiel for his fourth story which he must have liked particularly, because he went on to reuse the same, virtually word-for-word, in each of the next three stories he turned in.
The grand prize for laziness, however, has to go to Joel Bernard, author of The Thinking Machine Affair, who regurgitates what appears to be the complete, unedited text of Sam Rolfe's original development notes verbatim into his story – nominally as the output from THRUSH's computer when asked for information on how to break into UNCLE (which, in Bernard's world, evidently phrases its responses like a man making a studio pitch). In context, the result is just as clunky as it sounds, and I'm still torn between being thrilled to have found (what looks to be) such a complete version of the original notes, and unimpressed by the shameless plagiarism. (You can find the full text of that extract in this post.)
Some sort of honourable mention is perhaps also due to John Oram, who not only opens his first novel (The Copenhagen Affair) with a preface much like Avallone's, but also opens chapter 3 (the first scene at UNCLE HQ, naturally) with another chunk, and then finds space to copy out the complete description of THRUSH almost word-for-word into the middle of his story as well. Avallone himself also used a chunk of the THRUSH description as dialogue from one of his characters. Whittington spread his details out a bit more, but otherwise often did much the same.
A particular fixation was on letting us know about all the alternate entrances to UNCLE HQ. Take, for example, The Mask Club. The Mask Club was a minor detail from Rolfe's original development notes, attached to the same block as the rest of UNCLE HQ, which (may have) served as one of the entrances. Though it came up in promotional materials occasionally, the Mask Club was never seen, mentioned, nor even alluded to in all 105 episodes of the series. Nonetheless, the Mask Club is named explicitly in no less than 6 of the stories and novels, while 3 more included reference to “The Masked Club”, another mentions “The Masque Club”, another 2 shorten the name down to “The Mask” and another 3 reference the UNCLE block including a “key club” which isn’t named. That’s a total of 15 stories by 11 different authors (Avallone, Bernard, Jakes, Leslie, Lynds, McDaniel, Oram, Phillifent, Pronzini and Whittington – Stratton and Holly remain the only MfU novel authors who didn’t mention it at least once). As best I can tell, only one of these stories actually uses the Mask Club as even the most minor of plot points, and none actually feature a scene set there. The rest just felt the need to let us know that The Mask Club was a thing that existed on the UNCLE block.
Did you know that there's a secret entrance to UNCLE HQ through a channel leading from the basement to the East River? Well, 7 different UNCLE authors have made sure to let you know (Avallone, Bernard, Deming, Jakes, Leslie, Oram and Whittington), though I’ve yet to find more than a single story where it becomes a significant plot point. Both Jakes and Lynds assure us there are “four known entrances” at every opportunity, while Jakes, Avallone, Oram and Bernard all feel we absolutely need to know that UNCLE HQ has exactly four elevators and no staircases.
The British authors in particular seem to have had a great fascination with badge colours. All four of them at least once take the time to let us know that a red or yellow badge will grant you access to only a few floors of HQ, but only a white badge will get you all the way to the top – all quite oblivious to the fact that the show had dropped the white/yellow badge distinction by the time it went into production (probably for the very practical reason that the audience couldn’t easily tell the difference on a black and white screen). Everyone watching the show from S2 onwards would know perfectly well that a yellow badge was good enough for Waverly himself – and Leslie finally gets this right in his third novel (The Diving Dames Affair), only to go right back to proclaiming the gospel of The White Badge a couple of novels later (The Splintered Sunglasses Affair). In a number of cases, you can pick not just who had the developments notes on hand, but which version they were working from – “known entrances” is phrasing from the one that went out with the promotional booklet, whereas the details about badge colours more likely came from the original. A handful of later books show signs their authors had been updated with the new writers guides produced for later UNCLE seasons (we’ll get to these in a bit), though even then, many clung tight to the originals.
Despite all this minute fixation on UNCLE’s security, when it comes to portraying the system in action, these same writers regularly falter. In his first story, Lynds assures us that UNCLE HQ has only once been invaded with any success, in an attempt that came through the river entrance. Except that the very first episode ever aired showed us a major THRUSH invasion, which came through Del Floria’s. Oops. Leslie actually spends the first chapter of The Splintered Sunglasses Affair detailing an elaborate scheme to capture Napoleon in Del Floria’s own shop… which unfortunately depends on, 1) there being a solid door to the change room, which there very obviously isn’t, 2) that the security camera is in the cubicle itself and doesn’t show a good view of the shop (in the show, it has an excellent view of the shop and no view of the cubicle), and 3) that only a single receptionist is responsible for monitoring every single security feed from every entrance simultaneously, from multiple screens at her workstation. All of which is categorically contradicted by the first five minutes ever to air on TV, and again repeatedly through the first season (if not also latter seasons as well).
Leslie and Oram also both take time to let us know that UNCLE’s secret entrance is specifically in the third try-on cubicle in Del Floria’s shop, which is accurate to the notes, but not at all accurate to the show, in which there’s plainly never been more than one. But oddest of all must be I. G. Edmonds' incomprehensible belief that UNCLE has six different elevators, one for each named section. I can’t even guess where he got that idea, but it’s something Edmonds was sure enough about to mention in 3 of his 5 stories. Whoever was editing the result plainly never bothered to correct him.
This also conveniently brings us to the subject of UNCLE’s Sections, which were similarly handled.
The
If you'd asked a fan of UNCLE back during the original run how many sections the organisation was divided into, I'd imagine a lot of them would have answered '8'. That's what was printed on the back of the official membership cards, which were sent out in their tens of thousands to fans on both sides of the pond. It's rather telling, then, that even though the tie-in authors were eager to share the details of UNCLE's internal structure, almost none of them listed any section above Section 6 – the number listed in most of the promotional material dating from before the show hit the air. In fact, only two authors ever seem to have referenced either Section 7 or 8, either by name or by number. It won't surprise you to learn one of them was David McDaniel (who does so in two different books, once by name and once by number). The other, Thomas Stratton, was a pseudonym used by two of McDaniel's friends, who co-authored a couple of titles – one of which references the Public Relations department of Section 7.
What's more surprising is that a number of authors didn't even get as high as 6. When UNCLE is introduced to us in the opening pages of the very first book, the list contains only 5 sections, with the two intelligence sections (“Enforcement and Intelligence” and “Intelligence and Communications”) compressed down into a single section, dubbed “Enforcement and Communications.” Michael Avallone wasn't the last to make this error, and the general theory (relayed by Walker’s book Work/Text: Investigating The Man from UNCLE, which takes most of the credit for getting me started on this subject) is that later authors had copied his mistake.
While some very likely did just that, I'm personally suspicious that the “mistake” came from even higher up the chain. Joel Bernard at the very least can't have been copying from Avallone, because his book reproduces considerably more of the original development notes than Avallone did. So he, at least, must have copied directly from the original document. Quite possibly, the notes both men were working from dated from so early in the process that Rolfe himself hadn't got around to expanding UNCLE's organisational chart up to 6 sections yet.
Whatever their excuse, Lynds, Leslie, and Edmonds would all follow suit, cheerfully informing us that UNCLE had only 5 sections, or naming those last three incorrectly. Edmonds actually manages to get Section 3 right and Section 4 wrong in the same story. Meanwhile, Lynds was also struggling to make sense out of Heather McNabb, whose original bio unhelpfully attributes her to the “Communications-Research” section, which you might note appears nowhere on anyone's version of the chart. Lynds nevertheless names both Section 3 and Section 4 as “Communications and Research” in his various stories, and Pronzini dutifully follows his example. Avallone himself carefully corrects his original mistake in the opening pages of his two GfU novels, both of which contain an identical (and quite new) introduction to the subject of UNCLE, with the correct list of the standard 6 Sections included. Having achieved this much, he goes on to reference there being only five departments in The Blazing Affair and to introduce us to an agent of “Section Six: Security and Enforcement” in The Birds of a Feather Affair – a pretty original attempt at naming an UNCLE Section, even by Avallone’s standards (he also makes sure to tell us that Waverly is the head of "Section II, Operations And Enforcements" in the same volume).
The one last vaguely-interesting footnote in all this is that when McDaniel does finally get around to mentioning Section 8 by name, he calls it not “Camouflage and Deception” (which was printed on the back of every membership card I've yet found scanned on the web), but rather “Research and Development”, which seems to have been the name it was given in the writers' bible used by the show in Season 2. So it looks as if at least some of the writers were being updated with new information from the show. There's just not a lot of evidence to suggest many of them were using it. (Mind you, McDaniel also twice attempts to tell us that Napoleon is part of the Policy Section, and once even declares him Number 2 of Section 1, so obviously no-one's perfect.)
Though it's the hardest to find today, Waverly's bio seems to have been the one writers were most dedicated to referencing. The passage about his constantly handling a pipe he never smokes seems to have made a particular impression – run a search for 'pipe' preceded by words unlit, unlighted, empty or cold, and you'll receive no end of hits from Waverly's scenes (others do have him actually smoking, but since the show once made a minor plot point out of his irritation at having run out of tobacco, I don't think we can much fault them for that). 'Tweed' is almost as popular. Oram clearly took note of his being prone to forget the names of the men he worked with (as does Lynds, who, as usual, passed it on to Pronzini), and Jakes is particularly fond of pointing out the contrast between his seedy self and the modern outfit he runs. As much dedication as this shows to Waverly’s bio, alas, no author actually has the guts to have Napoleon "dangling from a pipe in a sewer pending the return of a homicide-minded enemy, look down to discover tweedy-jacketed, baggy-trousered Mr. Waverly, standing ankle-deep in water, “tsk-tsking” up at him", which I personally feel is a crying shame.
Rather less impressive are those authors who describe Waverly as a pedantic man in his fifties, since that particular quote comes direct from the bio of not he but Mr. Allison, who was written out of the series altogether and replaced before the show went to air (Oram was the first to make this mistake, and Bernard either copied it or came up with it on his own, but probably the former, while Whittington later picks up on the same theme). The prize for missing the point, however, has to go to Whittington’s very first attempt to describe Waverly in The Doomsday Affair, where he tells us that Waverly dyes his hair (which ‘toppled over his rutted forehead’) to a uniform black out of vanity – a statement so categorically wrong that I'm heavily suspicious that the photo of Leo G. Carroll which appeared in the press book was literally the only one Whittington had ever seen, since it's a rare shot that actually does make his hair look darker than grey.
Before you're far in, it becomes impossible to know exactly who's quoting the bio, and who's simply referencing books that came before. So many authors compare Waverly to a professor or schoolteacher that (even though it's actually not a bad description) I half-suspect most were referencing Avallone’s opening novel, where it happened first. In the following novel, Whittington declares that Waverly has “years of service in army intelligence”, which Lynds seems to have believed (now, he has “fifty years in British and American Intelligence”), passing it on to Pronzini. McDaniel also gives Waverly a detailed history through both world wars in The Dagger Affair, though there, it’s actually of some plot relevance.
Comparatively little interest seems to have been paid to Napoleon and Illya's biographies – or indeed, to the question of how to describe them at all. In fact, where Leslie comes to introducing Illya, one gets the impression that his first source is mainstream news reports about McCallum’s rabid female fanbase, as he twice has a receptionist sigh over the unavailability of everyone’s favourite blond Russian (Oram does likewise in his second book, as does Holly).
Illya's interest in jazz is perhaps the most-often referenced detail from either his or Napoleon’s bios, and even that comes up perhaps half a dozen times in total. Whittington, Lynds and Jakes each bring it up once in passing. McDaniel and Leslie both mention his having a specific interest in Charlie Parker (The Rainbow Affair and The Diving Dames Affair), and Phillifent has him enjoying some records (though not his own) by the Swingle Singers in The Power Cube Affair. There are quite possibly more references to particular musicians scattered through the series that I don’t have the keywords to check for, but I doubt there’s very many. Interestingly, a couple of authors also show him listening to classical music by Russian composers – in The Dagger Affair, McDaniel has him listening to a Prokofief symphony on an in-flight classical music channel, then later Oram has him disturbed while listening to the Shostakovich symphony in The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair (possibly taking his cue from McDaniel).
Since the Calibre extension I'm using to hunt through all these files takes regular expressions, I can also tell you that exactly 9 stories give me hits for "Ni[chk]+ov[ie]t?ch", which (I rather hope) ought to cover every possible permutation of Illya's middle name. Authors responsible include Avallone, Leslie, McDaniel, Oram and Phillifent (notably, none of the magazine authors appear in this list, presumably because the promotional booklet they were evidently working from didn't mention Illya's middle name). Most of these use the official spelling of "Nickovetch", but I do also get one hit for "Nikovetch" (one of Phillifent's 3 uses) and another for "Nickovitch" (McDaniel). Whether these were actually wrong in the novels or whether it's simply a typo introduced by whoever transcribed them, I can only guess, but the myriad different ways I've seen the name spelt on the web suggests that some confusion over the subject is fairly typical. Either way, that's 8 more uses of the name than fans would ever have heard from their TVs in the entire original run of the show.
Many of the novels refer to Napoleon as UNCLE’s ‘Chief Enforcement Agent’ – an interesting little detail, since it’s one of those bits of popular fanon that never appeared in the show itself. Given that the phrase appears at the end of both Avallone’s and Oram’s introductory blurbs (and that it also appeared in at least one article), it seems fairly safe to say it came direct from the original development notes themselves. Curiously, having introduced Napoleon to us as ‘Chief Enforcement Agent’ in his very first chapter, Avallone then goes on to refer to him instead as ‘Chief Enforcement Officer’ for the rest of the novel. Perhaps the notes did both, though I suspect this one was Avallone’s own personal error – but either way, other authors quickly followed suit. A total of 12 different stories use ‘Agent’, whereas 16 use the ‘Officer’ variant (Whittington and Edmonds variously use both in the same story, and Lynds tends to alternate from one story to the next).
As for Napoleon’s character, references to his biography are even thinner than Illya’s. Avallone does reference Napoleon’s cover identity as a man who works for some sort of charity organisation, not insensibly cross-referencing that with a detail from the development notes which specifies that UNCLE itself poses publicly as a charitable foundation. (To quote the full section: Solo flashed his impressive U.N.C.L.E. credentials, which to the world at large was some kind of charitable organization for the needy and underprivileged. It was so easy for the casual observer to assume from Solo’s outer appearance that he was some wealthy young man who had decided to be a philanthropist as his life’s work.) Unfortunately for Avallone, in the world of the show, although plenty of the public have heard of UNCLE, no-one ever seems to think it’s job is philanthropy, so he’s messed up a little there (presumably, once the writers had been required to clarify what the acronym stood for to so as to mollify the real world UN, any real chance to play on the ambiguity was lost). But from there on in, no-one seems to have been paying much attention to that bio at all.
A search through the books turns up not a single obvious hit for references to ‘poor Solo’s’ accident-prone reputation. Not one seems to mentions his degree in philosophy, time in the swimming or lacrosse teams, or disinterest in fraternities. Ironically, one of the few details that does get mentioned is the one that was already outdated at the time of printing, being that Napoleon is Canadian (something which was part of his history very early in development, but dropped after Rolfe joined production), which turns up twice in Jakes’ stories (The Ugly Man Affair and The Deadly Dark Affair). There are only three references to his love of sailing that I’ve found – two of them by McDaniel, who provides the source of some popular fanon when he names Napoleon’s yacht ‘the Pursang’ in The Utopia Affair, though it’s no more than name-dropped in passing there. He also brings up Napoleon’s experience as a small-boat handler in The Rainbow Affair. The last reference comes from Jakes, in The Deadly Dark Affair, which lifts heavily from Napoleon’s official biography in describing his boat and his apartment – though Jakes does at least manage to come up with a few specific pieces of nautical memorabilia to flesh out the scene.
Though many more books visit Napoleon’s apartment, details are thin on the ground. Holly spends an extended scene there, but has few specifics to share except that it has a terrace with French doors, and that Napoleon has “carefully collected everything that was in it with an eye to its elegance, comfort, and effect.” Taking absolutely nothing from the development notes, she’s also decided that Napoleon must move regularly for security purposes (a notion I personally find pretty laughable, considering that we all know that UNCLE hasn’t bothered to change a single aspect of its Del Floria’s entrance security, not even after every last detail leaked to THRUSH, back before the opening sequence of the very first episode).
McDaniel delivers a scene about a break-in at Illya’s apartment, though doesn’t go into much detail about the place. He does put Illya’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights in the same book (The Dagger Affair), and has apparently there remembered that he and Napoleon are supposed to live in the same building (not only is Brooklyn Heights a logical location for an apartment “overlooking the East River” as Napoleon's does, but Illya wonders if the villains who broke into his apartment might have done the same to Napoleon's immediately before or after, suggesting Napoleon’s must be nearby). By The Utopia Affair, however, McDaniel is telling us that Napoleon's apartment is in Manhattan – whether that means he'd forgotten his earlier account or whether he, too, had decided Napoleon would move regularly is open to question.
I’ve spent less time looking at The Girl from UNCLE books, but even on the most cursory keyword search, what stands out most is how much Napoleon and Illya turn up in them. Napoleon is namechecked at least in all but one of the GfU stories, and Illya in each and every one. Though most stories give them no more than a mention in passing or a brief cameo, several give them major appearances, including two of Richard Demming’s three stories (Velvet Voice and Deadly Drug), two of Edmonds’ three (Stolen Spaceman and Sinister Satellite) and one of Avallone’s novels (The Blazing Affair). Illya also appears in The Mesmerizing Mist Affair by Charles Ventura, even though that’s the one GfU story in which Napoleon isn’t mentioned at all.
I’m not certain what it says that the Girl from UNCLE authors evidently couldn’t finish a story without at least paying credit to the ‘real’ men from UNCLE. Some were likely just taking the chance to do what the shows couldn’t do for budget reasons, by putting all four heroes on page together (which I’m sure many fans would appreciate). But one can’t help but suspect that there was some sort of feeling going around that the Girl from UNCLE concept simply couldn’t stand on its own, and the truncated lifespan of the show would sadly tend to agree with them.
There’s a sixth ‘main’ UNCLE character, though he’s rarely remembered nowadays, and not without reason, because this was The Girl from UNCLE’s teenage work-experience student, a boy called Randy Kovacs, played by Randy Kirby. He appeared in only 7 episodes before the producers thought better of that idea, but any attempt to read the GfU tie-ins will mean encountering him regularly, as he appears in all except The Sinister Satellite Affair (Edmonds) and The Cornish Pixie Affair (Leslie). Edmonds also namechecks him once in one of his MfU stories (Million Monsters), granting him a total of 10 appearances + 1 mention, which is several more than he actually got on-screen.
On the flipside, a handful of the MfU magazine stories feature April or Mark – including one of Whittington’s, both of Edmonds (no story by Edmonds failed to at least namecheck all four UNCLE stars), one by Charles Ventura, and the last four stories by Jakes. Fewer feature them significantly – The Volcano Box Affair by Ventura features only April prominently, while both April and Mark look to have significant appearances in Whittington’s last story, The Light Kill Affair. None of the novels mention either April or Mark in any capacity – interest in crossing over the series was fairly one-sided in the original’s favour.
One of the big reasons I first went looking for the UNCLE novels was I'd heard that the two original UNCLE girls, Wanda Mae Kim and Heather McNabb (who have long been a particular pet-subject of mine), made appearances. To be specific, Heather turns up in the works of three of the UNCLE authors – one appearance in The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington, and several in Dennis Lynds' various entries in the magazines, plus one in Bill Pronzini's – while Wanda Mae Kim appears in Whittington's magazine story The Beauty and Beast Affair.
Looking deeper, however, one strongly begins to suspect that the main – perhaps the only – reason these girls were chosen is that they're the ones who happened to be featured in the promotional material the authors had on hand. None of them even get Heather's name right – Whittington styles it as “McNab”, as it appeared in the promo booklet (the actual episode credits would consistently spell it 'McNabb'), whereas Lynds confuses her actress with her character, naming the character “May Heatherly” every time she appears. Pronzini was evidently following Lynds' example, as he makes the same mistake. Still dutifully following the press release, both go on to refer to “Heatherly's” department as the “Communications-Research” section, which they variously decide is probably Section III or IV (Lynds does both in different stories), nevermind that nowhere else have either Section III or IV ever been given that title. Lynds even goes so far as to have Napoleon sigh about how “Heatherly” “did not see eye-to-eye with Solo on fraternisation among U.N.C.L.E. People” – a laughable mischaracterisation of a woman who, in the show, openly discussed upcoming dates with Napoleon on the radio in the middle of his missions. This, alas, is as close to any sort of inner life as Heather gets in any of these stories.
In one final bizarre footnote to the subject of Heather, one of the Whitman hardcover books The Affair of the Gentle Saboteur also prominently includes an UNCLE character called “McNabb”, but who's described as male field agent of Del Floria's age. Whether the name is pure coincidence, or whether the author had just completely misread the press book, we'll never know for sure.
Though Heather gets little to do beyond reporting on this-or-that piece of intelligence, Wanda's one outing sees her promoted to full field agent, and I only wish I could actually recommend the result. Unfortunately, the writer to take this initiative was Whittington, who is wastes no time establishing himself to be one of the most grossly misogynistic hacks ever to jerk off on page and convince someone to publish it, and if you think I’m kidding, my full review is right here.
Notably, no other UNCLE girl shows up anywhere – not Sarah Johnson, or any of the Caucasian Wandas or Lisa Rogers, nevermind that each of them tallied more appearances to their names than both Heather and Wanda Mae Kim put together. Plenty of publicity material came out surrounding the casting of both Sarah and Lisa, but evidently none of it ever made it to the tie-in authors, so none of them appear.
The only non-lead recurring UNCLE character to be mentioned more often than Heather is, of course, the ubiquitous Del Floria, though he’s not much better treated. Most appearances of the name “Del Floria” are, unsurprisingly, references to his shop. When he actually does appear, people tend to get him wrong. In The Radioactive Camel Affair, Leslie makes much of Del Floria’s attempts to get Illya to leave him his jacket for pressing, something which – you guessed it – is a throwaway detail from the development notes, but not something we ever see him do in the show. In fact, given the wordless communication that characterises most of Del Floria’s scenes, most attempts to write in some casual banter as Napoleon and Illya enter the shop fall similarly flat.
A truly depressing number of authors labour under the impression that “Del” is his first name (McDaniel is again one of the offenders), while both Leslie and Jakes inexplicably start referring to him as “Mr. Del Florio” in some of their later stories. Actually, I tell a lie there – this one I can explain. See, Del Floria’s one appearance in Season 4 was also credited as “Del Florio”, so we can only presume that the mistake came direct from the official writers’ guide for that season, and that this information was shared with the various tie-in authors. Not that that’s a particularly good excuse when both Jakes and Leslie really ought to have remembered that they’d both been spelling it “Del Floria” in all their previous work.
If notes for the new season were indeed making it to the tie-in authors, then it becomes only more curious that Leslie goes right on repeating the badge information from the pre-development version, and that other S4 features such as Lisa Rogers never do appear (Leslie goes so far as to portray Waverly’s secretary as a blonde in one of his ‘Del Florio’ titles). Maybe Lisa Rogers simply wasn’t mentioned in the notes the authors were given. But if so, you have to admit it says a lot that two different authors in this line were apparently able to zero in on the one piece of new information provided to them that would turn out to be a misprint.
Only once that I’ve caught do any of UNCLE’s guest-of-the-week characters turn up in the books, that being the enigmatic Dr. Egret, master of disguise, who serves as the villain of The Birds of a Feather Affair by Michael Avallone. Though Avallone himself remains infamous for his lacking familiarity with the show at the time of his first contribution to the series, he clearly must at least have watched either The Mad Mad Tea Party Affair or The Blondes of Nazarone Affair at some point – and actually makes a very good choice of villains to resurrect. By and large, however, authors were happier creating their own supporting cast from scratch.
Most famously, David McDaniel gave UNCLE a head of R&D, Mr. Simpson, who turns up in three of his novels, as well as the THRUSH villains Ward and Irene Baldwin, who are introduced in Dagger, mentioned in Rainbow, and reappear again in Hollow Crown. Lynds created a THRUH villainess called Maxine Trent, who appears in 5 of Lynds' 7 stories, and Jakes an UNCLE projectionist called Jacques, who appears in 4 of his own 7 (and may-or-may not be something of a self-insert). Leslie created an intelligence broker call Habib Tufik, who turns up in all three of his novels. In addition to these (all of which are pointed out in Work/Text), I can also add that both of Stratton's novels prominently involve a scientist by the name of Dr. Morthley, and two of Leslie's books mention UNCLE having a West Indian former beauty queen receptionist (who may or may not be a botched reference to Wanda Mae Kim, whose description in promotional materials mentioned that her actress was a former beauty queen from Taiwan). There may well be still more such examples scattered through that I've not even caught.
Though that's certainly plenty of inter-title continuity, it's notable that nowhere in there does any author use any character created by anyone else. McDaniel does namecheck Morthley's work on an invisibility device in The Utopia Affair, and Davies has Napoleon remember the torture he experienced at the hands of a Professor Adams in Holly's novel, but that's about as close as we seem to come. If the events of other novels are referred back to anywhere else, I've yet to catch it happening. Rather than giving us a rich, line-wide continuity, what continuity we get remains rigidly segregated by author.
Concepts, rather than characters, do manage a little more crossover success. Both Stratton and Davies borrow McDaniel's idea that THRUSH is an acronym, and Lynds picks up Whittington's idea of giving Napoleon and Illya the radio code names “Bubba” and “Sonny”. Bill Pronzini obviously borrowed the idea of using Heather McNabb from Lynds, as he makes the exact same mistake with her name, while Lynds may well have been inspired to include her by Whittington (though the error he makes with her name is all Lynds’ own). Leslie refers to Illya as owning a Brooklyn Heights apartment twice, but only after McDaniel had already done so once himself, so it may well have been McDaniel he got the idea from. The magazine writers in particular had a weird thing for throwing in the adjectives “young” and “slender” when they needed to describe Napoleon, which is a bizarre enough choice that it probably isn’t coincidence. McDaniel and Oram both mention Illya listening to music by classical Russian composers, and McDaniel and Leslie both suggest he’s a fan of Charlie Parker, which similarly may or may not be coincidence. Phillifent has Napoleon call Illya a “Smart Russian” twice, which he may have got directly from the show, though he also may have got it from McDaniel, who used it first. Avallone called Napoleon “Chief Enforcement Officer” rather than “Chief Enforcement Agent” in the main text of his story, and the moniker “Chief Enforcement Officer” remains the more popular of the two throughout the series thereafter. He also compared Napoleon’s gun to a Luger and Waverly to a college professor, which many later authors would repeat. So authors were obviously reading and eagerly referencing one another's books, even if they were reluctant to share around some of their more interesting toys.
There almost seem to be two distinct inter-connected universes in play here: one consisting of McDaniel and the other authors who actually came to the project as fans, being Stratton and Davies (and possibly also Holly and Phillifent), whereas writers of the magazine largely referred back to Lynds, who himself seems to lean heavily on the first couple of novels in the UNCLE series by Whittington and Avallone. (Jakes, writing for the magazine was also reputedly a fan, but seems less inclined to borrow from other authors than most, and while Phillifent seems more familiar with the show than most authors, I’ve not caught anyone borrowing from him).
A third group might be the British authors, who often seem to fixate on similar details, such as badge colours or the attractiveness of Illya to women. It goes without saying that fandom at large is firmly in the McDaniel camp – ideas of his like Botticelli, the THRUSH acronym, and even the naming of Napoleon's yacht have been eagerly adopted into popular fanon, while the likes of “Bubba” and “Sonny” have been swiftly forgotten.
The more you browse, the more the various writers' individual quirks become apparent. Lynds reuses so many of the same elements in his stories (also including a love of referring to Illya as “the small and/or blonde Russian”) that they eventually clued me in that I’d had one of his stories misattributed to Jakes (FTR, the listing on the Fans from UNCLE site seems to have a few mistakes in his attributions – this listing looks to be more accurate). Phillifent evidently liked the ‘smart Russian’ moniker so much he used it several times in both of his last two stories. And so on.
An even greater tell is how UNCLE communicates. The classic catch-phrase “Open Channel D” appears nowhere in the development notes, and thus appears nowhere in an awful lot of books. The term “Channel D” turns up nowhere in the first three books, but once McDaniel and Phillifent get in on the act, the phrase starts to appear. Stratton, Davies, Jakes and Holly all follow suit, and even Whittington and Oram eventually pick it up in some of their later stories. (Pronzini does too, showing he’d read at least something that wasn’t written by Lynds, who never used it himself. Bernard drops both ‘Central’ and ‘Channel D’, but I suspect that simply means that the writers’ notes weren’t the only thing he was capable of plagiarising.) On the other hand, Avallone, Phillifent, Oram and Lynds all have Napoleon and Illya using code-names over the radio (something they rarely if ever do in the show, where they instead regularly speak their names over the channel without fear), and Oram seems puzzlingly unaware that communicators are a standard part of the UNCLE kit at all.
The UNCLE Special is an interesting case – it wasn’t named in the development notes or in the show, but any moderately-dedicated fan would likely have read about it or bought one of the toys. Unsurprisingly, both Avallone and Oram are quite unaware of its name. Avallone describes Napoleon’s special gun as it’s described in his bio, and has presumably seen a picture (he mentions the ‘S’ on the butt), but says only that it resembles a Luger P-38, and Oram does likewise, as does Phillifent. Whittington, however, has evidently seen the gun named – and is interested enough to declare that it weighs exactly thirty-seven ounces in two different stories. McDaniel, being the super-fan that he is, names the Special in each of his stories, as do Stratton, Davies and Holly. Jakes, on the other hand, names it only once out of his 7 stories, and Leslie names it only once out of 6. Lynds and Davies again call it ‘Luger-like’, but they both also give it its name (Lynds names the UNCLE Special in every one of his stories, as does Pronzini). None seem aware that the final model was actually based on a Walther and that the Luger was quickly abandoned. It’s named sporadically in the GfU titles too.
Despite the popularity of ‘Chief Enforcement Agent and/or Officer’, very few authors refer to Waverly’s job as it’s regularly described in the show, as Number One of Section I. Phillifent does in The Corfu Affair, and Jakes does in Dolls of Death, but even McDaniel is unusually silent on the subject. He does, however, repeatedly make the mistake of putting Napoleon in Section I, once even referring to him as ‘Section One, Number Two’ (and it’s obviously not just a typo, since he’s referring specifically to Napoleon’s place as Waverly’s presumed successor). On the other hand, although Lynds rarely references anything so specific to the show, he does twice correctly identify Illya as Number 2 of Section II.
Putting the lot together with a few other key tells like Sections above 7 or use of phrases like “Smart Russian” from the show, you can quite legitimately come up with some sort of an Index Of Actually Giving A Fuck to apply to the tie-in series. Avallone, across three different stories, scores a grand total of 1 point, for his inclusion of Dr. Egret. Since I have granted only 0.5 points for awareness of the UNCLE Special, given that it never is named in the show, Leslie averages a dismal 0.25 over his 6 stories, while just ahead at an 0.5 point average per story we find Whittington, Lynds and Oram. Phillifent does somewhat better, averageing 1.67. Holly, Jakes and Stratton, meanwhile, all average around 2 points per story. Davies, in his one finished book, manages an impressive 2.5. But the grand prize unsurprisingly goes to McDaniel, who averages 2.67 across his 6 finished novels.
There are obviously other details I might have picked on, and the numbers say nothing about characterisation, but it’s pretty telling that you can come up with a number like that to begin with. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go sit in the corner for a bit and feel properly ashamed for having ever wasted the time it took to do that calculation at all.
Three authors stand out as having had the greatest influence on the shape of the series. Two are those who penned the first two books – Avallone and Whittington, who not only set the grim tone that would plague so many later entries, but who were obviously heavily referenced by later writers. This is something of a shame, given that even the publisher was reportedly unhappy with the tone of their work after the fact, but so it goes.
By far the most influential, however, would have to be McDaniel – both in inspiring later authors and in inspiring greater fanbase. More of his ideas are referenced throughout the series than those of any other author I could name. His ideas about the origins of THRUSH, though non-canonical by any other standard, have made it all the way to the UNCLE entry on Wikipedia. His books contain more references to the existence of Section VIII than the show itself, and the Fans from UNCLE website cites him under an article on the subject. The notion that Napoleon is known for his famously good ‘Solo Luck’, repeated in many-a-fanfic over the years, comes from nowhere in the series – it’s a pure McDaniel invention. So is the naming of Napoleon’s yacht as the ‘Pursang,’ and the idea that Napoleon and Illya while away their time on stake-outs playing word-games like Botticelli and Superghost. The fascination with what home-security UNCLE agents might have in their apartments more than likely owes something to McDaniel. And though the idea that Napoleon is next in line to succeed Waverly, and that he sometimes calls Illya a “Smart Russian” originate in the show, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if McDaniel deserves some of the credit for popularising them.
Of the rest, Holly seems to be the origin of the idea that UNCLE agents move apartments regularly (the obsession with security in the ACE line far exceeds anything that would ever be evidenced by the show), and Leslie might perhaps be the source of the idea that UNCLE’s female staff spend so much time sighing over the emotional unavailability of Illya Kuryakin. Work/Text suggests that some years of fannish debate over whether or not Illya is a defector were fueled in part by the fact that The Corfu Affair by Phillifent portrayed him as such. There may well be many more such lasting influences that I’ve not spotted, but by this point, probably 95% of those repeating them have no idea they come from the books, and have never actually read the books at all.
Whether fandom’s ongoing fixation with the many never-seen entrances to UNCLE HQ and such other nonsense truly derives from the novels, or whether it simply shows that the fans were just as fascinated by such details as the novelists, we’ll never know for sure – but maybe the most intriguing note I could leave you with here is to point out that the cycle is still going, even now. The 2015 movie takes even less from the original UNCLE mythos than any product ever produced under the UNCLE name – but when fans of that film go googling for information on the original, they’ll more than likely find themselves reading about all the same security minutiae. And I’ve already run into at least one (by one of those writers who makes no bones about their complete disinterest in actually watching the series) that opens with spiel about the New York HQ’s various entrances, and which later repeats verbatim David McDaniel’s backcronym explaining each of the letters of the word THRUSH, complete with a short diversion into their historical connections with Sherlock Holmes.
The following analysis comes courtesy of my recent acquisition of the entire series in digital format, plus some handy epub-library software. Pick a few key phrases out of the original MGM bios and development notes, and the number of hits that come up in a library-wide search tells one hell of a story – or perhaps more accurately, exposes just how little effort so many authors put into telling a story which would be original. That which was original was frequently an obvious mistake. I’m not honestly sure whether anyone but me is ever going to want to read this many words worth of analysis of who-lifted-what-from-where and who-fucked-what-up, but I am seriously far too fascinated by the train-wreck of error and plagiarism that is some of these novels not to get my thoughts down in full. Possibly you might prefer to skip to the sections on recurring original characters and the conclusion for some of the more interesting parts. If you’re looking for my reviews of those stories I’ve so far read in full, here’s that link.
Contents:
- The Authors
- Describing UNCLE
- The Sections of UNCLE
- On THRUSH
- The Actual Men from UNCLE
- Crossovers with The Girl from UNCLE
- The Support Staff of UNCLE
- The Miscellaneous Recurring Characters (and Themes) of UNCLE
- What wasn’t in the notes
- Some Conclusions
The Authors
Before I get into the specifics, some sort of brief cast summary would seem to be called, since a lot of different names are about to be thrown around repeatedly. In total, the collection includes 23 novels, plus 24 short stories from the Man from UNCLE magazine, plus an additional 6 books from the Girl from UNCLE series, and another 7 short stories from that magazine. In the main UNCLE line, the names you’ll want to remember are:- Michael Avallone produced the dark, violent, first novel in the series (The Thousand Coffins Affair). His later attempts at selling novels to the ACE line failed, but he did manage to sell a couple more books the later GfU series.
- Harry Whittington was a misogynistic hack who wrote the second dark, violent, novel (The Doomsday Affair). Like Avallone, he doesn’t turn up in the authors for the series again (quite possibly for the same reasons), but he did go on to sell four more stories to the MfU magazine (one of which I made the mistake of trying to read).
- David McDaniel, the first and most notable of the actual UNCLE fans to write for the series, published a total of six UNCLE novels (Dagger, Vampire, Rainbow, Monster Wheel, Utopia, and Hollow Crown). Many fans consider his work the only books worth bothering with, and I’d largely tend to agree.
- Thomas Stratton was actually a pseudonym for two authors who seem to have been friends of McDaniel’s. They produced two novels, which seem to have gone down better with fans than most of the rest of the series, though they certainly don’t rival McDaniel’s popularity.
- Fredric Davies is the pseudonym for two more friends of McDaniel, who turned out one book which (like Stratton’s) seems to be among the better-remembered parts of the series.
- J. Holly Hunter, the one female author involved in the line, wrote one book, The Assassination Affair. She was better at whumping than characterisation, but that seems to have been enough to get her some fan interest at the very least.
About a dozen more of the series were first published by a UK imprint. You can often pick their books by the fact they’re frequently set in Britain or Europe, and fixate on a few similar themes.
- Peter Leslie wrote 5 MfU books and 1 GfU, equalling McDaniel for productivity, though falling rather short on the scale of appealing to people who’d actually seen the show (which one rather suspects he hadn’t).
- John T. Phillifent produced three books, and was rather more obviously a fan, though your mileage may vary on how that translates to the page.
- John Oram wrote two books, being another basically competent writer who probably hadn’t bothered to actually watch the show. The most notable thing about Oram is that he contributed the third book, which was the last before McDaniel came onto the scene and started injecting some references actual fans might recognise into the series.
- Joel Bernard produced only a single book. His ability as a writer may be best summed up by the fact something like one in every twenty words in the novel he submitted was lifted verbatim from Sam Rolfe’s development notes.
Meanwhile, over in the magazine:
- John Jakes wrote 7 stories, making him one of the two most prolific from the magazine series. He was apparently a self-professed fan of the show.
- Dennis Lynds wrote another 7 (including the very first). He may or may not have seen much of the show, but had obviously read the first two novels in the series, because he lifts ideas from them regularly.
- I. G. Edmonds wrote 5 stories in the MfU and GfU books combined.
- Bill Pronzini sold only a single story to the magazine, for its penultimate issue, and would be wholly unmemorable were it not for the fact that he lifts so much material from Lynds that we’re going to be hearing about him rather a lot.
This isn’t the complete list of authors, just the ones we’re going to be hearing about the most, variously because they were the most prolific, or the least original. Rounding out the list, we also have Simon Latter, who wrote the remaining two Girl from UNCLE books, Richard Demming, who wrote three stories for the GfU magazine, Charles Ventura, who wrote one more, and finally, Richard Curtis, Talmage Powell, and Frank Belknap Long, who each wrote one story for the MfU magazine. Two last titles in my collection, both by Brandon Keith, were never published by ACE at all, but in hardcover by a Whitman imprint. These were shorter (both under 30K) and nominally aimed at a younger audience, though the actual content reputedly still maintained the dark, violent tone common to much of the main paperback series.
For all that I’m about to snark at these guys for not doing their homework, I should point out up front that it may not be that fair to expect much better. The quality of tie-in novels and games is notoriously bad in most franchises, and one of the primary reasons is that creators aren’t recruited for love or skill nearly so much as for speed. Authors of the UNCLE books seem to have made about $1000 a story, and those writing for the magazine perhaps about $500, with no royalties from sales – and even though this was a lot more in the 60’s than it is today, it still wasn’t a lot for a novel-length work. There’s a limit to how much time you can afford to spend on getting the details right when you’re writing for a living, and only get paid on completion.
It’s also worth remembering that in the days before home video, fans generally got one and only one shot to see each episode, mayyyybe two if it happened to be one of the ones that scored a repeat later in the year, so it’s hardly as if the authors could simply rewatch an episode for reference, the way those of us writing fanfic can today. Though they were provided with development materials, they don’t seem to have received any scripts, so they were largely working with what they had on paper – and what you’ve got in written reference format is almost always going to trump your memory of what you think happened on screen last season. Editorial oversight clearly wasn’t anything to write home about either. As one final note, I think we’re all well aware that not even the greatest super-fan on the planet is necessarily going to have the talent to convincingly recreate character voices on page. By those standards, 1 basically-decent author out of 21 probably ain’t that bad.
And on that not-wholly-uplifting note, time to get down to some specifics.
Describing UNCLE
In The Beginning, the Authors from UNCLE were provided with a copy of Sam Rolfe’s original development notes, and then apparently told to fuck off and write something already. No-one involved in the show had any further input in vetting the result. Probably nothing characterises most the books that resulted better than their obsession with sharing as much of those notes as possible.Charitably, one might suppose the authors had guessed fans would love to hear more about the inner workings of the UNCLE world. Less charitably, one might suppose a lot of these guys had simply found a convenient way to pad their word-counts with minimum effort.
The subtlety with which different authors went about working these sorts of details into their stories varied. Some, like Avallone in the very first novel, front-loaded their books with a preface introducing UNCLE HQ, which tended to be a slightly abbreviated copy of the same notes they started with. This isn’t actually a bad technique, given that the average person finding these books on the shelf might or might not have seen the show (which itself did much the same thing with the “welcome to UNCLE” sequence which opened the first few episodes, for much the same reasons).
Most, however, made at least some token attempt at working the information into the story, if not necessarily with much more grace. This typically meant that when Napoleon and Illya first step into Del Floria's shop in the early chapters, the reader would be treated to an extended info-dump detailing exactly how many other entrances they might have used instead. Some of the more prolific authors did this only in their first book, while others would find a way to work the same information into almost every story. John Jakes, who wrote several stories for the magazine, came up with an introductory spiel for his fourth story which he must have liked particularly, because he went on to reuse the same, virtually word-for-word, in each of the next three stories he turned in.
The grand prize for laziness, however, has to go to Joel Bernard, author of The Thinking Machine Affair, who regurgitates what appears to be the complete, unedited text of Sam Rolfe's original development notes verbatim into his story – nominally as the output from THRUSH's computer when asked for information on how to break into UNCLE (which, in Bernard's world, evidently phrases its responses like a man making a studio pitch). In context, the result is just as clunky as it sounds, and I'm still torn between being thrilled to have found (what looks to be) such a complete version of the original notes, and unimpressed by the shameless plagiarism. (You can find the full text of that extract in this post.)
Some sort of honourable mention is perhaps also due to John Oram, who not only opens his first novel (The Copenhagen Affair) with a preface much like Avallone's, but also opens chapter 3 (the first scene at UNCLE HQ, naturally) with another chunk, and then finds space to copy out the complete description of THRUSH almost word-for-word into the middle of his story as well. Avallone himself also used a chunk of the THRUSH description as dialogue from one of his characters. Whittington spread his details out a bit more, but otherwise often did much the same.
A particular fixation was on letting us know about all the alternate entrances to UNCLE HQ. Take, for example, The Mask Club. The Mask Club was a minor detail from Rolfe's original development notes, attached to the same block as the rest of UNCLE HQ, which (may have) served as one of the entrances. Though it came up in promotional materials occasionally, the Mask Club was never seen, mentioned, nor even alluded to in all 105 episodes of the series. Nonetheless, the Mask Club is named explicitly in no less than 6 of the stories and novels, while 3 more included reference to “The Masked Club”, another mentions “The Masque Club”, another 2 shorten the name down to “The Mask” and another 3 reference the UNCLE block including a “key club” which isn’t named. That’s a total of 15 stories by 11 different authors (Avallone, Bernard, Jakes, Leslie, Lynds, McDaniel, Oram, Phillifent, Pronzini and Whittington – Stratton and Holly remain the only MfU novel authors who didn’t mention it at least once). As best I can tell, only one of these stories actually uses the Mask Club as even the most minor of plot points, and none actually feature a scene set there. The rest just felt the need to let us know that The Mask Club was a thing that existed on the UNCLE block.Did you know that there's a secret entrance to UNCLE HQ through a channel leading from the basement to the East River? Well, 7 different UNCLE authors have made sure to let you know (Avallone, Bernard, Deming, Jakes, Leslie, Oram and Whittington), though I’ve yet to find more than a single story where it becomes a significant plot point. Both Jakes and Lynds assure us there are “four known entrances” at every opportunity, while Jakes, Avallone, Oram and Bernard all feel we absolutely need to know that UNCLE HQ has exactly four elevators and no staircases.
The British authors in particular seem to have had a great fascination with badge colours. All four of them at least once take the time to let us know that a red or yellow badge will grant you access to only a few floors of HQ, but only a white badge will get you all the way to the top – all quite oblivious to the fact that the show had dropped the white/yellow badge distinction by the time it went into production (probably for the very practical reason that the audience couldn’t easily tell the difference on a black and white screen). Everyone watching the show from S2 onwards would know perfectly well that a yellow badge was good enough for Waverly himself – and Leslie finally gets this right in his third novel (The Diving Dames Affair), only to go right back to proclaiming the gospel of The White Badge a couple of novels later (The Splintered Sunglasses Affair). In a number of cases, you can pick not just who had the developments notes on hand, but which version they were working from – “known entrances” is phrasing from the one that went out with the promotional booklet, whereas the details about badge colours more likely came from the original. A handful of later books show signs their authors had been updated with the new writers guides produced for later UNCLE seasons (we’ll get to these in a bit), though even then, many clung tight to the originals.Despite all this minute fixation on UNCLE’s security, when it comes to portraying the system in action, these same writers regularly falter. In his first story, Lynds assures us that UNCLE HQ has only once been invaded with any success, in an attempt that came through the river entrance. Except that the very first episode ever aired showed us a major THRUSH invasion, which came through Del Floria’s. Oops. Leslie actually spends the first chapter of The Splintered Sunglasses Affair detailing an elaborate scheme to capture Napoleon in Del Floria’s own shop… which unfortunately depends on, 1) there being a solid door to the change room, which there very obviously isn’t, 2) that the security camera is in the cubicle itself and doesn’t show a good view of the shop (in the show, it has an excellent view of the shop and no view of the cubicle), and 3) that only a single receptionist is responsible for monitoring every single security feed from every entrance simultaneously, from multiple screens at her workstation. All of which is categorically contradicted by the first five minutes ever to air on TV, and again repeatedly through the first season (if not also latter seasons as well).
Leslie and Oram also both take time to let us know that UNCLE’s secret entrance is specifically in the third try-on cubicle in Del Floria’s shop, which is accurate to the notes, but not at all accurate to the show, in which there’s plainly never been more than one. But oddest of all must be I. G. Edmonds' incomprehensible belief that UNCLE has six different elevators, one for each named section. I can’t even guess where he got that idea, but it’s something Edmonds was sure enough about to mention in 3 of his 5 stories. Whoever was editing the result plainly never bothered to correct him.
This also conveniently brings us to the subject of UNCLE’s Sections, which were similarly handled.
The 5 6 8 ? Sections of UNCLE
If you'd asked a fan of UNCLE back during the original run how many sections the organisation was divided into, I'd imagine a lot of them would have answered '8'. That's what was printed on the back of the official membership cards, which were sent out in their tens of thousands to fans on both sides of the pond. It's rather telling, then, that even though the tie-in authors were eager to share the details of UNCLE's internal structure, almost none of them listed any section above Section 6 – the number listed in most of the promotional material dating from before the show hit the air. In fact, only two authors ever seem to have referenced either Section 7 or 8, either by name or by number. It won't surprise you to learn one of them was David McDaniel (who does so in two different books, once by name and once by number). The other, Thomas Stratton, was a pseudonym used by two of McDaniel's friends, who co-authored a couple of titles – one of which references the Public Relations department of Section 7.What's more surprising is that a number of authors didn't even get as high as 6. When UNCLE is introduced to us in the opening pages of the very first book, the list contains only 5 sections, with the two intelligence sections (“Enforcement and Intelligence” and “Intelligence and Communications”) compressed down into a single section, dubbed “Enforcement and Communications.” Michael Avallone wasn't the last to make this error, and the general theory (relayed by Walker’s book Work/Text: Investigating The Man from UNCLE, which takes most of the credit for getting me started on this subject) is that later authors had copied his mistake.
While some very likely did just that, I'm personally suspicious that the “mistake” came from even higher up the chain. Joel Bernard at the very least can't have been copying from Avallone, because his book reproduces considerably more of the original development notes than Avallone did. So he, at least, must have copied directly from the original document. Quite possibly, the notes both men were working from dated from so early in the process that Rolfe himself hadn't got around to expanding UNCLE's organisational chart up to 6 sections yet.
Whatever their excuse, Lynds, Leslie, and Edmonds would all follow suit, cheerfully informing us that UNCLE had only 5 sections, or naming those last three incorrectly. Edmonds actually manages to get Section 3 right and Section 4 wrong in the same story. Meanwhile, Lynds was also struggling to make sense out of Heather McNabb, whose original bio unhelpfully attributes her to the “Communications-Research” section, which you might note appears nowhere on anyone's version of the chart. Lynds nevertheless names both Section 3 and Section 4 as “Communications and Research” in his various stories, and Pronzini dutifully follows his example. Avallone himself carefully corrects his original mistake in the opening pages of his two GfU novels, both of which contain an identical (and quite new) introduction to the subject of UNCLE, with the correct list of the standard 6 Sections included. Having achieved this much, he goes on to reference there being only five departments in The Blazing Affair and to introduce us to an agent of “Section Six: Security and Enforcement” in The Birds of a Feather Affair – a pretty original attempt at naming an UNCLE Section, even by Avallone’s standards (he also makes sure to tell us that Waverly is the head of "Section II, Operations And Enforcements" in the same volume).
The one last vaguely-interesting footnote in all this is that when McDaniel does finally get around to mentioning Section 8 by name, he calls it not “Camouflage and Deception” (which was printed on the back of every membership card I've yet found scanned on the web), but rather “Research and Development”, which seems to have been the name it was given in the writers' bible used by the show in Season 2. So it looks as if at least some of the writers were being updated with new information from the show. There's just not a lot of evidence to suggest many of them were using it. (Mind you, McDaniel also twice attempts to tell us that Napoleon is part of the Policy Section, and once even declares him Number 2 of Section 1, so obviously no-one's perfect.)
On THRUSH
Details about THRUSH are less often dwelt upon than those about UNCLE, though Oram (as we noted above) managed to copy out much of the original notes when he introduces the topic, while Avallone barely paraphrases the same before sticking it into a character’s mouth (Phillifent does likewise, but at least has the decency to paraphrase and summarise much more strongly). The name itself is variously either in all caps or not, but that can’t really be blamed on the authors, as the notes mostly seem to have had it in caps, while the show mostly didn’t. References to THRUSH’s supra-national character, its capital, council, and various satraps are scattered liberally through many other books, but the particular favourite topic seems to be the Ultimate Computer. This is rather unfortunate, since the one time the show actually touched on the topic, the Ultimate Computer was presented as a brand-new development, completed only to be destroyed by UNCLE before it could go into operation. Ironically, the one author who references the existence of the Ultimate Computer most directly is David McDaniel, who remains the one person involved in the series who otherwise seemed most familiar with the show. That said, fleshing out THRUSH’s history is another favourite topic of McDaniel’s, so it’s probably only natural he’d latch onto whatever he was given to start off with.The Actual Men from UNCLE
Though it's the hardest to find today, Waverly's bio seems to have been the one writers were most dedicated to referencing. The passage about his constantly handling a pipe he never smokes seems to have made a particular impression – run a search for 'pipe' preceded by words unlit, unlighted, empty or cold, and you'll receive no end of hits from Waverly's scenes (others do have him actually smoking, but since the show once made a minor plot point out of his irritation at having run out of tobacco, I don't think we can much fault them for that). 'Tweed' is almost as popular. Oram clearly took note of his being prone to forget the names of the men he worked with (as does Lynds, who, as usual, passed it on to Pronzini), and Jakes is particularly fond of pointing out the contrast between his seedy self and the modern outfit he runs. As much dedication as this shows to Waverly’s bio, alas, no author actually has the guts to have Napoleon "dangling from a pipe in a sewer pending the return of a homicide-minded enemy, look down to discover tweedy-jacketed, baggy-trousered Mr. Waverly, standing ankle-deep in water, “tsk-tsking” up at him", which I personally feel is a crying shame.Rather less impressive are those authors who describe Waverly as a pedantic man in his fifties, since that particular quote comes direct from the bio of not he but Mr. Allison, who was written out of the series altogether and replaced before the show went to air (Oram was the first to make this mistake, and Bernard either copied it or came up with it on his own, but probably the former, while Whittington later picks up on the same theme). The prize for missing the point, however, has to go to Whittington’s very first attempt to describe Waverly in The Doomsday Affair, where he tells us that Waverly dyes his hair (which ‘toppled over his rutted forehead’) to a uniform black out of vanity – a statement so categorically wrong that I'm heavily suspicious that the photo of Leo G. Carroll which appeared in the press book was literally the only one Whittington had ever seen, since it's a rare shot that actually does make his hair look darker than grey.
Before you're far in, it becomes impossible to know exactly who's quoting the bio, and who's simply referencing books that came before. So many authors compare Waverly to a professor or schoolteacher that (even though it's actually not a bad description) I half-suspect most were referencing Avallone’s opening novel, where it happened first. In the following novel, Whittington declares that Waverly has “years of service in army intelligence”, which Lynds seems to have believed (now, he has “fifty years in British and American Intelligence”), passing it on to Pronzini. McDaniel also gives Waverly a detailed history through both world wars in The Dagger Affair, though there, it’s actually of some plot relevance.
Comparatively little interest seems to have been paid to Napoleon and Illya's biographies – or indeed, to the question of how to describe them at all. In fact, where Leslie comes to introducing Illya, one gets the impression that his first source is mainstream news reports about McCallum’s rabid female fanbase, as he twice has a receptionist sigh over the unavailability of everyone’s favourite blond Russian (Oram does likewise in his second book, as does Holly).
Illya's interest in jazz is perhaps the most-often referenced detail from either his or Napoleon’s bios, and even that comes up perhaps half a dozen times in total. Whittington, Lynds and Jakes each bring it up once in passing. McDaniel and Leslie both mention his having a specific interest in Charlie Parker (The Rainbow Affair and The Diving Dames Affair), and Phillifent has him enjoying some records (though not his own) by the Swingle Singers in The Power Cube Affair. There are quite possibly more references to particular musicians scattered through the series that I don’t have the keywords to check for, but I doubt there’s very many. Interestingly, a couple of authors also show him listening to classical music by Russian composers – in The Dagger Affair, McDaniel has him listening to a Prokofief symphony on an in-flight classical music channel, then later Oram has him disturbed while listening to the Shostakovich symphony in The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair (possibly taking his cue from McDaniel).Since the Calibre extension I'm using to hunt through all these files takes regular expressions, I can also tell you that exactly 9 stories give me hits for "Ni[chk]+ov[ie]t?ch", which (I rather hope) ought to cover every possible permutation of Illya's middle name. Authors responsible include Avallone, Leslie, McDaniel, Oram and Phillifent (notably, none of the magazine authors appear in this list, presumably because the promotional booklet they were evidently working from didn't mention Illya's middle name). Most of these use the official spelling of "Nickovetch", but I do also get one hit for "Nikovetch" (one of Phillifent's 3 uses) and another for "Nickovitch" (McDaniel). Whether these were actually wrong in the novels or whether it's simply a typo introduced by whoever transcribed them, I can only guess, but the myriad different ways I've seen the name spelt on the web suggests that some confusion over the subject is fairly typical. Either way, that's 8 more uses of the name than fans would ever have heard from their TVs in the entire original run of the show.
Many of the novels refer to Napoleon as UNCLE’s ‘Chief Enforcement Agent’ – an interesting little detail, since it’s one of those bits of popular fanon that never appeared in the show itself. Given that the phrase appears at the end of both Avallone’s and Oram’s introductory blurbs (and that it also appeared in at least one article), it seems fairly safe to say it came direct from the original development notes themselves. Curiously, having introduced Napoleon to us as ‘Chief Enforcement Agent’ in his very first chapter, Avallone then goes on to refer to him instead as ‘Chief Enforcement Officer’ for the rest of the novel. Perhaps the notes did both, though I suspect this one was Avallone’s own personal error – but either way, other authors quickly followed suit. A total of 12 different stories use ‘Agent’, whereas 16 use the ‘Officer’ variant (Whittington and Edmonds variously use both in the same story, and Lynds tends to alternate from one story to the next).
As for Napoleon’s character, references to his biography are even thinner than Illya’s. Avallone does reference Napoleon’s cover identity as a man who works for some sort of charity organisation, not insensibly cross-referencing that with a detail from the development notes which specifies that UNCLE itself poses publicly as a charitable foundation. (To quote the full section: Solo flashed his impressive U.N.C.L.E. credentials, which to the world at large was some kind of charitable organization for the needy and underprivileged. It was so easy for the casual observer to assume from Solo’s outer appearance that he was some wealthy young man who had decided to be a philanthropist as his life’s work.) Unfortunately for Avallone, in the world of the show, although plenty of the public have heard of UNCLE, no-one ever seems to think it’s job is philanthropy, so he’s messed up a little there (presumably, once the writers had been required to clarify what the acronym stood for to so as to mollify the real world UN, any real chance to play on the ambiguity was lost). But from there on in, no-one seems to have been paying much attention to that bio at all.A search through the books turns up not a single obvious hit for references to ‘poor Solo’s’ accident-prone reputation. Not one seems to mentions his degree in philosophy, time in the swimming or lacrosse teams, or disinterest in fraternities. Ironically, one of the few details that does get mentioned is the one that was already outdated at the time of printing, being that Napoleon is Canadian (something which was part of his history very early in development, but dropped after Rolfe joined production), which turns up twice in Jakes’ stories (The Ugly Man Affair and The Deadly Dark Affair). There are only three references to his love of sailing that I’ve found – two of them by McDaniel, who provides the source of some popular fanon when he names Napoleon’s yacht ‘the Pursang’ in The Utopia Affair, though it’s no more than name-dropped in passing there. He also brings up Napoleon’s experience as a small-boat handler in The Rainbow Affair. The last reference comes from Jakes, in The Deadly Dark Affair, which lifts heavily from Napoleon’s official biography in describing his boat and his apartment – though Jakes does at least manage to come up with a few specific pieces of nautical memorabilia to flesh out the scene.
Though many more books visit Napoleon’s apartment, details are thin on the ground. Holly spends an extended scene there, but has few specifics to share except that it has a terrace with French doors, and that Napoleon has “carefully collected everything that was in it with an eye to its elegance, comfort, and effect.” Taking absolutely nothing from the development notes, she’s also decided that Napoleon must move regularly for security purposes (a notion I personally find pretty laughable, considering that we all know that UNCLE hasn’t bothered to change a single aspect of its Del Floria’s entrance security, not even after every last detail leaked to THRUSH, back before the opening sequence of the very first episode).
McDaniel delivers a scene about a break-in at Illya’s apartment, though doesn’t go into much detail about the place. He does put Illya’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights in the same book (The Dagger Affair), and has apparently there remembered that he and Napoleon are supposed to live in the same building (not only is Brooklyn Heights a logical location for an apartment “overlooking the East River” as Napoleon's does, but Illya wonders if the villains who broke into his apartment might have done the same to Napoleon's immediately before or after, suggesting Napoleon’s must be nearby). By The Utopia Affair, however, McDaniel is telling us that Napoleon's apartment is in Manhattan – whether that means he'd forgotten his earlier account or whether he, too, had decided Napoleon would move regularly is open to question.
Crossovers with The Girl from UNCLE
I’ve spent less time looking at The Girl from UNCLE books, but even on the most cursory keyword search, what stands out most is how much Napoleon and Illya turn up in them. Napoleon is namechecked at least in all but one of the GfU stories, and Illya in each and every one. Though most stories give them no more than a mention in passing or a brief cameo, several give them major appearances, including two of Richard Demming’s three stories (Velvet Voice and Deadly Drug), two of Edmonds’ three (Stolen Spaceman and Sinister Satellite) and one of Avallone’s novels (The Blazing Affair). Illya also appears in The Mesmerizing Mist Affair by Charles Ventura, even though that’s the one GfU story in which Napoleon isn’t mentioned at all.I’m not certain what it says that the Girl from UNCLE authors evidently couldn’t finish a story without at least paying credit to the ‘real’ men from UNCLE. Some were likely just taking the chance to do what the shows couldn’t do for budget reasons, by putting all four heroes on page together (which I’m sure many fans would appreciate). But one can’t help but suspect that there was some sort of feeling going around that the Girl from UNCLE concept simply couldn’t stand on its own, and the truncated lifespan of the show would sadly tend to agree with them.
There’s a sixth ‘main’ UNCLE character, though he’s rarely remembered nowadays, and not without reason, because this was The Girl from UNCLE’s teenage work-experience student, a boy called Randy Kovacs, played by Randy Kirby. He appeared in only 7 episodes before the producers thought better of that idea, but any attempt to read the GfU tie-ins will mean encountering him regularly, as he appears in all except The Sinister Satellite Affair (Edmonds) and The Cornish Pixie Affair (Leslie). Edmonds also namechecks him once in one of his MfU stories (Million Monsters), granting him a total of 10 appearances + 1 mention, which is several more than he actually got on-screen.On the flipside, a handful of the MfU magazine stories feature April or Mark – including one of Whittington’s, both of Edmonds (no story by Edmonds failed to at least namecheck all four UNCLE stars), one by Charles Ventura, and the last four stories by Jakes. Fewer feature them significantly – The Volcano Box Affair by Ventura features only April prominently, while both April and Mark look to have significant appearances in Whittington’s last story, The Light Kill Affair. None of the novels mention either April or Mark in any capacity – interest in crossing over the series was fairly one-sided in the original’s favour.
The Support Staff of UNCLE
One of the big reasons I first went looking for the UNCLE novels was I'd heard that the two original UNCLE girls, Wanda Mae Kim and Heather McNabb (who have long been a particular pet-subject of mine), made appearances. To be specific, Heather turns up in the works of three of the UNCLE authors – one appearance in The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington, and several in Dennis Lynds' various entries in the magazines, plus one in Bill Pronzini's – while Wanda Mae Kim appears in Whittington's magazine story The Beauty and Beast Affair.Looking deeper, however, one strongly begins to suspect that the main – perhaps the only – reason these girls were chosen is that they're the ones who happened to be featured in the promotional material the authors had on hand. None of them even get Heather's name right – Whittington styles it as “McNab”, as it appeared in the promo booklet (the actual episode credits would consistently spell it 'McNabb'), whereas Lynds confuses her actress with her character, naming the character “May Heatherly” every time she appears. Pronzini was evidently following Lynds' example, as he makes the same mistake. Still dutifully following the press release, both go on to refer to “Heatherly's” department as the “Communications-Research” section, which they variously decide is probably Section III or IV (Lynds does both in different stories), nevermind that nowhere else have either Section III or IV ever been given that title. Lynds even goes so far as to have Napoleon sigh about how “Heatherly” “did not see eye-to-eye with Solo on fraternisation among U.N.C.L.E. People” – a laughable mischaracterisation of a woman who, in the show, openly discussed upcoming dates with Napoleon on the radio in the middle of his missions. This, alas, is as close to any sort of inner life as Heather gets in any of these stories.
In one final bizarre footnote to the subject of Heather, one of the Whitman hardcover books The Affair of the Gentle Saboteur also prominently includes an UNCLE character called “McNabb”, but who's described as male field agent of Del Floria's age. Whether the name is pure coincidence, or whether the author had just completely misread the press book, we'll never know for sure.
Though Heather gets little to do beyond reporting on this-or-that piece of intelligence, Wanda's one outing sees her promoted to full field agent, and I only wish I could actually recommend the result. Unfortunately, the writer to take this initiative was Whittington, who is wastes no time establishing himself to be one of the most grossly misogynistic hacks ever to jerk off on page and convince someone to publish it, and if you think I’m kidding, my full review is right here.
Notably, no other UNCLE girl shows up anywhere – not Sarah Johnson, or any of the Caucasian Wandas or Lisa Rogers, nevermind that each of them tallied more appearances to their names than both Heather and Wanda Mae Kim put together. Plenty of publicity material came out surrounding the casting of both Sarah and Lisa, but evidently none of it ever made it to the tie-in authors, so none of them appear.
The only non-lead recurring UNCLE character to be mentioned more often than Heather is, of course, the ubiquitous Del Floria, though he’s not much better treated. Most appearances of the name “Del Floria” are, unsurprisingly, references to his shop. When he actually does appear, people tend to get him wrong. In The Radioactive Camel Affair, Leslie makes much of Del Floria’s attempts to get Illya to leave him his jacket for pressing, something which – you guessed it – is a throwaway detail from the development notes, but not something we ever see him do in the show. In fact, given the wordless communication that characterises most of Del Floria’s scenes, most attempts to write in some casual banter as Napoleon and Illya enter the shop fall similarly flat.A truly depressing number of authors labour under the impression that “Del” is his first name (McDaniel is again one of the offenders), while both Leslie and Jakes inexplicably start referring to him as “Mr. Del Florio” in some of their later stories. Actually, I tell a lie there – this one I can explain. See, Del Floria’s one appearance in Season 4 was also credited as “Del Florio”, so we can only presume that the mistake came direct from the official writers’ guide for that season, and that this information was shared with the various tie-in authors. Not that that’s a particularly good excuse when both Jakes and Leslie really ought to have remembered that they’d both been spelling it “Del Floria” in all their previous work.
If notes for the new season were indeed making it to the tie-in authors, then it becomes only more curious that Leslie goes right on repeating the badge information from the pre-development version, and that other S4 features such as Lisa Rogers never do appear (Leslie goes so far as to portray Waverly’s secretary as a blonde in one of his ‘Del Florio’ titles). Maybe Lisa Rogers simply wasn’t mentioned in the notes the authors were given. But if so, you have to admit it says a lot that two different authors in this line were apparently able to zero in on the one piece of new information provided to them that would turn out to be a misprint.
The Miscellaneous Recurring Characters (and Themes) of UNCLE
One of the more interesting points that Work/Text had me looking for is that several of the authors created something of their own continuity: characters would recur, and Napoleon and Illya would occasionally remember events from previous stories. While this is certainly true, the overwhelming majority of inter-continuity references I’ve managed to catch myself were authors referring back to their own previous books.Only once that I’ve caught do any of UNCLE’s guest-of-the-week characters turn up in the books, that being the enigmatic Dr. Egret, master of disguise, who serves as the villain of The Birds of a Feather Affair by Michael Avallone. Though Avallone himself remains infamous for his lacking familiarity with the show at the time of his first contribution to the series, he clearly must at least have watched either The Mad Mad Tea Party Affair or The Blondes of Nazarone Affair at some point – and actually makes a very good choice of villains to resurrect. By and large, however, authors were happier creating their own supporting cast from scratch.Most famously, David McDaniel gave UNCLE a head of R&D, Mr. Simpson, who turns up in three of his novels, as well as the THRUSH villains Ward and Irene Baldwin, who are introduced in Dagger, mentioned in Rainbow, and reappear again in Hollow Crown. Lynds created a THRUH villainess called Maxine Trent, who appears in 5 of Lynds' 7 stories, and Jakes an UNCLE projectionist called Jacques, who appears in 4 of his own 7 (and may-or-may not be something of a self-insert). Leslie created an intelligence broker call Habib Tufik, who turns up in all three of his novels. In addition to these (all of which are pointed out in Work/Text), I can also add that both of Stratton's novels prominently involve a scientist by the name of Dr. Morthley, and two of Leslie's books mention UNCLE having a West Indian former beauty queen receptionist (who may or may not be a botched reference to Wanda Mae Kim, whose description in promotional materials mentioned that her actress was a former beauty queen from Taiwan). There may well be still more such examples scattered through that I've not even caught.
Though that's certainly plenty of inter-title continuity, it's notable that nowhere in there does any author use any character created by anyone else. McDaniel does namecheck Morthley's work on an invisibility device in The Utopia Affair, and Davies has Napoleon remember the torture he experienced at the hands of a Professor Adams in Holly's novel, but that's about as close as we seem to come. If the events of other novels are referred back to anywhere else, I've yet to catch it happening. Rather than giving us a rich, line-wide continuity, what continuity we get remains rigidly segregated by author.
Concepts, rather than characters, do manage a little more crossover success. Both Stratton and Davies borrow McDaniel's idea that THRUSH is an acronym, and Lynds picks up Whittington's idea of giving Napoleon and Illya the radio code names “Bubba” and “Sonny”. Bill Pronzini obviously borrowed the idea of using Heather McNabb from Lynds, as he makes the exact same mistake with her name, while Lynds may well have been inspired to include her by Whittington (though the error he makes with her name is all Lynds’ own). Leslie refers to Illya as owning a Brooklyn Heights apartment twice, but only after McDaniel had already done so once himself, so it may well have been McDaniel he got the idea from. The magazine writers in particular had a weird thing for throwing in the adjectives “young” and “slender” when they needed to describe Napoleon, which is a bizarre enough choice that it probably isn’t coincidence. McDaniel and Oram both mention Illya listening to music by classical Russian composers, and McDaniel and Leslie both suggest he’s a fan of Charlie Parker, which similarly may or may not be coincidence. Phillifent has Napoleon call Illya a “Smart Russian” twice, which he may have got directly from the show, though he also may have got it from McDaniel, who used it first. Avallone called Napoleon “Chief Enforcement Officer” rather than “Chief Enforcement Agent” in the main text of his story, and the moniker “Chief Enforcement Officer” remains the more popular of the two throughout the series thereafter. He also compared Napoleon’s gun to a Luger and Waverly to a college professor, which many later authors would repeat. So authors were obviously reading and eagerly referencing one another's books, even if they were reluctant to share around some of their more interesting toys.
There almost seem to be two distinct inter-connected universes in play here: one consisting of McDaniel and the other authors who actually came to the project as fans, being Stratton and Davies (and possibly also Holly and Phillifent), whereas writers of the magazine largely referred back to Lynds, who himself seems to lean heavily on the first couple of novels in the UNCLE series by Whittington and Avallone. (Jakes, writing for the magazine was also reputedly a fan, but seems less inclined to borrow from other authors than most, and while Phillifent seems more familiar with the show than most authors, I’ve not caught anyone borrowing from him).
A third group might be the British authors, who often seem to fixate on similar details, such as badge colours or the attractiveness of Illya to women. It goes without saying that fandom at large is firmly in the McDaniel camp – ideas of his like Botticelli, the THRUSH acronym, and even the naming of Napoleon's yacht have been eagerly adopted into popular fanon, while the likes of “Bubba” and “Sonny” have been swiftly forgotten.
The more you browse, the more the various writers' individual quirks become apparent. Lynds reuses so many of the same elements in his stories (also including a love of referring to Illya as “the small and/or blonde Russian”) that they eventually clued me in that I’d had one of his stories misattributed to Jakes (FTR, the listing on the Fans from UNCLE site seems to have a few mistakes in his attributions – this listing looks to be more accurate). Phillifent evidently liked the ‘smart Russian’ moniker so much he used it several times in both of his last two stories. And so on.
What wasn’t in the notes
Over-reliance on the development notes didn’t just produce stories full of details that contradict the show, it missed a number of details that did. The classic one may be THRUSH’s leadership: the notes tell us THRUSH is led by a council, whereas the show, from season 2 onwards, consistently references the leadership as ‘THRUSH Central’. Stratton, Phillfent and Davies all use the term from the show at least once apiece, and McDaniel and Jakes use it regularly. Others, such as Avallone, Oram, Leslie and Lynds stick to “THRUSH Council”, though Leslie must at least once have spotted other authors using the term from show, as he hybridises the both into “THRUSH Central Council” at one point. McDaniel is interested enough in THRUSH that he sometimes uses both, but I wouldn’t hold that against him.An even greater tell is how UNCLE communicates. The classic catch-phrase “Open Channel D” appears nowhere in the development notes, and thus appears nowhere in an awful lot of books. The term “Channel D” turns up nowhere in the first three books, but once McDaniel and Phillifent get in on the act, the phrase starts to appear. Stratton, Davies, Jakes and Holly all follow suit, and even Whittington and Oram eventually pick it up in some of their later stories. (Pronzini does too, showing he’d read at least something that wasn’t written by Lynds, who never used it himself. Bernard drops both ‘Central’ and ‘Channel D’, but I suspect that simply means that the writers’ notes weren’t the only thing he was capable of plagiarising.) On the other hand, Avallone, Phillifent, Oram and Lynds all have Napoleon and Illya using code-names over the radio (something they rarely if ever do in the show, where they instead regularly speak their names over the channel without fear), and Oram seems puzzlingly unaware that communicators are a standard part of the UNCLE kit at all.The UNCLE Special is an interesting case – it wasn’t named in the development notes or in the show, but any moderately-dedicated fan would likely have read about it or bought one of the toys. Unsurprisingly, both Avallone and Oram are quite unaware of its name. Avallone describes Napoleon’s special gun as it’s described in his bio, and has presumably seen a picture (he mentions the ‘S’ on the butt), but says only that it resembles a Luger P-38, and Oram does likewise, as does Phillifent. Whittington, however, has evidently seen the gun named – and is interested enough to declare that it weighs exactly thirty-seven ounces in two different stories. McDaniel, being the super-fan that he is, names the Special in each of his stories, as do Stratton, Davies and Holly. Jakes, on the other hand, names it only once out of his 7 stories, and Leslie names it only once out of 6. Lynds and Davies again call it ‘Luger-like’, but they both also give it its name (Lynds names the UNCLE Special in every one of his stories, as does Pronzini). None seem aware that the final model was actually based on a Walther and that the Luger was quickly abandoned. It’s named sporadically in the GfU titles too.Despite the popularity of ‘Chief Enforcement Agent and/or Officer’, very few authors refer to Waverly’s job as it’s regularly described in the show, as Number One of Section I. Phillifent does in The Corfu Affair, and Jakes does in Dolls of Death, but even McDaniel is unusually silent on the subject. He does, however, repeatedly make the mistake of putting Napoleon in Section I, once even referring to him as ‘Section One, Number Two’ (and it’s obviously not just a typo, since he’s referring specifically to Napoleon’s place as Waverly’s presumed successor). On the other hand, although Lynds rarely references anything so specific to the show, he does twice correctly identify Illya as Number 2 of Section II.
Putting the lot together with a few other key tells like Sections above 7 or use of phrases like “Smart Russian” from the show, you can quite legitimately come up with some sort of an Index Of Actually Giving A Fuck to apply to the tie-in series. Avallone, across three different stories, scores a grand total of 1 point, for his inclusion of Dr. Egret. Since I have granted only 0.5 points for awareness of the UNCLE Special, given that it never is named in the show, Leslie averages a dismal 0.25 over his 6 stories, while just ahead at an 0.5 point average per story we find Whittington, Lynds and Oram. Phillifent does somewhat better, averageing 1.67. Holly, Jakes and Stratton, meanwhile, all average around 2 points per story. Davies, in his one finished book, manages an impressive 2.5. But the grand prize unsurprisingly goes to McDaniel, who averages 2.67 across his 6 finished novels.
There are obviously other details I might have picked on, and the numbers say nothing about characterisation, but it’s pretty telling that you can come up with a number like that to begin with. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go sit in the corner for a bit and feel properly ashamed for having ever wasted the time it took to do that calculation at all.
Some Conclusions
Probably the single most important point Walker makes about the place of the novels in the greater UNCLE mythos is that for well over a decade, they represented the only UNCLE source left to its US fanbase. While other 60’s shows like Star Trek were regularly repeated, spurious complaints that the show was too violent kept UNCLE out of repeats until the 80’s, leaving the novels and other various tie-ins as the only source remaining. So whatever fans may think of them now, it’s perhaps inevitable that they should have made such a lasting impression on the collective fanon surrounding the series. Would all those factoids about UNCLE’s various unimportant sections and entrances be so widely cited today, without the novels to remind fans about them? Would so many fans persist in holding up S4, in its grim&gritty re-imagining of the UNCLE universe, as somehow representing what the show was supposed to be like? I can only speculate, but the novels certainly can’t have hurt.Three authors stand out as having had the greatest influence on the shape of the series. Two are those who penned the first two books – Avallone and Whittington, who not only set the grim tone that would plague so many later entries, but who were obviously heavily referenced by later writers. This is something of a shame, given that even the publisher was reportedly unhappy with the tone of their work after the fact, but so it goes.
By far the most influential, however, would have to be McDaniel – both in inspiring later authors and in inspiring greater fanbase. More of his ideas are referenced throughout the series than those of any other author I could name. His ideas about the origins of THRUSH, though non-canonical by any other standard, have made it all the way to the UNCLE entry on Wikipedia. His books contain more references to the existence of Section VIII than the show itself, and the Fans from UNCLE website cites him under an article on the subject. The notion that Napoleon is known for his famously good ‘Solo Luck’, repeated in many-a-fanfic over the years, comes from nowhere in the series – it’s a pure McDaniel invention. So is the naming of Napoleon’s yacht as the ‘Pursang,’ and the idea that Napoleon and Illya while away their time on stake-outs playing word-games like Botticelli and Superghost. The fascination with what home-security UNCLE agents might have in their apartments more than likely owes something to McDaniel. And though the idea that Napoleon is next in line to succeed Waverly, and that he sometimes calls Illya a “Smart Russian” originate in the show, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if McDaniel deserves some of the credit for popularising them.Of the rest, Holly seems to be the origin of the idea that UNCLE agents move apartments regularly (the obsession with security in the ACE line far exceeds anything that would ever be evidenced by the show), and Leslie might perhaps be the source of the idea that UNCLE’s female staff spend so much time sighing over the emotional unavailability of Illya Kuryakin. Work/Text suggests that some years of fannish debate over whether or not Illya is a defector were fueled in part by the fact that The Corfu Affair by Phillifent portrayed him as such. There may well be many more such lasting influences that I’ve not spotted, but by this point, probably 95% of those repeating them have no idea they come from the books, and have never actually read the books at all.
Whether fandom’s ongoing fixation with the many never-seen entrances to UNCLE HQ and such other nonsense truly derives from the novels, or whether it simply shows that the fans were just as fascinated by such details as the novelists, we’ll never know for sure – but maybe the most intriguing note I could leave you with here is to point out that the cycle is still going, even now. The 2015 movie takes even less from the original UNCLE mythos than any product ever produced under the UNCLE name – but when fans of that film go googling for information on the original, they’ll more than likely find themselves reading about all the same security minutiae. And I’ve already run into at least one (by one of those writers who makes no bones about their complete disinterest in actually watching the series) that opens with spiel about the New York HQ’s various entrances, and which later repeats verbatim David McDaniel’s backcronym explaining each of the letters of the word THRUSH, complete with a short diversion into their historical connections with Sherlock Holmes.
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Date: 2017-06-20 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-21 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-21 01:24 am (UTC)There are several good pieces of research on the novels by Al Tonik, a fan from long ago, that were published in the HQ newsletter.
Kathyy Crighton also published an interview with Avallone in a SF mag. I missed the gathering which he attended and after hearing about him, was glad I did.
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Date: 2017-06-21 06:11 am (UTC)I actually remember you mentioning that in your book! (which TBH I have still not quite finished reading, because I keep getting myself side-tracked by stuff like this) Would love to get a look at those someday.
Kathyy Crighton also published an interview with Avallone in a SF mag. I missed the gathering which he attended and after hearing about him, was glad I did.
Oh boy, that bad, huh? What was he supposed to have done?
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Date: 2017-06-21 01:44 pm (UTC)I have the HQ newsletters of Tonik. I wish this was the old days when we all used to meet at MediaWest and talk about background stuff like on the old Channel W like you're doing. There's still an archive over there. I used to write columns on background for a newsletter put out by Lois Balzer.
I, myself, have always been fascinated by the details of the fictional universe and how it was jerry-built just as you are. So, I understand where you're coming from.
Ever read the UNCLE Files? They have a couple of interesting maps that fans used to figure out how the HQ was laid out and where those entrances were.
Years ago, Nan Mack and I wrote an Escape from NY/MFU crossover [Thrush takes over the world] and we had to break into HQ so a lot of that info came in handy. I don't have the zine electronically ---it was in the early 90s. But it's still available on Ebay I hear.
Can I ask: where do you live? It's nice to find another researcher :) Maybe we should set up a Section 10 website.
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Date: 2017-06-22 06:22 am (UTC)Ever read the UNCLE Files? They have a couple of interesting maps that fans used to figure out how the HQ was laid out and where those entrances were.
I've heard of those - they do sound very interesting (may go looking for a copy sometime when I have a little more disposable income available again). I've found scattered scans online here and there - oddly, I've think I've found (parts of) two quite different (http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rallamajoop/1790811/108093/108093_original.jpg) versions (http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rallamajoop/1790811/109535/109535_original.jpg) of the floor layout, so I'm wondering if perhaps there were two different editions?
I'm sure trying to put together a definitive floor plan would be an exercise in frustration, since it certainly didn't stay the same episode to episode (and you can hardly blame them when they had to make one length of corridor double for most of the building), but it's still a fun fannish exercise to try. I got a bit stuck on the subject myself recently, while trying to make sense out of why the set layout blueprints put an elevator on the side of the corridor, when I could've sworn they were always at the end of the corridor in the show (Craig Henderson over on the facebook group eventually suggested that was probably just where they'd stored the movable walls that made up the elevator set when they weren't actually using them, which made a lot of sense). I found the UNCLE files version in the process, and you can definitely see how much effort they went to to try and put everything together, from both the development notes and the show (even if they did apparently change their minds between editions).
Can I ask: where do you live? It's nice to find another researcher :) Maybe we should set up a Section 10 website.
Australia, I'm afraid - nice play to live, but rather a long way from everywhere else. Though I'd definitely be up for a Section 10 website. I do love a series that rewards you for putting in a bit of effort to track down all the details, and UNCLE has got me so, so bad on that front.
Out of curiosity, was there ever a Section 9?
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Date: 2017-06-21 01:52 pm (UTC)