WHEN DID YOU START TO STOP SEEING THINGS? • REVIEW

WHEN DID YOU START TO STOP SEEING THINGS? • DECLASSIFIED

• Pre-Titles Teaser... Tully drives his orange sports car into the underground car park, finds a vacant space and parks up. He has come to meet Jeff Randall, but he can see no sign of the private detective. He checks his watch - Randall should be here by now. He gets out of the car and calls out, "Mr. Randall!" - he receives no reply. He calls again and then sounds the horn of his car. As he does this, someone approaches, but it is not Jeff Randall. The man that Tully sees before him is a dark-haired, cold-faced man in a khaki trench coat. Tully asks if Randall has sent him, but the stranger is silent. He reaches into his inside coat pocket and withdraws from it a revolver, complete with silencer. Tully looks on aghast and makes a run for it. Coldly, the stranger aims and pulls the trigger. In the far distance, Tully falls to the ground, dead. "That's right, Tully. Mr. Randall sent me," intones the killer.

• Production Brief... When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things? was the eighteenth episode to go before the cameras. It was the Tony Williamson's sixth episode as scriptwriter and the third to be directed by Jeremy Summers.

• Roger Christian returned as set dresser for this episode, a role that he would also fill for the final six episodes of the series, starting with The House on Haunted Hill.

• Exact filming dates for this episode are unknown, but it is believed to have been filmed between March and April 1969. A fully edited version of this episode was completed by early July 1969.

• On Location... When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things? is an episode set predominantly in urban locales, with only High Canons (previously seen in It's Supposed to Be Thicker Than Water) bucking the trend. Otherwise, the action takes place in London's Fitzrovia, Holborn, Knightsbridge and Marylebone areas, with stop offs in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)'s familiar stamping grounds of St. John's Wood, Harrow and the car park beneath ABPC Elstree Studios. More details in Locations: When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things?.

• Haunting Melodies... Edwin Astley was not asked to compose any new music cues for When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things?, with its score coming entirely from stock. One piece of library music was used, a Chappell cue composed by John Barry - Mood Three - and this was used to accompany the scene where Sir Oliver, under hypnotic instruction from Marty, behaves like a secret agent. A tiny snatch of this theme was later used in Could You Recognise the Man Again?

• Seeing Things... When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things? received its first UK broadcast on Sunday 26th October 1969 at 3.45pm when it aired in monochrome in the HTV ITV region.

• It was first shown in colour on ITV on Sunday 23rd November 1969 at 7.25pm in the London Weekend Television region.

• Trivia... Psychiatrist Sir Oliver Norenton shares offices at 42 Harley Street with Sir Digby Fowling, a neurosurgeon, M.J. Bartell, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and Sir Lattimer Glade, a maxillofacial surgeon.

• The abstract artwork seen hanging behind Hepple's desk in his penthouse suite had first been seen as one of Lord Manford's art treasures in The Avengers: From Venus with Love (1967), for which it was specially created. The design originally filled the complete canvas, but for reasons unknown was whitewashed in part for Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) to create restrict the active area of the painting to the shape of a human body. Declassified's Art Critique: they blinking ruined it!

Image © StudioCanal, 1967 Images © ITV Studios, 1969

• Only You, Jeff? This one's more a case of "Not even Jeff!" but Marty is fortunate in being able to communicate with patients of Sir Oliver Norenton, namely Tilvers, Mrs. Trotter and Sir Timothy Grange, when he has put them under hypnosis. Later, Marty manages to communicate and suggest actions to Norenton when Sir Oliver is himself in a trance.

• Ghosts and Ghoulies... Just Marty in this one, but we love Marty, so who's complaining?

• The Vehicles... Appearing in this episode were the following wonders of transport...

	1969 TVR Vixen S2 Registration PHP 999G Driven by Tully	Also appeared in: Department S - 'The Soup of the Day'
	1968 Vauxhall Victor FD 2000 Registration RXD 996F Driven by Jeff Randall	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - used extensively throughout the series Department S - 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'The Man from X'
	1962 Wolseley 6/110 MkI Registration 649 CLC	Also appeared in: Man in a Suitcase - 'The Sitting Pigeon', 'The Whisper', 'Why They Killed Nolan', 'Jigsaw Man', Property of a Gentleman'
	1959 Bentley S2 Continental Registration 11 PPO Driven by Sir Oliver Norenton	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'The Man from Nowhere', 'Just for the Record' (with fake HAL 14 plates) Department S - used extensively in the series with fake European plates (Jason King's car)

• Seen It All Before? Familiar sets were used for the study, hallway and cellar of The Manor House, Milton Vale - home of James Laker - with subtle changes compared to how they had appeared in previous episodes.

• The lift area of Hepple's penthouse suite had featured previously in Never Trust a Ghost.

• The name Lattimer (later used more prominently in The House on Haunted Hill) appears here on a Harley Street door sign as the forename of a maxillofacial surgeon: Sir Lattimer Glade.

• Cock-ups... The first cock-up in When Did You Start to Stop Seeing Things? appears at 8 minutes and 7 seconds into the episode when Marty approaches the door of several Harley Street pracititioners. As he nears the door, we see a brass letterbox with a series of vertically arranged brass nameplates above it. The camera cuts to Marty studying them and then we cut to a shot of the nameplates... only they are now wooden nameplates, three vertical and with another to their right, against plain concrete, with a brick wall to the left. The Harley Street building has no visible brickwork of this type nor concrete posts, placing this firmly, irrefutably, in cock-up territory.

Images © ITV Studios, 1969

• At 28 minutes and 7 seconds, we see that Jean's desk is placed so that there is just enough room for one person to stand beside it. When Inspector Large arrives 29 seconds later, the desk has moved to the far corner of the room, and Jean with it!

Images © ITV Studios, 1969

• And Finally... Viewers can be forgiven for actor spotting while watching episodes of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and other ITC series. Every episode is populated with familiar faces belonging to people who pop up in any number of films and television shows from the era and beyond. However, there is one of the series' supporting actors who is considerably less well known to later generation audience members, but who was a such a star in her day that in 1960 she was awarded with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. The person in question is Bessie Love, who played Mrs. Trotter, one of Sir Oliver's patients in When Did You Start To Stop Seeing Things? Born Juanita Horton in Midland, Texas, in 1898, Bessie gained ingenue parts from 1915 when the pioneering film director placed her under an exclusive contract with his Fine Arts company. Her work with the company placed her in the spotlight but a couple of ill-advised moves to work for other companies meant that her career as a dramatic actress didn't really blossom until the early 1920s. The coming of sound witnessed her star rising in 1929 and 1930 with an inspired move into musical comedy. In 1935, she moved to England, where she continued to work in film, on stage and, eventually, on television, occasionally returning home to work there too.

   

  You can read more about Bessie Love in our Who's Who? section.

Plotline: Scoton Productions / ITC • UK Transmissions by Simon Coward and Alan Hayes
Review by Alan Hayes • Declassified by Alan Hayes
with thanks to Vince Cox, Alys Hayes, John Holburn,
Anthony McKay and Andrew Pixley

All timings given on this page relate to the Blu-ray editions of this episode