The Unorthodox Shepherd

The episode is set a week before Christmas. WIN has traced a series of counterfeit United States dollar bills to an unlikely source – the Reverend Joseph Shepherd, vicar of the rural St David's Church. Professor McClaine, Joe 90 and Sam Loover (voiced by Rupert Davies, Len Jones and Keith Alexander) are assigned to investigate and travel to the Reverend's village. Equipped with the brain pattern of a World Bank vice president, Joe determines that all of the bills have been printed recently even though the plates were destroyed in a fire many years ago.

The trio decide to confront the Reverend at his vicarage. Outwardly half-deaf, Shepherd amazes the WIN agents by identifying the make of Loover's gun simply by the click of its safety catch. Shepherd admits that his hearing problems are an act and confirms that the plates were not destroyed: criminals Kline and Mason have brought them to England and are using them to print $6 million in counterfeit bills. The plates were smuggled into the country inside the coffin of Mason's uncle, Clem Mason – known to the intelligence community as the notorious racketeer Carlo Masoni – who wished to be buried in the village of his birth. Kline and Mason's hideout is on the church grounds in the crypt beneath Clem's tomb. To protect the counterfeiting operation, Mason has planted electronic devices that cause the church bells to ring at strange hours, leading the villagers to think that the building is haunted and stay away from the area. The counterfeiters have also taken the verger, Thomas, hostage and are threatening to kill him if Shepherd betrays them to the authorities. Desperate for money to save the church from dry rot, Shepherd had no choice but to agree to their demands and has been using feigned deafness as a way of deflecting attention.

Sam devises a plan to bring down Kline and Mason by using Mason's fears against him. That night, with the $6 million target nearly reached and all devices removed from the church, the counterfeiters are puzzled to hear the bells ring out once again. While looking for trespassers, Mason is terrified when Sam, hiding in the shadows with a megaphone, declares himself the spirit of Carlo Masoni and warns that an angel will come to avenge his "desecrated" memory. Holding Thomas at gunpoint, Kline and Mason emerge from the crypt to meet the angel. Joe, dressed in white robes with a jet pack underneath, flies towards Kline and Mason. As Mason tries to flee, Kline fires wildly at Joe until the boy knocks him down. The counterfeiters are arrested by police.

One week later, a white Christmas has arrived. Shepherd has received a combined reward of £10,000 from WIN and Interpol for assisting in the recovery of the stolen plates – enough for him to restore St David's. The episode ends with shots of the snow-covered fields around the village accompanied by the sounds of Shepherd's congregation singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing".

The episode features extensive location footage of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Harefield, London Borough of Hillingdon (photographs taken in the 2000s).

The episode is set in December and according to character dialogue it has been 17 years since Clem Mason's death. Mason's gravestone gives his year of death as 1996, indicating that the episode is set in December 2013.[2][3]

According to director Ken Turner, the episode's budget and production schedule did not allow the costs and length of time needed to build an entire church nave in the scale of Century 21's Supermarionation puppets (which were ​¹⁄₃ human size).[4] It was therefore decided to minimise the use of puppets for scenes set inside the church and shoot the episode partly on location, with the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Harefield doubling as the fictional St David's.[3][4][5] In a DVD audio commentary for the episode, Turner remarked that such methods were "experimental" for Century 21.[4]

Pre-production began in early 1968 when Turner and production designer Keith Wilson went to Harefield to conduct a recce of the church and its grounds.[5] Using photographs taken at the recce, Wilson built scale reproductions of interior elements for puppet filming, as well as the miniature model of Clem Mason's tomb, which was based on a real monument in the churchyard.[5][6] The crew later went back on location to film inserts in and around the church as well as shots of a human-sized dummy of the villain Mason.[4][5][7] This marked Century 21's first use of a mannequin to represent a Supermarionation character.[4] Although many of the church scenes take place at night, the shots of the church's exterior were filmed by day as Century 21 could not afford the increased costs of shooting night-for-night.[4] Some weeks later, after a heavy snowfall, the crew again returned to film panning shots of the fields around the church for the episode's snowbound closing scene.[5] Century 21 would return to St Mary's Church in 1969 to shoot the ending of the UFO episode "The Square Triangle".[5][6]

The episode's puppet filming was completed between late January and early February 1968 on Century 21 Studios' Stage 3.[8] For scenes set inside the church, characters were filmed in close-up to conceal the fact that the puppet set was only a partial reconstruction; the puppet shots were then intercut with the material that had been filmed on location.[4] A scene that was filmed but later deleted from the episode showed village policeman Constable Lewis arresting Mason and Kline after their encounter with the disguised Joe in the churchyard.[5] The scale model representing the Reverend Shepherd's vicarage first appeared as General X's mansion in the Thunderbirds episode "Martian Invasion" (1966).[2]

The incidental music was recorded in two parts: church organ and harp pieces in a two-hour session held at composer Barry Gray's private studio on 26 March 1968, the rest in a four-hour session at CTS Studio on 10 April along with the music for the episode "Big Fish".[9][10]

Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, authors of What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson, believe "The Unorthodox Shepherd" to be one of Joe 90's best episodes, writing that it "[explores] the series' unique formula to intriguing effect".[11] Andrew Pixley of Time Screen magazine describes it as "rather above average" but questions the logic of its ending.[12] The episode's title has been criticised by the website TV Cream and the magazine SFX, the latter ranking it 21st in a list of "worst TV episode titles".[13][14]

Alasdair Wilkins of website io9 states that "The Unorthodox Shepherd", besides being "bonkers in the way most Joe 90 episodes are", is "one of the oddest Christmas episodes ever made". He considers it more innovative than the Christmas-themed instalments of earlier Supermarionation series, such as Thunderbirds' "Give or Take a Million" and Stingray's "A Christmas to Remember", commenting that Joe's reliance on scare tactics against the armed Kline and Mason constitutes a "seriously insane risk to build a plan around". He also describes "The Unorthodox Shepherd" as "one of the more quietly religious Christmas episodes I've seen".[15]

The episode's use of location shooting was well received by the crew, who considered the effect convincing.[7] Archer and Hearn state that the episode demonstrates the "seamless integration" possible in mixing puppets with live actors.[16] They and other commentators regard "The Unorthodox Shepherd" as a forerunner to the final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service, which combined puppet sequences with greater amounts of live action in a hybrid format that Archer and Hearn argue "saw Supermarionation through to its natural conclusion".[7][12][17] Comparing the episode to The Secret Service, Pixley notes the Reverend Shepherd's similarity to the protagonist of the later series, Father Stanley Unwin, pointing out that like Unwin he is a vicar who "isn't all he seems".[12] Ian Fryer of FAB magazine draws comparisons with the final episode of The Secret Service, "More Haste Less Speed", pointing out that both episodes "centre on the production of counterfeit dollar bills in old basements, and feature a vicar who isn't what he seems to be." Fryer also comments that along with another Joe 90 episode, "See You Down There", "The Unorthodox Shepherd" embodies an "early flowering of the whimsy that was to be the defining feature of The Secret Service."[18]

The Joe 90 Region 1 DVD box set by A&E Home Video includes an audio commentary for "The Unorthodox Shepherd" with director Ken Turner.[19]

Works cited

• Archer, Simon; Hearn, Marcus (2002). What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson. London, UK: BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-53481-5.
• Pixley, Andrew (2019). Joe 90 – File 90: Viewing Notes. Network Distributing. 7958193.

• "The Unorthodox Shepherd" at IMDb
• "The Unorthodox Shepherd" at TV.com
• "The Unorthodox Shepherd" at BIGRAT.co.uk