1. Hot Snow  

First aired: 1/7/1961

Dr. David Keel has just announced his engagement to his secretary, Peggy. However, when Peggy is murdered Keel, vowing vengeance, meets a mysterious stranger named John Steed. Steed and Keel join forces in hunting for the gang responsible for Peggy's death.

(All episodes in this guide are authorised by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, authors of 'The Avengers Dossier: The Definitive Unauthorised Guide' (London: Virgin Books, 1998).

2. Brought to Book  

First aired: 1/14/1961

Steed and Keel have joined forces. Steed tells Keel that he has managed to become a member of the gang of protection racketeers responsible for Peggy's death.

3. Square Root of Evil  

First aired: 1/21/1961

Steed, impersonating Riordan, infiltrates Riordan's gang who are planning to flood the country with forged banknotes.

4. Nightmare  

First aired: 1/28/1961

Dr Keel is investigating the disappearance of an eminent scientist, but when an attempt is made to kidnap him Dr Keel is shot in the chest. An operation is necessary, but during the operation the oxygen is tampered with. Keel is dying and it is up to Steed to save his life.

5. Crescent Moon  

First aired: 2/4/1961

Steed is investigating the kidnapping of a young girl, but Steed suspects that the motive is a political one as the girl's father had officially been killed in an accident only a week earlier, and there is no motive for the kidnapping.

6. Girl on the Trapeze  

First aired: 2/11/1961

A girl jumps into the Thames, but the body which is recovered is that of another girl who has been murdered. Dr. Keel discovers that she had been a member of the Radeck State Circus. Upon visiting the circus, Dr. Keel finds a girl whose face is masked with bandages. She is the daughter of Professor Danilov who had fled to the West with his daughter, and the plan is that she will be used to make Danilov return.

7. Diamond Cut Diamond  

First aired: 2/18/1961

Steed is attempting to break a gang of international diamond smugglers, and masquerading as John Ryan is living in a bungalow near Heathrow Airport which once belonged to Harcourt, a suicide who had once been a member of the smuggling organisation. One morning Steed receives a telephone call advising him to read the morning papers. They carry a report that a woman was run down and killed. Told by the caller to check his car, Steed finds that it is damaged and covered in dried blood. Steed has been set up.

8. The Radioactive Man  

First aired: 2/25/1961

Marko is an immigrant who, in the course of his work, has picked up a radioactive isotope capsule, ignorant of the fact that it will prove fatal to both him and anybody who comes into contact with him. Dr. Keel is asked to help search for this man before it is too late.

9. Ashes of Roses  

First aired: 3/4/1961

Steed is convinced that a watchman who died in a warehouse fire was murdered. In the course of his enquiries his investigations lead him to a hairdressing salon. Ultimately Dr. Keel's receptionist Carol is nearly burned alive when one of the hairdriers which she is sitting under catches fire.

10. Hunt the Man Down  

First aired: 3/18/1961

Frank Preston has hidden more than one hundred thousand pounds, the proceeds of a robbery for which he has served a long prison term. When he is released he goes looking for his hidden cache which he has stowed away in the sewers, but he is not the only one looking for this valuable hoard. Steed is also searching, and Carol is kidnapped by thugs in an endeavour to extort information from Dr. Keel and Steed.

11. Please Don't Feed the Animals  

First aired: 4/1/1961

Steed and Dr Keel follow Felgate, a minor civil servant who is involved with secret cyphers, to a private zoo. He sees Felgate throwing a packet of blackmail money into the reptile pit. Although Steed keeps an eye on the packet, it vanishes the next day. The culprit is a small monkey who is being used by a gang of blackmailers.

12. Dance with Death  

First aired: 4/15/1961

Elaine Bateman, owner of a ballroom dancing school, is strangled with Dr. Keel's scarf. Steed promises to help clear Keel's name.

13. One for the Mortuary  

First aired: 4/29/1961

Steed conceals an important new medical formula, in microdot form, onto a document belonging to one of Keel's partners. Keel takes it with him when attends a conference in Geneva, but is ultimately accused by police of murder.

14. The Springers  

First aired: 5/13/1961

Steed is after the organisers of an escape route who will help any prisoner to escape for the right price. He asks Dr. Keel to impersonate a convict. Keel does so, and both he and Steed end up at a girl's finishing school in the clutches of a gang. Steed's quick thinking enables him and Dr. Keel to escape.

15. The Frighteners  

First aired: 5/27/1961

Jeremy de Willoughby is beaten up by a couple of heavies. Dr Keel discovers that the organiser of the gang of heavies is a man known as The Deacon who has been paid by a tycoon to prevent de Willoughby from marrying his daughter. It emerges that de Willoughby is a 'professional marrier' so Dr. Keel and Steed arrange a trap for both de Willoughby and The Deacon.

16. The Yellow Needle  

First aired: 6/10/1961

After an attempt is made against his life, Sir Wilberforce Lungi enlists Steed's aid. Steed flies to Tenebra to make enquiries. Meanwhile, back in London, a member of a sinister African society substitutes a dose of yellow fever for the insulin with which Lungi has to inject himself, and also makes an attempt on Dr. Keel's life.

17. Death on the Slipway  

First aired: 6/24/1961

An agent has been killed at the secret dockyard where submarines are built. Steed investigates, and finds that a foreign spy has been arranging 'accidents' for him.

18. Double Danger  

First aired: 7/8/1961

Keel, called to deal with a man seriously injured by an accident, quickly discovers that the man is suffering from gunshot wounds, and that he may be implicated in a recent diamond robbery.

19. Toy Trap  

First aired: 7/22/1961

Keel is asked by the improbably named Bunty to help her find her missing friend. What is the connection between the department store where the women work and a call-girl racket?

20. The Tunnel of Fear  

First aired: 8/5/1961

Top-secret information is finding its way into the wrong hands, and the source seems to be a south coast fairground. Steed succeeds in getting hypnotised and winds up in the ghost-train tunnel. With frightening results, of course.

21. The Far Distant Dead  

First aired: 8/19/1961

Dr Keel, treating the victims of a cyclone struck Mexican village, uncovers a number of food-poisonings; emergency cooking oil is, in fact, hydraulic fluid.

22. Kill the King  

First aired: 9/2/1961

A visit to London to sign an oil treaty from a monarch whose life is under threat brings Steed and Keel into the world of dissidents and assassinations.

23. Dead of Winter  

First aired: 12/9/1961

The discovery of the body of Schneider, a wanted Nazi war criminal, deep-frozen in a consignment of meat at London docks brings Steed and Keel into the shadowy world of Phoenix, a new and terrifying Fascist party in Britain.

24. The Deadly Air  

First aired: 12/16/1961

An experimental vaccine is stolen, and the subsequent test proves deadly. Steed and Keel, suspecting that the human 'guinea pig' did not die directly from the vaccine, volunteer to be the next subjects.

25. A Change of Bait  

First aired: 12/23/1961

An unusual and sprawling tale of heart disease, industrial unrest, and a consignment of rotten bananas.

26. Dragonsfield  

First aired: 12/30/1961

How has a research centre developing radiation-proof material managed to irradiate one of its scientists? Once more, Steed submits himself to scientific testing.