THE INNOCENT: Judy Carne as Salty Oliver, a prim and bookish prison inspector who works for an international ethics organization. Recruited not without some argument to help get Solo onto penal colony grounds (as her new husband). She is nevertheless the object of the prison captain's attentions, and when she dresses up, of Solo's, too. Carne is actually British (weirdly, Solo will play her husband as British, but she plays Salty as American) and started out on British television (her first credit is on Danger Man). Moving to Hollywood in 1962, she would eventually know success with a sitcom called Love on a Rooftop and then, Laugh-In, where she introduced the phrase "Sock it to me!" to the American idiom. The 70s weren't as kind to her, with fewer and fewer roles, and a brief marriage to Burt Reynolds.
REVIEW: "The Ultimate Computer"? Maybe instead of drawing connections to James Bond, I should be drawing connections to Star Trek! The computer even vaguely looks like the M-5, or at least, a Trek console (it's the circle that does it). AND Roger C. Carmel (Harry Mudd) appears for the second time, here as Captain Cervantes, the lascivious captain of a South American penal colony where rights abuses abound. He's also an up-and-comer in THRUSH, whose sponsorship of a computer that can make the terrorist organization infallible is at odds with the old guard, represented by his direct superior, Governor Callahan, who's more invested in playing strip poker with his statuesque nurses/bodyguards. A couple of fun villains who will die together in an explosion (Callahan keeps his buddy in the room out of spite), and it's much better than having the computer do, well... anything. It exists. It's a MacGuffin. But it's not a character. We don't need it to be.
The episode has a great opener, with Illya playing the role of a destitute mariachi arrested for trying to rob a man on the street, but that man turns out to be UNCLE - a ploy to get him into the prison. I love the "con" aspect of the spy genre, and the fact that he's immediately identified and allowed to go about his business - as is Solo, later playing Salty's moustachioed husband - means the villains are up to the task. Indeed, they're playing four-dimensional chess, conning all three heroes in different ways (the computer decoy, Cervantes's alliance with Solo, his creepy "seduction" of Salty (with the whip, brrr). What they don't count on - can't PROJECT - is that Illya won't leave without Solo because he's too loyal to his partner. This derails THRUSH's plans entirely as the agents keep switching their one guard uniform between them to confuse the standing army, and Salty walks in on the computer demonstration with a bomb in cake.
While Solo doesn't trust Cervantes (he's no fool), I still wish the agents did a little better. They perhaps carry too much of the comedy - Solo's ridiculous dingy, the costume changes... - and turns out there's no point to Illya whistling "Hava Nagila" throughout. I thought it was a signal, but if so, it seems accidental, or unheard, and just a very weird choice for a Spanish musician. It's probably an inside joke, but one wonders if it informs the character's mysterious backstory. Illya can't seem to shake the stogy he has in his mouth once he's in prison. When it catches the electric beam in the computer center before his nose can, it seems contrived, but there's no reason to keep it in later scenes. The governor calling the agents "UNCLE officials" is also strange, but it's not like the episode wasn't written by one of the show's regular writers. It's Peter Allan Fields's fifth.
At least the final joke actually works, this time. i.e., it isn't a head-scratcher. Solo, having fallen for Salty's librarian charms, starts to lay it on thick, and Illya ruins the romantic moment by saying all of his friend's lines as he says them. Salty quickly realizes he's a womanizer and she's far from the first (indeed, he was romancing a Channel D girl earlier in the episode) and drops the matter as their jeep drives into the sunset. Given that Illya has been doing all the dirty work in this episode - beaten up by cops, put to work on a chain gang, etc. - he deserves a bit of justice for his partner romancing the Innocent while he's stuck fiddling with a fussy engine.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "All the knowledge in the world with one push of a button. That's the generation we're in now. Subjective error, human frailty, eliminated. Look at it." "And man shall not worship idols." (Cervantes and Callahan)
"How do you think I got to be captain?" (Cervantes, after shooting one of his men)
BONDED: Salty is a strange name, but a lot of Bond girls have names like that; this one isn't as rude. The episode ends like many Bond films, with the superspy smooching on his leading lady at the back of a vehicle, ignoring his duty.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Great villains and lots for our heroes to do. The second season seems to be off to a great start.
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