A Naval Affair

Alan Moss is a ship designer whose revolutionary ideas for warships were rejected by the Admiralty, so he set out to do it alone. Then his house burns down, taking years of plans with it. For a designer whose life is his drawings, the fire is the cruelest possible blow. The EYES team joins Moss on a sailing trip that goes wrong when the rudder breaks, which is either bad luck or the same someone, still trying. The sailing trip is the episode's most unusual scene, the unit bobbing about in a boat with a man who designs warships, and the rudder failure gives it a properly nasty edge.

But an explosion at Maggie's flat settles it. Someone wants Moss dead, and they are not fussy about who else gets hurt. Maggie takes the case to the Admiralty, where she meets Commander Hutchins, a man who supports Moss's designs, which makes him either an ally or the most dangerous person in the room.

Francis Megahy wrote it and Claude Whatham directed. John Fortune's Alan Moss is a man running out of everything at once, with Timothy Carlton as Commander Hutchins, John Challis as Stark, Nicholas Geake as a Policeman, Julian Ronnie as a Car Mechanic and Kate Ingram as a Suspect, while Jill Gascoine's Maggie, Tracy-Louise Ward's Tessa, Leslie Ash's Fred and Don Warrington's Nigel work the case. It went out in May 1987. John Challis, who plays Stark, was already familiar as Boycie from Only Fools and Horses, and Claude Whatham, the director, had made That'll Be the Day, so the credits are full of faces from the wider world of British television.

The naval setting gives the show a proper change of scenery, boats and brass buttons, and the episode makes good use of it. John Fortune, better known for comedy, plays Moss with a quiet dignity that suits the part. There is something sad about Moss, a man whose best work keeps getting destroyed, and the episode plays that sadness straight.