Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

"Is Your Journey Really Necessary?" is the episode where the cost of the job stops being theoretical. Operation Nightingale, mounted without permission as a favour to the CIA, has gone badly wrong near the Soviet border, and Burnside's superiors are asking pointed questions about his judgment. Then they hear the worst of it. Sandbagger #3, Alan Denson, killed Sandbagger #2 rather than let him be captured alive. It was the rule, carried out under pressure, and nobody in the room is comfortable with it.

Denson takes the natural step after a mission like that. He wants to marry his fiancée Sally Graham, and he wants out of the life altogether. Burnside answers with pressure, ordering Willie Caine to run a background check on the girl. Denson wants a quiet life; his boss is making sure he understands that some jobs do not come with a retirement plan.

Meanwhile there is the Paris job, which shows how far this world runs from heroics. A British diplomat, brother of a senior Cabinet minister, is having a homosexual affair, and the Foreign Office wants proof. No rescues here, no killings either. Just material, collected so a government can use it as it sees fit, and the show lets you notice the contrast with Nightingale without pointing at it.

Ian MacKintosh wrote it, Derek Bennett directed. Roy Marsden anchors it as Burnside, with Richard Vernon's 'C', Ray Lonnen's Willie Caine, Alan MacNaughtan's Sir Geoffrey Wellingham and Elizabeth Bennett's Diane Lawler around him. Steven Grives plays Alan Denson, Brenda Cavendish Sally Graham, Andy Bradford Phil Fyffe, David Glyder Jake Landy and Michael O'Hagan Stan.

The title is a question nobody in the episode wants to answer, and the hour does not pretend to have one. But Denson pays for the journey either way, and the show is honest enough to leave you wondering what he got in return.