K atarina’s equally temporary replacement was Bret’s assassin Sara Kingdom… who eventually reveals herself to have been Bret’s sister, gulled by the Dalek-collaborating Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen into believing that Bret was a traitor. One way to explain their different surnames is to imagine that the pair were actually stepsiblings, sharing only one parent. The name ‘Kingdom’ is particularly intriguing, though. If Sara’s mother had been of royal descent, it would explain her strong resemblance to Joanna (1165-99), the sister of Richard I of England – since both were played by the same actress, Jean Marsh Bret might have been an ersatz James Bond, but Sara was promoted with reference to another 1960s spy-fi phenomenon: ABC-TV series The Avengers. A Daily Mail report of 4 December described Sara as “a space-age combination of Cathy Gale and Emma Peel” – with “a woollen cat-suit, black leather boots, expertise in judo and karate and a ray gun for when that suits the scriptwriters better.”