There was a suggestion at SFContario that episode 2 may have been recycled from an earlier, unproduced script. Having thought it over, it seems to me that *if* the Sax Rohmer elements hadn't been laid on so thick I could have assumed an underlying train of writer's logic: 'OK, so American gangsters have become a total cliche since Doyle's time - should we make this about Russian gangsters or Chinese gangsters?' 'Well, seems to me someone raised by Chinese gangsters would have a much easier time reinventing herself as a normal person than someone raised by the Russian mob.'
But, as the actual episode goes - that crossbows-and-counterweights deathtrap is straight out of a 1940s serial - I mean it actually is the contraption an uncredited Philip Ahn got strapped into in Drums of Fu Manchu.*
*He didn't tell Fu where the scroll was hidden, and he was rescued in time. I think Dwight Frye may have been in that same episode.
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'OK, so American gangsters have become a total cliche since Doyle's time - should we make this about Russian gangsters or Chinese gangsters?'
'Well, seems to me someone raised by Chinese gangsters would have a much easier time reinventing herself as a normal person than someone raised by the Russian mob.'
But, as the actual episode goes - that crossbows-and-counterweights deathtrap is straight out of a 1940s serial - I mean it actually is the contraption an uncredited Philip Ahn got strapped into in Drums of Fu Manchu.*
*He didn't tell Fu where the scroll was hidden, and he was rescued in time. I think Dwight Frye may have been in that same episode.