John Steed

John Steed is the main protagonist of The Wombles Saga. He can often be stupid or violent, but he is also loyal and brave. He is known for his three-piece suit with a bowler hat and an umbrella.

History
Steed was born John Wickham Gascoyne Beresford Steed to his parents James Steed and Jenny Steed (nee Bond). His father was a very privileged businessman, who owned his own company, Steed Industries. Steed was set to inherit the company when he was old enough, because the only other possible heir to the company was an illegitimate child, James Bond.

Steed's father was abusive, and he murdered his wife/Steed's mother, Jenny. It was a long time before Steed's father ever became a suspect for the murder, and so he was allowed to go on looking after Steed, and re-marry. Later, Steed's father and his second wife were brutally massacred on the North West Frontier of India. This happened when Steed was little more than a baby.

Steed initially attended Eton, alongside his cousin James Bond, who had a reputation as a school bully. Steed was his regular choice to pick on, but despite this, Steed admired his cousin and wanted to be just like him. Steed goes as far as to say that he idolised James once he became 007. However, Steed once got into a large fight with James, and so he was expelled from the school.

Because of this, Steed later was moved to ￼a welcoming home for unfortunate children of sociopaths, where he met his first girlfriend, Melissa Mackennan. They were forced apart from each other due to conflicting lifestyles, however, according to Melissa, they never stopped considering each other close friends.

When Steed became legally an adult, he joined the army, where he became a celebrated war hero, earning the title of "Major the Hon.". His army often served alongside the Navy, where Steed met Mike Gambit, and awkwardly reunited with James Bond.

War led Steed to end up in Occupied France, where he temporarily worked undercover for the Secret Service. He left that job because he reunited with a girl whom he had a crush on before he ever met Melissa. She was a woman now, just as Steed was now a man, and so they explored a relationship together, and even ended up engaged. However, the marriage was doomed to fail, as Steed's fiancée was killed by his enemies in war.

Steed sought revenge and he got it. He abandoned his army's code of honour, and swore to hunt down the men who killed his fiancée and do to them what they did to her. Steed succeeded in his mission, but he felt no comfort of having avenged his fiancée afterward. He just felt guilty. Because he felt so guilty, he tried to find comfort in many things, including having an illicit affair with Emma Peel, completely unbeknownst to her husband Peter. But Steed didn't find comfort in any of the things he tried.

Eventually, Steed sought to find inner peace by joining a group of Monks and Nuns. He met a nun who was there for a similar reason to his one, looking for fulfillment. Her name was Cathy Gale, and she had gone there to get away from her troubles after her husband, Paul, had been killed in war.

After preaching alongside Cathy for a few years, Steed decided it was time to move on and find a new purpose in life. He applied, and was accepted, to join the MI12, a group of British spies also known as the Ministry or the Avengers. His first task was to investigate the murder of Peggy Stevens. Because part of Steed's story was so similar, he could not help but become close friends with the fiancé of the victim, Dr David Keel. Because of their friendship, they then began to regularly work together on cases.

After Steed's first year as an Avenger, Dr Keel decided to stop putting his life on the line all the time, and so Steed instead began to work with a colleague of Dr Keel's, Dr Martin King. However, Dr King also stopped working with Steed, and so Steed had to find a new partner. He had heard that Cathy was back in town as an anthropologist, so he sought her out and they began to work together on cases. At first, she was somewhat cold toward him, possibly due to Steed having left without saying goodbye, but she eventually warmed to him and they entered into a romantic relationship.

Some time during the time Steed and Cathy were working together, they found out about an organisation known as The Old Dickensian Empire, or TODE for short. It had been founded mostly by ancestors and family members of Steed, as well as the sister of Mrs Peel. TODE's main goal was the recreate the world in their own image, and Steed and Cathy, having had really bad lives, decided to join.

The Avengers
John Steed is originally from the 1960s TV Series The Avengers, first appearing in the series pilot, Hot Snow. We first meet Steed when the original protagonist Dr David Keel is investigating the murder of his fiancée Peggy. Steed is represented as a dark, mysterious, and possibly untrustworthy character. Throughout the first series of the show, Steed is seen to have no objection to violence, regularly torturing people for information, and not hesitating to kill his enemies. In the second series, where he works with Dr King and then Cathy, and occasionally Venus Smith, his character is less violent, and he comes across slightly more affable. As the show goes along, Steed gradually becomes a friendlier and much less mysterious person.

After the third series, Cathy says she is 'going on holiday', and so Steed calls Mrs Peel to work with him instead. The only mention of Cathy later on is when she sends Steed a Christmas Card, and Steed makes a remark about her being in Fort Knox. To this day, nobody knows why she was there. She was also seen in a photograph in the sequel series The New Avengers.

Steed worked on more cases with Mrs Peel than with any of his other partners, and it is often speculated that Steed and Mrs Peel were in a romantic relationship during that time. In Wombles Saga canon, it appears that Steed was dating both Mrs Peel and Cathy at the same time... Well, it is Steed.

Much later on, Mrs Peel left, because her presumed dead husband Peter was found alive in the Amazonian Jungle. The main boss of the Avengers at the time after Grandma, Mother assigned Steed to work with a newly qualified agent, Tara King.

The New Avengers
After the TV series 'The Avengers' went down, it was revived with a sequel series called 'The New Avengers'. Apart from cameos, the only character to return for the sequel series was John Steed. In it, he works alongside his best friend Mike Gambit, and a woman named Purdey, who has a complicated will-they won't-they relationship with Gambit. It appears that Steed trained both Gambit and Purdey to become agents of MI12.

The Wombles One
The Wombles One appears to take place somewhere during The New Avengers, although Purdey and Gambit do not feature. This is apparent because in the Wombles One, Mrs Peel breaks up with Peter, and tells Steed 'I'm not Mrs Peel anymore'. And in her cameo appearance in The New Avengers, Mrs Peel reminds Steed 'I'm not Mrs Peel anymore.' And so, during the events of The Wombles One, we can assume that in between scenes, Steed was working with Purdey and Gambit, as well as Tara, whom he is mentioned to work with.

In the Wombles One, the first time we see Steed is when he reunites with Venus Smith, and she has lost her memory. Steed mentions that he had been looking for Tara, but because Venus cannot remember how to sing, his top priority now is getting her memory back. For unknown reasons, Steed and Venus were in Yellowstone Park.

As soon as Steed and Venus were about to leave on their mission to give Venus her singing knowledge back, they are stopped by hundreds and thousands of bowler hats falling on top of them. They seem to be the hats owned by Peter Peel.

Because of the injury with so many hard bowler hats falling on top of them, Steed and Venus go back to London to see Dr King. ￼This is where Steed learns that Mrs Peel isn't Mrs Peel anymore. She is said to be Miss Peel, although, as is pointed out in the Wombles Five, her maiden name is actually Knight.

Steed then offers for Miss Peel to rejoin the Avengers, but she refuses, because she feels that Steed has led her on, and she thought he was going to ask her to marry him. Instead, Steed appears to propose to Tara, and they get engaged. After the proposal, Steed, Tara, Cathy, Dr King and Dr Keel all head to see Mother for their mission briefing.

When they get there, Mother explains that a strange badger-like creature (Orinoco Womble) is planning to kill everybody, and a window cleaner (Mr Class) is working with a Milk Man to take down the Avengers. He then goes on to explain￼ that Steed was his original choice for the mission, until Steed was reported to have been seen with Orinoco.

Steed had never seen Orinoco before at this point, and so he concludes that it must have been a duplicate, as he has had many duplicates in the past. Mother accepts the explanation and allows Steed to lead the mission after all.

Steed then decides to announce to Mother about his engagement to Tara, but then gets knocked out by Mother. Later, he is kicked awake by Mother, along with Tara who was also knocked out, and Mother commands them to go to Vaudevilla. Steed and Tara do as they are told, where they meet a very feminine-looking man named Mr Speel.

Mr Speel then goes on to reveal that he is actually Miss Peel in disguise, and she challenges Tara to a dual for Steed's hand in marriage. Miss Peel wins by using her pout which can render a man helpless for days, and so Steed gets engaged to Miss Peel instead of Tara.

Steed and Miss Peel then head to the Classy Glass Window Cleaning Company to begin their mission. There, they meet Mr Class, and get into a fight with him. With a bit of luck, they win the fight, and Mr Class is captured by them.

While interrogating Mr Class, Steed learns of the existence of Wombles, and he learns that Bungo Womble is in trouble, captured by somebody more evil than Mr Class. For the sake of saving Bungo and the other Wombles, Steed puts differences aside and offers to work with Mr Class for this mission. Mr Class accepts, and recommends to also work with the Milk Man.

Later, while out on a walk with Miss Peel, Steed is knocked out and wakes up tied to a conveyer belt. He quickly learns that Cathy was his captor. Since they are both secretly members of TODE, they pretend to hate each other, but Steed questions her, saying she is going a bit far.

He escapes by using a method he learnt in early training called Advanced Escapology for Idiots or Unlucky agents (AEIOU), and stopping Cathy from chasing him by using a forget-me-dart which came out of Cathy's arm. He was luckily able to escape quicker because Tobermory Womble was driving by in the Wombatmobile. Tobermory takes Steed to the Womble Burrow, where Miss Peel is.

When Steed gets there, Miss Peel is tying Uncle Bulgaria Womble to an old TV. She remarks that they can always watch him now. Steed is slightly confused as he had expected more Wombles, so he asks Miss Peel why there are so few of them.￼ Miss Peel explains that several Wombles keep disappearing or showing up dead. She also explains that since she arrested Uncle Bulgaria, she is now the leader of the Wimbledon Wombles. Steed decides that he will track Bungo, and he asks Miss Peel to take Peter to the Window Cleaning Company.

Miss Peel hires Steed as the new head of the Womblegarten, and they jointly decide to hire Tara as the new cook.

Dr King, Cathy and Venus then come into the burrow, and Venus explains why they're there via a song. From this song, Steed learns that Dr Keel and Tara love each other, and that Cathy had captured him because she thought he was Peter, having lost her memory, although Venus adds that Cathy told her that even if she had known it was Steed, she wouldn't have cared. This causes a short awkward silence before Venus is hired as the Womblets' entertainer, and Dr King is hired as the Womble doctor. Here, Steed learns that Cathy is second-in-command to Miss Peel.

Once Miss Peel, Dr King, Tara, Venus and the Wombles are elsewhere, Cathy captures Steed and ties him to the conveyer belt again, this time fully aware that he is Steed, not Peter. Steed is very concerned by this, since he and Cathy were supposed to be working for TODE together.

He is almost immediately saved by both Miss Peel and Tara. At this point, Steed learns that although Tara is with Dr Keel, she actually likes Steed better. However, Steed does not return her feelings, and so she goes to find Dr Keel instead. It seems that Dr Keel might be at the burrow, because the next we see of Tara, she is racing Steed and Miss Peel back there. Steed and Miss Peel realise that they drove Cathy's car by mistake, and Miss Peel says that she will give it to Wellington Womble. They then realise that Tara's car is gone, and she is now just sitting on the road.

Tara explains that there was a flash of wombly orange and then her car was gone. Steed suggests that it might have just been a Womble trying to tidy up, but then realises that it would be strange for a Womble to tidy up a car with a driver in it. Because of this, Steed and Miss Peel head back to the burrow to check on their cars. They are both gone, but Steed doesn't worry about it because he still has two green bentleys left.

Steed goes to his house to get his bentleys, but discovers that his house is gone, with the cars still there. Steed and Miss Peel take a Bentley each, and move into Miss Peel's house instead.

Steed and Miss Peel then head to the burrow and arrive together with Tara. ￼They go into Miss Emma Peel's Office, also known as MEPO, and discover that Cathy is there after they turn the lights on. Miss Peel mentions that she got a report from Mother about Cathy, so Wombat (Tobermory) subdues Cathy and then Steed, Miss Peel and Wombat take her to Mother's office.

Steed questions Cathy about why she turned on the Avengers, though it can be assumed that he was really questioning her about why she turned on him alone. Cathy does not answer, and so she is put in a room which Miss Peel refers to as "A prison cell with weird swirly images on the wall".

The next time we see Steed, he is watching Cathy in her cell through an observation screen, along with Mother, Tara and Miss Peel. The four of them are having fun mentally torturing Cathy.

Much later, Steed's phone rings and Steed discovers that the caller is Mother, and that Mother is calling him to ask him to check on Cathy in her prison cell. Steed heads immediately to the place, where his umbrella mysteriously starts ringing. Steed spends too much time trying to figure out how to answer his umbrella, so Cathy seized the opportunity to grab a bunch of keys from him and escape. By the time he notices, Cathy is already gone. Steed decides to discuss with Miss Peel about what to do now, but instead they just end up talking about their names.

Steed then goes to see Mother instead, but when he gets there, he overhears Venus singing that Cathy and Mother are actually in a relationship and Cathy is Mother's boss/partner in literal crime. Soon afterward, when he comes out of the undergrowth to argue about Venus saying that he hasn't got a hope against the evil duo, he discovers that Cathy is also there, along with Dr King and Dr Keel.

At that point, Dr King and Mother start fighting, while Dr Keel just drinks Mother's brandy. Dr King loses the fight, and Steed, helpless against Mother's weapons, has to watch as Dr King is dragged away to Cathy's secret lair. However, he does manage to re-capture Cathy, and entrap her in a large prison cell with many extra unpleasant experiences.

This time around, Cathy, instead of escaping, lies that she will stop her evil ways and re-join the Avengers loyally. Steed and Miss Peel are too gullible to notice that she's lying, and so they let her out of their trap.

Pretending to be friendly with them, Cathy offers to show Steed, Dr Keel, Dr King and Miss Peel her new café, the Cafeeee. However, Steed and Miss Peel both pass out after eating their meals because they were poisoned.

Steed, Miss Peel, Dr King and Dr Keel are put inside a refrigerator room where they are meant to freeze to death. However, Dr Keel's smoking habit is their saviour, as he accidentally sets all the food on fire, and it becomes very hot in that room, but not to the point of death. Miss Peel then uses karate to knock the door down, and the four Avengers exit the room.

[This page is a W.I.P.]￼