Everyone agrees that while the Tara King episodes were still good,
they were a clear step down from Emma Peel's episodes? Usually, poor
Tara herself gets the blame, but I am going to argue to the contrary.
The decline in Tara's episodes were based on the following reason,
none of which related to Tara herself.

1. The loss of Phillip Levene
Phillip Levene was the script editor and author of many many Emma
Peels, but seemed to drop out of sight with Tara (see previous post).
Brian Clemens kept the show alive and wrote the best Tara Kings, but
the other scripts were frankly of an inferior quality from Emma's.
This is evident when one compares early Levene and Clemens Tara
scripts to those of other authors.

2. The overuse of Mother
Now I liked Mother's character. Really I did. But his intrusion into
the episodes as a regular cast member destroyed the Steed and partner
relationship. Now everytime Steed had a hangnail, he had to go
running to Mother. It made the episodes feel uneven, and made Steed
and Tara seem more inadequate. The proof of this is in that the
episodes which did not feature Mother were by and large the best. The
only notable exception was Bizarre, in which Mother only appears at
the very end for the tag.

3. The Americanization of the Show
As an American, I obviously have no problem with Americanism, but the
Avengers was an English show with English humor. Under the Tara Kings
there was a serious reduction in the number of unique characters that
made Emma's so special. Gone were characters like Mr. Cheshire and
other eccentrics. In were standard villains with just a touch of
humor (of course, I agree there were exceptions).

Opinions?