I've watched her episodes and she seems like she'd have been more at home walking down a runway or dancing on a show like Laugh In. Pretty but not tough or smart.
She was also too young and her acting was at best average - corny too and all tongue in cheek type action stuff.
"So, a thought crossed your mind? Must have been a long and lonely journey"share
I don't think Linda Thorson was that bad, she was inexperienced and just out of drama school, and taking over after two very successful and strong actresses like Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg can't have helped.
To be honest, I think the series was becoming a tiny bit too avant-garde for its own good by the time Tara came along!
"Wow. Koo-koo-ka-choo got screwed."
Unlike Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg, Linda Thorson was an inexperienced young actress when she was cast in "The Avengers" (she was only 20 years of age at the time).
Both Blackman and Rigg were experienced actresses when they joined the series and it showed in their performances. Thorson's inexperience did show through at first (which was part of the reason why she was cast because producers wanted a fresh take on things). However as the season progressed, there was a sense of confidence in her acting that came through in her later episodes.
Another factor that worked against her was that the writers seemed unable to get a proper handle on the character of Tara King. So many episodes saw her continually change. One story she was frighten and unsure of herself - screaming for help in some instances! and the next she is tough as nails. Not very consistent in terms of storytelling and character development......
Tara's voice gets to me sometimes. She seems too ethereal, and almost excessively "feminine". At times she seems like this big, tall, volutuous "girly-girl", but then she'll surprise you and dive headlong into violent physical action.
Compare that with Emma, who was so slender, and yet whose voice always seemed to have an air of authority and toughness mixed with the undeniably feminine. It's like Emma was a complete, coherent personality, while Tara couldn't seem to make up her own mind (I guess we can blame the writers).
Which cracks me up when I think of Linda Thorson's appearance as "Diamond" on RETURN OF THE SAINT, where she seemed TOUGHER than Cathy Gale! And that voice! You just don't wanna mess around with her. I have a suspicion that was the "real" Linda Thorson's voice, and the "Tara" voice was mostly some kind of put-on she came up with. (Of course, that didn't stop Laurence Luckinbill from being a scary-as-hell total B******.) I love the "character arc" in that story, as she starts out trying to overwhelm and intimidate Simon (Ian Ogilvy), then dials it down a bit to "mere" toughness as she slowly gets a handle on that he actually wants to help, then, surprise, he winds up with her at the end-- just by being him.
In "Whoever Shot Poor George/XR40" we hear Linda speaking with her native accent when she impersonates Sir Wilfred Pelley's American niece. She does a good job of sounding like an American because she is actually from Toronto, Canada and is thus "North American".
Her "Tara" voice is a total put-on.