Malta houses evil scientist in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D episode

Got your hands on fancy but potentially dangerous piece of technology that could make you stratospherically rich, but that would inevitably attract the attention of international security watchdogs?

Come to Malta.

That, at least, seems to be the take-away lesson from this week's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, ABC Network and Marvel Studios's spinoff series from the lucrative 'Avengers' comics-to-film franchise.

Aired in America last Tuesday, 'The Asset', the third episode in the series, pitted the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D) against Ian Quinn (David Conrad), a rogue scientist who kidnaps his former Cambridge classmate Dr Franklin Hall (Ian Hart) so as to exploit a powerful and highly dangerous gravitational device.

"Malta. You're not stupid," Hall tells Quinn early on in the episode, before Quinn goes on to list the reasons why the island is perfect for someone like him.

"Stunning beaches, beautiful tax laws... and a deep-seated hatred of outside forces telling them what to do."

"You've always been a stubborn bastard," Hall quips to Quinn in return, "now you've found a place where the watchdogs can't touch you".

Moving his illicit base of operations to the "former prime minister's estate", Quinn - "now a naturalised citizen of this fair country" - also says that moving to Malta allowed him to circumvent the enemies of "profit and progress", among them the US government and the EU.

In what is something of an amusing coincidence, the episode was aired on the same day that the Individual Investor Programme was announced - which will allow for foreigners with €650,000 to spare to purchase Maltese citizenship.

And in fact, Malta offers various ways of allowing foreign nationals to invest their money in Malta - either through financial assets or property - which would allow them to obtain generous tax rebates.

'The Asset' was, however, not actually filmed in Malta, but California. At one point in the episode, the alpha male hero of the S.H.I.E.L.D team, Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), asks to be dropped "in the hills outside of Valletta".