The episode is best known for the scene in which Peel dons a revealing, kinky "Queen of Sin" costume (which Diana Rigg designed herself), complete with a dog collar with three-inch spikes, whalebone corset, and high leather boots, with a large snake. It is the Hellfire club members who dress her this way; she appears for less than ten minutes of show time in this manner, always demure, though ending with Cartney attacking her with a whip. As a result of this and other elements, the episode was not broadcast when "The Avengers" aired on American network television; it did air on British television, but with the whipping scene edited down to one crack of the whip, due to objections made by Associated-Rediffusion Television. James Chapman said of the episode, "With its visual references to sado-masochistic pornography, 'A Touch of Brimstone' unsurprisingly ran into censorship difficulties with the ITV network; it was not screened in America at all." The episode has been cited as one of Diana Rigg's finest. The members of the Hellfire Club have been described as engaging in "uninhibited debauchery".