Blake's 7: Assassin

“All right then; he’s not infallible. It’s just that up to now he’s never failed.”

At last, this rather piss-poor season has produced a second decent episode. I’ve no idea who this Rod Beacham chap is, but he’s really come up trumps with this rather clever little script. All the characters are well-served, the story is gripping, there’s a nice little twist and the pacing is well fast.

The first scene, for all that it’s basically exposition (the team learn about Servalan hiring an assassin to get them and decide to pre-empt her, blah blah blah) is both funny and interesting character-wise, as for once we get to see Avon being scared, however much he may try to hide it. In fact, he spends most of this episode being rather more sensible than he has been of late.

Interesting name for the assassin- Cancer- although I’ve concluded that it’s probably not worth going subtext-hunting here. This episode is all about the action, anyway, as we fast-forward to Avon and Vila having teleported down to the surface of Gomo, one of those ubiquitous quarry worlds, without bothering with any pointless scene beforehand establishing that they’re going to do so. It’s not the last time that this will happen during this episode, and it’s the most refreshing example of the refreshing economy of storytelling that’s on display here.

Avon succeeds in his rather barmy plan of being captured as a slave (What’s with this element of masochistic craziness in Avon’s plans? He did something similar in Rumours of Death. Actually, I take back what I said about him acting sensibly here.), although his losing the bracelet is going to be a bit of a bother.

I fear that for once I’m going to break my golden rule and discuss another programme here, as it’s blindingly obvious that this episode is the reason that Richard Hurndall (Nebrox) gets cast as the First Doctor two years later in The Five Doctors. You can see why. The resemblance is uncanny, far more so, in fact, than it would be when he actually came to play the role.

This isn’t the only delightful piece of casting, either. At the slave auction scene (Servalan’s there, naturally) we get a wonderful little cameo from the legendary Betty Marsden of Round the Horne fame. She gets an interesting little speech, incidentally, which implies (well, says out loud, really) that there are such people as “nouveaux riches” and “nobles” at this point in the future. Also hilarious is her excuse for why so few extras are needed to play the punters at the auction!

There’s a wonderfully kinky little moment as Servalan buys Avon as a slave, but it’s time for the plot to move on, so Avon duly gets rescued. We now move to Cancer’s seemingly marooned ship, the main setting for this episode. Cancer is overpowered, seemingly quite easily, much to the apparent relief of the too-girly-to-be-true Piri. You’ll forgive me for revealing the plot twist at this early stage (I guessed at the 29 minutes and 45 seconds mark), but her awfully stereotyped personality actually turns out to be a very clever postmodern trick- I love that.

Incidentally, the bridge of Cancer’s ship is straight out of an ‘80s music video, with the bearded “Cancer” looking just like General Zod. But the real Cancer, once we finally get to see her as she is, looks utterly fab in a way that transcends the decades, with great hair. Oh, and the fight scenes on the bridge are shot really excitingly, with lots of fast cutting. It’s really, really weird to see direction like this in 1981. I’m really impressed with David Sullivan Proudfoot’s work here. His surname is pretty cool too.

The plot really is very, very clever. “Piri” manages to quite easily manipulate everyone, deliberately alienating Soolin (who comes a little closer to having a personality than she has before, if only because she slaps Piri, and seems to work out that she’s a baddie) and getting Avon and Tarrant to fight over her. Her plan actually seems pretty likely to succeed, too; I suspect that Vila, Dayna and the smitten Tarrant, aboard the Scorpio, would prove rather easy to manipulate.

I like the animatronic spider, too. But the ending is satisfying, giving us a nice little verbal exchange between Servalan and Avon before things are resolved. And it seems the episode ends with Servalan thinking they’re all dead?

That was good. Very good. More like this please.