Blake's 7: Gold

“I’ve got a criminal record.”

“Hasn’t everybody.”

I seem to start every single Blake’s 7 review these days by saying that I don’t know who the writer is and, er, I’m going to do it again now. So, Colin Davis: who he? Well, I dunno.  Even my good friend Wikipedia can’t help me with this one.

This is a fairly middling episode, really; a simple bank heist with a fairly ho-hum twist at the end. It starts well, though; I always like to see episodes of Blake’s 7 start as Star Wars films do, with cool-looking ships floating through space.

We’re soon introduced to Keiller, an old friend of Avon, played by a suitably shifty Roy Kinnear. Aside from outlining as much of the details of the heist as the unravelling of the plot requires us to know at this point, we’re clearly shown that Keiller is not to be trusted. He has an interesting line to Avon, too: “On the grapevine, my friend, you’re getting to be big news.” Avon’s reaction suggests this is unwelcome news. He isn’t Blake; he recognises that notoriety will not do any good for his chances of survival.

With the necessary exposition over with, the scene switches to the initial phase of the heist with admirable speed. Our heroes have to do something there to ensure they can convert the “black gold” into proper gold again once the job is done. As this is a drama and dramas need conflict, things don’t go well, and we spend quite a few minutes wondering whether Avon and Soolin are dead. Soolin, incidentally, is starting to acquire some character traits. Only some, mind you, but we’re beginning to establish that she’s efficient, no-nonsense, slow to trust people, self-reliant and fearless. This might all add up to a fairly generic character type, and she still has no hinterland whatsoever, but you have to start somewhere.

We now begin to get some answers from Keiller; he’s being employed by persons unknown, but we all immediately guessed it would be Servalan, right? I like the concept of the entire space cruise being a sham to cover up the delivery of gold to the Federation on Earth, mind. Even better is Avon’s explanation of how it is possible to dupe the passengers (“I imagine they have chemical help.”

I’m very conscious with Blake’s 7 that the teleport can create quite a problem for the sense of threat: how can the characters be in danger if they can be immediately teleported out. Davis finds a neat and very cheeky solution; teleporting the gold would immediately destroy its value. Hah!

The heist itself is quite clever and well-executed, but once again Avon and co find themselves in some very murky moral areas. Not only do they shoot an awful lot of security guards throughout the episode, but Keiller murders an unarmed doctor in cold blood. They’re all accessories to that, I’m afraid. It hardly makes our “heroes” look heroic. But then, I think that’s the point. They are criminals. Yes, they’re politically opposed to the totalitarian rule of the Federation, but they’re not nice people and they never have been.

It’s eventually revealed that Servalan has planned it all- of course- and Keiller gets his comeuppance. But, in a final twist, recent financial developments mean that their money is worthless, while Servalan is in possession of loads of gold (“We risked our lives to make Servalan rich”). Everyone seems to be pretty scathing of Avon; will there be consequences? And once again there are signs that he’s not quite right in the head any more, laughing hysterically at his own misfortune…