Blake's 7: Power

“You can have war between races, war between cultures, war between planets. But once you have war between the sexes, you eventually run out of people…”

Oh dear. That’s two rubbish episodes in a row. Straight after last episode’s pointless rip-off of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ben Steed goes and bloody gives us a “battle of the sexes episode”.

It doesn’t start well, either. You remember how I praised the new title sequence last episode? Well, this time I’ve noticed there’s no apostrophe any more in “Blake’s 7”. Grr.

Anyway, we’re still on Xenon, and Vila still has to open that door from last episode if our heroes are to have any hope of reaching Scorpio or, indeed, food. Avon, foraging, is swiftly caught by a couple of the sort of crossbow-wielding savages who have long since become one of the drearier Blake’s 7 clichés. It’s clear that Avon has fallen afoul of “hostiles” so Tarrant and Dayna go looking for him. Tarrant continues to be a total arse; knowing perfectly well that there are “hostiles” about, he loudly shouts Avon’s name!

Vila meets a rather attractive-looking Pella, one of the “Seska”, who has mysteriously got herself into the complex, and she kindly tells Vila that the door is programmed to detonate a nuclear device after forty-eight hours without Dorian’s voiceprint! Avon has less pleasant company; the tribe he’s forced to interact with are the “Hommiks”, led by Gunsar, who’s a bit thick. Using his typically adroit diplomatic skills, Avon manages to talk himself into a fight to the death with Gunsar. I like the way he chooses a glove as his weapon and manages, technically, to win before being unfairly hit from behind, but we’ve seen this sort of thing so often before.

Pella, and two of her Friends, realise they’re going to need Avon, now that Dorian is dead, to reach Scorpio, and accordingly they set out to rescue him. They don’t do very well; two of them are caught, and Pella soon joins Avon in his cell. Things still don’t look all that bad elsewhere, but the bomb goes off in not much more than three hours, and Orac, git that he is, is talking in riddles.

We learn things, though. Avon and Pella escape, and Pella escapes with Avon to prevent an operation of some kind being performed on her friend. She’s shocked to see the operation performed by a long-lost friend and Seska, Nina, who is deliberately staying with the tribe, because she wants to be a woman.

We get a bit of context for this as Vila, Dayna, and Tarrant look at some old recordings. It seems that twenty years ago a war concluded between the Seska (who are all women, apparently) and the Hommiks. It’s at this point that the horrible truth dawns on us; this is that horrible, horrible cliché of a war between the sexes.

Now that we have the context, it becomes more than a little eyebrow-raising to see Avon overwhelming Pella with his male strength and forcibly kissing her! He’s making a bit of a habit of this sort of thing.

Avon finds the central computer room, operated by Gunsar’s adviser, Cato, without the knowledge of his rather thick boss. It seems that, after the war ended twenty years earlier, technology had to start again from the very beginning. This room, which powers the light and heat, is run secretly. We’re about to hear more, but Pella kills him by means of Avon’s trigger finger. She’s telekinetic, and goes on to further demonstrate this by knocking Avon out with a levitating object.

The episode is beyond hope now; even Dayna’s challenge to Gunsar can’t liven things up. We end with our heroes and the Seska stood by the door to Scorpio, trying to agree terms. There were never any more Seska than the ones we see; there are only two left, and Pella is about to shoot the other! She deactivates the bomb, but she has a clever plan; threatening Dayna with a gun, she heads to Scorpio to take off by herself. Avon, however, has been cleverer (isn’t he always?), and has conspired with Orac to get the teleport working. After he’s teleported aboard and dealt with her, our heroes have a new ship. But Soolin is still around…

That was utter crap. I hope this season comes up with a good episode soon; it’s been rubbish so far.

Blake's 7: Moloch

“The Liberator? That’s Blake’s ship.”

“He liked to think so…”

So, Ben Steed has another script after his excellent Harvest of Kairos. This isn’t as good, but it’s still a quality script. Mercifully, after last episode, the characters are well-handled and there’s some movement of the season arc.

The ship has been following Servalan for twenty-seven days, just to find out what he’s doing. This shows us, firstly, that Avon is still very much top dog at this point and, secondly, that although he doesn’t have the political commitment of Blake he’s certainly driven by curiosity. And yet, recently, there’s the sense that he’s aimlessly allowing Servalan to become a bigger threat over time. It’s notable that his only motivation for following Servalan’s ship to the mysterious hidden planet is sheer curiosity. He’s still much more sensible than Tarrant, though. He’s a much diminished figure, it seems, after recent events. His plan to teleport down through a barrier which repels all electromagnetic waves is typically reckless and stupid.

The Liberator makes it through, just avoids crashing, and ends up outside the barrier again. We see just enough of the planet to see that the surface in close-up consists of a couple of obvious drawings. Meanwhile, two women, Chesil and Poola (the only natives we ever in fact see) are on monitoring duty, and choose to erase all records of the incident, in the hop that the intruding ship may offer them help.

Avon asks Zen for a printout (how very quaint!), for information on the planet. Meanwhile, Poola, having been caught erasing evidence of the Liberator’s arrival, is punished by being “given to the men” for a purpose which is quite clear. Even more horrible is the fact that she isn’t seen again.

Servalan at last arrives, but something isn’t right. The two officers in charge, Lector (appropriately close to “lecher”) and Grose, are of oddly junior rank. They also have strangely easy access to such apparently rare things as “real wine, from grapes” (which Servalan doesn’t appreciate, the philistine), and “coffee too, from beans”. Never mind the blatant tyranny; I wouldn’t want to live in a future without wine in it. That’s true dystopia.

Servalan’s less than subtle digs at her hosts’ gluttony, lust and sadism are followed by some probing questions about mysterious accidents that seem to have befallen their senior officers, and the glaring absence of the massive fleet which is the reason for her being here. She declares that they are both under court martial. But their obvious lack of concern already makes it clear that all is not as it seems.

Orac reveals that the hidden planet is called Sardos, and its small population have predicted their own evolutionary future. Er, how? Evolution isn’t predestined! It’s merely the survival of those random mutations best suited to the many and unforeseeable circumstances faced by a species. Never mind; somehow they’ve done this, and seek to gain control, of their own evolution. This is clearly going to be relevant later on.

Orac also reveals a nearby transport ship which will offer a way of arriving on the planet unseen. Tarrant bullies Vila into teleporting down with him, just as he did earlier in the season; is this pointing towards his eventual comeuppance, I wonder? Typically, Tarrant arrives all right while Vila is soon caught. Less usually, he is instantly invited to join in the party!

The fun doesn’t last long; Tarrant soon prises Vila from his new friend Doran, pulling a gun on him; that’s some comeuppance coming! It seems this ship was full of escapees from a penal planet, and that they’re nothing to do with Servalan who, it is increasingly clear, is not in charge. Avon and Dayna (increasingly the two who are at the top of the pile on the Liberator), teleport down to find their missing comrades. Meanwhile, Vila discovers that Doran is perhaps not such a nice guy, after all (“My problem was always women.” “You like them?” “No…”.). He reminds me of Gan, circa Series One.

Servalan is told that the planet is run by a massive computer which is able to replicate any item it has scanned, transmuting rock into gold, or teleport bracelets, or indeed dead mice. This is controlled by something called Moloch, and is part of a criminal enterprise planned by Lector and Grose. The escaped criminals are to be the crew of their pilot ship, and Moloch declares of Servalan that they should “Give her to your men!”

Fittingly, Servalan is “given” to Vila, who is not exactly going to rape her. The two of them promptly escape, and make a rather amusing double act. Meanwhile, Avon and Dayna find the replicator machine, where clever old Avon starts to work things out. We know he’s gaining quite a lot of knowledge because he bites into an apple in a rather clumsy little Biblical metaphor.

Servalan ends up escaping, while Vila meets up with Doran and Poola. Avon’s theorising is briefly interrupted by a little light torture from our two erstwhile pirate captains, but he swiftly points out to them that Moloch isn’t telling them everything; who’s in charge? Tarrant, Vila and co soon promptly rescue them (with the rather nastily misogynistic Doran getting a suitably meaningless death), but they are soon under the control of the computer, itself controlled (as clever Avon expected) by Moloch, a living projection of the natives’ evolutionary future. Er, ok. Anyway, he’s a Muppet.

It turns out the whole thing was a trap, arranged for the Muppet to get his paws on the Liberator. His plan works perfectly, and he promptly teleports over and immediately dies, having made the elementary mistake of failing to realise the separation from his life support system would kill him. Pillock. Avon, meanwhile, rather cleverly replicates them all a load more teleport bracelets.

We end on what seems to be a cliffhanger, though; the Liberator is surrounded by Servalan’s pursuit ships, and is poised to run. How will they get out of this one? After all, it’s not as though they’ve got out of this sort of situation many times before, is it?

Blake's 7: Harvest of Kairos

“But first there is the question of that degrading and primitive act to which I was subjected in the control room.

I should like you to do it again.”

Another new writer, then: Ben Steed. IMDb tells me very little about him, but he’s come up with one of the finest scripts I’ve ever seen on Blake’s 7. We begin in media res as the Liberator faces attack from four Federation pursuit ships while Avon and Vila are on the planet below. In previous episodes this sort of scenario has formed a central part of the plot; here, it’s a mere curtain-opener.

Servalan (still on that space wheel thing even though she’s now president), while supervising the attack, is told by this week’s underling, Dastor, that a construction worker called Jarvik has mocked her constant failure to capture the Liberator. Interestingly, this is conveyed by the phrase “They say you’re afraid of Tarrant”. This is interesting; as per last episode, it’s interesting to speculate on whether or not Avon is still in effective control of “his” ship. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, of course; one again, Tarrant doesn’t order Avon about as he does the others, and Avon does at one point explicitly comment on Tarrant’s famed skills as a space commander. It’s possible that Avon is simply delegating combat to the most skilled member of his crew, but it doesn’t feel that way, especially as Avon spends the entire episode being somewhat detached, obsessing over some rock he’s found.

We meet the construction worker, Jarvik, as Servalan demands an explanation. All she gets is a “Woman, you’re beautiful,” and an unexpected and unsought kiss! This, and the quote at the top there, are… interesting. Is the script, as opposed to the character, being misogynistic here? This isn’t just kinkiness, which would be fine; it’s non-consensual. And Servalan’s reaction might be thought to send out worrying messages that all women “want” it. I suppose the power relations between the two of them, with Servalan being an absolute dictator who is implicitly always in control, are a satisfactory mitigating factor as far as the character of Servalan is concerned; I can believe her reaction. But the subtext is still worrying.

Anyway… Jarvik gets to look clever by making snide comments as Servalan’s attack inevitably fails. And he correctly predicts that Tarrant will take the Liberator to Kairos, for its harvest. (At this point, deciding where to take the Liberator, Tarrant seems to be blatantly acting as leader. Yes, he takes a vote, and yes, Avon declines to comment when asked, but he’s taking charge.) The planet is hostile to human life for some reason, except during “harvest week”, where the fantastically valuable Kairodan crystal can be found; under Avon and/or Tarrant, the crew of the Liberator seem to be, up to a point at least, thieves interested in personal wealth. With Blake and the Federation gone, so has any clear political aim.

Our two newbies are developing in opposite ways here; Tarrant is competent, warm, and less annoying, while Dayna is showing fewer and fewer personality traits.

It seems Jarvik once knew Tarrant, and was in fact once his superior officer before being downgraded to construction worker for crimes which are, interestingly, unspecified. He’s very much the no-nonsense alpha male type, intelligent but appreciative of the textures and pleasures of life, and very much against computers; this seems to be a running theme this series. Servalan is intrigued by him, both cerebrally and sexually, temporarily promotes him to acting major, and gives him three modern pursuit ships to see if she can capture the Liberator.

Servalan gets to show how deliciously evil she is by ordering the harvest ship on Kairos to abandon the labourers to certain death so she can fit more Kairodan on to the ship. There’s a great scene as a guard gloats at their inevitable deaths, until he realises he’s being abandoned too!

Servalan observes and commentates, despairingly, as Jarvik carries out his cunning plans. That it is, until Jarvik tells her to “Lie there and keep quiet until I tell you otherwise!” Tarrant and co teleport to the cargo hold where the Kairodan is being held, where they are ambushed. In a brilliant scene, Avon then rouses himself briefly from his study of the rock to casually rescue them all, stating, devastatingly, that “They were an obvious possibility, Tarrant!” But, of course, this is a ruse; the real trap is in the crates, a sort of Trojan Kairodan. Servalan is on the point of arresting Jarvik for failure when the capture of the Liberator is reported.

Servalan demands that the ship register her voice pattern on pain of killing the crew one by one. Tarrant naturally refuses, but Avon is very clever indeed. Forcing Servalan to order Zen to drop them off on the nearest planet, he seems to have outsmarted her, until it turns out that the nearest planet is Kairos, and the harvest is over.

Jarvik rejects command of the Liberator and, although television convention dictates that we next see them fully clothed in bed, quite obviously proceeds to have some rather good sex with Servalan. For motives which are by now almost entirely sexual, though, Servalan persuades him to teleport to Kairos and grab all of the former crew’s teleport bracelets, “If you’re to me man enough for me.” Jarvik agrees, and insists on going alone, cos he’s well ‘ard.

On the surface we see an archaic landing module- lucky, that, as it turns out- and the secret of the planet: some extremely large grubs have hatched. Passing over the awkward fact that they look rather less convincing than the pantomime horse off Rentaghost, we learn that they eat Kairodan, and will kill anyone who’s touched it. There is fighting and macho posturing aplenty as Jarvik arrives, and he returns from his mission with all of the bracelets plus Dayna as an added bonus. Servalan orders the local area of the surface to be bombarded, and our heroes are in very big trouble.

Appropriately, it’s Avon who saves the day, with the rock. Its means of self-preservation is to convince any attacker that it’s a slightly bigger and better version of itself. Zen is convinced that this tiny little capsule is, in fact, a massive and far superior ship, in spite of the scanner image showing that it blatantly isn’t. Jarvik isn’t fooled, but Servalan is, and she calls off the attack. Jarvik’s accidental death by friendly fire is a little contrived, but this doesn’t really detract from an outstanding episode.