Blake's 7: Blake

“Stand still! Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?”

So, it’s Chris Boucher who gets to write the last episode, not Terry Nation after all. I suppose Terry really was properly in America by this point.

Isn’t this exciting? Even the very first thing that happens- the Scorpio leaving Xenon for the last time as our heroes blow up their now compromised base- reminds us that this is it; from this point onwards there is no reset button and anything can happen.

Of course, this being the final episode, it has the luxury of being largely about the series’ own mythology in a way which the series up to now has rather wisely resisted. But this is entirely appropriate, of course, and it fits in nicely with the series’ running themes and threads. The increasing sense of desperation that has run through Season Four reaches a head for; our heroes’ ambitious plan has failed, they are now homeless vagrants in a tatty old ship, and one last desperate throw of the dice is needed. Avon’s words about needing a new figurehead may sound as cynical as always, but there’s a real sense that in resorting to Blake he’s clutching at straws. For one thing, this represents a real loss of faith; for all Avon’s talk of “idealists” needing “direction” from the likes of himself, he is essentially admitting that he has failed as leader and that it’s time to reassert the hierarchy against which he once rebelled.

Blake himself is a shocking site; not only is he physically scarred, with his sight seemingly lost in one eye, but we see him in the least glamorous surroundings we could possibly have imagined. Worse, he’s revealed to be a bounty hunter: has he abandoned all his principles for the most amoral lifestyle possible? There’s one hint that this may not be true: he freely admits his name to Arlen, his captive, and there seems to be no consequences to her later revealing this information to Blake’s Federation employer. At first this seems to be a hole in the plot but, as we later discover, it hints that all may not be as it seems.

Orac has traced Blake to Gauda Prime, which we now learn is Soolin’s home planet. At last, in the final episode of the series, she acquires a hinterland and an identity! The planet has officially been declared lawless, purely so the mining companies can evict farmers from their lucrative land, but now wish to reverse this now that money is being made! This is a great concept, reminiscent of Westerns and nicely pointing forward to the series I’m going to move on to after Blake’s 7! (Hint: it’s American, 21^st century, sci-fi, and the most appropriate follow-up series possible!)

In order to have the Federation re-impose law, such authorities as exist are hiring bounty hunters to assassinate all known troublemakers so that any future laws stand some chance of being enforced. Sadly, this comes too late for Soolin’s entire family, but at least she got her revenge in while she still could.

Anything can happen during this episode, though, and when the Scorpio is shot down we’re made very aware that this could be the end for the ship ands at least some of the crew, although of course the minutes left to be filled do rather hint at some survivors. This means we get a nice bit of misdirection: Tarrant is unable to teleport away with the others and it really seems that he’s about to die. In the end, he doesn’t, but that’s it for Scorpio. And Slave’s final words are even a bit poignant.

Tarrant is soon accosted, and apparently rescued by Blake, and taken in a flyer back to base, being told along the way that Jenna is dead (ensuring of course that, by the end of the episode, there are no survivors at all from the crews of the Liberator and Scorpio!). Dayna, Soolin and Vila are meanwhile making a right mess of things until Avon comes and sorts then out. Still, Avon has Orac, he has a plan, and he has a flier. All he needs to do is follow the other nearby flier back to base. Simple as. What could possibly go wrong?

Blake gets Tarrant back to base, and immediately seems to sell him out to the Federation. Tarrant runs away, but Blake seems unconcerned. He explains to his accomplice Deva (David Collings) that Tarrant will lead them to two bigger prizes: Avon and Orac. The dialogue is cleverly ambiguous here, but seems on the surface to imply that Blake is a traitor. It’; all a bit ominous; what if Avon and co should burst in at an awkward moment?

Oh, look. They have. Oh dear. And all mere seconds after Blake, talking to Deva, makes it clear that this is all part of elaborate plan to recruit capable people against the Federation.

Paul Darrow has never been better; the anguish in his voice as he asks whether Blake has betrayed him is haunting, as is the look in Gareth Thomas’s eyes as the dying Blake, shot three times by Avon, stares at him in disbelief.

It’s all gone horribly wrong; from this point there’s no hope for anyone. I’d heard that Avon’s fate, at least, was a bit ambiguous, but that isn’t the impression that I get. Fittingly, they all meet their ends at the hands of faceless minions of the system. As in 1984. Totalitarianism wins.

That was an amazing programme. Yes, there was the odd bad episode, many elements have dated, there could be a certain campness, and story arcs were less distinct than in modern television, but Blake’s 7 is generally well-written, well-acted and is at times a fascinating little meditation on totalitarianism.

Right. Torchwood tomorrow, and of course I’ll carry on with Doctor Who until the current season ends. I’ll be a bit less prolific over the next couple of weeks (real life intrudes, alas), so there might be the odd film review for a bit before I properly start reviewing the next programme…

Blake's 7: Rescue

“Beneath that cold exterior beats a heart of pure stone.”

Well, it had to happen eventually; a bad script from Chris Boucher. He’s usually so full of ideas, but not here. I preferred Oscar Wilde’s version as if it needed saying. What’s the point of “homaging” something if you’ve got nothing to say about it? Also, the early 1980s BBC conception of the future being dull, functional corridors is hardly something to satisfy an aesthete.

Still… a brand shiny new season, then, with some genuinely fantastic new titles which remind me very much of an old Acorn Electron game called Starship Command. We’re following directly on from the end of last season, as Dayna and Avon watch Gerald the Gorilla head into the ship Servalan has so kindly left for them. The ship immediately blows up; it was a booby trap.

Avon immediately realises that, if Servalan booby-trapped the ship, she will have booby-trapped her headquarters to go off simultaneously, too. No wonder her terms seemed so suspiciously reasonable last episode.

We see Vila dragging an unconscious Tarrant outside just before there’s a second, huge, explosion. Cally is killed by this explosion. Jan Chappell doesn’t even appear in this episode, and we only hear her voice for two last, telepathic, lines. Her last word is “Blake”.

It’s a shame that the focus then moves elsewhere and Cally’s death is pretty much downplayed for the rest of the episode. Even Gan got more of a send-off.

Having found what’s left of Orac, our team rather foolishly split up, inevitably getting into trouble. Dayna and Vila are rescued from their Sarlacc-like predicament by some bloke called Dorian, who seems to have a bizarre S&M relationship with his ship’s computer. Our heroes are less than grateful, though; as soon as Avon arrives he pulls a gun on him and the lot of them hijack his ship, just in the nick of time as we get played loads of stock footage of earthquakes, volcanoes and stuff.

For all we know at this point, Dorian is what he appears to be; an innocent salvage chap. And this makes it seem very clear that Avon and co are committing a particularly nasty and very serious crime here: stealing someone’s spaceship by means of armed hijacking. Yes, our heroes have always been criminals, but there’s always been something of a romanticised Robin Hood quality to their crime, and this diminishes them as protagonists. Yes, I know Dorian turns out to be a baddie (he bloody well had to after this), but that doesn’t justify the hijacking.

There’s an interesting Dayna moment as she passes a connoisseur’s judgement on the adjustable weapons they find aboard. And this scene immediately tells us that this ship is going to replace the Liberator (it even has a partly-formed teleport bay), or otherwise it wouldn’t be here.

The ship, we learn, is called Scorpio, and they’re headed to a planet called Xenon. As soon as they arrive, though, they discover that the only person around, aside from Dorian, is a rather gorgeous lady called Soolin, who remains enigmatic for pretty much the whole episode. It seems, initially, that she and Dorian are a couple. It also seems that they were expected, and they receive an oddly hospitable reception for a bunch of hijackers. They even get a glass of wine each (one glass too many; that’s for Cally), which is apparently supposed to be quite good, which is odd as it appears to be rosé. Still, we learned in Moloch that “real” wine is supposed to be rare, so perhaps beggars can’t be choosers.

There follows an odd, underground scene between an inexplicably aged Dorian and some horrible creature in the underground darkness, which immediately tells us something isn’t right. I’m sure that there are plenty of viewers far more eagle-eyed from myself who immediately guessed which novel was being ripped off at this point.

The party splits up again, with unpleasant circumstances all round, especially for Dayna. Only Vila, sensibly deciding to get sloshed, is not in trouble. Avon gets the exposition; Dorian has been on the planet for two centuries (has the wine really lasted that long without being drunk?) but hasn’t aged a day, and is able to indulge all sort of unspecified vices, which would no doubt, if we could see them, be both shockingly depraved and far too expensive for the Blake’s 7 budget. Oh, and his first victim was a male “partner”. That figures; it’s inevitable that he would turn out to be gay because, like, so was Oscar Wilde and stuff (actually, both Dorian and Wilde seem to have been bisexual, but let’s not get sidetracked).

Anyway, Vila saves the day (hooray for getting sloshed!), and Soolin quickly nips upstairs…

Blake's 7: Death-Watch

“Space. The final frontier, as it was once called…”

Chris Boucher is back, and this is a bloody good ‘un. These two facts may well be connected.

The opening scene, with spaceship models floating through the ether as we hear voices communicating electronically, echoes Boucher’s own Star One. But then we move to a fascinating scene. Aboard a luxury starliner is one Deeta Tarrant, played by none other than Steven Pacey. This man is clearly a massive celebrity in these parts, a fact that becomes very clear indeed when an attempt is made to assassinate him. It seems he’s some sort of “warrior”.

The Liberator, meanwhile, has escaped from Servalan’s fleet just like that. There was a time when a fleet of Federation pursuit ships would have presented at least some sort of threat, but those days are apparently gone. Instead, the crew amuses itself with current events. Apparently Orac has discovered that the United Planets of Teal and the Vanlor Confederacy are at war. Almost as good as the Internet is old Orac…

Tarrant is keen to head straight to the “combat grounds” although it’s interesting, in the light of this season’s personal interactions, that he looks for Avon’s permission first. Apparently, a war between these two powers is resolved by the simple method of each side appointing a champion to fight in a dual to the death, provided over by a neutral computer. Cally may find it barbaric (and, to be fair, the way it appears to be pushed as entertainment is certainly that), but it certainly cuts down on the casualties of war.

The crew of the Liberator then settle down to watch a bit of telly. We then get a wonderfully metatextual set of scenes as our television characters watch the television, and we get to see a presenter doing a piece to camera, and then talking to his extremely camp producer afterwards. A lot seems to have changed in the future, but television hasn’t, it seems.

It seems both champions have “seconds”; Deeta’s is Max (Stuart Bevan), a local diplomat. There are three arbiters for the process, it seems- one for each side, and a neutral arbiter, in this case none other than Servalan. The weapons, in an amusing nod to the Western, are “ancient” pistols. We meet Deeta’s opponent, the supremely confident Vinni, and through Max we get to see rather effectively just how nervous Deeta is.

A planned excursion by our heroes to the planet’s surface is cut short by the fact that there’s sod all going on, but not before Avon has a most interesting chat with Servalan, protected by the fact that all violence among visitors is forbidden during the duel. Avon threatens Servalan, ascertains she’s hiding something, and then kisses her(!) before leaving. Interesting relationship we have there. Also interesting to wonder how Dayna would react if she knew, especially given Vila’s later faux pas, which makes it clear that she still very much has it in for Servalan.

Tarrant is unable to speak to his brother before the fight, but has an interesting chat with Max, discovering that the absence of apparent festivities is because everyone is using a disc to tap into one of the contestants’ feelings as “catharsis”, and in no way as entertainment. Showing some initiative for once, he grabs one of each.

The duel begins, and the environment, naturally, is uncannily similar to the sort of thing that might be considered a cheap location. Deeta shows himself to be chivalrous, passing up an easy shot from behind in order to accept a challenge to a straight-up, Western style, quick draw challenge. He loses, and the camera goes into slow motion as he is killed. Tarrant and Dayna have respectively been monitoring both opponents. Tarrant is devastated, but Dayna notices something wrong with Vinni. He seems to have no instinct, just superhuman reflexes. It’s clear he’s an android, put there by Servalan to get caught and invalidate the contest. This will lead to a full-scale, traditional war, which can only end with Servalan stepping in to “restore order”, eventually annexing both entities. She’s a clever one, that Servalan. Even cleverer, the android won’t even be aware it isn’t human. It’s just like Blade Runner, two years early. Clever, clever Avon for working all this out.

There’s a solution, though; as the dead man’s brother, Tarrant has the right to challenge the android to a rematch, and Avon sets a trap. Tarrant cheats, shooting Vinni, and the evidence is conveniently vaporised away. We end with Avon and Tarrant explaining a version of this to Max; a version which, naturally, implicates Servalan. If Max makes an objection, the contest will be void, and a new contest can start. This time, of course, Teal will insist on full prior medical examinations, and a new neutral arbiter will be appointed. It’s time for Avon and Tarrant to make a sharp exit, though; Tarrant is now legally Teal’s First Champion…

Blake's 7: Sarcophagus

“I think I will accept your ship as your gift to me.”       

This is an interesting one, nicely structured and with lots of very interesting and thoughtful characterisation for all of our regular characters. But it leaves me with the impression that there are subtexts I’m not getting, and although I can recognise a lot of quality here I can’t quite say I particularly enjoyed it more than other episodes, less laden with meaning and subtext, at least on first viewing. Still, I’d like to see more from Tanith Lee, and Boucher’s policy of getting established sci-fi authors to write episodes is certainly a great idea.

The extended opening sequence is extraordinarily weird. Female-only cultists carrying torches on bleak alien landscapes is already a Blake’s 7 cliché, but this- several minutes of no dialogue in which a series of masked, colour-codes female figures are summoned into being, seemingly by magic, to perform rituals- is baffling, very odd indeed and must surely have alienated the viewing audience. After one viewing, and deliberately not reading up on the episode until after my review, I have no idea what any of this symbolises. I’m guessing it’s something pagan and on the theme of the feminine, but I have no idea.

We then switch to the safe and familiar territory of the Liberator, although admittedly by means of a very unusual camera zoom outwards from Cally’s eye in close-up. We have dialogue at last, and Tanith Lee proves herself to be rather expert at it, as well as depicting all the regulars as fully-rounded characters and saying interesting things about all of them before the episode ends.         

The chat between Avon and Cally is extremely interesting; both of these characters are somewhat broken after their sufferings during the last two episodes, and its clear there’s a bond between them. For all Avon’s aloof manner, he’s genuinely kind and comforting to Cally here, because he cares about her. And it’s obvious that she knows this. And it’s interesting in this light to later see this episode’s obligatory fight between Avon and Tarrant for the spot of alpha male of the pack; it starts with Tarrant accusing Cally of hiding something and Avon defending her.  

In fact, this particular Avon / Tarrant scrap is very interesting indeed. Tarrant is the one who lets rip, saying some very hurtful things about Avon while Avon keeps his cool. But Avon is the clear winner here; no one has thicker skin than he does, and he’s the one who ends up looking like an adult. Even his deferral to the majority vote on exploring the mysterious alien ship nearby makes him look strong, and indisputably the leader; he can afford to be magnanimous. As we shall see, Tarrant ends this episode considerably diminished, and quite low down on the Liberator’s pecking order.     

Avon quietly asserts his superiority over Tarrant by leading the search party himself. He, Cally and Vila find what appears to be a tomb, complete with grave goods, adrift in space like an Anglo-Saxon ship burial. It’s a trap, of course, which gives us something of an exciting sequence, but ultimately the team end up bringing two artifacts aboard the Liberator; one large, obvious and immediately studied, and the other a ring hoarder by Cally, who is clearly beginning to come under some influence.    

Night falls, everyone goes to sleep, and things become very creepy for most of the rest of the episode. “Night” may well be an arbitrary concept for a spacecraft (and how come the Liberator only ever gets chased by Federation pursuit ships when everyone is awake?) but we’re certainly made to be afraid of the dark. Firstly Orac describes the artifact as “irrational”, then asks to be disconnected. Then Zen, whilst being drained of power, warns that there’s a malign power on board the ship. We get some very eerie poltergeistiness before the artifact seems to age rapidly and collapse. Cally, meanwhile, is clearly under its baleful influence.         

Then things really get weird. Vila’s magic trick (a nice nod back to The Keeper) actually works, and that weird space lute thingy starts playing itself. Both Vila and Dayna simultaneously exist in two realities, one of which has them hooded and robed in strange surroundings.    

Dayna and Tarrant find Cally, and Dayna reveals she was knocked unconscious by a being which looked exactly like Cally. Tarrant responds with an excitable babble of theories. Then Avon turns up- calm, collected and organised, having been rather sensibly observing everything that’s happened. He cautions Tarrant against a “cavalry charge”. Tarrant, being Tarrant, doesn’t listen. And gets utterly humiliated and diminished as a result.

The being is gradually absorbing Cally’s life force to fashion a body based on hers. It may be ancient, but it is also childlike, simply demanding anything it wants, including the ship’s crew as its “pets”: Dayna as musician, Vila as fool (ha!) and Tarrant (no doubt sarcastically meant…) as “protector”. It is perceptive, though, saying of Vila that “This one interests me. He has a very high IQ and yet he behaves like an imbecile.”

Avon, who’s been conspicuous by his absence, now returns to do the heroic thing and reaffirm his place in the pecking order. He goads the being into killing him, knowing that Cally won’t let her; interestingly, we get confirmation here that Cally has feelings for him. He then declares that “You’re beautiful when you’re angry”, and suddenly kisses her- a surprisingly misogynistic moment for a script by a female writer. He then uses the distraction to grab the ring, my precious, which is the source of her psychic power. The being then ages, horribly, and fades away to her awful fate of fully conscious nothingness. It’s all very bleak, but elegantly put.

The episode ends with Avon most definitely as top dog, with Cally and Dayna both seeming to be well above Tarrant in the pecking order. Will this last…?

Blake's 7: Rumours of Death

“Oh. Don’t tell me, let me guess. You only ever followed orders?”

This episode is extraordinary. Simultaneously the finest character study of Avon we’ve yet seen, somewhat disorientating in its cleverer-than-it-looks structure, and also managing to be an “arc” episode, this is a showcase for the massive talents of both Chris Boucher and Paul Darrow.

The beginning is a shock; Avon, in a suitably grotty cell, with sounds of unpleasantness in the background and signs of mistreatment conveyed by Darrow’s performance. He’s been there for five days, and has finally attracted the attention of the chief torturer, Shrinker. Then, the tables are suddenly turned, as Avon stops transmitting his signal. Dayna and Tarrant suddenly teleport into the cell, and the three of them force Shrinker back to the Liberator. It’s a brilliant reversal, and a stand-out scene.

What follows is almost as good. Inevitably, the torturer comes in for some baiting from Dayna and Tarrant, but Cally refuses to join in, realising that behaving in this way can lead to a very dark place.

Meanwhile, Servalan is about to take possession of her presidential planet with is on Earth and, inevitably, somewhere that looks an awful lot like Hertfordshire. We see a rather senior married couple, Chesku and Sula, discussing how “Earth and the inner planets are once again united” under Servalan; once again we learn of the limited range of her authority as “president”. But this scene is also, if less dramatically, upended, as Sula turns out to be in league with rebels, shooting her husband dead. Meanwhile, we’re introduced to military double act Granlee and Forres (David Haig), some rather well-drawn and acted characters who are the framing device for much of what follows.

The crew have agreed to carry out Avon’s intentions from last episode; to track down Anna Grant’s killer. There’s a reason for the kidnapping; teleporting down with Shrinker to a subterranean cave, Avon eventually learns more than he’s bargained for, as do we, the viewers. There’s a flashback to Anna Grant, and we have two surprises. Firstly that Anna, apparently the great love of Avon’s life, calls him by his surname(!) and, secondly, that she’s played by the same actress as Sula and is thus the same person. Well, one surprise for me as I didn’t actually notice the big revelation until it was rather more blatantly pointed out later on…

Shrinker convinces Avon that he never met Anna, and that Avon was always being “run” by a Federation agent known as “Bartholomew”; it seems this person may be the killer, and it’s possible that Servalan would know more. With that, Avon abandons the torturer to die in the cave, his mercy extending only to giving him a gun. It’s a graphic example of how, behind Avon’s carefully maintained sardonic exterior, are some very, very passionate feelings.

Servalan, meanwhile, is on film in a posh house, about to host some posh dinner as president. Her presence is making our two surveillance chaps nervous, and rightly so; the rebel plan is being executed very competently indeed, and when the final attack is sprung it works perfectly. Both of our surveillance chaps are shot, and David Haig’s light relief character is the one who’s killed; this tells us something about what we can expect from the tone of the rest of the episode.

The rebels’ moral dilemma of what to do with Servalan nicely mirrors the scene with Shrinker earlier, in the Liberator. It also indicates that their position is not so secure now that they’ve completed their immediate objective; what do they do now? The consequences could be grave, especially as a dying Granlee calls for help.      

The contrast is with a fairly united Liberator crew; for all the quips from Dayna, Tarrant and Cally, they care about Avon because, deep down, they know that he cares a lot for them. Again, passions underneath the cold exterior. 

They find the palace under occupation, with Servalan chained to a wall (kinky!), in obvious distress and showing signs of physical violence. She’s a distressing sight; Jacqueline Pearce is great here.    

Sula’s arrival is a crushing moment for Avon, of course, as he instantly recognises her. Flashbacks of Shrinker’s words reverberate effectively as she tries to convince him she still loves him; she is Bartholomew, and was always using him from the beginning. Only when she tries to kill him does he shoot her, and he’s a broken man. “I let you go, my love”, she says, dying. “No, you never let me go, you never did,” he replies, allowing us a glimpse at those deep, deep passions. Avon is such a more complex and interesting character than he’s often taken for.                                              

Blake's 7: The City at the Edge of the World

“I am surrounded by cretins!”

So. This is it: the last episode of Blake’s 7 that I’ve seen before. From now on it’s all uncharted territory for me. Exciting, eh?  Know how the series ends, obviously, but aside from that rather huge exception I’m completely spoiler-free.

As Chris Boucher is wont to do, we begin some way into the story, after Tarrant has already done a bit of sniffing around on the planet below. He quite horribly bullies Vila into going down to do a job for the natives, alone and unarmed, in return for some unobtainium crystals, while nobody’s looking. This is fascinating, for two reasons. Firstly, it’s becoming clear that we are not meant to like Tarrant. Secondly, this episode makes him look like both a bully and a pillock; he’s definitely taken down a peg or two.

It’s interesting, in this light, to note how comparatively concerned and caring Avon is made to look in contrast, just before Vila teleports down. It’s Avon who tries to plant a tracer on Vila for his safety, and his disapproval is clear. He and Cally are very much the anti-Tarrant double act here, and Dayna’s not impressed either.

Tarrant is also shown to be naïve and rather stupid in assuming the natives are harmless. It’s not long before Avon (significantly in the context of what seems to be a developing conflict between Tarrant and Avon; this one Avon definitely wins) safely detonates an intended booby trap. And when the rather silent natives finally deliver Avon to his destination, a ruined city, it’s revealed that Tarrant has in fact made a massive, massive cock-up. There are no unobtainium crystals. But there is the splendid Bayban the Butcher, splendidly hammed by the wonderful Colin Baker, and his comedy henchmen. But there’s also, er, a henchwoman, Kerrill, who seems cute and vulnerable beneath the harsh exterior.

It seems there’s a mysterious portal Bayban wishes to penetrate, and he’s conned Tarrant into supplying him with the best locksmith around. The locals (represented by a taciturn Valentine Dyall) apparently say that “It contains this world and the next”. If we’re paying attention then we’ve already guessed that it leads to another world. But all this exposition is delivered amongst a lot of highly entertaining lines from the great Bayban. I love his annoyance at being only second on the Federation’s “most wanted” list after Blake!

Vila has one hour to open the portal, or things look grim. Fortunately, though, he’s a bloody good thief. If this were D&D he’s have a dexterity of 18, without question. He’s not as unlucky as things might seem, especially as Kerrill re-appears, having just happened to put on some rather alluring clothing. Vila quickly manages to impress her by cleverly working out that the portal is in fact a force field, designed to resemble a solid object, which will throw back any energy fired into it. All he needs is a low energy probe, too subtle for it to detect. In love Vila’s sense of rivalry with his opponent.

Suddenly, it opens, and they both go through. And, as every viewer knew it would, it simply closes again. Still, Kerril is getting rather tactile, so Vila is still not necessarily having such a bad time, even if he is becoming rather conscious of being used. He’s about to go back, but her scream brings him back, and the two of them have a lovely little cuddle. They’re aboard a spacecraft, next to the skeletons of two of their predecessors, when they suddenly hear a voice from thirty centuries ago. The planet’s civilisation is at the height of its power, but some local Hari Seldon-type chap has been insisting that for some reason they’re about top collapse into barbarism. The ship is a kind of ark, programmed to find a suitable planet, and the remaining natives have been genetically engineered with a Quatermass and the Pit-style race memory to ensure they continue to behave in ways their rather controlling ancestors would approve of. Once the other end of a teleport is set up, the entire race can migrate. Talk about pushy parenting…

Unfortunately, the ship seems to be in flight, and the air will therefore soon run out. There’s only one thing for it; to have what I imagine would be some lovely, slow, gentle sex. Never mind the fact that, in true TV fashion, the two of them later wake up fully clothed! Still, they’re alive, they’re a really sweet couple, and the ship has landed, after all. Oh, and there are unobtainium crystals everywhere. Shame the planet so obviously looks like a papier-mâché set.

Meanwhile, Avon and co all teleport down, although not before they give Tarrant a hard time. It’s noticeable that Avon is the one in charge as they all rather efficiently work their way towards Bayban. It’s nice that Dayna at last gets to re-use at least one of the character traits established in her first appearance, making use of an exploding remote controlled car that she’s invested. More of this, please: in every episode since Aftermath she’s seemed like just another generic female character. There’s a big fight, and Bayban is sent packing.

Kerrill and Vila are so cute together, but it can’t last; we know that Vila’s a main character in this serial, and that reset button is going to be pressed. It’s done very well, though, with lots of sadness. Especially as Kerrill tells Vila that she loves him. Besotted though he is, he isn’t quite able to say the same; perhaps in the long run they wouldn’t have been so good together. Still, it’s a great episode for Vila; not many end with him being told that he’s “a clever man, and brave”. A wonderful episode.

Blake's 7: Star One

“Avon, for what it’s worth, I have always trusted you, from the very beginning.”

The final episode is written by Chris Boucher, which is fitting; a symbolic changing of the guard at script level which mirrors the changing of the guard aboard the Liberator in this bold, amazing and pivotal episode. Whoever said that season finales weren’t supposed to have been invented in 1979?

The first tension-filled scene, with a ship being rammed by a mysterious small vessel, looks amazing. It’s uncannily similar visually to the opening scene from Star Wars, and that’s deliberate: this is 1979. And it’s the perfect indication of the epic nature of what we’re about to see unfold over the next fifty minutes.

We get the backstory from Servalan thereafter. (And this is where I first notice the prominent Federation symbol; interesting how closely it resembles the symbol for the Federation in Star Trek, but from an entirely different perspective on what such a Federation would be like!) The attack is just one of many catastrophic events happening throughout the Federation’s outer worlds, most of which seem to involve weather control malfunctions. Ah, weather control! Such a very old-fashioned sci-fi trope, isn’t it? It belongs to a past era which believed in progress more than we do, an era of Concorde and Butskellism where the state spending money was seen as a Good Thing, chaos theory (which nixes weather control) had yet to enter popular culture and people believed that it would one day be possible for mankind to explore space. Happy days, or at least I’m told. Alas, I was born in 1977.

Er, anyway, Servalan’s underling tells her that all this can only mean problems at Star One, something which Servalan refuses to believe. She has to; not only does she not know where it is, no one knows where it is. Even the scientists living there are marooned forever, and both selected and conditioned to be the types of people who would never attempt to communicate with outside.

Er, is this wise? If Star One is so important, and disorder in the universe is always increasing (the good old Second Law of Thermodynamics, says that clever Professor Brian Cox), then surely there will be problems in store when the scientists are all dead and Star One inevitably starts to go wrong?

Blake and co know where it is, though. The co-ordinates take them to a spot a little outside the galaxy, into the dark, intergalactic board. They’re off the edge of the map. Here be monsters, inevitably.

And this where we get an incredible, pivotal scene. We’ve seen lots of arguments between Blake and Avon, but this time it’s final. Things are said which cannot be unsaid. “Show me something who believes in anything, and I’ll show you a fool”, says Avon. He doesn’t mean it, of course. By now we know that he doesn’t like tyranny any more than Blake does. It’s just that he’s horrified by Blake’s recklessness and is deliberately saying the most hurtful things he can. Beneath the exterior, Avon is a very moral man who is loyal to his friends and cares a lot. That’s why he loathes Blake’s casual attitude to other peoples’ lives.

He basically Admits, too, that all that stuff at the end of last episode about using Star One to rule the galaxy is just him lashing out at Blake and again trying to be hurtful. This would be quite as morally objectionable to Avon as it would be to Blake. No; Avon has an ultimatum for Blake: they destroy Star One, and then they’re finished. It’s over. Blake gets dropped off on Earth and the Liberator is Avon’s. He even calls Blake a fanatic to his face.

But Blake lacks the confidence to really argue back; this is the episode where he comes the closest to what he wants, and yet he’s racked with doubt, as are others; even the normally loyal Cally points out that with out Star One, many people would die. Is all this really worth it? There are some powerful ethical issues at work. Yet, the end of the scene, whatever the supposed caveats, Avon gets exactly what he wants. He, not Blake, is the Alpha Male now.

Meanwhile, Servalan speaks of chaos spreading across the Federation leadership. She has decreed the President and the Council to be incapable of dealing with the crisis. She has launched a coup and had them arrested, no doubt to be “disappeared”. The scene ends with her senior underling addressing her as “Madame President”.

Avon and his crew discover Star One to be a tiny, barely habitable world orbiting an isolated white dwarf. Avon notes that this is the nearest point to the Andromeda Galaxy. Implying that, with human technology, it would take thousands of years to travel there, he has nevertheless spotted that there are thousands of satellite generators lying beyond it; a “minefield” place there by the Federation! Does this imply a known threat from the direction of Andromeda, a threat which would most likely arrive through this exact point? Orac confirms that these minefields extend around all those parts of the Galaxy’s edge which are occupied by humans, and this implies that the Federation (and humanity) does not occupy all of the Milky Way or even necessarily very much of it.

Oh, and I’m not sure about the concepts of minefields, what with space being three-dimensional and all, but never mind. I think a bit of handwavium is justified, because this is great.

Avon, Blake and Cally teleport down, and are separated. Blake and Cally do the “take me to your leader” thing while Avon walks around being cynical. But another ship is landing, one identical to the small vessel form the opening scene. Blake, meanwhile is expected, but it soon becomes apparent that he’s been mistaken for Travis.

Events start hurtling forward apace; Blake sets his bombs, but other things are afoot. All of the scientists but one are impostors, alien beings from Andromeda sent as an advance party to destroy the minefields. Gazillions of alien ships are heading towards Star One, from Andromeda, to launch an invasion. Oh, and Travis is here, in league with the aliens in a betrayal of his own species- and it’s implied that the aliens intend on committing genocide, or something pretty damn close.

Blake is a lost figure by this point, forced to abandon all hope of fighting against the Federation because of the need for humanity to unite against this greater enemy. Even his being shot and seriously injured by Travis, which should be dramatic in itself, is almost merely a symbol of his more general impotence from this point on.

Servalan has a big decision to make, too; given the new threat, she contacts Servalan and asks for Federation military back-up. Suddenly, all previous quarrels have become a luxury which no-one can afford.

One quarrel is ended for good, though. It’s fitting, given the constant tension between Blake and Avon about whether to kill Travis, that Avon should shoot him dead so casually and irrevocably. It’s yet another moment which signifies which of the two of them is now on top.

Servalan sends a fleet, but it will take an hour to arrive; the Liberator, facing hopeless odds, is the only thing which can possibly fight them. Blake briefly tries to return, but he’s yesterday’s man; Avon insists that he buggers off back to Star One. Accepting his new lack of status, he agrees and duly sods off. It’s Avon, showing his true heroic colours, who leads the crew of the Liberator in what must surely be a hopeless last stand against the invading hordes…

What an episode!

Blake's 7: Weapon

“And the other mistake I made was not getting an advance on my fee…”

So, after fourteen straight scripts by Terry Nation we get at least two in a row from Chris Boucher. Can he possibly beat the record of his illustrious predecessor? We shall have to wait and see.

After some stock rocket footage, we see two fugitives scrabbling about in a quarry. One of them, Coser, is dressed rather oddly and played by John Bennett, and the other, Rashel is a slave, freed by him after his escape. She starts out very much in this role, but it’s nice how she becomes gradually more assertive as the story continues.

We then get a rather dreamlike sequence in which Travis apparently kills Blake. Except… it’s not Travis. Yes, I know that the character is subtly different, rather emasculated, and scripted far more for comic effect than we’ve seen before, but Brian Croucher is rubbish, isn’t he? It’ll be interesting to see whether my opinion shifts over time, but right now he seems rather one-dimensional, shouty and camp, far from the genuine menace exuded by Stephen Grief.

That was just a clone, of course; the real Blake is aboard the Liberator where he’s arguing, as he often does these days, over a particularly suicidal plan of his, or rather Cally’s (she has fanatical tendencies too, of course), to attack the Federation’s Weapons Developmental Base, an absurdly high profile target.

The relationship between Servalan and Travis is evolving in interesting ways, beyond being much shoutier; it’s clear that Travis has lost all of his menace and is basically her gimp. I suspect she keeps him around at least partly because she enjoys her power over him. This script certainly brings out the best in Jacqueline Pearce, who is fantastic here. We get some exposition, too; the “clonemasters” apparently have a monopoly on cloning, and the whole subject of cloning is generally treated as something exotic, which is not quite so much the case in these post-Dolly the Sheep days.

Orac informs Blake that his plan just isn’t a goer, as security around the Weapons Development Base is currently sky high; a bloke called Coser has escaped, with a brilliant new weapon he’s invented, called “IMIPAK”. It’s all exposition at the moment, aboard the Liberator as well as on the Clonemasters’ planet. We even learn that Blake is 34, just like me.

It’s not long before the plot gets going, though, as we see Coser and Rashel take refuge in a building. Interestingly, for the second Chris Boucher script in a row we have a heavy emphasis on social class, with Rashel being a slave and Coser being the sort of “B grade” technician who isn’t supposed to be clever enough to invent something like IMIPAK. It seems the Federation operates quite a rigid caste system.

We’re introduced to Carnell, played by the excellent Scott Fredericks, a psychostrategist or “puppeteer”, a kind of uber-smug version of Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov’s splendid Foundation novels. He’s also, of course, one of the main characters in Magic Bullet’s excellent Kaldor City audios. And yes, I know I keep going on about them! He’s great here; flirting outrageously with Servalan and showing what a massive genius he is by casually thrashing the best chess computers of his time. He really must be a genius, considering Garry Kasparov’s –performances against a computer which would presumably be far less advanced. But he lets slip that he may have made a mistake- he assumes Coser is alone. And when he later charms an underling to let him see a report, he remarks that this has “saved his life”.

We switch to an industrial location, so often seen in Blake’s 7, for the denouement. The clone tricks Coser into handing over IMIPAK to Servalan, and it seems that it consists of a gun, with which you can shoot someone to “mark” them, and then press a button to blow them up. Coser makes it sound all good and everything, what with the power one would hold over someone who’s been marked, but why not cut the crap and just shoot them? We get a rather ridiculous scene in which Blake, Avon and Gan, having teleported down, all stand still long enough to be “marked” by Travis. Why doesn’t he just shoot them?

Servalan gives them all a chance to run, for plausible and rather clever reasons; after she blows them up it will be assumed that they have IMIPAK, whereas in fact Servalan does. I love the way she has her own agenda, rather than just acting on behalf of the Federation. She’s a deliciously ambitious woman.

Fittingly, it’s Rashel who saves the day, in a pleasingly assertive manner, and ends up alone on a planet of her own with a clone of Blake as her own sexual plaything. Fittingly, this episode sees her evolve from the lowest origins possible to being the most important person in this episode. And Carnell gets away before Servalan can kill him, but not before recording a message to Servalan telling her that she’s “undoubtedly the sexiest officer I have ever known”. She can’t resist a smile.

Not quite up to last week’s standards, but this is another good ‘un.

Blake's 7: Shadow

"Where are all the good guys?"

"Could be looking at them."

"What a depressing thought..."

What’s this? Written by Chris Boucher? You mean there are writers in this world who aren’t Terry Nation? Blimey. Actually, this episode feels so extraordinary different from everything that’s gone before simply because of the change of writer. It helps that Chris Boucher is so damn good, too. This is one of the best episodes yet.

So, another space station, and a bloke called Largo. This is close enough to “Iago” to immediately tell us what sort of character he is; duplicitous and not very nice. He’s a sort of cross between said Shakespearean baddie, Mother Superior off of Trainspotting and Tony Soprano, being a middle-ranking flunky in the “Terra Nostra”. Of course, any similarity to any legitimate business organisations of Italian extraction is entirely coincidental.

Largo is having some fun humiliating two of his customers before he hands over some “Shadow”, a highly addictive gobstopper-like substance. I’m fairly sure you could get it in my village’s local sweet shop when I were a nipper. But one of these two siblings pulls a gun on him, the pair of them nick loads of stuff, and off they go.

Meanwhile, aboard the Liberator, everyone is speaking lines not written by Terry Nation, and it’s an odd yet refreshing experience. All the lines sound right (Boucher has been script editor all this time, after all), but the characters now have a bit more room to breathe. They’re orbiting “Space City, a “Satellite of Sin” controlled by the Terra Nostra, whose help Blake wants to enlist in his quest against the Federation- a sign, if there hadn’t been enough already, of how his monomaniacal obsession has skewed his moral compass. He dismisses the considerable ethical problems with a curt “Earth is all I’m interested in”; this time last season his political opposition to the Federation was far less narrowly defined than this.

Interesting that Gan should be the main one to object. Firstly because he’s always been the most loyal to Blake; he’s never before questioned his decisions and has strongly defended him to Avon. And yet here he’s on Avon’s side, an interesting development in the heightening power struggle between them. And secondly it seems to indicate a definite change in Gan’s character from the hints of extreme sexual dodginess we seemed to be getting last season. Has all this been dropped? Suddenly Gan seems to be going all moral.

Meanwhile, the desperate siblings have lost their other brother to an overdose, and found themselves captured by Largo’s underling. Our, ahem, “heroes”, meanwhile, are off to see Largo themselves, to cut a deal. Apart from Cally, that is, and Vila. Some interesting dialogue here: Blake is a privileged “Alpha Grade”, while Vila is a “Delta Service Grade” peasant.

Vila isn’t on the Liberator for long; he soon enlists the help of Orac to get himself inside the City. Meanwhile, Blake, Jenna Gan and Avon are being rather less successful with their own negotiations, which end with them all being marched into a cell at gunpoint.

Things look a bit grim, but we get a bit of light relief here; the conversation between Cally and Vila only drop vague hints as to what Vila is doing, but there’s almost certainly at least one lady present. Unfortunately, Blake and co aren’t having anywhere near as nice a time.

There’s a nice moment for Cally here as she quickly susses out from Blake’s subtle hints that his suggestion to bring loads of money over is under duress, and proceeds to go all badass and arse-whuppy. I rather like this badass Cally. It’s almost a shame that her moment of triumph is rather rudely pre-empted by Blake and co just escaping by themselves without so much as a by-your-leave. Some people just have no manners.

Blake still plans to go after the Terra Nostra, though; this time he plans to well and truly shove a stick into said hornet’s nest and again, Gan objects most strongly. It’s interesting watching Avon here; it’s strongly implied that he’s already worked out what’s going to be revealed at the end, but is deliberately allowing Blake to try and fail. He plans to go to Zondar, where Shadow is in some way grown, in spite of the plant being extinct.

Meanwhile, Cally finds Orac and ends up in a strange yet cheap-looking dream world, uncannily similar to that seen in the excellent Doctor Who story, Kinda. And it turns out that the Terra Nostra are able to trace the Liberator through the Shadow in the possession of one of their guests. This is no good to Largo, though; he’s just been assassinated and smoothly replaced by his subordinate. That sort of thing is so very Chris Boucher, and reminds me of the wonderfully backstabbing world of Magic Bullet’s splendid Kaldor City audio dramas, based on Boucher’s concepts from Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who.

Blake, Jenna and Avon teleport down to Zondar, where they find some “moon discs” from which Zondar is derived. And suddenly (and, as it turns out, conveniently), Cally wakes up, panics, runs, teleports to the surface and collapses next to a load of moon discs, nicely in position for the climax.

Anyway, Orac has gone bad, is trying to crash the Liberator, and kills Druggy Girl, although that last bit is ok; she’s no longer useful to the plot. It seems that Orac has been possessed by an extra-dimensional entity for some reason, but that Cally, with help from the sentient moon discs, is able to overpower it, which is nice.

The big reveal is rather clever, although Avon probably guessed some time ago; the Terra Nostra is run by the Federation, who thus control both sides of the law…

Doctor Who: Image of the Fendahl

Part One

“You must have been sent by Providence.”

“No, I were sent by the council to cut the verges.”

After the car crash that was The Invisible Enemy it’s a huge relief to see Chris Boucher’s name popping up, and once again he doesn’t disappoint. We start with a mysterious skull, but in spite of the obvious parallels with Quatermass and the Pit there’s a lot more going ion here than just a rehash. And fittingly for a Chris Boucher story Scott Fredericks appears, again reminding me of the excellent Kaldor City audios. K9 only gets fleeting appearances at the start and end of the story, but he’s have jarred with the story’s tone in any case.

It’s immediately noticeable how much better written the Doctor and Leela are compared to the previous story, which should come as no surprise from Leela’s creator. And the story, atmosphere and guest characters are all brilliant from the start. It’s a clever touch that Thea and Adam, the sympathetic characters amongst Fendelman’s group, are implicated by being persuaded not to tell the police about the corpse found by Adam. And I just love the Doctor’s “Good morning, ladies!” to a herd of cows. We also get a self-referential moment that’s much wittier than usual: “You’ve both escaped from somewhere, haven’t you?” “Frequently.”

Part Two

“Alas, poor skull.”

We get to see a glimpse of the Fendahleen here, and we’re given the beginnings of a backstory- it seems the fifth planet of the solar system broke up about twelve million years ago, the same age as the skull. And Thea is mysteriously claiming to have planned the whole thing. This is all excellent stuff, with a mystery developing nicely and a threat which may be a little nebulous but somehow feels defined in the way it didn’t in Horror of Fang Rock.

It’s noticeable the Doctor isn’t around much in this episode, mind.

Part Three

“Dr Fendelman, I think you have an industrial relations problem.”

Leela saves the Doctor’s life, and we get a moment that could be sexual tension between them if not for the fact that there hasn’t been any other sign of any such thing. We get another excellent episode, with even the use of sci-fi concepts to explain second sight being just about passable. Stael’s agenda becomes clear, and Scott Fredericks really is excellent here. Arguably the Quatermass and the Pit connection starts to get a bit much here, what with Mrs Tyler’s “race memory” and all, but it’s all so good I don’t really mind.

We get drip fed some more backstory; apparently the fifth planet was erased from existence, War Lord-like, by the Time Lords. And the situation is nicely summed up by Fendelman just before Stael shoots him: “I have been used! You are being used! MANKIND HAS BEEN USED!”

Part Four

“…Or, on the other hand, it could all be just a coincidence.”

A simply staggering conclusion to a simply magnificent story, with elements from folklore turning out to be essential to the plot- the use of salt here is clever, and in many ways shows how this story in some ways parallels The Dæmons, only done much better.

Oh, and the Doctor fires a gun. Again. He’s always doing that!

I love the Doctor’s explanation to Adam, which at the same time explains what’s going on but remains just ambiguous enough for the Fendahl to retain its mystery. Apparently it destroyed Mars on the way, but it’s not as though Doctor Who has ever featured any Martians!

Utterly superb. An easy 5/5, and a new entry to my top five. After a wobbly start the Graham Williams era suddenly pulls an all time great story out of the bag.

Doctor Who: The Robots of Death

Part One

“Shoomph!”

Just to go blatantly OT from the very start, this viewing is particularly fascinating to me as it’s the first time I’ve seen the story since hearing the unbelievably magnificent Kaldor City audios, set in the same society and with Uvanov such a promising figure. But back to the story…

Everything looks fantastic, with the set design, costumes and robot designs possibly giving this story the best aesthetic ever seen in Doctor Who. There’s a real sense that in this society, with robots to do all the drudgery, people tend to behave in ways that evoke the aristocracy of pre-revolutionary France. Everyone wears male-up and fancy clothes designed entirely for display and with practicalities not an issue, revealing a lot about their lifestyle. There’s also some impressive world-building with the dialogue- the company, the founding families and the like.

Leela also gets a nice introduction to the dimensions of the TARDIS. Sadly, I think I’m right in saying that’s the last time we’ll be seeing this version of the control room, after it’s appeared in only three stories.

Part Two

“We’ve all got something to hide. Don’t you think so, Commander?”

The whodunit plot gathers steam, and a very good whodunit plot it is too, with plenty of genuine suspects. In fact, it makes me wish I hadn’t seen this story so many times so I could enjoy it again. The characters are well drawn too- perhaps I’m back-projecting from the Kaldor City audios, but I love Uvanov’s dialogue- “You have cost me and the company a great deal of money and you have killed three people.” Nice to see what his priorities are!

There’s some nice direction, too- I’m particularly noticing all these shots of the robots’ feet.

Part Three

“I heard a cry.”

More plot unfolds, with details of Uvanov’s history, our first mention of Taren Capel and the revelation of the fantastic D84 as a company agent. I love his turn of phrase, especially when offering the Doctor a communicator- “Would you like to use it? I cannot speak.”

Leela gets a great line, too, as her knife gets stuck in an advancing robot; “Now you’re showing off!” Only her second story, and she’s magnificent, taking all these new experiences in her stride while still being true to her origins. It’s a huge bonus to have her second story written by Chris Boucher as well as her first.

Part Four

“Please do not throw hands at me.”

Robophobia, caused by the disturbing lack of body language in the otherwise humanoid robots, is a fantastic sci-fi concept, which goes to show that, for all the obvious Agatha Christie trappings of this story, Chris Boucher has shown himself in both his stories so far to be heavily grounded in literary science fiction- here there are obvious echoes of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, and there’s even a character called Poul. 

As silly as Taren Capel may seem all made up to look like a robot, and however much we may snigger at the line “I’ll release more of our brothers from bondage- we’ll be irresistible!”, ultimately he’s a tragic and deluded figure. The feelings of brotherhood are all one way- in reality, to the robots he’s just another “master”. The story’s conclusion is clever, but also the cruellest possible fate for Taren Capel.

One of the greatest stories ever, entering my top ten at number four. 5/5.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil

Part One

“Now drop your weapons or I’ll kill him with this deadly jelly baby.”

My BBC video starts with an edition of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop from 1977 with Noel Edmonds interviewing Louise Jameson. I don’t remember ordering Noel Edmonds from the cosmos, so fast forward to the story…

We start with Leela’s trial for blaspheming against Xoanon. Not our Xoanon, another one. Anyway, she’s to be exiled outside the barriers which protect this Neolithic-ish tribe, the Sevateem, from the nasty things outside for the crime of suggesting that a seemingly suicidal attack on their enemies the Tesh, ordered by their god Xoanon, is not such a great idea. She is offered the alternative of facing the Horda, whatever they are, but declines it, and it’s clear from her reaction that this is a fearful experience leading to almost certain death. Horribly, her father agrees to take it for her, and is duly killed. This is very dark, illustrating both the horrors of a society which punishes “blasphemers” and the horrible moral complications of resistance to such a society.

The TARDIS lands in an area where we’ve just seen a creature crawling along- a Horda, presumably, going by what we see later. That’s a nice touch. Unfortunately the Doctor, being alone, talks to himself, and indeed the camera, which is very awkward. He needs a new companion to talk to, and sharpish. And right on cue, here’s Leela.

Interestingly, Leela’s fellow Sevateems Calib and Tomas are also sceptical about the upcoming attack, if more cautious about voicing it. This scene does a lot of useful expositing, letting us know all about the planned attack on the Tesh, whereas a later recital by Neeva (my avatarsake!) gives us the mythological version, complete with clues. This is nicely counterpointed by Leela’s reactions to “The Evil One”. There’s also some good character stuff as Leela realises she can trust the Doctor.

The concept behind this story- an apparently stone age tribe on an alien planet using items of spacefaring technology as religious relics, is a brilliant one, and it’s introduced early. There are lots of fun little touches on this theme throughout this episode, such as the motions for checking a spacesuit having changed into a ritual for warding off evil. And of course there’s the panel saying “Survey team 6”- nice!

The Doctor and Leela make a great pairing, and whatever may have happened offscreen, they have great chemistry onscreen. But it’s notable that the Doctor suddenly becomes very stern as soon as Leela starts killing people with Janis thorns.

Part Two

“I like the hat. Very fetching.”

The concepts of the first episode get more development here, with the overall message of the story probably coming through most clearly as the doctor comments that Neeva was seemingly expecting an answer to his prayers. “There wouldn’t be much point in praying if he didn’t.” Only through the medium of the fantastic can such a blatantly atheist subtext excite seemingly no contemporary comment!

Calib gets to be cunning, and the Doctor gets to be very clever indeed, curing Leela from the Janis thorn, and successfully facing the trial of the Horda- I love the moment where he chucks a Horda at the bloke who slaps Leela!

The episode ends with some invisible creatures (well, it’s cheap!) which sound like the Skarasen and look like the Doctor when visible. And what’s that great big carving of the Doctor’s face…?

Part Three

“I don’t believe in ghosts either.”

Now we get to see the Tesh, and how their situation parallels that of the Sevateem. There isn’t the time to develop them as much as the Sevateem- no bad thing as they’re such arrogant arses- but it’s ironic how they think the Sevateem can open the barrier and Xoanon is playing both tribes against each other.

One thing that strikes me- as Xoanon has lifted the barriers and all of his nasties are now able to terrorise the Sevateem, presumably the whole tribe is heading down the Doctor’s throat. And Calib speaks of getting “the men” inside the barrier. Is Leela the only woman then?

Part Four

“We start getting proof and we stop believing.”

“With proof, we don’t have to believe.”

We get our first instance of Leela not suffering cowards gladly as she says to a cowering Tesh “Lying there isn’t going to help, then.” We’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing.

The plot, excellent throughout, is nicely tied up. It’s good to see Neeva being the sacrificial hero in the end, ironically being the only one able to resist Xoanon’s brainwashing. Leela is elected leader, and then immediately scarpers… yes, she’s companion material, all right! Into the TARDIS she goes…

Magnificent, a criminally underrated story. 5/5.