Blake's 7: Traitor

“Maybe we should start running now…”

Hooray for Robert Holmes! Nuanced characterisation, themes, complex narratives- how I’ve missed these things!

There are a bewildering amount of Federation officers to keep track of, mind. Just to get things straight in my heads; the chap with the eyepatch is Quute; above him is a general whom we may as well call “The General; there’s the mysterious Leitz; and the sadistic Sleer, unseen until the end. Right…

We begin with Quute sending a curiously tame captured rebel back to his mates, who are apparently led by a Star Major Hunda. The man has had a tracer placed on him so the rebel base can be blown up, but fortunately (for Hunda and co), he is blown up before reaching them. In a typical Holmesian touch, Quute and his underling blow him up while playing chess, which is not only very, very cool but pre-empts the episode’s themes.

Meanwhile, on board the Scorpio, Orac announces that yet another world has been re-integrated into the Federation’s interstellar computer network: Helotrix, home to the Helots (nice classical reference there). This clearly shocks Avon and co; the Federation is expanding with shocking speed. This scene seems to be pivotal; too late, our heroes discover how they have horribly underestimated the Federation, and that their failure to capitalise on its recent weakness may well come back to bite them. Avon insists they go to Helotrix to find the secret behind the Federation’s success.

We then have a fascinating little meal between Quute and his commanding officer. It seems to be quite a luxurious meal, complete with (real?) white wine. And the conversation- death from afar vs. close fighting with cold steel- starts a theme which is developed throughout the episode. Some exposition is cleverly mixed up here; the Helots, like other recently conquered people, have been “adapted” courtesy of a drug which renders them docile. There’s a debate about whether or not this makes them good soldiers which, again, foreshadows later events.

Back aboard the Scorpio, Dayna’s ethnicity gets mentioned for the second episode in a row, and it’s explained that Helotrix is one of the earliest settled planets, and one of the first to declare independence from the Federation. Interestingly, Soolin implies she disputes the contention that humans all originate from Earth, which seems to imply that at least some degree of historical knowledge has been lost. Then again, I suppose it’s no worse than the barmy conspiracy theories that infest the Internet today.

This comment is the only spark of personality that Soolin displays, incidentally. Three episodes in she seems to have no personality and no hinterland whatsoever. I still have no idea who she is.

A comment from Vila confirms that he Scorpio is a much, much more rubbish ship than the Liberator was, and that they have no chance whatsoever of outrunning Federation pursuit ships. Orac may be designing faster engines (or delegating the task of doing so!), but we get the sense that the days of our heroes occupying a state-of-the-art ship are long gone.

It’s Dayna and Tarrant who teleport down to discover the Federation’s apparent new secret weapon. On the surface, the new governor arrives, and we get some exposition. It seems that Servalan (who seems to have changed her title to “supreme empress”!) is no longer in charge, and presumed dead, after a coup took place against her. Still, her body is missing, and that tells us everything, including that she escaped from the Liberator.

This planet has a unique and impressive quality; foggy, marshy and oppressive, it doesn’t look at all like the South East of England. It looks as though it may well have been filmed in some truly exotic climes, such as East Anglia, perhaps. Dayna and Tarrant, hiding in the fog, have the good fortune to bump into Hunda, there on a mission of his own, who’s exactly the chap they need. He tells them what they need to know about the Federation’s mind-altering drug.

Meanwhile, the new governor is murdered by persons unknown, and Leitz turns out to be a secret rebel agent, telling Hunda of away to get into the Federation HQ through the “old monorail” (how prescient of Holmes to guess that they would become passé!), while Dayna and Tarrant are told where the drug is manufactured, which is conveniently nearby.

All is not as it seems, however; Leitz is a double agent who has lured them all into a trap. The scene in which he reveals this is a typically assured piece of writing by Holmes, as he uses the fact that he was leaking secrets to the Federation’s enemies as his alibi for the governor’s murder!

Dayna and Tarrant meet Forbus, a bloke in a wheelchair who has been forced to manufacture the MacGuffin Drug (Did he mention homeopathy as though it were a plausibly scientific process? Grr!) under duress, by Leitz and the equally sadistic Sleer. Fortunately, he has an antidote! This immediately alerts our heroes that they’re walking into a trap set by Leitz, and they set off to warn their fellow rebels.

The Scorpio is spotted, but Avon prefers to hide behind the clouds rather than bugger off. There was a time when he wouldn’t have done that; he seems a lot more impulsive these days and, dare I say it, shows some indications of a death wish. Is this the result of the devastating revelations surrounding Anna Grant? It’ll be interesting to see if this theory continues to hold water.

Dayna and Tarrant manage to warn Hunda and suggest changes to the plan of attack, which goes ahead successfully. In the mêlée, however, they spot none other than Servalan! It turns out that the previously unseen Sleer is in fact Servalan under an assumed name. Leitz is her accomplice and, it seems, her lover, but at the slightest hint of blackmail she naturally bumps him off.

Tarrant and Dayna return to the Scorpio and reveal to Avon that Servalan is alive. He’s not best pleased…

Doctor Who: Shada

Part One

“One lump or two?”

“Two please.”

“Sugar?”

For the first time since Underworld, this is a story I haven’t seen (well, I’ve read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but…), leaving only Meglos left. And yet frankly I still don’t feel as though I’ve seen it, as there’s so little left, especially towards the end.

Still, this first episode is largely intact. After my comments on The Horns of Nimon I almost burst out laughing to see yet another story start with a spaceship in deep space. It’s an odd beginning, although the roman numerals on the screen are a nice touch. An then we’re off to Cambridge, where we meet Professor Chronotis, who unaccountably has the TARDIS is his study. I love the way this is left unremarked upon for ages, and then Chronotis just casually remarks that “I think someone must have left it there when I was out.”! We also meet Chris Parsons, clearly a prototype of Richard from Dirk Gently.

We then get the familiar scenes of Romana and the Doctor on the Cam, which seem odd in their original context, but soon they turn up at Chronotis’s college. In a nice touch, the Warden knows the Doctor from many previous visits. The scene with Chronotis in his study is hilarious, as is the notion that a Time Lord can quite easily spends three centuries as a Cambridge don without anybody noticing. We also get the funniest line in all of Doctor Who so far, as Chronotis responds to the Doctor’s mention of hearing a “strange babble of inhuman voices” with “Oh, undergraduates talking to each other, I expect. I’m trying to have it banned.”

The first episode judged on its own is an easy 5/5, in much the same way as City of Death. Sadly, it’s the only episode that’s anywhere near complete.

Part Two

“Two lumps, no sugar.” 

This episode introduces us to a load of brilliant sci-fi concepts of the kind we’d expect from the author of The Pirate Planet. A book that’s -20,000 years old, a sphere that steals minds, Chronotis beating his hearts in Morse code. And the dialogue continues to be great. Sadly, there’s a lot less footage here than there was last episode.

Parts Three to Six

And that’s as far as I can go with the individual episodes, as there’s so little that was filmed for the later episodes. I’m watching the video release with Tom Baker narrating the missing bits, and this works well, but I just don’t end up feeling as though I’ve come anywhere close to seeing Shada. I liked what I saw- lots of great dialogue and great concepts- but I just don’t feel competent to judge things like plot and pacing. I’ll give the story a 4/5 for Alinor, but that’s very provisional as I just don’t feel competent to judge. I’m feeling very much inclined to listen to the Paul McGann audio of this story after the TV Movie…

As for Season 17, I’ve already rated it 3/8/5 if Shada’s not included. With Shada it leaps slightly to 3.83/5. But, much as I’ve never been much bothered about what’s “canon” or not, as there’s so little of Shada left I’m not much inclined to think of it as a full Doctor Who story. A shame, as judging by what we’ve got it could have been great.