Blake's 7: Horizon

“Oh Hell. I’m tired of running, Jenna.”

Blimey. For the first time, we get a writer who has neither written nor script edited an episode of Blake’s 7, nor do I know of him from Doctor Who. Allan Prior: who he? He’s rather good, whoever he is.

It seems Cally is now an expert in medical matters. Either that, or the fact that she’s a woman apparently means she’s good at nurturing and stuff. But the message is clear; the entire crew is knackered, dangerously knackered for a bunch of people who live in such constant danger. So what does Blake do? Yep; go chasing a nearby Federation freighter because he’s “curious”. This is one of many recent examples of a subtle but growing trend; instances of Blake showing that he is in fact a dangerous, reckless fanatic who is a danger to his crew, who would be better off with Avon who, in spite of his outward cynicism, is a sensible chap, has their best interests at heart and is not so apolitical as he pretends.

The freighter is going to Horizon, an isolated world on the very edge of this spiral arm. Blake follows, pushing his crew hard; Jenna makes it very clear that she’s tired. They make it through a magnetic barrier- another example of how Blake’s recklessness could have got them all killed- and eventually Blake and Jenna teleport down, but not before Avon overhears Blake admitting to her that he’s taking her, as the best pilot, as insurance to stop Avon running off without him.

Being knackered, they are both promptly spotted and hit by darts from a blowpipe, meaning that Gan and Vila have to go after them.

Blake and Jenna are interrogated by the Federation’s Commissar, a nasty little totalitarian who sees resistance as a “malfunction of the genes”, suffered by “one in 100,000” which is usually “detected in infancy”. Suddenly we’re back to the overtones of Brezhnev-style medicalisation of dissent as seen back in The Way Back, and we’re reminded just how awful the Federation is.

Alongside the Commissar is a young, hesitant man called Ro, nominally in charge of this planet. He’s played by Darien Angadi, who had a rather memorable part in I, Clavdivs. There’s a tension between him and the Federation, but as a young and weak ruler, he allows himself to resist, collaborating with what he tries to pretend are not his colonial overlords. As with the European colonies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Federation are interested in Horizon for its mineral resources, in this case Monopasium 239, a rare element(?) which can send ships “into new galaxies” (Is this new? Is humanity just about on the verge of leaving the Milky Way for the first time?). This is done by slave labour, and generally by the most repressive practices possible. 1979 is surprisingly late for a colonial allegory like this one, but Ro reminds me of one of those Indian princes who went to public school and Oxbridge.

Blake has an interesting conversation with Ro, in which he sows all sorts of doubts into his mind; it seems he saw a friend of Ro’s die on the way to Cygnus Alpha. This isn’t allowed to go on for long, though; soon they’re both dispatched to the mines, where there’s an interesting scene where Blake organises the rationing of food fairly. There they meet Selma, Ro’s consort, who has been dispatched to the mind for vaguely “seditious” remarks. This is pretty appalling, in fact so much so that it’s a bit of a misstep on part of the script. For Ro to treat the woman he supposedly loves like this makes it hard for us to sympathise with him at all.

With four of the crew missing, Cally goes down to find them, and promptly disappears. Now there’s just Avon. Will he flee, safe aboard the Liberator, or will he rescue his friends? There’s a degree of tension, but regular viewers know by now that he’s far more loyal and reliable than he superficially seems.

Meanwhile, Cally reveals to Ro that the Federation had his father killed, and he discovers the Federation had been considering having him killed. Worst of all, he has to watch while Selma is tortured. The climax is fitting, as Avon’s highly efficient rescue mission coincides with Ro, in traditional dress, killing the Commissar with his blowpipe.

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…

Blake's 7: Redemption

“It felt personal. It always feels personal when someone tries to kill me.”

A new series, then. There’s not much difference to start with, what with the same theme titles and the prospect of a fourteenth episode in a row written by Terry Nation. But then we see Blake, Cally and Jenna- is it me, or do all of them have much bushier hair? And why is Blake dressed like a seventeenth century farm labourer?

Vila and Avon may not have noticeably bushier hair, but they are on film for some reason. But enough of fashion matters; we have some footage of the end of the last season to replay, although fortunately the recap is less clumsy than this time, and doesn’t feel the need to hold the viewer’s hand quite so firmly as we’re once again confronted with the horrifying concept of having to remember a couple of the main points from previous episodes.

Avon strings Blake for a bit before deigning to reveal his rather clever thoughts; he’s identified the starfield in the footage of the Liberator blowing up, and it’s the other side of the galaxy. All they need to do is avoid ever going there and they’ll be fine. This piece of cleverness is, of course, a blow for him in the ongoing contest between Blake and Avon for the role of alpha male. This seems to be ratcheted up a lot in this episode, as signalled early on by Avon: “Perhaps, in future, they won’t rely on you to provide all the answers.”

Suddenly the ship is attacked by two mysterious hostile vessels of unknown origin. The Liberator is pretty much helpless, and yet they recover from an almighty arse-whupping to discover they’re all alive and well, but without weapons, without Zen and heading somewhere at huge speed. Avon (he’s on fire today) suspects that they were deliberately weakened rather than killed, and the ship is being taken somewhere very specific.

We cut to a couple of rather cold young ladies inside a swanky space station. The décor inside the space station stands on the cusp of a new era; it shows some of the ineffable hallmarks of the 1980s BBC sci-fi set, as opposed to the 1970s BBC sci-fi set we’ve been used to. Dullness is beginning to be replaced with Light Entertainment spangliness. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend develops. Or not.

On board the Liberator it’s becoming clear that the ship is under the control of some outside force, while Blake and Avon continue their rather un-macho power struggle. Even Avon’s bravely saving Blake’s life (interesting that he never acts as cynically as he talks) is quickly used by Avon to verbally bitch-slap Blake.

Meanwhile, the earlier scenes of Cally doing some engineering work, with screwdrivers and everything, is rather undermined by the sight of Jenna handing out the tea. These late ‘70s gender roles, eh? It’s women’s lib gone mad.

Finally, some mysterious unseen baddies teleport aboard and capture the whole crew, one by one. We finally learn that these people are, as we’ve suspected, the people who built the Liberator. And, just when he’s needed, Orac is busy…

The aliens are rather unpleasant, rude and not afraid to dish out a little light torture at the slightest provocation. They’re escorted off the ship to some cells to await their imminent execution, while Blake is interrogated by “the System”, the all-powerful supercomputer that rules the three inhabited planets in this system. Avon, meanwhile, immediately begins to plan escape. He realises that, as Jenna points out, they apparently have no chance whatsoever, but he prefers to be defiant and die a good death. That’s interesting- behind the cold and sardonic exterior (a mask?), there is some passion.

Blake, in travelling to his interrogation, observes that this is a rather nasty, slavery-practising, totalitarian dictatorship of the most repressive kind imaginable, and we’ve already established that Blake is not particularly enthusiastic about such things. But, as he is interrogated, the System’s, er, systems start to go wrong, and it’s not long before sporadic mini-revolutions break out. How very appropriate to be watching this in 2011, with the Arab Spring still happening.

There’s an interesting glimpse into an old-fashioned world view of computers here, I think; this is still (just!) in an age before computers were seen as cool consumer goods and when they were still seen as potentially threatening to the freedom of the individual. It seems strangely modern in the light on contemporary talk about “The Singularity” and the excellent if typically and wonderfully all-over-the-place Adam Curtis documentary (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace) from earlier this month.

The quickest revolution in all of history is carried out, er, quickly, in spite of the fact that there seem to be about three rebels. One of them dies saving Blake, of course, but collateral damage is by now an essential part of his lifestyle.

Avon’s still on fire, though- he spots that they’re in the exact part of space where the Liberator is doomed to blow up. The crew have all escaped, but it seems their fate is certain- until they see that they’re being pursued by a ship of the exact same design. Orac has been plotting all this time to make that ship explode, and explode it does, just as in the prediction. That was rather clever plotting. We end with a bit more Blake / Avon friction…

That was really rather good. Terry Nation can write quite well when he’s had a bit of time off.

Blake's 7: Orac

“I don’t intend to sit around and wait to die.”

What a very odd beginning. Terry Nation was clearly terrified that his radical decision to introduce a bit of continuity between consecutive episodes was a wild and dangerous risk, and the viewer needs to have the concept explained in words of one syllable. Hence the arse-clenchingly contrived recap, in which for some reason Blake goes to the trouble of editing together some clips and providing a voiceover, purely so that he can tell Avon something he already knows. It’s quite a contrast from watching recent episodes of Doctor Who written by Steven Moffat, I can tell you.

That’s not the only hangover from the previous episode, either. Avon, Jenna, Gan and Vila are all coming down with radiation sickness, meaning we finally get to see one of Terry Nation’s favourite things: anti-radiation drugs! As Avon puts it, “In a couple of weeks, we’ll all recover.” Er, quite.

Anyway, the Liberator’s off to Aristo to give the cells to Ensor, who has a dicky metal ticker, and hope that he’ll give them some anti-radiation drugs in return. Ensor, meanwhile, is feeding his fish and watering his plants in a room which could only possibly have existed in 1978 and no other year. He discovers a Federation ship has landed, containing two passengers and, of course, we immediately guess who they are. It seems that Servalan and Travis have to travel through the passageways under the city where monsters called “Phibians” lurk. This episode is the most Terry Nation thing ever.

Zen explains that Aristo hasn’t got much in the way of landmass, and that while it has old ruined cities on it, amphibians have only just evolved and started to colonise the landmasses. Er, how does that work then?

We essentially get two parallel quest narratives here: Blake and Cally on the surface; and Servalan and Travis underground amongst the nasty monsters. I’m sure I could come up with all sorts of ways this is symbolic of the contrasting natures of the two pairs, and all sorts of tropes surrounding quests, but I’m too busy laughing at the rubber monster. Sorry. Still, it’s interesting watching the shifting power dynamics between Servalan and Travis. Servalan does panic and need to be rescued by Travis (she is a female character in a story by Terry Nation, after all), but is quick to assert her authority over him as soon as the danger is over.

Blake and Cally find Ensor and tell him the sad news, sensibly omitting all the hijacking stuff. For reasons of plot convenience it now becomes necessary to take Ensor, along with Orac, up to the Liberator. Orac is this fantastic machine with the ability to connect to other computers without a direct connection. Which makes it, er, a slightly crapper version of the Internet. How very futuristic.

Travis and Servalan arrive at this dramatic moment, just in time to put a bit of excitement into the last few minutes before Avon saves the day at the very last possible moment. While all this is going on, Ensor quietly dies of not-having-any-more-to-contribute-to-the-plot syndrome.

So, Blake & co now have Orac, a second smartarse computer voiced by Peter Tuddenham to add to their collection. For some reason Orac can mathematically “predict” the future, and it seems the Liberator will explode very soon….

Well, I rather enjoyed that first series, in spite of the last few episodes showing some signs of repetitive writing. A solid set of characters and a premise that works. Roll on Series Two…

Blake's 7: Deliverance

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

The first few minutes actually look very impressive. There’s a small spaceship flying through the void, and we can actually see its two occupants through the front window. We then cut to a wheeled space station, on board which is, er, a BBC Micro. But never mind that, because the camera then draws back to reveal Servalan, who is watching the ship. For some reason it’s important.

This little ship is heading for an unknown destination, but meanwhile is passing a “primitive” planet called Cephlon. You immediately realise that this is the only reason this would have been mentioned was if the ship was about to crash and, surely enough, it does.

The crew of the Liberator, by an amazing coincidence, are watching all this too. They watch two lifeboats ejecting from the ship and resolve to teleport down and find them. It’s dangerous down there, with comedy Stone Age stereotypes posing a grave threat to everyone’s dignity.

The landing party is led, not by Blake, but by Avon, along with Jenna, Gan and Vila. And it’s interesting that, notwithstanding the mild personality clashes we’ve seen with pretty much everyone, no one questions that Avon is the de facto deputy to Blake. He’s competent, intelligent and pragmatic.

One of the two men is dead, but the other, played by some bloke off Eastenders, is alive. It’s time for them all to return to the Liberator, and we get a quick glance of Cally, next to the teleporter, listening to some groovy sounds in her rather cool shades in a way which is so quintessentially late Seventies.

At this point we’re re-acquainted with what’s becoming one of the standard tropes of Blake’s 7: the female crew member not returning with everyone else when teleporting back to the ship. Blake is clearly very worried about Jenna in a way which implies he has feelings for her which are almost certainly not reciprocated. Meanwhile, we discover that the dead man, Terry Nation style, was a “Space Surgeon”. Ha!

The survivor starts bibbling about energy cells, his dying father and the need to get to Aristo, a planet which makes me think of that Blackadder episode set during the French Revolution. The Federation was to pay 100 credits for something called “Orac”, says the survivor, in a hilarious display of overacting. He then produces a gun and hijacks the ship. They are to head to Aristo immediately, to cure his sick father, leaving the rest of the crew on Cephlon. Ah yes, another standard trope of Blake’s 7: the Liberator forced to go out of teleporter range when members of the crew are still on the planet.

There’s a great scene between Servalan and Travis which consists basically of Servalan showing how ruthless and badass she is, and making it clear to Travis that he’s her bitch. She explains that “Orac” is the creation of a scientist called Ensor, father of that bloke off Eastenders. A deal was made; 100 million credits for Orac, but also an agreement to send a surgeon, Maryatt, to cure Ensor. But Servalan has made some slight amendments to this. As soon as she knows where Aristo is, she blows the ship up and resolves to go there herself and seize Orac, without paying the 100 credits. Even nastier is that she intends to have Maryatt posted as a deserter, meaning that his family will be sold into slavery on one of the frontier worlds. Now that’s ruthless.

Meanwhile, Avon and co are having a spot of bother with some cavemen caricatures and a door. But as soon as they’re inside they meet Meegat, who is pretty, smiley and very friendly indeed, especially with “Lord” Avon. Being Avon, though, he insists on remaining a bit of a miserable git on general principles.

Interestingly, is seems Meegat (and presumable some unseen other people) have a prophecy about all this that turns out to be right, so prophecy works; it’s possible to predict the future. It’s a shame more isn’t made of this. But the prophecy comes to pass: a stock footage rocket is launched, meaning cells sufficient to re-spawn an entire race will reach their destination in just five short centuries’ time. Whoopee. If Avon’s leadership credentials weren’t already established, he successfully leads a rescue of Jenna, leaving you with the distinct impression that he’s make a much better leader than Blake, and would be a lot more loyal than he pretends to be. He’s intelligent, level-headed and heroic in spite of himself. What more do you want?

There’s another interesting Gan moment as they re-enter Meegat’s cave thingy. “You know, Vila,” he says, “For a minute out there I was actually quite beginning to enjoy myself.” Again we have this mix of thuggery and low self-esteem.

By now, Ensor’s son has died and the Liberator is back. They still have the energy cells, so it’s off to Aristo, Ensor and Orac…

Blake's 7: Bounty

“Civilisation has always depended on courtesy rather than truth.”

I shouldn’t really make too much of the alien planet looking just like the South-East of England on a gloomy and wet Autumn day- I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing- but this really takes the biscuit. And to see a fully functioning car from the early twentieth century on what’s supposed to be another planet, many centuries in the future- I’m sorry; that’s just not remotely plausible.

Still, this is a perfectly fine episode, although a little by-the-numbers. By now there’s definitely an element of marking time until the season finale. That’s what happens when you get one writer to do the whole series, I suppose.

Blake and Cally are skulking about, trying to break into the comfortable prison where former President Sarkoff is being held, alongside a young woman called Tyce. Tyce is played by a lady who I thought was Connie Booth until I saw the credits, and Sarkoff is played, very well, by T.P. McKenna. He’s been in exile for seven years, and appears to be a rather tragic, noble but embittered figure. The thing is, the character is superficially interesting, and has some very good lines, but is a bit of a cliché, only saved by McKenna’s performance. The sheer stubborn self-indulgence of the man, given what we’re told about his past and what ultimately happens, doesn’t seem realistic. He seems to be motivated more by the requirements of the plot than anything else.

I almost groaned at the prospect of the Liberator having to go out of teleport range after a ship approaches them, no doubt to return and teleport our heroes back on board only in the nick of time. This has happened too many times recently.

There’s more interestingness surrounding Gan here though; he offers to teleport aboard the ship which seems to be in distress. If it turns out the ship is hostile, he will communicate back to the Liberator and ask Vila to destroy it, with himself aboard. The script emphasises that he really does mean it. It’s strongly implies that he has a death wish, or at least very low self-esteem.

Sarkoff’s first conversation with Blake is fascinating, as he reacts to what he supposes to be his imminent assassination with studied courtesy, indulging his ego by intending to die as the perfect gentleman. It seems he was president of Lindor, a world outside the Federation, for five years. Resisting calls for annexation by the Federation, he stood for re-election, lost, and promptly flounced off to the custody of the Federation, of which he disapproves. Er, why?

Blake insists that Lindor is on the brink of civil war, with the Federation poised to intervene under the guise of “peace-keeping”, annexing the planet by stealth. The election lost by Sarkoff was rigged. Sarkoff struggles to accept all this, choosing to believe what the Federation tells him. He seems awfully naïve and self-indulgent here- hardly the impressive figure we’re being asked to accept.

Blake doesn’t come up smelling of roses either. His vandalising of Sarkoff’s no doubt priceless antiques makes him look like a thug and a bully as well as a fanatic, but then this isn’t the first time he’s shown that he can be all of these things.

This episode gave me one big surprise, I must admit: I never expected to see a car being started with a handle in Blake’s 7. Of course, this sequence, rather less unpredictably, sees all four of Blake, Cally, Sarkoff and Tyce teleported up to the Liberator. We then get a few minutes of excitement, as the ship has been captured by some old smuggler mates of Jenna’s, wanting to claim the reward money from the Federation for turning the fugitives in. For some reason, it seems, the Federation isn’t particularly likely to arrest them, although they’re obviously criminals.

Sarkoff gets a somewhat chance to be decisive, shooting dead the leader of the smugglers, Tarvin, before he gets a chance to shoot Tyce. For some reason it’s only now that we learn she’s his daughter. And for some reason this suddenly turns him into the Sarkoff of old, before he started wallowing in self-pity.

For an episode which resolves around the character and motivations of Sarkoff, this doesn’t really work. McKenna plays him well enough, but unfortunately the character seems to behave as he does purely for the convenience of the plot. Not one of the best episodes.

Blake's 7: Breakdown

“I’m finished. Staying with you requires a degree of stupidity of which I no longer feel capable.”

These obviously painted starscapes that we keep seeing at the beginnings of most episodes are starting to feel normal by now, but they really date the programme for me. I’m also starting to realise just how brown Blake’s 7 looks.

Gan’s the centre of attention this episode, even though David Jackson spends most of it just lying down and doing nothing. It’s also another interesting opportunity to look at the theories put forth in Liberation, that Gan was a sex offender. Certainly, his sudden violence against Jenna at the start would be consistent with this, but he’s just as violent towards everyone else.

Clearly something’s wrong with his limiter, and the scenes in the sickbay are so tense that for some reason they’re on film. Everyone knows that Gan is in serious trouble, something has gone badly wrong with his limiter, and that he urgently needs a neurosurgeon. Blake states at this point that “The limiter is supposed to cut in when stress drives him to the point where he might kill”, which doesn’t sound too consistent with the sex offender theory.

It seems the nearest neurosurgeon is to be found at a space laboratory called XK-72, which had been noted by Avon as a possible bolthole if life aboard the Liberator was to become too dangerous. (Like it isn’t as dangerous as it could possibly be anyway…). Apparently this laboratory specialises in weaponry and that old Terry Nation favourite, “space medicine.” There’s just one problem; Zen insists that the quickest route crosses a “prohibited space zone”. He won’t say what the danger is, but he refuses to fly through it and flies off into a sulk until the end of the episode. It becomes clear that something out there is affecting the Liberator…

In the sickbay there’s an interesting scene in which Gan calmly persuades Cally to release hi, and promptly goes on a rampage. This manipulative behaviour is most interesting; Kayn later refers to Gan as a “psychopath”. He hasn’t been seen behaving like this before- it this part of his personality, like the violence, normally inhibited by his limiter?

The ship is heading into a “gravitational vortex”, which would presumably be a black hole. Can it really be plausible that this wouldn’t be known about? It seems to lie in-between fairly important and well-used areas of space, after all. At least someone would have noticed all the ships which mysteriously disappeared.

Blake eventually decides the best thing to do it to head, at full speed, right for the centre. Er, ok. I’m sure this is scientifically rigorous. Anyway, for some reason they manage to survive. I think perhaps we should not think too hard about this. After all, Terry Nation clearly didn’t.

More interesting is what looks like a complete breakdown in relations between Blake and Avon (one of the reasons for the title?) as Avon, dismayed by Blake’s increasing recklessness, says that he can no longer stay. There’s a real frostiness between the two of them for the rest of the episode.

The Liberator finally reaches XK-72, which appears to have a population of just three. We have the officious but decent Farren, the brilliant but obnoxious Professor Kayn, played rather brilliantly by Julian Glover, and Kayn’s underling. Kayn agrees to perform the operation, mainly to annoy Farren, but seems to have a worryingly high regard for the Federation. It’s not long before he realises who Blake and co actually are, and promptly tips off the nearest Federation base.

Avon, meanwhile, looks as though he’s going to stay behind on XK-72; he spills the beans to Farren, and offers him the secret of teleportation in return for being allowed to stay. It looks as though it’s going to happen…

Kayn really is a bit of a git. He deliberately delays the start of his operation on Gan so the Federation have time to get there. News of this reaches XK-72, but it looks as though Avon is still going to stay; he’s been guaranteed that the Federation won’t be told. He just needs to return and collect a few things…

The crew of the Liberator end up forcing Kayn to perform his operation at gunpoint, with Blake threatening to destroy his hands if he refuses to co-operate. We finish with the now-traditional altercation with Federation pursuit ships. XK-72 ends up destroyed by a bolt from one of the pursuit ships, yet more collateral damage from Blake’s actions. Avon won’t be going anywhere. But surely something has now changed between him and Blake? It’ll be interesting to see whether this is followed up.

I had to raise an eyebrow at the line where Blake takes over the navigational duties with the words “I’ll handle this, Jenna- you can help Gan.” The Liberator is not exactly a feminist paradise, then. We finish with a Hanna Barbera cartoon-style forced laugh, with Gan safely back to his usual lobotomised self.

Blake's 7: Project Avalon

“Hope is very dangerous…”

We start with what looks like some stock footage of heavy snow until we see a mutoid walking through it, accompanies by a cowled figure. We cut to the studio and this cowled figure is, of course, Travis. He has another big plan to get Blake. Good for him. He seems to hang around with fit young mutoid ladies a lot, though. Does he have some kind of thing for them?

We cut between Travis and Blake & co on the Liberator, and between them they give us all the exposition we need. Terry Nation seems to be doing this sort of thing a lot lately. Travis intends to use Avalon, a previously unmentioned resistance figure, as bait to lure Blake into his latest trap. He’s captured her, and summarily murdered everyone else in her resistance group, in typical Federation fashion.

Travis’ less-than-spectacular success rate has not gone unnoticed so far; Servalan has come to check up on him, and she’s made it clear that he’s for it if he doesn’t shape up soon. Two recent assassination attempts don’t seem to have put her in a forgiving mood. Fortunately, Travis’ latest plan is apparently a good ‘un, so nothing can possibly go wrong. It seems to involve a virus, shown by means of some very weird visual effects, which is used to kill an unfortunate prisoner as an experiment. How nice.

Meanwhile, Blake, Jenna and a typically reluctant Vila are trying to break into the Federation facility where Avalon is being held without being seen by one of those hilarious-looking “Security” robots. Unfortunately the Liberator is being chased by some Federation pursuit ships, and will duly be out of teleport range until the very last second before they would otherwise get killed, as per usual. It’s early days, but this is already looking like an established trope of the series.

Our heroes break into the building, and force a guard to pretend they’re his prisoner so as not to arouse suspicion. It’s about time that hoary old Terry Nation favourite finally turned up in Blake’s 7. Before long, though, it all goes horribly wrong and a guard sets off an alarm. I think we may have established a second trope for this series.

The team manage to rescue Avalon, in spite of the fact that Jenna seems to be spending an awful lot of her time playing Operation Wolf. The Liberator arrives, in the exact circumstances we expected, and that’s it. Avalon is rescued and everything is fine. Although, once again, Gan’s attentiveness towards Avalon, who just so happens to be female, could perhaps come across as creepy and once again hinting at the possible sexual nature of his crimes. Still, at least he’s not the one who says, a few minutes later, “Get something to tie her up with.”

It’s all a trap, though: this “Avalon” is in fact a robot, programmed to kill them all with that nasty little virus and then deliver the Liberator back to Travis. Fortunately, Blake is able to turn the tables, and humiliates Travis in front of his boss. (This is the first time Blake and Servalan have met- it’s actually quite exciting!) That’ll be another established trope for the series, then; Blake going back to somewhere he’s just escaped from to finish the job. Meanwhile, Travis has now been relieved of command by Servalan. That’ll improve his mood no end…

That was all enjoyable enough, but there are a few worrying signs that Terry Nation is starting to repeat himself and resort to his own tricks. Time for someone else to write an episode, methinks.

Blake's 7: Duel

“Not only is he primitive, he is pompous as well.”

It’s an odd start, with two bizarre-looking women, one of whom is played by Isla Blair, telling each other things that the other would undoubtedly know, but without leaving the viewer much the wiser. I presume that their longing to “be at peace” is essentially a death wish. Nice.

Anyway, Travis is busily chasing Blake in his pursuit ship, where he’s surrounded by some rather yummy goth girls. Except these ladies are mutoids, meaning they subsist via little green tubes full of blood. Urgh. The Liberator is running low on fuel, and needs to remain in orbit around the nearest habitable planet, for the period of time required by the plot, so that it can “recharge”. Recharge with what, exactly? Also, Travis claims to have pursued Blake “into this galaxy”. So the Federation spans multiple galaxies? Or does Terry Nation just not know the difference between a galaxy and a star system? I suspect the latter myself.

Blake, Jenna and Gan nip down to the planet to kill a bit of time, and find a world suspiciously similar to Skaro in Terry Nation’s first ever Dalek story for Doctor Who. Not only is the sight before them “Almost like the effects of a fusion bomb”, but there are stone (petrified?) statues. Suddenly, Gan sees two women, who quickly disappear before anyone else sees them. Interestingly, at this point he says “I hope my limiter hasn’t malfunctioned.” Why would he say that? Killing wasn’t an issue here, but women were. This seems consistent with the idea of his crimes having been sexual in nature.

Blake spots the Federation support ships, and they all teleport back on board. The Liberator is out of power, Travis has them surrounded, they have to ration their power, and they’re basically screwed. So Blake decides to ram Travis. What else?

Then time slows down, and the two alien women teleport Blake and Travis down to the surface. They spin a tale of a thousand year war, a “planet made barren by radiation”, and make it very clear that, like, war is bad, m’kay? They question Blake and Travis, and it’s interesting that Travis says that Blake is “An enemy of the Federation, tried and convicted.” Why not mention the child abuse charges? Surely it would be in his interests to do so?

Annoyingly, the two alien women conclude only that the two positions are irreconcilable; they don’t give a monkeys about the relative merits of both cases. I may have my doubts about Blake’s unrealistic pessimism, but I don’t like the Neville Chamberlain-style mindless pacifism being espoused here. This is very different to the message Nation seemed to be imparting in the aforementioned The Daleks.

Anyway, there’s to be a gladiator-style duel, complete with gladiator-style swords, which is supposed to, er, show that the aliens are more civilised. Right. And we get Jenna and that rather nice-looking mutoid goth lady teleported down, too. This dual takes place in a forested region of the planet which looks suspiciously like the South-East of England.

Interestingly, it seems Mutoids have no memory of their previous lives, and Travis’ sadistic attempts to tease his companion about her previous life are to no avail. Are Mutoids ex-criminals then, who are altered, have their memories wiped, and are made to serve as military slaves? And Travis clearly has a history with this Keyeira, as she was. Is he responsible for her condition?

Meanwhile, aboard the Liberator, Avon says something very interesting: “I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care. Or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all.” He may be a bit of a cold fish, and somewhat self-centred and cynical, but it’s interesting how he seems to imply that he does in fact care.

There’s a climactic fight scene in which, yet again, Blake refuses to kill Travis for some rather flimsy reasons. He seems to be making a habit of this. He’s returned to the Liberator where, interestingly, Gan makes a rather laddish comment about Sinofar, the younger of the two women. More evidence?

The mutoid, meanwhile, faces a bleak future of court martial and execution, yet continues to follow orders. Creepy.

I’m in two minds about this one. I really, really don’t like the central concept or message, but there’s some excellent characterisation, and the stuff about the mutoids was fascinating. And, of course, Douglas Camfield directs it beautifully.

Blake's 7: Mission to Destiny

Personally, I don’t care if their whole planet turns into a mushroom. I’m staying because I don’t like an unsolved mystery.”

A whodunnit in Blake’s 7 seems rather odd, especially at this early stage. But it works, oddly enough, and lets us have a closer look at Avon. He may be cynical and self-centred (although less so than he likes to present himself), but he’s also intelligent and intellectually curious.

We begin with a ship flying through space in a scene rather reminiscent of a low budget version of the previous year’s Star Wars, and we meet a bloke who is instantly done in. With lead piping, apparently.

In no time at all the Liberator turns up, and Blake, Avon and Cally (the only regulars who get significant screen time) start investigating the mystery. Everyone has been rendered asleep by tranquillising gas, the controls and the communicators have been sabotaged, and the murdered man managed to write “54124” in his own blood before he carked it. Our heroes get well stuck into the mystery, with Blake and Avon even finding themselves on film as they investigate the filters.

Early on we get a typical whodunit scene in which the suspects tell us their names and alibis, and we establish the two obligatory red herrings, Mandrian and Solheim. One of the suspects is played by John “K-9” Leeson, and there’s a missing person, Dortmunn (a very Terry Nation name, that), who apparently has escaped on the life raft. Except he hasn’t, as Cally and the rather pervy Solheim later find his body.

It seems this ship is from Destiny, a frontier world settled a mere century ago and which remains, for the moment at least, outside the Federation. On board is a McGuffin, vital for the future survival of the planet, but also made of priceless unobtainium, and the perfect motive for any greedy person to resort to murder. All the pieces are in place. It’s agreed that Blake will take the McGuffin to Destiny as quickly as they can, while Cally and Avon stay behind. It’s fun seeing how Paul Darrow plays his role here: people may have died but Avon is rather enjoying himself!

Cally sees loads and loads of potentially important stuff happening, much of it on film, while the discovery of Dortmunn’s body leads Avon to call everyone together and do his best Hercule Poirot impersonation. He’s definitely enjoying this.

The Liberator, meanwhile, is faced by a whopping big meteor storm (what, they’re weather phenomena?), and has to choose between going round, which will take ages, and going right through. Blake, of course, chooses the more laddish of the two options.

Avon gets a particularly cool bit of dialogue where he says he thinks Mandrian probably did it, with Sonheim next on the list, but that he’s going by instinct and so is therefore probably wrong. Now there’s a man who understands the tropes of the genre he temporarily finds himself in. Rather less cool is Jenna’s claim, on board the Liberator, that “We’re having to use a lot of power to maintain our speed and heading”. Er, I think you’ll find that in a vacuum you require exactly no power to do that.

Meanwhile, Mandrian is dead, with Sonheim so obviously guilty that he can’t possibly have done it. Avon now realises whodunnit, and assumes the role of the fictional famous Belgian for one final time: it was Sara what done it. She seems to hold all the cards, including the McGuffin, which is not on the Liberator after all. But Blake has realised this, and the Liberator races back to get back to the ship before Sara’s mates do. We end with a budget-friendly, off-screen bang.

I rather enjoyed that, but it will be good to get back to the usual skulduggery surrounding the Federation…

Blake's 7: Seek-Locate-Destroy

“I’ve come to blow something up. What do you think might be suitable?”

Now that’s more like it. An incredibly action-packed episode full of menace, tantalising bits of backstory, intriguing bits of world-building and not one but two great baddies.

We begin on the planet Centero, which oddly seems to be a gas giant. On the surface (for there is one, gas giant or no) is a 1970s industrial complex patrolled by a hilarious toy robot which half reminds me of the robot from Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment and half reminds me of one of those obscure Kenner Star Wars toys, a robot that didn’t seem to appear in the film.

Into this surreal situation teleports Blake, soon joined by Vila. As well as showcasing his skill with locks, Vila also takes the time to remind us that Terry Nation is writing his words: the scene where he distracts the Federation guards is suspiciously similar to a scene in Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks.

Blake is looking for the Federation cipher room, so he can build a kind of Enigma machine. He’s soon joined by Cally, Gan and Avon and a tense hostage situation develops while our heroes try to remove said Enigma machine, which has apparently been screwed down very well indeed. Top marks to the Federation’s collective DIY skills there.

The mission, after some tension and some time bombs (very Terry Nation, that) is accomplished, but Cally is left behind. Of course, we then get one of those faintly implausible scenes, inevitable in these situations in all TV drama, in which it takes everyone a good few minutes to realise that she’s missing.

Elsewhere, on a circular space station, extreme coolness is happening. Not only does the splendid Jacqueline Pearce make her really rather excellent debut as the wonderful Supreme Commander Servalan, but we also get the bizarre combination of Peter Miles and Peter Glaze as Administration politicians, visiting on behalf of the President. This scene actually gives us a fair bit of new information on how the Federation operates. The outer planets are run by “controllers” whose loyalty to the Federation can be “delicately balanced”. The powers that be are nervous that Blake is starting to become a legend; real pressure is now being brought to bear that he be caught, and quickly.

The introduction of Travis is masterfully handled; before we meet him we get a lot of talk about him, and how notoriously cruel and ruthless he is. This really serves to build him up. Not only do we get the scene with the two political flunkies, but one of Servalan’s underlings expresses concern. There’s a subtext here that I didn’t catch before; Travis later refers to Servalan’s “decorative staff men”, and I rather suspect that, when Servalan refers to her underling as a “friend”, this is a euphemism for certain perks of her position. This is all a bit Catherine the Great or, to be more topical, a bit Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The point is, Servalan is powerful, clever, ambitious, dangerous, and takes what she wants. And her willingness to use a monster like Travis underlines her utter ruthlessness in pursuit of her aims.

Travis, incidentally, would perhaps be more menacing if not for the very Terry Nation title of “Space Commander”. I take it there are also Space Chiropodists and Space Accountants. Still, his arrival (to ominous chords) is effective, and Stephen Grief both looks and acts the part. Travis promises to be a great and very nasty baddie.

Meanwhile, on the Liberator, Avon has finally got the Space Enigma Machine working. Our heroes are recording everything on to “micro tape”- how very futuristic. Fortuitously, this causes them to overhear a conversation stating that Travis is off to Centero to investigate. This is a bit of a blow to Blake, who thought he killed him.

Travis shows himself to be a highly intelligent and effective investigator, and also something of a workaholic. He takes time out to provide some exposition for us as well, though, coincidentally at exactly the same time as Blake. After Blake almost killed him, he turned himself into the Bionic Man and started hanging around with “Mutoids”, whatever they are. It seems they met when Travis foiled a plot be Blake to attack a “political rehabilitation centre”, where dissidents are sent for “indoctrination treatment.” This sort of thing reminds us just how nasty and totalitarian the Federation is.

Blake’s memories from before his treatment seem to be returning. He is certainly now able to bear a huge grudge against Travis for killing large numbers of his friends before his own capture. He has more things to hold against him, too; Cally has been caught and it’s very heavily implied that she is tortured.

Travis shows himself to be very clever indeed, not only realising that Blake has the Enigma machine, but also realising the potential opportunity to use disinformation to set a trap for his nemesis. Cally, of course, is the bait. But, in a neat reversal, Blake was already there and waiting, the same trick Travis earlier pulled against him. Conveniently, though, Blake doesn’t kill Travis on the grounds that “You don’t matter enough to kill.”

This changes quite a lot. Rather than being up against a powerful but faceless enemy, Blake has now acquired a rather cool arch-nemesis with whom there’s clearly going to be quite a due. And there’s an even bigger and cooler big bad lurking in the background…

Blake's 7: The Web

“We gave them life. We have the right to take it from them.”

What an odd episode. It feels strange, after a four episode arc, to go into a standalone story with hardly any Federation involvement and lots of alien weirdness. In fact, this has a lot more in common with Terry Nation’s Doctor Who stuff than anything we’ve seen so far.

We begin on the surface of an alien world which just happens to look like the South-East of England. There are webs and a rather cheap looking bouncy castle. Inside the bouncy castle is some stuff, including two plastic chairs and a bloke putting his head through a piece of cardboard with a little embryo-like body drawn on it. Scary. Not for the last time this episode, I’m reminded of Nation’s rubbish Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus.

Meanwhile, the Liberator is being controlled by forces unknown. More worryingly, so is Cally. Also worryingly, Jenna is still expressing doubts about having an “alien” on board. Refreshingly, though, it’s night, and most people are asleep. That’s something which notoriously never happens on television spaceships, so well done to Terry Nation for that at least.

Still, a bomb? Very Terry Nation, that is. It’s an interesting scene, though; Avon saves Blake’s life, probably, by instinctively grabbing him. He insists it was just reflexes and he’s as surprised as Blake is, but Blake replies “I’m not surprised.” Blake is seemingly quite convinced that Avon is basically trustworthy and not as amoral as he seems. This certainly makes a nice contrast to Avon’s later comment to Gan that “There will come a time when [Blake] won’t be making the decisions.”

The Liberator is drawn to an uncharted system (for the first time it’s confirmed that they exist within Federation space). By now we’re a good way through the running time; I believe Trekkies refer to this sort of thing as a bottle episode. But then some aliens possess Jenna, announcing that the ship cannot escape. The crew are to follow a beacon signal and land. Cally then, conveniently, proves her worth with some much needed exposition. (She’ll be developing a personality next, just you watch.) Apparently there’s an old legend on Auronar of something called “The Lost”. Ooh.

Blake finally makes it to the alien planet. It looks every bit as embarrassing as the opening scene, except that there are blokes wearing some arse-clenchingly embarrassing rubber suits. They seem to be laying siege to the bouncy castle, inside which there is a laboratory. Yet again, I’m reminded of a particularly dull episode of The Keys of Marinus.

Blake is welcomed by a rather odd couple, a brother and sister. They explain that they are genetic engineers, the webbing in space is one of their experiments which has got out of control, and that they are able to release the Liberator if Blake will replace their dwindling power supply. How convenient that a ship should pass by just as they’re about to run out of power. What are the chances of that, eh?

There’s a snag though. The unconvincing rubber suits are called Decimas, and they are a genetic experiment, intended to be slaves, who have had the effrontery to show independent thought. Our rather cold scientist couple intend to destroy them all once their power is restored, yet Blake can see a group of them mourning their dead friend, who got nastily done in by one of the scientists a few minutes earlier. Now, I don’t want to be accused of reading things into things here, but don’t you think there might be a slight subtext here about the ethics of genetic experimentation? Just throwing that one out there.

Blake is appalled, of course. He soon discovers that the scientists are also artificially engineered slaves controlled by the bloke with his head through a bit of cardboard. Mr Cardboard Body is a gestalt entity comprised of six separate scientists, all of dubious morals, and they are indeed who Cally says they are. Avon, who has now turned up, is not quite as bothered by this as Blake is. Still, it’s interesting to hear Blake refer to Avon to the two scientists as “my friend”.

The ending is a bit disappointing; a group of Decimas just get through the door after it’s carelessly left open. They then proceed to ransack the place while Blake and Avon bugger off back to the Liberator, where they manage to evade some Federation pursuit ships. They then carry on with what they were doing before they were so rudely interrupted.

That one was a bit rubbish, really.

Blake's 7: Time Squad

“I plan to live forever. Or die trying.”

So, we’re now at an interesting point in the series. The crew of the Liberator are now off into the universe, and we can start to find out more about the show. Is it going to focus entirely on the struggle against the Federation? What sci-fi tropes are going to be allowed in this series? Are there aliens, for example? And is there any more evidence of Gan being a sex offender?

Certainly this episode starts like the last one, with a rather naff painted starfield. But now our newly assembled crew are united, sort of. They can fly the ship together. But Avon remains semi-detached, and in his constant alpha male sparring with Blake he remains the most interesting character by far. Gan, on the other hand, is bizarrely uber-loyal to Blake.

Blake, dangerously charismatic as usual, sends them all off to orbit Saurian Major, an essential communications hub for the Federation, to blow some stuff up. Avon points out that his insistence that decisions are made democratically isn’t quite what’s happening.

But there’s a distress call; a small capsule, which Blake and Jenna go to explore together. Not that there’s much to explore. Zen is behaving oddly; is it something to do with the capsule? We know very little about “him” yet. Gan seems to think he has some sort of “limiter”. Hmm.

The crew are dormant; Blake and Jenna seem to believe this is a “cryogenic capsule”, presumably from one of the early space flights “centuries ago”. This is in accordance with what we heard last episode about roughly how far we are into the future, although it’s odd that Blake and Jenna would be able to manipulate this technology so easily if the technological gulf is so vast. I’m getting hints about their relationship, too. Jenna seems to have liked Blake earlier, given her body language and behaviour towards him in earlier episode, but seems to have concluded by now that he’s a bit too intense and, well, weird to be potential boyfriend material.

The air’s running out, and the teleport has shorted. Zen really doesn’t want the capsule on board. Still, Avon gets to manoeuvre it into the hold, thereby both saving Blake and Jenna and managing to look cool at the same time. His reaction to the capsule is interesting, too- he posits that it might be from a “technically backward culture”- aliens? We don’t know yet whether there are supposed to be aliens in this fictional universe. All sorts of rules and limits have to be established.

Blake seems to think it’s ok to re-animate three people while he, Vila and Avon bugger off down to the planet’s surface for a quick spot of terrorist sabotage. Er, OK then. And it seems there’s such a thing as “neutral space” as opposed to Federation territory.

So, Blake’s plan is to hang around being blatantly obvious and hope to be contacted by any passing rebels? Er, OK. He must be really charismatic. Meanwhile, there’s an interesting scene where possible sex attacker Gan and Jenna (who, in case you haven’t noticed, is a woman) are alone together. He’s staying with Blake because “I have to. I want to stay alive, and to do that I need people I can rely on. I can’t be on my own.” This is interestingly ambiguous. His crime, apparently, was to kill a security guard because “he killed my woman”. Is this the whole truth? Is it true at all? Interestingly, after saying this, he has a headache. What induces this?

Never mind that, though; the sleeping beardies are awake, and the directing suddenly goes a bit slasher movie. Only a bit, though. This might be the same year as Halloween but it’s still a late 1970s spaceship corridor with masking tape on the walls.

Gan’s limiter means he can’t kill, apparently. This is a bit awkward, seeing as Jenna rather needs him to drop exactly that to shoot her attacker. Is that all that it limits? Did it give him that headache earlier? Was it because he started having sexually violent thoughts about Jenna and it reacted?

Meanwhile, Blake, on Saurian Major, a planet bathed in permanent red light, encounters Cally, a telepath, and an alien (so there are aliens) from the planet Auronar. Everyone’s acceptance of her, and her involvement with resistance against the Federation, implies that aliens are not entirely unknown, and that at least some of them have some sort of political existence within the Federation. And her alien status has enabled her to rather conveniently be the sole survivor of a rather nasty bout of chemical warfare, thus cutting down on cast members required. Handy, that.

While Jenna and Gan are in a spot of bother with their rather ungrateful guests, Blake and co have reached the Federation communications thingy. The Federation are clearly great fans of 1960s industrial architecture. Few things have dated this episode (aside from Jenna’s hair) more than the use of this location footage to represent an alien planet.

We learn that Vila’s very good at opening doors, Avon’s still good with computers, and things are about to go boom. Gan just manages to teleport them all away at the last possible moment, which is good news for Jenna as Blake proceeds to do the same for her.

Cally joining the ship’s crew gives rise to some resistance from Jenna; it seems aliens aren’t entirely accepted within what is clearly an overwhelmingly human society. But with the addition of Cally and, er, Zen, our gang can indeed now be described as Blake’s seven. That’ll be permanent, right?

Good stuff, although drags a little in places and doesn’t quite maintain the high quality of the previous three eps.

Blake's 7: Cygnus Alpha

“Wisdom must be gathered. It cannot be given.”

A bloke is a cloak, a sunset which is clearly a painted backdrop, a night sky which is even less convincing… hardly an auspicious start. And yet this episode is quite as brilliant as the first two. The Captain is subdued as the London is about to land; he’s not exactly shrouded himself in glory of late, as we’re reminded by a quick flashback.

Blake, whose recent achievements have been rather more impressive, is still with Jenna and Avon in their cool and mysterious new ship. The ship has some powerful weapons. There’s a nice scene where Avon points one at Blake, only for Blake to turn around and ignore him. This is a nice little scene, mainly about who’s the alpha male, of course, but also showing us that Blake has decided that much of Avon’s amoral cynicism is just a front.

The ship goes through “negative hyperspace”, meaning it’s “crossed the anti-matter interface”. Well, quite. What’s interesting here is that this is technology far in advance of the Federation, and presumably humanity. It’s alien, then. And yet so far we’ve had no explicit mention of aliens. Presumably, then, they’re known to exist (this isn’t Isaac Asimov’s human-only Galactic Empire), but few spacefaring civilisations are known to exist within explored space, although the concept is considered plausible? Certainly, it seems as though this new ship, the Liberator as Jenna christens it in a revealingly Blake-sympathetic moment, must be alien. And yet we know little of its origin is that it was involved in some sort of altercation last episode. Perhaps.

Oh, and we’re introduced to Zen. And he says “confirmed” for the first time, while remaining effortlessly, enigmatically cool. He really gets on Avon’s tits, which helps. Oh, and “spatials” are apparently a unit of measurement.

Before long we come across what appears to be a matter transmission room, and triggers another contest between Blake and Avon over who is the alpha male. Blake wins this quite easily by being the only one of the two of them who’s man enough to risk using this untried technology to teleport down to Cygnus Alpha. Jenna’s impressed, I can tell. She certainly gives him a big hug when he teleports back.

Meanwhile, Cygnus Alpha is not what we were expecting. There are no guards and it can only loosely be termed a prison; convicts are simply dumped there and forced to fend for themselves, a bit like people who’d finished their sentences on Devil’s Island. We also get a bit of a closer look at Gan, who has really only been a supporting character thus far. And I’d like to get a look at him, having read the rather splendid Liberation by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore. This excellent fan guide to Blake’s 7 posits, rather fascinatingly and convincingly, that Gan is some sort of sex offender, and it’s going to be interesting to watch what he does with this in mind. Certainly his threats to the bloke being nasty to Vila hint at some possible psychopathic tendencies, but generally he comes across as a nice chap.

Vila, Gan and their redshirt friends encounter a rather grisly corpse, and Pamela Salem in a cloak, looking particularly lovely. She orders them to kneel, which they do. Fair enough. I probably would have done the same. I mean, she kisses Gan.

Interesting religion they have here; monotheistic, practised in what looks very much like a church, with an altar and candles and everything. It looks as though it’s been largely ripped off from Christianity which, to give the designers their due, seems to fit in rather nicely with what we’re later told.

Oh, and let’s talk about Brian Blessed, shall we? Apparently in Z-Cars, which I haven’t seen, he was a talented actor. Certainly in I Clavdivs, which I have seen and enjoyed very much, he’s outstanding. But at some unspecified point (arguably The Black Adder is the point of no return), he seems to lose the ability to play anything other than loud, shouty, bearded barbarian kings. Is this where the rot begins to set in? Beard? Check. Shoutiness? Check. And yet there are still several scenes here where he still has that Augustus-like ability to be quietly menacing. I miss that side of Brian Blessed.

Back to some rough kind of chronology, the prisoners are apparently suffering from the “Curse of Cygnus” to which, conveniently, only the priests have the cure. It’s not long before Brian is telling Blake that the priests are all descended from convicts, making him some kind of Great Space Australian. Interestingly, he admits that society used religion to bind together a society which had become conflicted, over fifty generations, between newly arrived convicts and those born on the planet. So, is he a true believer, someone consciously using religion as a tool or, as I suspect, both?

“Fifty generations” is interesting, too, as it gives us a clue as to how far into the future we are. It seems humans broke “the light barrier” at least, say, 650 years ago if a “generation”= 25 years.

Meanwhile, there’s conflict between Avon and Jenna; they’ve discovered untold wealth on the ship. Avon persuading Jenna to give Blake just an hour before abandoning Blake generates a lot of dramatic tension, of course. But it’s much more interesting than that. Jenna is being torn between two ideologies here. And Avon is persuasive. Blake is a “crusader”. He can’t win. Does she want to be rich or dead? He has a point.

Blake gets to be cool, too, though. Placed in a cell with the other prisoners, who know perfectly well that if he doesn’t agree to give Brian their ship then one of them will be sacrificed, Blake manages to get them on his side through sheer force of will. He’s definitely the alpha male here. But also, perhaps, again showing signs of being a charismatic and dangerous fanatic.

We get a final showdown with Brian who reveals, perhaps too easily, that the “disease” is a mild and artificial poison, and dies, most certainly too easily, before he can get started on all that space evangelism. Still, nice episode.

Blake's 7: Space Fall

“They murdered my past, and gave me tranquillised dreams.”

The story follows directly on, but this episode is spent entirely on board ship, and our cast of characters shifts accordingly. We’re on the “Civil Administration Ship” London, staffed by a captain, the competent and ambitious Artix, and the rather unpleasant Raiker, played by Leslie Schofield, who seems to have been in everything in the late ‘70s. It’s amusing to hear some of the series technobabble we’ll presumably be hearing on a regular basis, with all this “hyperdrive speed” and “time distort seven”. Interestingly, even with faster-than-light travel, the journey is to take eight months.

Raiker delivers a nasty speech to the prisoners, in which he warns them of all sorts of arbitrary nastiness which will be coming their way. This, of course, informs the viewer that he’s a right baddie, and is almost certainly get his comeuppance. This becomes all the more certain after his initial attempts to sexually abuse Jenna. As the only woman on board, she’s in a very dangerous and vulnerable position, but shows herself to be extremely dignified and strong. She’s lucky that all of her male fellow prisoners are by some strange coincidence such solidly middle-class RADA-trained types, though.

Blake, of course, is already plotting escape. And there’s a rather interesting new character: a computer expert and fraudster called Kerr Avon. Already he’s by far the most interesting character, and Paul Darrow is just incredible.

Some kind of mysterious space battle nearby somehow causes “turbulence”. Meanwhile, Blake gets a film sequence as he crawls around the ship, looking for the main computer. Meanwhile, in the studio, Vila and some bloke called Gan are distracting a guard in a scene which reminds me of bits of The Great Escape.

Dialogue tells us that four months have suddenly elapsed, long enough for Blake to gather his information and make his plans. All that remains is to persuade Avon, a highly intelligent and fascinating character, do help them. It’s quite gripping to watch the two of them verbally sparring, something we’ll be seeing rather a lot of.

Avon agrees, and is rewarded with a film sequence of his very own as he crawls towards the computer room. A redshirt prisoner follows to see what he’s up to, and rather impudently demands a film sequence hardly befitting to such a minor character. Quite rightly, he soon gets killed. From this point, only Avon (and that bloke he fights) is deemed cool enough to be on film.

Not everything goes well, and we soon have a stalemate. Blake, Jenna, and Avon control the computer, but all the others, including Vila and Gan, are recaptured. At this point we get an intense debate over what to do next, and thus is crucial, establishing the relations between the three of them. Blake admits the true intensity of his desire to overthrow the Federation. Heroic, perhaps. Idealistic, certainly. But Gareth Thomas plays it in such a way that we’re already a little troubled. Has Blake crossed the border into fanaticism? Are his goals at all realistic? Is he, if you’ll excuse the cliché, a freedom fighter or a terrorist?

Avon is quite different, concerned only with his own material welfare. This is amoral and cynical, yes. Self-centred, certainly. But between Avon’s rational self-interest, and criminal activities which could be seen as victimless if one were feeling generous, and Blake’s possible fanaticism, which is likely to do more harm to the innocent bystander? These are very interesting questions.

Jenna’s reaction is interesting, too, and perhaps mirrors ours. She admires Blake, wants to believe him, but isn’t quite convinced.

The impasse is broken by a trick which Nation will re-use the following year for Doctor Who in Destiny of the Daleks. Raiker simply threatens to shoot one prisoner every thirty seconds until Blake gives in. It works, of course, and leads to a lot of whingeing from Avon, but makes the viewer even more convinced that Raiker isn’t going to survive the episode. This is a Terry Nation script, after all.

It looks as though our heroes have lost. But then the London comes across a whopping great ship, apparently something to do with this space battle they came across earlier. Everyone is keen to claim it as a prize (I’m getting echoes of the great Patrick O’Brian here), and so an hilariously flimsy-looking “transfer tube” is sent across. Two redshirts seem to go mad and die. What else to do than to send our three erstwhile mutineers after them? Blake, Jenna and Avon are duly introduced to this ship, and we, the viewers, can see from this shiny and expensive new set that it’s obviously going to be re-used a lot. It’s all a trap, of course, but Blake is able to resist it. I’m sure there’s some sort of Biblical or literary allusion there but I’m buggered if I know what it is.

Raiker gets his long-anticipated come-uppance and our three heroes (well, two heroes and Avon) have a rather splendid ship with which to liberate their mates on Cygnus Alpha…

That was really rather brilliant.