Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans

 "Called himself the Physician, or the Dentist, or something..."

The new season of Doctor Who is over. I need something for the withdrawal symptoms, really rather urgently.

This is another of those fan-made, straight to video dramas made during Doctor Who's "wilderness years". Made on a shoestring by fans, they were nevertheless fascinating. Often featuring actors from the show, as well as other British telefantasy series such as Blake's 7, they varied in quality, in truth. Many of those fans making them would go on to greater things, though, and for what they were- and their minuscule budgets- they were very impressive.

This, which I've now seen for the first time, is undoubtedly one of the best.

The script, from ever-reliable Terrance Dicks, is genuinely witty and full of twists and turns. The Sontarans here are supremely designed, wtritten and acted, coming across as a very three-dimesnsional species. The Rutans are used well, with surprisingly good effects.

And while the performances are variable, Brian Croucher truly stands out. So does Carole Ann Ford, playing a much deeper and interesting character than Susan ever was. 

Location shooting on HMS Belfast, and creative use of camerawork, makes this look far less cheap than it doubtless was. It's not quite a prodessional production and that shows in places- it looks as though the performances are not always well directed. Yet, with a very strong script at its core, this is a highly impressive piece of work.

Blake's 7: Terminal

“Incidentally, you should always be careful about getting a second hand spacecraft. They can be very unreliable.”

Ooh, Terry Nation’s back for the season finale! Surely he would have been in California for about a year now? We are indeed privileged!

Avon’s gone all mysterious; he’s taking the ship to some mysterious location for some kind of “rendezvous”, and he goes all mardy whenever anyone else tries to go on to the flight deck. Everyone else has got the message and is leaving him alone. Dayna and Cally are playing space chess, if you believe the dialogue, or Space Monopoly, if you believe the props department.

Tarrant, of course, has a go at confronting Avon, but it’s no use; Avon is at this point indisputably top dog. He’s changed course, and he won’t say where or why. Even more strangely, he receives a message and then sets off to a new location. It’s just like a galactic treasure hunt. And Avon’s in a hurry; he’s not even prepared to avoid a possibly dangerous cloud of fluid, and proves this by pulling a gun on Tarrant. Still, what harm can a bit of fluid on the hull do?

Eventually they arrive at their destination. Terminal is an artificial galaxy, long thought destroyed, created 411 years ago in an orbit near Mars. It has now been moved right across the galaxy for reasons which remain unexplained. Whatever its origins, however, it just so happens to look like- yes, you guessed it- the South-East of England.

Avon teleports down, leaving the others with strict instructions not to follow. If he misses just one of his hourly call-backs, they are to leave on a pre-programmed course, and a pre-recorded message explaining his actions will be played on arrival. That’s it. Avon gives no further explanation before teleporting down. Naturally, Tarrant and Cally make plans to follow.

Avon is being watched by two sinister-looking mulleted Aryan types, as the treasure hunt continues. Eventually, Avon finds an entrance to some kind of underground base. Meanwhile, aboard the Liberator, the liquid is gradually penetrating the ship’s hull.     

The two mulleted strangers attempt to follow Avon, but are suddenly attacked and killed by Gerald from Not the Nine O’ Clock News. What else?

Exploring this strange underground location, Avon discovers evidence that none other than Blake himself is being held somewhere close by, and is receiving treatment for some very serious injuries. At this point, though, Avon is caught, and knocked out.

On board the Liberator, things are getting serious as the strange alien enzymes threaten to overwhelm the ship. Interesting, though, that it’s Vila who takes charge of the situation, ordering Zen to cease repairs in the hope that focusing on diagnosing the problem might save them all.

Cally and Tarrant reach the door, where they are attacked. Fortunately, Gerald and his flange of silly gorilla costumes are mysteriously much less formidable that they were against those two redshirts earlier, and are quickly disposed of.

Avon wakes up to find himself lying on a table, but somehow at liberty to wander about. Soon he finds a bearded Blake, lying on a table. It’s a shock to see Blake again; the banter between the two of them is the same as ever. Blake has discovered an exciting but vague supply of unobtainium nearby, but is unable to leave his life support and survive. Avon is rendered unconscious again suspiciously soon after this.

The following scene is fascinating; something is done to Avon, and he’s put back exactly where he was before. A lot of effort is expended to ensure he has no idea he’s been moved. This is a pleasingly metatextual scene; the comment that “We must keep the continuity right” must be a constant refrain in any television drama.     

It is, of course, an elaborate trap set by Servalan; what else could it have been? Avon is wonderfully unsurprised, and the conversation between them has just the right amount of flirting to keep this very interesting relationship simmering nicely.

Servalan is oddly lenient in her demands; a season ago she would have been much more ruthless. In return for the Liberator, she’s prepared to grant Avon his liberty, along with that of his comrades; Blake; and a ship. What we know, and Servalan doesn’t, is that the Liberator is dying. Zen’s last words are quite moving, and it’s interesting that it should be Vila who is most affected.

Servalan hasn’t quite kept her side of the bargain; “Blake” was an illusion, carefully engineered by the continuity artist and their mates, and the ship they are to have will require a bit of work. Servalan claims that Blake died a year ago and she saw him cremated. Of course, we only have her word for this.

Annoyingly, Servalan spouts some absolute crap about the flanges of Geralds being what man is said to evolve into. What utter arsecack!!! That isn’t how natural selection works. Sorry, bit of a bugbear of mine.

It’s a pyrrhic victory for Servalan, of course. She has the Liberator, but as soon as she orders it moved (“Maximum power!”), it starts to blow up. Servalan is last seen running into the teleporter…

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: Moloch

“The Liberator? That’s Blake’s ship.”

“He liked to think so…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blake's 7: Ultraworld

“Kiss me!”

What a stupid title.

I’ve never before encountered Trevor Hoyle; it seems he’s another novelist, and this is his only TV script. I wasn’t impressed with this at all; artifact sci-fi by numbers with Hanna Barbera characterisation.

The establishing scenes at the very start are getting increasingly good; the starscapes and the model of the Liberator at the start of the episode look fantastic, the most impressive example of a recent trend. It’s such a shame that what follows is so rubbish.

This episode seems to have been put into this slot to tread water before we start the final stretch to the end of the season. We do get an interesting arc-related comment from Tarrant though: “The rate Servalan’s empire has been expanding, anything is possible!” It seems that, while the Liberator’s crew have been aimlessly arsing about under Avon, the Federation has been quietly re-establishing itself under a particularly effective dictator.

The dynamics of the crew are interesting here, too. Fitting, after Tarrant’s belittling in the last episode, that Avon should be so unambiguously in charge here. It’s such a shame that Vila, after his recent chance to shine, should be such a cartoon character here.

The ship comes across a mysterious, spiky, artificial planet. Cally is feeling telepathic vibes from this. This is all distressingly familiar; how many artefact-centred episodes have we had recently, and how many times has Cally had some vague telepathic response to something outside the ship? After a good run of episodes the series suddenly seems to be stuck in a rut.

Everyone except Vila (whose every action and every line is excruciating) teleports down to the artifact to find the suddenly missing Cally, and discover that they’re inside a massive computer, a concert that seems anything but modern in this day and age. They are accosted by three rather amusing, and rather chatty, stereotypes of officialdom.  This computer world exists for no other purpose than to gather knowledge (yeah, right!) and apparently it’s alive and, er, “It built itself”. How does that work then? Oh, and Cally is just having a little nap.

Tarrant wanders off and overhears said officials talking about “the core”, and that Cally is in fact to be “wiped clean, ready for absorption”. Subtle as ever, Tarrant reveals himself and starts shouting, only being rescued from his utter twonkishness by the much more sensible, and cooler, Dayna. I like Dayna. She’s capable, up for a bit of arse-kicking and won’t take any crap. I find her rather sexy. Still, after Avon is captured, and with Cally still out of it and Vila just spouting stupid jokes, the only hope lies with Dayna. And, to make things worse, she’s encumbered with the useless Tarrant.

Things get even worse when the two of them find (oh dear) a Giant Rubber Brain which apparently eats the thoughts of its victims before literally eating their bodies for nourishment. Er, right. The episode has pretty much jumped off a cliff by this point, although at least we het some amusing remarks from the three officials. Avon, apparently is to be absorbed, as the Core has need of brains of “such high calibre”. Dayna is to be absorbed, too, but Tarrant will be a “menial”. Heh!

Things get even sillier as Dayna and Tarrant are captured and forced to perform a “human bonding ceremony” for the voyeuristic pleasure of the Core. The foreplay begins with a bit of kissing although, this being Blake’s 7, they are of course both fully clothed. Still, this must be a pivotal episode for any Dayna / Tarrant shippers out there, although I can’t imagine any kind of shipping involving Tarrant could possibly exist.

Mid-snog, Dayna manages to throw off a bomb so they can escape. The Earth certainly moves for the officials as they ask “Is that the bonding ceremony?” Sadly, that the last moment of the episode which is in any way entertaining. Thankfully, they all escape and the episode finally ends, as “Ultraworld” is somehow killed by Vila’s riddles.

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 Children of Auron

“The trouble with the people of Auron is that they all suffer from a superiority complex.”

Is it me, or does Servalan look particularly ravishing in this episode with that gorgeous make-up? Then again, I do have a bit of a predilection for evil women. She’s back, anyway, complete with mutoids and fractious underlings, and this time she’s more heinous than ever, planning to unleash a plague on Cally’s home planet of Auron.

Meanwhile, aboard the Liberator, Avon (who seems to be more or less top dog at this point) has decided they’re all going to Earth to “execute” Anna Grant’s killer. This is a far cry from Blake’s idealism (although this, as we’ve seen, carried its own big problems), and I think the sheer crudeness of this desire for revenge rather appals Cally, who spends this episode uncharacteristically at odds with him. But this stuff, of course, is only here to be contrasted with the motivations Cally is soon to acquire, which will cause Avon to be outvoted.

Servalan “rescues” an Auronar pilot (Michael Troughton) and infects him with a nasty pathogen before sending him on his way, and he duly infects the planet. This is the first time we’ve got to see Auron, a planet we’ve heard so much about, and it’s a crushing disappointment to behold; a control room staffed by people in dull space uniforms, an equally dull laboratory, and a bit of location footage shot in an industrial complex. That’s it. And, aside from the fact that for the last three decades they’ve reproduced by cloning (why?), they’re a bit telepathic (although we only actually see this with Cally and her sister, although it’s only the younger, cloned, generations that seem capable of this), and they’re strictly neutral, we get absolutely no impression of their having any kind of culture or hinterland. It’s a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Conveniently, Cally has a twin sister, Zelda, and Zelda’s telepathic abilities are apparently capable of traversing many light years instantaneously to reach Cally. So, er, telepathic vibes can travel faster than light then? Oooo-kaaay…

Avon is unable to persuade everyone that it’s a trap, so off they go. It is a trap, of course, but it’s more than that. Servalan wants to use their cloning technology to reproduce- asexually, with all the children being young copies of herself. It’s interesting to see Servalan showing a maternal instinct, but there’s something cold and sexless, not to mention genocidal, about how she intends to fulfil it.

I realise this is going to make be sound incredibly stupid, by the way, but it’s only when Avon suggests consulting Orac about what to do that I realised that Orac is transparently intended as a kind of “oracle”. How thick am I? Never mind. It’s also revealing to hear the Auronars refer to Servalan as merely the “president” of a “faction” of the “ex-Federation”. It seems her powers are not as great as her fancy title might imply.

Everyone, aside from Dayna, Vila and, if he counts, Orac, teleport down, and it’s not long before they and their rather wet hosts are taken prisoner by one of Servalan’s squabbling underlings. Servalan is now in a position to bargain with Vila for the Liberator by threatening to kill everyone. Unfortunately, her plan fails miserably because for some reason she forgets Dayna exists. It’s nice to see Dayna kicking some arse, incidentally. She’s being written with more personality than lately, and I like her- smart, loyal, fond of administering a good kicking but ultimately kind and caring. Plus Josette Simon is rather attractive, I have to say…

As usual, Servalan’s plans unravel, and the subplot between Servalan’s two underlings becomes interesting; Ginka, the junior underling, lies to Servalan, claiming that his superior officer destroyed her own offspring and replaced them with his. This means Servalan no longer has any reason to blow up the room out heroes are hiding in. They all manage, with Dayna’s help, to teleport away, complete with incubators containing the genetic material for five thousand babies. Inevitably, Cally and her sister (who inevitably meet, although only through glass; the budget won’t stretch to split screen!) can’t both be allowed to live due to the strains this would place on the special effects budget, so Zelda has to rather pointlessly sacrifice herself.

Servalan instinctively knows that her own “children” are blown up (er, quite), and is genuinely anguished by this, instantly killing both of this episode’s underlings.

It’s not clear how this ends for Auron- there’s to be a new Auronar colony with a disturbingly young median age, yes, but what happened to the survivors on Auron itself? This is a fairly rubbish script from Roger Parkes, really, and the Hanna Barbera ending is possibly the worst bit of all.

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: Harvest of Kairos

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

I should like you to do it again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blake's 7: Dawn of the Gods

“Perhaps he had an unfortunate experience with a computer.”

“Haven’t we all?”

This one is written by James Follett. Wikipedia tells me he’s a very successful novelist but he’s done very little TV. His script here is an intriguing sci-fi concept, and starts to develop the interactions of the new crew in interesting ways.

We start with a sitcom-like scene as everyone plays Space Monopoly and Orac is extremely competitive. Fortunately, things soon improve as a mysterious force starts to act on the ship, although both Zen and Orac, being computers and thus pedantic, insist that all is normal. In fact, the pedantry, annoyingness and frustration of computers seems to be something of a subtext.

The stress of the situation highlights an interesting development; Tarrant, with his military background, seems to be acting as the leader. This is very interesting; so far this season the Liberator has unambiguously been Avon’s ship! I wonder where this is going? Will there be conflict? Is Tarrant going to take over? Have the writers decided that having Avon as leader isn’t good for the character’s development? It’s intriguing, anyway. Unlike between Avon and Blake there seems to be no ideological dimension, at least not yet. And I notice Avon is the only character who isn’t ordered about by Tarrant.

Another interesting development is the obvious mild racism felt by our two newcomers towards Cally, an alien. It’s a small sign that Dayna and Tarrant are not quite settled in yet.

The ship is being drawn “outside” the galaxy, “into spiral space”. I’m not sure what this means- are we being told that the spiral arms are not part of the proper galaxy? Because Earth is in one! As well as all the Population I stars with the heavy elements needed for life…! Never mind. Whatever it is, it’s uncharted space, from whose bourn no traveller returns.

Eventually we realise that the ship is falling into a black hole, which is a bit of a problem. Worse, it turns out to be Orac’s fault; the black hole is not emitting x-rays, which makes it unique, and so Orac was curious! I must say, whatever the kamikaze characterisation of Orac, it’s a very science-literate script. Although of course I say that as an English graduate who got all my physics from television and A Brief History of Time…

Interesting that, as the ship faces what seem to be its final moments, Avon tries to get into a spacesuit and Tarrant fights to stop him, although he wouldn’t be any more or less dead if Avon were to survive! Afterwards he even says that “One day, Avon, I may have to kill you.” Ooh!

Initially, we seem to have that hoary old sci-fi cliché of the ship being the other side of the black hole in a kind of nothing dimension. But this is nicely undercut by the realisation that the ship is just in a very big, dark cave! There’s another nice, metatextual touch when the big, nasty monster turns out to be just special effects!

Eventually, though, the crew meet a man dressed in strange ancient regime type clothing. He says this is Krandor, an artificial planet, home to the mighty Thaarn. And he is the Caliph(!) of Krandor. What a bizarre choice of title! I wonder what Muslim viewers thought.

The Caliph, extremely polite though he is, is essentially enslaving Avon and co and stealing the Liberator, which he wants to break up for its precious unobtainium. His neuronic whip is rather nasty, although at least it only gets used on the rather annoying Tarrant. It’s distressingly early, but I’m taking quite a dislike to the character. Perhaps I’m intended to, though? Interesting to see if this looks plausible in the longer term.

Of course, Dayna and Tarrant are both rather clever in what they say about Orac, not lying (on pain of death!), but not revealing who or what he truly is. This means, of course, that Orac and Zen are able to kill the two redshirts who come to cut up the Liberator. No wonder the mighty Thaarn, Auron god or otherwise, hates computers.

This use of mythology is a nice spin on the old Arthur C Clarke idea of sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, but I have to say the idea of an advanced technology having banned computers looks a lot less plausible in 2011 than it would have done in 1980.

Thaarn, in the end, turns out to be a rather vulnerable, lonely old man, defeated by Cally and her resourcefulness in a Wizard of Oz type climax. I love this kind of metatextual stuff, and there’s some nice character stuff too; it’s a good episode. Still, a non-arc episode seems odd at this point!

Blake's 7: Volcano

“If that’s winning, I’ll take losing every time.”

An Allan Prior script, this time. It’s something of a by-the-numbers, mildly disappointing episode, but it’s fascinating to see how Tarrant and Dayna continue to develop and relate with their new comrades. It’s such a shame that Servalan seems to have permanently changed from Machiavellian schemer to stereotypical scenery-chewing baddie.

Stock footage of a volcano to start with, as Dayna and Tarrant teleport down to the planet Obsidian to find some friends of Dayna’s father. Meanwhile, also on this planet are Michael Gough and a robot that, firstly, looks ridiculous and Lost in Space-y and, secondly, looks like a man in a suit. Not good.

Meanwhile, on the Liberator, Avon and Vila are theorising about the planet, its volcano, and how come it has managed to avoid being colonised or dragged into the Galactic War. Is it me, though, or has Vila lost a few IQ points this series? He seems at times to be as stupid as Avon keeps saying he is.

Oh, and there are rumours of Blake being on this planet, apparently. He’s only been away a couple of episodes and now he’s some kind of mysterious, legendary figure.

Dayna and Tarrant are an interesting pair. Dayna entirely trusts her new comrades (especially Avon!), but Tarrant is still finding it hard to trust anyone completely. He seems to be a loner at heart. It’s not long before they’re captured, but their captors don’t seem all that hostile. The chap played by Michael Gough is called Hower, and his rather bland son is Bershar. Fortunately, the old man knew Dayna’s father. They’re friendly pacifists, socially engineered to be that way because of electric shocks and constant propaganda. This bit troubles me. Isn’t this all a bit totalitarian? The script doesn’t seem to have much to say on the debate between peace and free will. That’s particularly disappointing for a programme based on the theme of freedom vs. tyranny.

Servalan is nearby and, although Travis is dead, there are still Mutoids. She seems to know exactly where to find the Liberator. I wonder why that is? At last, a bit of a mystery. It’s not as though Hower and his lot are the only suspects! It’s interesting to see how the politics are changing, too. Now that Servalan is President, and therefore less interesting with no greasy pole to climb, her new underling, Mori, is the new Servalan, a potential Supreme Commander, with the Liberator as potential prize. This gives a real sense of things being in flux, but at the same time the series is feeling a little unsettled and uncertain.

Avon gets a good episode, though. Being leader has given him a sense of responsibility he never had before, but he’s entirely the same person. His closet heroism may be more obvious now without Blake to hide behind, but he still tries to hide behind cynical comments. Still, he’s the one who’s teleporting all over the place, finding out what’s going on, and co-ordinating everything. He’s a more efficient leader than Blake ever was, and underneath it all he’s far more concerned for his crew.

Tarrant and Dayna are, inevitably, betrayed by Michael Gough’s son, who is not quite the pacifist his father is. Meanwhile, Servalan has a fleet of eight ships in orbit.

Things start to get very pear-shaped indeed, with the Liberator surrounded, and boarded by four soldiers. They’re driven away, but not without taking Cally and Orac with them. At least, as it turns out, Dayna and Tarrant were never really in much danger; they’re soon freed by Michael Gough, who soon calmly kills his own son(!) in a not-entirely-pacifistic manner. Even less pacifist is the massive nuclear bomb we’re now told lurks under the volcano, waiting to be operated by means of a Big Red Button. That’s how the planet has avoided unwelcome attention; no one’s called their bluff. Except they’re not bluffing. As soon as our heroes are all back on board, the planet goes boom. This story might not have much to say on the blatantly tyrannical nature of their society, but I’m guessing that Allan Prior was no great fan of nuclear weapons.

It doesn’t lead anywhere, incidentally, but Servalan muses at one point that, without Blake, the crew of the Liberator are “merely criminals” and “they’ll keep!”

Blake's 7: Power Play

“This is my ship!”

This time around it’s a little less surprising to see Terry Nation’s name in the credits, and things are settling down to a smaller scale after the recent epic events. The status quo is still very much in flux though, and that makes for an exciting episode.

We get a little reprise and carry directly on from the cliffhanger; Avon soon discovers there’s not only this Federation officer chap (Del,Tarrant, the most Terry Nation name ever!) but a full half dozen Federation troops. There’s also a rather thuggish second in command called Clegg. Fascinatingly, he’s played by Michael Sheard, a far from obvious choice for this part. And yet Sheard manages to show what a brilliant range he has by being possibly the best thing in the episode.

Shipping alert: interesting that Avon should describe Dayna as his wife. Let’s face it- they are, aren’t they?

Avon manages to bluff his way through for a short while, but eventually he and Dayna end up locked into a rather familiar-looking cell. But these Federation types aren’t in control; the Liberator will answer only to the existing crew, and they are powerless to control the ship. We hear Vila trying to communicate; evidently he’s in trouble. By this point we think we know what’s going on from the set-up. Rather cleverly, though, we’re going to be wrong-footed by the time the episode ends. The situation is not what it seems. Terry Nation might be a bit basic with his characterisation, but when he wasn’t trying to write two many episodes at once he was a bloody good plotter.

Vila, on a “primitive” planet which bears an odd resemblance to Hertfordshire or some such place, befriends a couple of rather nice “primitives”. It seems they’re being hunted by someone or something which uses searchlights, eerily scanning the forest. Much to Vila’s surprise, they turn out to be rather nice seeming young ladies. Of course, Vila’s relieved to be taken to civilisation. It seems that the original settlers on this planet split into “hi-techs” and ”primitives” in a situation rather similar to The Face of Evil, a Doctor Who Story from a few years earlier by none other than Chris Boucher. Clearly, absolutely nothing can go wrong now.

Cally seems to be all right, too; she’s being cared for on a medical ship, from a neutral planet, staffed by rather nice nurses dressed in strange green nurses’ uniforms. All right, that is, until the next patient to be picked up turns out to be Servalan, who is again acting rather more like Thatcher than she did in the previous two series.

Avon gets to sneakily talk to Zen, and is told that Blake is heading for some planet called Epheron, while Jenna is going to somewhere called Morphenniel for some reason. That’s the last we’ll be hearing from them, then.

Things start to go pear-shaped, though; Dayna gets caught by Mr Bronson, while Avon is caught by Tarrant, who turns out to be a clever chap and to have worked out who he is. Fortunately, Tarrant turns out be a bit of a rebel disguised as a Federation officer and, seeing as he’s rather helpfully been bumping off the troops one by one, there are now only three Federation bods on the ship. I’m not sure about this Tarrant, though. Bit bland, isn’t he?

Vila and Cally meet up just as they’re both about to be taken into the “Hi-Tech” city to make their “useful contribution”. What could possibly go wrong now? Quite a lot, it seems. The Federation may be a shadow of its former self, but Servalan, after a little light humiliation, is able to bribe her way out, and gleefully informs the pair of themselves that they’re about to be vivisected- humanely, of course.

In the end, after a bit of negotiation, plotting and intrigue between Mr Bronson and our heroes, it’s brute force than wins out, as Avon, Dayna and Tarrant simply stop trying to be clever and simply beat the crap out of Mr Bronson and co. Cally and Avon are teleported up seconds before their certain death, and the new status quo is established. We now have two crew members, the rather sexy and likeable Dayna and the yawn-inducing Tarrant…

Blake's 7: Aftermath

“You were with Blake?”

“Yes, but it hardly seems to matter now, if it ever did.”

Ooh, brand new opening titles! Not very good, are they? I’m surprised to see this episode is written by Terry Nation; hadn’t he gone to America by now?

The opening scenes, with lots of spaceships shooting at each other, look great, and epic, and very, very Star Wars-y, as per last episode. Blake’s 7 is still very much in epic mode, right to the end of this episode, at least, but things are a bit calmer, and there’s a lot of reflection on what the new status quo is going to be.

We’re told in just one line of dialogue that Jenna has “gone with Blake”, and it’s clear that both of them have suddenly left the series. Everything’s in flux, though; the Liberator is very badly damaged and the remaining crew- Cally, Vila and Avon have to get on the lifeboats. This being Terry Nation, there’s a countdown, and they make it only at the last second. But that’s the last we see of Cally or Vila- this episode is all Avon.

The planet below is not safe, though. We get a quick scene where two Federation redshirts (one of them played by Richard Franklin) get to spout some brief exposition, to the effect that the Federation has won the war and destroyed all the aliens, but only at the cost of 80% of the Federation fleet being destroyed. Having fulfilled this brief function, these two characters are no longer needed, and are duly killed by the planet’s resident mediaeval warriors, who really do look rather cool.

Avon, too, comes a cropper in this way, until he’s saved by Dayna, a rather cute young lady with a bow and arrow. During his descent he was clearly not expecting things to turn out well, but soon he’s being looked after by a gorgeous girl with an obvious sense of fun, who tells him he’s beautiful and slowly kisses him out of “curiosity!” It’ll be interesting to see, as the series goes on, whether the two of them come across as a couple or not.

It seems that Dayna and her father are from Earth, the only people from “civilised” territory to be living on this planet. Having stopped off to collect Orac, Dayna takes Avon to her home, under the sea. But, as we see, Servalan is also marooned on this planet, alone and unable to communicate to her underlings. She unexpectedly pulls a gun on an unsurprised Avon, only or Dayna to turn all this into a Mexican standoff, which soon gains an extra layer of complication as the natives attack. Forced to co-operate, Servalan cheerfully admits that her gun isn’t loaded anyway.

They’re taken to Dayna’s rather stylish home, where Avon meets her father, Hal Mellaney, with his afro and cool shades. Mellaney is some kind of rebel, exiled from the Federation, and he’s somewhat awed to find that Avon was with Blake. Servalan, meanwhile, pumps Dayna for information in an extremely sinister fashion. Is it me, or is Jacqueline Pearce basing her performance more on the equally sinister Margaret Thatcher than she used to?

Mellaney further reveals that Dayna, in spite of her penchant for old-fashioned bows and arrows, is something of a genius when is comes to weapons engineering. He reveals that, after being caught running weapons to some rebels, he lost his sight after being tortured by the Federation, and needs a special device to give him partial vision. His position as an exile may no longer be necessary, though; the Federation’s military has been decimated, and it is falling apart. As Avon says, it seems as though Blake has won both of his wars.

We briefly meet his adopted daughter, Lauren, and Avon hears from Zen, via Orac. Jenna is on a hospital ship being taken away from the series, Cally and Vila are missing, and an unknown ship is trying to dock at the Liberator.  Servalan, of course, overhears all this, and we get a simply awesome and erotically charged scene between her and Avon. Servalan starts by articulating her deep misunderstanding of Avon’s personality, assuming that the surface cynicism, rather than being the defence mechanism of a passionate and principled man, is who he is. She’s making an obvious miscalculation in assuming that he will ever agree, now that Star One has been destroyed, to make use of Orac and the Liberator to restore the Federation and share power with her. As Avon wisely notes, “I’d be dead in a week.” But still, before he refuses we get that kiss! There’s real sexual chemistry between them, although they’re always going to be enemies. There’s something rather exciting about that!

Hal mentions to Avon that he’d like Dayna to leave (the implication is with Avon) to see the universe. This has something of the last wish about it- we know at this point that he won’t survive the episode. And, sure enough, he catches Servalan sneaking into the room to steal Orac. Servalan taunts him quite nastily before killing him. This episode demonstrates more clearly than ever before that she really is a textbook psychopath.                                      

Dayna is devastated, and she and Avon set off to find Servalan. And, just to make her day even worse, her sister Lauren has been crucified by the natives. Suddenly she has nothing but Avon. She promises Servalan to her face that she’s going to kill her.

There are further stand-offs between the two of them Servalan and the natives. We end with Servalan about to shoot the two of them, but they are both rather fortuitously teleported aboard the Liberator as Avon has pre-programmed. All is not well, though; there’s a stranger aboard. He declares the ship to be Federation property and threatens them both with summary execution…

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!