Blake's 7: Sand

“Perhaps I like watching old films?”

Oh my. This is the best episode ever. Yes, the central conceit is a bit of an off-the-shelf sci-fi concept, but who cares? Poetic dialogue; fascinating character stuff; fourth wall-shattering critiques of how rubbish this series has mostly been, smuggled into the dialogue- this episode has it all. I rather admired the last episode by Tanith Lee while feeling it went somewhat over my head. But this is an episode to love without reserve. Prepare for much gushing.

The opening moments show us an atmospheric panorama of the planet Virn, over which we hear some rather poetic dialogue which echoes Shelley or Coleridge. This is a statement of intent; we’re getting more than an ordinary Blake’s 7 script here. And the sudden reveal that all this happened five years ago, and Keller’s last message is being watched by Servalan also introduces us to all the lovely metatextual fun that we’re going to be having.

The parallel opening scenes, sharing exposition duties between Servalan, Reeve and underling on the one hand and Avon and co on the other, is nicely done. And the sudden crashing of Servalan’s shuttle is both unexpected and a powerful demonstration of the threat posed by this eerie, silent planet. Virn, almost uniquely in this series, looks nothing like the South-East of England. It may not look quite real, perhaps- it’s more like a stage set than anything one might see at the cinema- but realism doesn’t matter. The look of the planet just works, and drenches the episode in atmosphere.

The initial dynamics between Servalan and Reeve is fascinating; marooned and helpless, the dynamics of the group are in flux, and Servalan’s position as top dog is under threat. This is emphasised even more once their underling has been attacked and killed, apparently by the sand.

There’s a great scene with Reeve revealing that he knows that “Sleer” is in fact Servalan, and this leads to a situation with Servalan, Reeve and Tarrant all wandering independently around pillars with a gun as though they’re in a shoot-‘em-up! Of course, Reeve ends up dead- such is the fate of all who discover who Servalan really is- and the fascinating scenes between Tarrant and Servalan begin. The chemistry between the two is apparent from the start. Jacqueline Pearce is fantastic here.

Aboard the Scorpio, Avon has pretty much worked out that the planet is a single living organism, and that the thunder is caused by Scorpio “irritating” the atmosphere. All things electronic are going a bit funny, too; it’s rather arresting to hear Orac saying “I love you”!

After a bit of flirting, Servalan and Tarrant arrive at Keller’s crashed ship, and begin to work out what’s going in while continuing to flirt and, eventually, connect with each other.

On the Scorpio, though, there’s some extraordinary character stuff going on. Soolin’s throwaway reference to Lee’s previous script isn’t very significant at face value, as she dismisses the theory at once, but hints that the rules are not as they usually are. And Vila, the drunken court jester, is allowed to say some very true things. “Who cared about Cally?” he moans, implicitly criticising the scripts in the earlier part of the season for their unforgivable failure to mourn her passing in any way.

Both Tarrant and Avon work out the truth; the planet is alive, and the sand carnivorous. It seeks to kill the humans it does not need, and domesticate the rest. This, of course, means as many fertile females as it can get, plus a solitary “bull” to service them! I’m not sure this is good genetics, but as a dramatic plot device it certainly works. If nothing, it gives us Josette Simon’s wonderful delivery of the line “Well, how could we refuse, Avon? You are the dominant male, aren’t you?”

It’s interesting that it should be the less than cerebral Tarrant, not the usually self-assured Servalan, that should work this out. Servalan is unusually vulnerable here; it seems that Don Keller was her lover when she was eighteen, but he left her. Since then she has devoted herself to power, and “Power is like a drug. It’s beautiful!” It says a lot that she should tell all this to Tarrant. Oh, and then there’s that kiss. Although we’re left in no doubt that she’s dangerous, and will have no compunction about killing Tarrant when the time comes.

It’s obvious what Tarrant has been up to once he’s back aboard the Scorpio. Dayna is disgusted- nice touch- and Avon, I believe, is jealous!

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…

Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden

Part One

“Interfere? Of course we should interfere! Always do what you’re best at, that’s what I say.”

It seems very strange to see Bob Baker credited as the writer with nary a sign of Dave Martin. But we’re instantly thrust into a familiar environment: deep space, a spaceship and those vaguely dull corridors that were always used to represent the future in the late 70s. The silliness of the incidental moment at the start is worrying but the story gets off to a good start, with David “Irongron” Daker and an early Big Sci-Fi Idea as two ships are melded together following exactly the sort of hyperspace jump we were told was “theoretically absurd” in The Stones of Blood.

Interestingly, I came to The Creature from the Pit expecting to like a story I had fond memories of but came away feeling slightly disappointed. In contrast I’d always thought of Nightmare of Eden as too sensible by half for the season it’s in and dominated by an overly preachy and excessively foregrounded “just say no, kids” moral about drugs. But in truth, I didn’t really find that much to object to on that score. There’s still something not quite right in the depiction of Vraxoin though. If it induces apathy and then kills you as quickly as it seems to, why would anyone take it in the first place? It just doesn’t seem realistic for people to be that stupid- you can’t imagine anyone taking it and imagining they could just take it a few times and not get addicted, which is how drug addiction tends to start in the real world. It’s all just too simplistic and devoid of grey areas, as though people who take drugs in real life are just being suicidal and nihilistic. Having said that, though, this time round it didn’t seem to be there primarily just to provide a cheap patronising moral but mainly to provide the basis for a sci-fi crime caper, if not quite Doctor Who does The Sweeney. And that makes it a lot less of a problem.

There are lots of little things in this episode to give us a flavour of what this future (twenty years after 2096, so roughly 2116) is like- a galactic recession, a real sense of an interstellar economy, scientific research. Other cool things include the Miniscope- er, CET machine, Tryst’s accent and the Doctor’s response to Rigg questioning who he is: “Galactic went out of business twenty years ago.” “I wondered why I hadn’t been paid.” “That’s not good enough.” “That’s what I thought.”

All good so far.

Part Two

“Nothing’s inexplicable.”

“Then explain it!”

Rigg’s drink is spiked with Vraxoin… but it’s meant for Romana! There’s clearly a baddie amongst the guest characters. The murder mystery aspect of the plot is quite well-handled and there’s a lot of misdirection, although the limited number of suspects means it’s not that hard to guess at least who one of the villains is.

We get some rather oddly dressed passengers, a chase involving a mystery man,. Revelations concerning Stott and Della, and two comedy thick excise officers who promptly try to arrest the Doctor and Romana. Oh, for a piece of psychic paper… This is fast-moving and genuinely well-plotted stuff, with the witty dialogue on top of a proper serious story. It’s a formula that seems to be working a lot better than the previous story.

Part Three

“Well, it’s a perfectly ordinary electric dog.”

The Doctor and Romana have been forced to take refuge in the CET machine, in a section taken from the planet Eden. So naturally the Doctor decides “Let’s go east!” Nice touch, that. And we learn that the creatures from the Black Lagoon- er, Eden, are called Mandrels. And Stutt’s been hiding in the CET machine spending most of his time being a narcotics agent (ah!) generally not being dead. This is good plot stuff- such constructive use of a third episode is almost unheard of in Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, the passengers are being attacked by Mandrels. Rigg, high on Vraxoin, protests that “They’re only economy class. What’s all the fuss about?” while the excise men generally faff about being generally incompetent. There’s no real sense of threat even as the excise man threatens Romana with a gun, but that’s ok as they’re basically just there to provide the comic relief.

This episode’s big reveal is that Vraxoin is made from dead Mandrels. But, good, well-constructed story that it is, Nightmare of Eden has plenty of surprises to come…

Part Four

“My arms! My legs! My everything!”

The ships have been separated at last, and the Doctor has vanished from the Hecate. But he turns out to be aboard the Empress, where he discovers that Dymond is implicated in the Vraxoin smuggling. I didn’t see that coming. Tryst’s guilt was just a teeny bit more obvious, but I suspect from the blatant way he tries to manipulate the excise man that we’re supposed to have already worked out that he’s a baddie. His efforts are futile though- from the moment Stott reveals himself it’s the Doctor, up to now a fugitive, who’s instantly in charge.

There’s a neat ending with Tryst being hoist by his own petard, and a nice delivery of “Go away.” By Tom Baker. A very appropriate ending to a very skilfully plotted tale.

Surprisingly better than I remembered, then- much better plotted, wittier, and much less focused on preaching about drugs than I remembered. A solid 4/5.

Doctor Who: The Space Museum

The Space Museum

"You wouldn't say that, young lady, if we ever meet [the Daleks] again. Which to say the least is very unlikely."


Nice opening model shots, and an intriguing conceptual mystery from the start. The Doctor's continual refusal to explain is most amusing. Vicki's dropped glass un-breaking and jumping back into her hands deepens the mystery, and it's good to see the food machine again. It's also great to see the Dalek, and Vicki's lines about the Dalek invasion happened over three hundred years ago is our first explicit suggestion that all the TARDIS's landings in the future take place in the same timeline which should in theory be internally consistent.

This is a great episode driven by fantastic concepts, for once making actual use of the time travel premise of the show. Great cliffhanger, too.

The Dimensions of Time

"Chesterton, this is no time to be playing cowboys and Indians!"


Suddenly this story is looking a lot less visually interesting, with some very dull corridors and costumes. The actors playing the Xerons don't exactly imbue them with charisma either. The time travel concepts now fade into the background, although the TARDISeers' attempt to avoid their preordained fate will remain as an intriguing element.

The Doctor namedrops James Watt here, although Jacqueline Hill has to prompt Hartnell for the line. Nice line from Barbara: "All the doors and corridors are exactly alike." No doubt this is the one and only time we'll be hearing such sentiments...

The Doctor'd monocle is very cool indeed, but is very quickly topped by his antics in the Dalek. This story may look dull, and have Xerons in it, but otherwise I must admit it's keeping me interested.

The Search

"It's nothing to do with me! I'm just a simple soldier!"

So, no Doctor in this episode! it's good to see Vicki getting a chance to shine though. Her attitude is great: "Sitting here planning and dreaming of a revolution isn't going to bring your planet back!" It's rather arresting to see this revolution taking the form of acquiring guns though- certainly not something you'd see in later eras!

Why do the Xerons, just because they're the goodies, have to be a perfectly peaceful people, free from all want? Can't they be allowed just one tiny flaw?

The Final Phase

"Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?"


Vicki continues to be great here, effectively directing the revolution. We get a nice ending, with the TARDISeers all imprisoned but Vicki's already ensured their release- she's the real star of the story.

The last scene comes as a real surprise though- Daleks! With a time machine! And now with vertical slats- it seems that the lost old style Dalek we saw was the one in the exhibition.


Overall, I quite enjoyed this. The first episode was great, with the others not being as good (par for the course for the science fiction stories so far), but a lot of the dullness was the fault of the design and some of the guest actors- the script was good throughout. This is nowhere near as boring as its reputation- a solid 3/5.