The Prisoner: A Change of Mind

"Unmutual!"

Wow. This is actually quite a harrowing episode that goes to some very dark and totalitarian places, exploring the nature of tyranny to an extent rarely seen even in The Prisoner. It's almost a common cliche that British science fiction of the post-war, Cold War era deals with themes of totalitarianism, freedom and tyranny, reflecting a nation relieved to have escaped Hitler's clutches and looking nervously over to the Eastern Bloc.

Things are very dark from the start. Number Six is using his private makeshift gym again, until a couple of thugs rough him up a bit for having the effrontery to expect privacy. Things then escalate as he is made to confess before a "committee" which has no interest in protestations of innocence; this is a Stalin-type show trial and the confession of Number Six's bearded predecessor is deeply distressing to observe. Even the absurd surrealism of the committee's appearance is sinister in the same way as the Nazis' goose-stepping; yes, it's silly. But you're too terrified to laugh, which makes the silliness something quite different. And, as though things were not awful enough, a woman is being "treated" for obvious depression in this context. Then we get the sinister "social group", evoking Mao's contemporary Cultural Revolution as dissenters are verbally denounced, although I'd like to think that the rare casting of an actor of Chinese origin here is not stereotyping.

Things get even more horrifying as we turn to the medicalisation of dissent in the hospital- something which, at the time, would very much evoke the USSR of Brezhnev, with its treatment of dissent as psychiatric illness. But then we seem to observe Number Six being lobotomised- something which even Brezhnev saw as beyond the pale. Of course the series has to continue after this, so the lobotomy turns out to have been a charade and the reset button remains available for pressing. But this in no way lessens the horror.

Yes, Number Six sort of turns the tables at the end. But even here he finds the mob mentality a depressingly small-minded one. An extraordinary and outstanding piece of television, which disturbed me far more than any horror film I've ever seen.

Blake's 7: Headhunter

“I was a perfect gentleman towards her!”

“That’s what bothered us.”

Oh dear. Another rubbish episode. That’ll be five out of six for the season so far. Not good. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise; Roger Parkes wrote Children of Auron, after all…

For the second episode in a row, our heroes are desperately flailing around trying to recruit an eminent scientist in the hope he’ll be of some vague use. Vila and Tarrant are sent to collect this chap, Muller, while Avon uses his limitless charm to entertain his girlfriend, played by a disturbingly young Lynda Bellingham. But Muller calls Scorpio to say that someone’s on to him and he needs to be teleported up immediately.

There are clues that something’s up as soon as Vila and Tarrant teleport down. For a start, Muller is dressed quite absurdly, and his voice sounds a bit robotic which, as we will soon learn, a dead giveaway. Tarrant decides at the last minute to bring along a mysterious black box. Lucky he did, in the light of what happens.

Muller goes completely off his rocker once he finds the box is aboard, and sets about tussling with Tarrant in a highly unconvincing way. Plot convenience demands at this point that Vila is able to knock him out, possibly killing him, by a simple blow on the back, in spite of the superhuman strength he is later revealed to have.

Vila and Tarrant set off back to base with their black box and seemingly dead passenger, but things soon start to go wrong. Firstly Slave starts to become notably less obsequious, and then the destination of the ship is altered (Why? We never discover any reason for this to happen!). Finally, life support is withdrawn, meaning that Vila and Tarrant will gradually find their environment getting more and more airless and cold. Back at base, Orac suspects something is up, and suggests quarantine. Avon agrees. But ultimately, when it’s clear that the choice is to rescue them or let them die, Avon angrily refuses to abandon them. In fact, Paul Darrow’s decision to play both this scene and the episode’s final moments with real, passionate anger is pretty much the only interesting thing about this episode.

Orac starts acting a bit odd to Soolin (we still know sod all about her), though. Apparently all human life in the galaxy is doomed. Isn’t that nice? It seems he wants to be switched off until the “intruder” is destroyed. I suppose, in a halfway-decent episode, this would be in some way ominous.

We soon discover that not only is Muller alive but he’s happily walking around the premises (so when did he teleport down then?), and is in such a bad mood that he manages to rather unconvincingly kill his own girlfriend. He also seems to have superhuman strength, the power to control all electronic stuff, and the power to turn guns to stone for some reason.

The big revelation of the episode is very silly indeed; “Muller” is in fact a headless robot who has killed Muller so he can graft his head on to his robot body and pose as his creator, so he can make his way to Xenon, join forces with Orac, and enslave Orac. Oh, and the black box contains the robot’s head, which contains its metal superego, which is supposed to stop its metal id going out of control. Is this the silliest Blake’s 7 episode ever?

Our heroes manage to defeat their metal foe with the use of a dam and a bridge, and we get a very silly moment where Avon struggles to re-attach the head. With the threat over, Avon proposes to use the robot as a weapon, but Tarrant and Dayna proceed to blow it up behind its back. He throws a right wobbly here, which leads Orac- traditionally the voice of reason who speaks wisdom- to lambast his arrogance and hint that, perhaps, he may no longer be entirely sane or reliable…

Blake's 7: Voice from the Past

“It doesn’t make for the most reliable of leaders, does it?”

I’d never heard of writer Roger Parkes before, until glancing at IMDb just now, but there’s something a little off about this story. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that the tone of this political intrigue is a little off, and that the revelation that there are idealists in high positions rather undermines the Federation’s credentials as a Big Faceless Invincible Totalitarian Thing.

The crew of the Liberator begin, rather sensibly in the light of both how knackered they were last episode and what happened last time they over-tired themselves, by heading for a bit of a rest. But it’s not long before Blake, behaving even more oddly than usual, orders Zen to head towards an obscure asteroid instead, and haughtily refuses to explain this to anyone. I don’t think this attitude can be entirely blamed on external influences and, as we’ll see, the episode ends by pointedly not absolving him.

The crew (with a lot of guidance from Avon, clearly the alpha male in Blake’s absence) soon discover that Blake is being controlled in some way related to the brainwashing he received after his trial some years ago. Things go a bit mad for a while, but eventually Blake is restrained and the Liberator resumes course for the Planet of the Health Farms.

Except that Vila is a bit of a gullible muppet- which is, I’d say, just a little out of character. Nevertheless, Blake manages to convince him to lock everyone else up and resume their course towards the obscure asteroid.

Blake teleports down to the surface, in a short scene which is quite the most cringe-inducing yet; Blake is clearly stood just a foot or so in front of some god-awful matte painting. It’s the sort of sci-fi exterior set you’d expect to see at an infant school assembly, not from the BBC. Arse-clenchingly embarrassing stuff.

Mercifully, though, Blake eventually finds some indoor sets, rather safer ground for the production. There are also a load of people, apparently rebels, led by a chap called Ven Glynd, a former senior Federation politico who seems to have defected. Unfortunately there’s also an utterly absurd bandaged figure with silly false eyes, who is apparently the legendary Shivan, a revolutionary hero who has been presumed dead.

Blake is quickly persuaded- rather too quickly persuaded according to Avon, who is invariably right about these things- that the group have a foolproof plan to legally expose various pieces of Federation skulduggery, including Servalan’s dodgy dealing with Orac at the end of last season and the killing of Blake’s defence barrister. Blake seems to swallow this, simply because of the mention of an apparently “sane” Federation ambassador called Le Grand. And yet, if the Federation can indeed be successfully challenged through its own legal system, and with the help of apparently decent and reasonable Federation apparatchiks, does this not undermine the sense we’ve always been given that the Federation is an extremely nasty, arbitrary, 1984-via-Brezhnev, totalitarian police state? The revelations we later discover in no way make up for the fact that our image of the Federation as an uber-scary and powerful entity has been badly damaged by the fact that this sort of thing is even considered plausible by the characters we know.

Still, Avon’s having none of this and Orac backs him up; Blake is still being mind-controlled. We begin to receive hints that he’s intended as a figurehead in a “triumvirate between himself, Le Grand and Ven Glynd, with Ven Glynd clearly seeing himself as the Octavian.

Le Grand’s ship lands on the planet Atlay, where the conference is due to be held, in a magnificent piece of model work from the one and only Mat Irvine. But it’s a trap; the arena is empty apart from a load of Federation troops and Servalan on a screen; Le Grand’s treachery has been known all along, and she lets out a few tears at the end of her dream. Then the shooting starts. Meanwhile, on the Liberator, it’s revealed that the bandaged figure was Travis all the time. He seems to be losing more and more dignity with each appearance.

The melee ends with everyone (except the redshirts from the asteroid, who all die) back aboard the Liberator, and Travis about to be arrested by Federation troops. Blake has forgotten all of these events, and immediately abandons all thought of his crew’s much-deserved rest in favour of renewed action against the Federation; they need to find this Docholli. Once again he’s pushing his crew hard, and the consequences will no doubt be tragic; if they are, then