I, Clavdivs: Hail Who?

“Drusilla! I’m dying!”

So this is it; the big one. Claudius, amongst chaotic schemes, and while protesting that he wants a republic, is made emperor. And the whole thing, really, is played like a farce.

Caligula is still dangerously mad and capricious, of course, but the shock of all this most definitely peaked at the end of last episode. Not that we lack spectacle, or John Hurt being superb; on the contrary we get several minutes of Caligula in a dress performing as Dawn in a weird dance to Homer. But the focus has moved to Claudius. So the palace is a brothel at the start, but shown in relation to on Claudius, the butt of the joke but managing to save a couple of women from being raped. Caligula plays at being on campaign and makes war on Neptune, yes, and his booty is a load of shells, but the focus is on how court jester Claudius saves two messengers from death by beheading, and later saves the entire Senate by acting the fool. And on how the old and clumsy Claudius is married to the young and beautiful Messalina- as a joke.

Just as chaotic is the plot to murder Caligula- ultimately, and sbsurdly, caused by his silly habit of giving Cassius suggestive phrases to use as the watchword of the day. Nothing goes right, and the surviving Claudius is almost killed before he is declared emperor by a Praetorian Guard who want to keep the cushy life they have.

Less amusing, of course, and a brutal contrast, is the murder of Caligula's wife and baby daughter, a reminder that Cassius is no saint either. It is, as usual, a splendidly written and acted piece, although the range of settings- on camp near the Rhine, at the Gams- make it more than usually obvious how studio-bound it all is.

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!