I didn't mean to leave it 3-and-a-bit years before reviewing the rest of Blake's 7 – Series One is here – and to make matters worse, I watched and reviewed them all at the time! But my laptop crapped out when trying to get screenshots for Series 2/B, 3/C, 4/D (see how I accommodate The Letter People), and I didn't want to post more reviews bare-bones.
But I'll be posting a bunch of Doctor Who book reviews soon, so it's now or never! Maybe I'll go back in and add in more screenshots later.
ANYWAY. Series 2. (OR B DEPENDING ON YOUR PERSUASION.)
***
Change is coming, slowly but surely. In Series Two (or B), Blake’s 7 puts some work into what kind of show it wants to be. What are the crew of the Liberator for? What, in an ongoing TV show, are the stakes? The writing staff begins to vary. The cast as well – sometimes with dramatic effect. Now and again the series plays with tone, suggesting that a world mostly comprised of bad (or morally grey) guys needn’t be straight laced. Some of the show’s bad habits persist, but the highs are higher. And away we go...
1. Redemption
by Terry Nation
If you were wondering who built the Liberator and why it was just lying about for Blake to find, you are... sort of in luck?
An attack by unidentified ships leads to the Liberator suddenly refusing to cooperate. (And Zen cooperating... slightly less than usual.) There’s nothing they can do to avoid being captured by – it turns out - the people who built the Liberator. They want it back. And they’re roughly as pleasant as the Federation.
This is long overdue. It’s always been criminally convenient that this ship was just sitting there, and they missed a trick making it so easy to control. An episode where the ship starts rejecting the new crew like a dodgy skin graft would have made more sense in the first series, but it’s still creepy and alarming watching doors shut on them, computers refusing to help, controls moving by themselves. What did they expect? It’s not their ship, they’re just squatters.
Once we meet the people who built the Liberator (sorry, it’s all I can think to call them) and are taken aboard their space station it becomes a pretty standard quest to escape again. They never really go into the specifics of why this ship was there, but we do find out a little about... the people who built the Liberator (god damn it) i.e. they are controlled by computers and they have slaves. One of the slaves helps them make a run for it, and (partly thanks to Orac making it harder to control the Liberator) the station is heavily damaged, while the Liberator escapes. I’m assuming we just won’t hear from... those people who did that thing... again.
The episode is at its strongest with the creepy malfunctions. It’s exciting to see the-people-who-did-you-know-what take over the Liberator so easily - like the introduction of Travis, it’s a raising of the stakes - but we don’t find out anything that’s likely to be an ongoing concern for the series, so it’s pretty much all action from there. An impressively large (and suspiciously familiar) gasworks doubles for the space station; several explosions boom rather impressively in all that space!
There’s little for the characters to do, though there are moments where the tension between Blake and Avon is escalated, particularly at the end when Blake decides to head back to Earth. The most memorable thing about the cast is that they have inexplicable and mostly horrible new outfits. Blake has massive sleeves, Gan and Cally are nearly falling over their coats, Avon looks like he’s into S&M now. Gan, at least, has finally figured out how to rough people up without getting a limiter-hernia.
Oh, and there’s Orac. At the start we find Blake obsessing over Orac’s prediction that the Liberator will be destroyed. Orac says it’s immutable. Blake and Avon have some interesting discussions about fate and determinism, but Orac refuses to give them more details as it might throw off the prediction. (Huh? Why is it so important that the prediction happens? Maybe it’s part of Orac’s personality/ego, and he needs to be right?) Anywho, at the end of the episode another Liberator-style ship pursues them and that one blows up. So it was a prediction about an unrelated ship all along. Ergo, a copout. Was Orac keeping shtum because he knew he’d need to be the one to blow it up, and if he told them anything more it might work against them? Or was he just trolling them? Because for all the good it did, he might as well not have said anything.
It’s an interesting start to Series 2, or just about: some good ideas and a bit of atmosphere. And on reflection this plot works well as a second series premiere, as it’s a clearing of the decks: no need to keep wondering who made the ship, so let’s move on to new things. Just maybe don’t scrutinise it.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Blake is tasered in the throat by one of his own weapons, and later he and a slave attack two people in the same way - possibly killing them? We also see a smear of blood on a wall, though to be fair it is a bit too purple to convince.
WHO’S WHO: Slave Roy Evans did a few Whos but is mostly recognisable as Bert, the friendly but doomed coal miner in The Green Death. Computerised villains Harriet Philbin and Shiela Ruskin have both appeared, one as a Thal in Genesis Of The Daleks, the other as Nyssa’s stepmother in The Keeper Of Traken.
2. Shadow
By Chris Boucher
New writer, new writer! Thank god.
It’s not that Terry Nation is a bad writer. He started this series off with a bang and those were the best episodes yet, but he can be very workmanlike. Given enough episodes it’s clear he has a pretty limited imagination for sci-fi, yet ironically the grim dystopia that was the basis for Blake’s 7 has slipped away in favour of weekly SF runarounds. Chris Boucher, also late of the Doctor Who parish, joins the ranks here and things immediately get more interesting.
Blake wants some help against the Federation, and has in mind the Terra Nostra: as the name suggests, space gangsters. We see one operating against a couple of “dream heads” - people addicted to the drug Shadow. Largo is mocking and cruel to the two of them, but they turn the tables. As they go to plan their escape, we glimpse the Liberator through a window. Soon a meeting is arranged, although having met Largo it’s hard to believe that’ll pan out.
The direction and dialogue is all just a bit fizzier. The scene with Largo has a certain quickness and cruelty; the introduction of the Liberator is wittily done; Gan challenges Blake on getting into bed with real gangsters and then Blake questions whether they can be choosy, suddenly seeming less of a goodie-two-shoes Robin Hood; Jenna has witty repartee with Avon and it doesn’t seem out of place; Avon, at all turns, remains caustic and intelligent; Cally actually finds a use for her telepathy, using it to get Blake out of a tight spot with Largo. The only one worse for wear here is Vila, whose sudden desperation to go on a space bender leaves Orac hidden away and the ship potentially endangered. Has he really gone that long without a hard drink and an easy lay? What a liability. To say nothing of Orac who, it seems, has his own dangerous agenda. (What is it with supercomputers?!)
Blake agrees to take the two Shadow addicts with him and, when it turns out the Terra Nostra aren’t amenable (shocker), he decides to go right to the heart of Shadow production and use it as leverage. Again, he’s questioned about the morality of doing this. It’s great to have Blake’s 7 if not outright doing bad things, at least having conversations about them.
While all this is going on, something’s wrong with Cally. When she went looking for Orac she was trapped in a mental prison by him. Chris Boucher clearly finds her telepathy interesting which, well, it’s about time someone did, and these scenes are almost pleasantly baffling. Orac, psychic? What?
Arriving at the Shadow homeworld - the drug being derived from vaguely telepathic “discs” that move about on its surface - Blake, Avon and Jenna teleport to the surface (all in Luke Skywalker cosplay because um?) looking to create havoc. I’m still not exactly sure what the plan was, but while this happens Cally seems to break free of Orac and gets to the surface. The Shadow discs have been helping her; some kind of psychic life form has infiltrated Orac, and together they stop it, narrowly avoiding the crash of the Liberator along the way. Unaware of this, Blake and co. find evidence that the Terra Nostra are working with the Federation. (You can’t trust anyone these days.) Plan thoroughly ruined, he lets one of the addicts (his sister having been killed by the Orac-creature) destroy the Shadow discs, harming the Terra Nostra and the Federation. Cally is keeping one disc as a form of psychic support - which makes it all the more unpleasant that Blake had the rest destroyed. (Morally grey, or just an oversight?)
I mean, well. There’s a lot going on, isn’t there? This story is perhaps the most densely packed of the series so far, chucking out ideas all the time. They don’t entirely work, in all fairness: there’s no dramatic way to explain what’s happening to Cally so she just has to info-dump it at the end, and it still sounds like bollocks. (Worse, the Cally plot feels incidental to the main one about the Terra Nostra.) Having the ship refuse to cooperate is creepy, but we literally had that last week, so it’s less effective. And the two addicts don’t really contribute to the story beyond showing us what Shadow does - and one of them isn’t even on it!
But having a new writer makes a huge difference to the tone, and it feels like we’re once again getting a grasp on what this crew does and what it’s all for. There’s room for improvement, but it’s still a welcome kick up the arse.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! One of the addicts is electrocuted (I think?), and the Cally mind-prison sequences are freaky.
WHO’S WHO: Addict Adrienne Burgess appeared in The Sun Makers, alongside Michael Keating, and prolific movie actor Vernon Dobtcheff was in Troughton’s swan song, The War Games. He’s a suitably menacing Federation figure here, carrying out a vid-conference while feeding his (space?) spider.
3. Weapon
By Chris Boucher
Hmm. It’s only been two episodes but I’m noticing a pattern with Chris Boucher: he’s got lots of ideas and isn’t great at organising them.
In Weapon a man (Coser) escapes from a Federation weapons facility with IMIPAK, something Servalan wants to get her hands on. (And before you say it, no, it’s not another smug supercomputer.) Blake and co. hear about the breakout and also want to find out what’s so great about IMIPAK - though by a strange coincidence, Coser wants Blake to have it anyway. He spends the rest of the episode waiting to get in touch with the Liberator, hanging around with a rescued slave and apparently going mad, carping and complaining the whole time. This is when he isn’t extolling the virtues of IMIPAK, and saying IMIPAK so many times you’d think some townspeople were going to appear and sing their version of the Monorail song. It’s a strange choice to have this new character just sit there, sucking up minutes of the episode and being a pain before inevitably dying. All he needs to do story-wise is hand the thing over to someone and preferably explain what it is. (I’ll keep it a mystery for now. Ooh, IMIPAK!)
Before setting off to get some IMIPAK goodness, Servalan and Travis visit a cloning facility to get a copy of Blake. As you do. Travis murders it but luckily enough they made two. The clones - including Blake 3.0 - obsessively treasure life so it’s a bit odd that they let that go, or that they made some clones for these obviously homicidal people at all? The whole sequence is a bit odd, with the clone... boss?... giving us her life story (she is also a clone) and telling Travis that this futuristic room they’re in is actually a vegetable (?!), while an excited choir booms in the background. Totally normal scene this.
And speaking of weird clones, they’ve recast Travis. There’s no nice way to say this: he’s not as good. Gone is the calculated rage of Stephen Greif, replaced with Brian Croucher strutting about shouting at everyone, including Servalan. It’s like unironically doing the thing Travis was meant to be a parody of - the ridiculous baddie who’s obviously evil at first glance. You could argue this characterisation better suits Travis’s success rate - he’s been a total loser so far, so what’s he so confident about? - but he’s a lot less interesting to watch, and his chemistry with Servalan has instantly gone from “two predators circling” to “why doesn’t she just kill him?” (To be fair, she tries.) He even looks sillier, with glossier hair and a more B-movie eyepatch. It borders on parody.
Anyway: once again we have an episode where two parties go to collect a thing, only this time Servalan has the advantage. Sending her Blake clone on ahead to get Coser’s trust, she soon has IMIPAK. Surprise! It’s a laser gun. Only, when you point it at someone, they are now “marked” and can be killed by remote control (sold separately) at any time, and from up to a million miles away. All of which soundspretty cool but... isn’t it just a laser gun with a pause button? Why bother? If you’re already pointing a gun at someone are you likely to get the urge to go on holiday?
TL;DR, Travis marks Blake, Avon and Gan. (Servalan marks Travis. I don’t remotely blame her.) For once, the Federation has won, and Servalan sends Blake and co. on their way, practically guffawing in their faces. Except the Blake clone doesn’t like all this killing, and the slave from earlier isn’t fond of it either, so they steal IMIPAK, mark Servalan for death and tell her to get lost. So nobody wins, which is quite novel. But it all feels like a strangely paced runaround.
(And if you like strange: Servalan gets her plan idea from Carnell, an underling/smug genius, whose life will be over once the plan has failed. When she returns to exact revenge he has left an answer message for her. Capping off multiple scenes of outrageous flirting, he ends the episode by observing “You are undoubtedly the sexiest officer I have ever known.” I mean he’s probably not wrong, but WTF?)
The scenes with Coser just sit there. Servalan and Carnell flirting is amusing enough, but it’s just random colour since he then runs away. The clone stuff gives the plot a handy way out, but as far as Servalan goes it seems like a lot of bother for nothing. Travis sucks now, so that traditional highlight is out. The episode isn’t really about the Liberator so they’re all rather surplus, but you can at least depend on Avon to deliver some funny lines and stoke a bit of mutiny: he’s annoyed at Blake for coming up with an attack plan that might endanger them all, and he assumes Jenna always knows where Blake is, because well... wink. If you’re bored there’s always the costume department, which seems to randomly reset every week, this week landing on “funny collars.” (When we first see Avon he’s wearing an understated black turtleneck, but then he goes to the planet and yep, theeere it is: a lumpy red leather jumpsuit.)
I’m not sure if it’s the wacky production, the faintly tipsy story or both, but this one didn’t work for me at all. Sorry Chris: honeymoon’s over.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Nothing much. Travis kills “Blake” but he just falls over. Coser uses IMIPAK to kill an alien but it’s literally just a big claw. When Servalan uses it on him and a random guard, we don’t see anything.
WHO’S WHO: Coser is John Bennett, who previously played a corrupt army general and, controversially, a Chinese villain. Crazed flirter Carnell (Scott Fredericks) was in two Whos. Brian Croucher was in The Robots Of Death, which has some odd links to Blake’s 7, not least that Chris Boucher wrote it.
4. Horizon
By Allan Prior
I haven’t seen anything else by Allan Prior, and according to IMDB he’ll go on to write a few more of these. I have mixed feelings.
Horizon is weird right from the off. Is there a particular reason it opens with shots of Jenna and Vila over the stars? We go inside the Liberator to find the crew grousing (mostly Vila) about how tired they are from the constant stress. They immediately start wondering about places they can go to relax (so what, you can’t park the Liberator and put your feet up?) and, spying a Federation freighter heading for an unknown planet, they for some reason pin all their hopes on its destination. Maybe it’s a lovely holiday world? Out here in the middle of nowhere, being visited by a Federation ship? I mean, it could happen.
Sure enough, it’s a shithole. On arrival Blake sees slave labourers mining something for the Federation. Then he and Jenna are tranquillised. They soon meet the planet’s ruler, Ro, who works (so he believes) in partnership with the Federation. Blake tries to convince him they are bad news. This really shouldn’t be hard, as they have sent his fiancé to work in the mine.
First Gan and Vila, then Cally go down to the surface to check on their silent comrades; all are immediately tranquillised on arrival. I’m with Avon on this, only an idiot follows up their colleague’s sudden radio silence by just marching into the same situation. It’s the level of intelligence you expect from henchmen going around a corner and all getting bonked on the head. If Horizon had been a full-blown Federation outpost this would be the series finale, ten minutes in.
On the plus side, by now two distinct good bits have come out of the episode. Ro is having a (heavily signposted) crisis of conscience. Will he break with the Federation and save Blake? (And his nuptials?) Much of the episode consists of Ro looking down at Blake and his crew strapped to tables, and it’s all pretty thankless, but Darien Angandi imbues the part with believable optimism in the Federation’s intentions, and a quiet grappling with his instincts as a ruler. (Even his body language is interesting; see the crumpled way he sits.) When he makes his choice, inevitable or not, he sells it. The writing isn’t bad either, with the Federation making constant chides at his people’s “savagery” and Ro quietly insisting that they have their own culture that is worth preserving. It’s not a subtle takedown of British imperialism, but it’s affecting.
The other good bit? Well, it’s Avon, isn’t it. At first he resists going down to the planet (why should he go? They have absolutely no stake in it), then he has no intention of meeting the same fate as his crew, and then he tells Cally as bluntly as possible that they should just bugger off and leave the rest of them to it. When Cally saunters into the trap anyway, he seriously considers taking the Liberator. A moment like this has been a long time coming. He didn’t ask to fight the Federation in the first place. Why notlead a quiet life, one step ahead of the Federation and everyone else? Maybe it’s the thought of being bored, but of course he goes back for them, easily outfoxing the tranquillisers and breaking the rest of them free. It’s a shame he isn’t paid. He needs a raise.
The trouble with the episode is, er, the rest of it. “Vila has a tummy ache from too much stress” isn’t a great starting point (all he ever does is moan anyway), and it’s downright stupid of everyone except Avon to blunder into danger like this, not to mention randomly assuming this planet will be a safe haven. Are they a crack team or not? That’s two weeks in a row they’ve needed either random luck or Avon to save them at the last minute. And speaking of luck, we nearly get some action at the end but then the Liberator is saved from three attack ships by “it turns out the planet had a defence shield.” Woo, exciting.
The majority of the episode consists of Ro hanging around his planet, which means either a pokey jungle set or a dodgy cave set. With his obvious character arc, good acting or otherwise, it’s just a bit boring hanging around here. Even Ro getting his mojo back doesn’t massively help; I don’t care how confident he is, good luck fighting off a now angered Federation armed only with blowpipes.
It’s boring with good bits. Come on guys, we deposed Terry for this.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Unless they’re scared of blowpipes, you’re fine.
WHO’S WHO: Federation officer Brian Miller has popped up in New and Old Who, but more memorably was married to Elizabeth Sladen. William Squire cropped up opposite Tom Baker.
5. Pressure Point
By Terry Nation
Don’t panic: this isn’t “writes it every week” Terry Nation. Pressure Point seems a lot more focused than I’ve come to expect from the show’s often exhausted creator.
Still, the story seems a bit familiar. Once again Blake and co. unwittingly play into the Federation’s hands, this time looking to destroy their central computer on Earth. We occasionally cut to Servalan and Travis awaiting Blake’s imminent arrival; they even know about the rebel leader he intends to meet (Kasabi), having kidnapped her and her daughter, and killed her supporters. Blake really needs better intel.
I think what stops this feeling like a repeat of episodes like Mission To Avalon (we meant for you to take that) or Weapon (we got there first) is the sheer, almost manic determination of Blake. Even knowing as a viewer that this is a trap, it still feels utterly vital that he tries. When Blake finally reaches the computer room and the episode reveals the truth as grandly as possible - it is a huge, empty room - Blake’s momentary euphoria seems justified. Just before reality bites he stops saying “We’ve done it” and says “I’ve done it,” shedding his apparent modesty from earlier when he denied he was a leader that everyone would get behind. It’s a spectacular, horrible moment. This should have been it. He’s had a series and a half now of failing to strike at the heart of the Federation. He needed a win.
He sort of gets one, in that Jenna - in an uncharacteristic moment of triumph - gets a gun on Servalan and arranges Blake’s escape. But even that comes at a pretty high cost. (Spoilers coming, for the fraction of you out there who might possibly read this having not seen it.)
Pressure Point feels tense and exciting even before the shock ending (final warning), but there’s some nice character stuff simmering along beside it. Avon, having truly thrown his lot in last week, seems surprised that anyone would even question his going along with the plan. He tells Blake openly that should they succeed, Blake will end up leading the fight on Earth and he’ll probably do so in space. (Which is a long-winded way of saying “bagsey the Liberator”, but he seems sincere in what he wants to do with it.)
The rest of the gang are much as usual - Vila’s constant complaining really is starting to get on my proverbials - but we spend some quality time with Servalan. (This week sporting a funky hat and a very loose dress. Someone in the costume department is having a ball.) Kasabi knew her as a youth when they both trained in the Federation, and tells her what a spoilt, selfish creature she was. Servalan, thrown to the floor, actually looks upset. Just before Travis inevitably kills her, Kasabi regrets not doing more to help her as a young woman. Servalan gets to vent some rage at Travis (for Blake’s inevitable escape), yelling at him, slapping him and telling him deliciously that she’ll bury him. Travis, for his part, is more understated than he was in Weapon; Brian Croucher finds an unpleasant thuggishness which wasn’t there with Stephen Greif, but seems to work for him.
Case in point, with Blake and co. fleeing he throws a grenade after them hoping to cause some random damage. He succeeds: caught under a door, Gan is killed. The tone of the episode foreshadowed this, where the operation seemed like a huge gamble, Blake and Avon had that Death Or Glory attitude throughout, and the discovery of the missing computer followed by a lucky escape felt almost suspiciously clean. But even so, the randomness of this adds to the impact.
Which is good, as it’s horribly shot. First Gan is holding up a door for them, but then everyone is through and he carries on holding it anyway (?), and next we see it’s caught on his foot somehow. He tells Blake he isn’t worth dying for, but too late as the ceiling collapses, catching Blake anyway. (It’s unclear why Blake didn’t die as well.) It’s a shame that such an important moment isn’t stronger visually. Even his dead acting could have used a do-over.
Off Blake goes back to the Liberator, with Kasabi’s daughter opting to stay and have some sort of revenge on Earth. (God knows how as she’s in a collapsed building surrounded by mines with no living comrades.) Travis and Servalan have had a humiliating failure, but Blake has lost a man. Hopefully it’s the last time for a while that we repeat the “it’s a trap” formula, because it worked so well here.
Not much else to report on the episode, so I’ll nitpick. It’s weird that Travis is annoyed when Blake has made it through the mines - wasn’t the trap on the inside of the building? The bit where Avon trips in the minefield and is nearly killed is bizarre and silly, given he’s the most capable one. (The sight of him practically leaping into Gan’s arms is... unfortunate.) The sets are modest including, somewhat randomly, a church, and some absolutely shameless reusing of corridors and stairwells in different lights. But never mind all that. The real talking point here is Gan.
David Jackson did his best, but it wasn’t a vital character. The limiter no doubt looked like a good idea on paper, but given how rarely the gang actually kill anyone, the only time it contributed was the week it broke down. Gan mostly just shoves people out of the way with greater ease than his comrades, which seems a strange use of an actor giving downright RSC enunciation to his minimal dialogue. The nicest thing I can say about him is that he may not have been the most useless one, but then again, even Jenna stepped it up this week.
I knew he’d die going into this, but Pressure Point is tense and exciting regardless. That’s quite an achievement. Good Terry. Now have a nice long think before your next one.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Two rebels are quite believably blown up by mines at the start. It’s horrible. Whereas Gan’s death might as well be him randomly copping it on the spot, and the shooting of Kasabi’s troops is a zap-you’re-dead affair.
WHO’S WHO: Jane Sherwin (Kasabi) was in Patrick Troughton’s swansong, The War Games. The surprisingly intense Yolande Palfrey (Kasabi’s daughter) would later appear with Colin Baker in Terror Of The Vervoids.
BLAKE’S... Back down to 7 now including Orac. And hold it...
6. Trial
By Chris Boucher
Gan died in the previous episode. By the end of Trial, you’ll wish you had.
There’s an opportunity here to do some solid character work, as the crew comes to terms with being one man down. To an extent Chris Boucher takes it: Blake is so shaken by events that he needs time alone. He selects a random planet and mysteriously flounces off to it. He’s being dramatic andfoolhardy here, since if no one on the bridge had said the words “Did Blake leave us a message”, triggering Zen, they wouldn’t even know what was happening. Leave a damn note.
Blake doesn’t know where they should go from here. Come back in 13 hours, he says, and if they don’t feel like picking him up they can swan off guilt-free. Avon’s little eyes light up and Vila jokes about doing nothing as a career choice, but there’s no serious debate about leaving him. And in the course of his walkabout, all Blake learns is that he needs to become more of a legend and immediately carry out another high risk attack, so his gang can presumably stay in the top Twitter trends. He’s learned absolutely nothing. Gan who?
And about the walkabout. Okay, Chris: it’s a random planet so it can’t be a Federation trap (for once), but it must allegorically help Blake learn something. So what do we have? A jungle, a lighting rig that makes Blake look like he’s under a heat lamp, and a random alien who says total gibberish for twenty minutes. Pity poor Claire Lewis, dressed as a cross between a Doctor Who cast-off and a kid in a dance show, desperately trying to inject some alienness into Zil. She manages funny arm movements and hilarious tongue darts. Kindly, what the hell were they thinking?
Zil babbles something about oneness and eggs, while on the Liberator Orac announces that Blake has cleverly picked a planet that’s alive, and transforming dangerously. There are probably some good SF ideas in here but the whole sequence is so maddeningly redundant to the ongoing plot or characterisation that I just didn’t care what Boucher was on about. It’s silly, then Blake gets out of there and they all just move on. The only purpose it serves is to revive Blake’s zest to fight and survive. Any crisis would have done.
But wait, you ask. Isn’t this called Trial? Is there a courtroom? Yes to both! Only it’s Travis being put on trial for war crimes, and none of it has any bearing on Blake. (Which is amazing, as Travis’s constant and surely documented failures to capture Blake must also have counted against him, and being charged for those would have been, y’know, relevant.) The trial isn’t particularly interesting or even very trial-ish - it’s just a case of listing the charges and waiting for judgement - including a bizarre moment where Travis makes the opening speech near the end of the proceedings, and it just consists of angry yelling. Sorkin it ain’t.
The episode can’t seem to decide if this is the subplot. Here’s the problem: who in the audience gives a damn about Travis? Yes, he’s a fun bad guy - I would argue less fun since he was replaced with a significantly worse actor, but then again maybe that makes him more so! - but can we seriously be expected to care what happens to him? I hope he fries. If he doesn’t, meh, see you next week I guess. When he survives, it’s ironically thanks to Blake’s attack hitting the court room. (A moment when Travis literally dives for cover made me laugh out loud.) There is probably something to be said about Travis always letting Blake escape, and Blake now inadvertently returning the favour, and whether they are both their own worst enemies. But with all that time needing to be spent on Planet Who Gives A Shit, the episode doesn’t say any of it.
I’m a bit flabbergasted. What was all that about? What did anyone learn, how has the ongoing story progressed? So Travis is an outlaw now. If we are to assume the Federation has a veneer of law and order - and his trial tells us that it does - then to all intents and purposes, he already behaves like one. Even as an official “outlaw” he still has the exact same job and still reports to Servalan!
Ideas, even good ones, bubbling away without good reason continues to be a hallmark of Chris Boucher’s scripts. Hopefully we’re past the worst of it now with this dithering, useless hour.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! I wouldn’t put them through this, but it’s hardly violent.
WHO’S WHO: Peter Miles is back from a previous episode, offering bitchy trial commentary with John Bryans for no discernible reason. (And guys, they can hear you.) Otherwise John Savidant presides; he would later be killed off within minutes of a Peter Davison Doctor Who.
7. Killer
By Robert Holmes
It’s Robert feckin’ Hooooolmes! Doctor Who royalty right here, known for Jon Pertwee’s great first story, Peter Davison’s great last one, and that really great Victorian Tom Baker story with the unfortunate racism. Sure enough this episode is brimming with spicy dialogue, mostly for Vila and Avon, who should exclusively hang around with each other for this purpose: “There are a quarter of a million volts running through that converter. I make one false move, I'll be so crisped up what's left of me won't fit into a sandwich.” “I'm a vegetarian. Thanks for the offer, though.”
In Killer, Vila and Avon go to retrieve a crystal that will help them decode Federation comms. While there Avon bumps into Tynus, an old friend for whom he took the rap and got arrested. Needless to say, Tynus owes him. Coincidentally a 600 year old spaceship is drifting towards the same outpost; Cally reckons there’s something malevolent aboard, so while the Bantz Ladz go after the crystal Blake goes to oversee the investigation of the spaceship. Said investigation has already turned up a wisened corpse. The scientists, including Dr Bellfriar, seem blissfully uninterested in Blake’s criminal record. Secretly Tynus has no such objectivity and is stalling for time until the Federation arrives.
It’s a very neat episode. As usual there are two strands to give the different groups something to do, but they dovetail nicely for once. You get a bit of character development for Avon who’s up against a ghost from his past, played with subtle restraint by famous Raiders Of The Lost Ark Nazi Ronald Lacey. The investigation of the dead body goes from bad to worse as it suddenly reanimates and kills a doctor, then dies again, but not before spreading a peculiar plague. As Avon tries to engineer a distraction big enough to steal the crystal and Tynus really has no intention of helping, the plague intervenes and ruins Tynus’s plot. Poor Dr Bellfriar - a lovely, naturalistic performance from Paul Daneman, who I know as Bilbo in the BBC radio adaptation of The Hobbit - dies just as he finds an antidote. Blake and Avon butt heads over whether to let the plague sit there and ensnare the Federation, but Blake rightly imagines what could happen if it gets out and infects the innocent, so he sets up a warning buoy. For a second there, Avon almost has them waging a much dirtier war.
It’s almost a boring one to review. Here’s an episode made up of bits, admittedly, but they all work. I can’t think of anything snarky to say - oh, well there’s the absolutely horrific leather/PVC costumes, which are about as impractical as sci-fi ever gets. What were they thinking? Here I am all set to laugh at Avon for wearing his gimp outfit again, and then they all change into these giant squeaky ponchos that you can’t sit in. I know it’s the 70s but does it have to be quite this 70s? Also there’s a hilariously poorly directed bit where a man fleeing quarantine dramatically says “I’m not going to stay here to die!” and punches someone in the gut, but in doing so pivots his whole body like a cartoon. (Maybe he couldn’t move in the costume?) Lastly, Cally has nothing to do other than get a funny feeling about the spaceship, and Jenna has nothing to do at all. I’m 50% annoyed about this.
Otherwise, smashed it. Robert Holmes, everybody.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! The corpse looks absolutely horrific, and the plague boils are horribly convincing. Good job all round. Even the script is fairly scary, as the tension mounts over the plague and then as Dr Bellfriar, reading his antidote formula to Blake, suddenly forgets how to read.
WHO’S WHO: The ill-fated doctor is Morris Barry, who appeared in The Creature From The Pit but is mainly known for directing 60s Who episodes with Cybermen in. I forgot he was an actor!
8. Hostage
By Allan Prior
One of the ongoing threads of Blake’s 7 is Travis. Now technically an outlaw - which makes no difference to what he does or who he reports to, but whatever, it sounds cool - he continues to pursue Blake. For the series to continue, he must always fail. For Travis to keep coming back, Blake must never kill him. And so it goes with Hostage, neither of them advancing an inch. Ho hum, roll credits.
Travis, unsurprisingly, has taken a hostage: Blake’s cousin Inga. In a video message he asks that Blake come alone, but just to talk, and he’ll let the girl go. Blake mystifyingly goes along with this and soon the Liberator is in orbit around (you guessed it) a planet closely resembling a quarry. Travis really wants the Liberator and, because they stupidly keep following him down as in Allan Prior’s earlier episode Horizon, he soon has Avon and Vila too. Thanks to Jenna and Cally, his thuggish “Crimos” (an adorably crap name for “criminal psychopaths”) are foiled in an attempt to steal the ship. Inga’s father Ushton helps the hostages escape.
Well, it’s just a runaround isn’t it? Of course Travis is not planning to let anyone out alive. But it’s nice to see Jenna and Cally fight someone off for once. It’s nothing but an eye-roll to see Blake let Travis go again, here gullibly believing that the Federation really do want him in custody and thus will take care of him. We should be at a point now where Avon gets sick of all this indecision and just shoots the guy.
As for Travis, Brian Croucher has found a kind of niche in the character’s violent side, reaching a peak when he screams at Vila to tell him how to operate the teleport bracelets. (It is, hilariously, the word “teleport”. You didn’t try that?!) But otherwise he’s all but pantomiming, and his plans come to nothing once more. Crap, isn’t he?
Servalan shows up and has a few scenes growling at various underlings, but the whole encounter is a bit useless for everybody. Inga and Ushton have plans to liberate the (seemingly barren?) planet using some new food stores, but what with Servalan being there they’ll be bloody lucky to stay alive. Oh, and Blake gains some hitherto unmentioned family in this, which ought to flesh out his character somewhat, but no such luck. Blake’s on-again-off-again amnesiac past provides a blank cheque for the writers, but where he never seems connected to it, because amnesia, it never means anything to us. Anyway, he shares a quick romantic kiss with Inga at the end, which um, yeah. She’s his cousin. So...
Not terrible. Not very good. Not really trying, are they? Next.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Travis being Mr Shouty might cause some upset, and one of his Crimos explodes in space thanks to Jenna’s teleporting skills. Otherwise there are some hilariously silly fights between the Crimos and some noticeably bouncy rocks.
WHO’S WHO: During an otherwise pointless attack at the start, which the Liberator is lucky to survive, we see Andrew Robertson who appeared memorably in The Pirate Planet. Ushton is John Abineri who cropped up many times over the years, most notably in The Ambassadors Of Death. But best is Kevin Stoney, who threatens to wrestle a scene away from Setvalan at one point, known for big villain roles such as Mavic Chen and Tobias Vaughan. Quick, bring him back!
9. Countdown
By Terry Nation
Don’t panic: if you give him enough time off, Terry Nation can write very good episodes. Countdown is another one.
Blake and co. visit the planet Albian looking for Provine, a Federation officer who knows where their central control is. The only snag, besides the low likelihood of his actually telling them anything, is that a rebellion is already in progress and the Federation have been driven out - but as a parting shot, they’ve activated a bomb that will level all life on the planet. Avon must work with Del Grant, a mercenary from his past who’s sworn to kill him, to find the bomb and disarm it. Meanwhile Provine is still at large and outwitting everyone.
There’s no mucking about here. They have a time limit (although the countdown is not in seconds so who knows how long they’ve got) and even if they don’t die in an explosion, the guy they’re looking for might cause trouble. The Federation aren’t exactly in charge, but they’ve still rigged the deck in their favour. All of this makes for a better story than the likes of Hostage, where no one achieves anything.
Provine is an appropriately sinister (and worryingly clever) bad guy, taking every opportunity to double cross or change outfits to stay out of sight. But the best bits are with Avon and Grant, and learning what happened to drive them apart. We find out a good amount about Avon here, once forced to let a lover die, and Paul Darrow wrings a lot of pathos out of it - but with the usual Avon twist where it all sounds like nothing much. Nation wisely has the most intense conversations happen while they’re defusing the bomb.
I’ve complained before that hitherto unheard of figures in Blake’s life do nothing to enhance Blake. Here we are doing the same for Avon, and it does work. Maybe the individual bit of back story is stronger in the first place than say, “me and Travis used to be nemesis and turns out we still are”. Or maybe Avon’s just an all round more interesting character; freed of the Robin Hood hero goody-goody role, his past can include stuff he really should regret. You just don’t know. Maybe I just like Paul Darrow better. Anyway, it’s good stuff.
They get what they need, or some of it at least: central control is called Star One. Apart from that they’re on their own (Provine dies before saying more), but the planet didn’t blow up and Avon didn’t end up killing Del, which seemed the obvious route, so phew. I like the frustrated sort-of-victories in this series as well as the tragic failures. Just don’t give me too many draws.
As for a downside, Jenna and Cally get sod all to do. Quelle difference: they always get stuck together and they never seem to leave the Liberator. Any chance we could throw some character development their way? Apart from that, the series has somewhere to go now (Star One) and we know Avon a bit better. We have a winner.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Provine slaps and murders his way through this one, and at one point a quite bloody corpse is seen in the background.
WHO’S WHO: Grant is Tom Chadbon, best known as punch-happy Duggan in City Of Death.
10. Voice From The Past
By Roger Parkes
With the Liberator on its way somewhere nice for a change, Blake suddenly hears strange noises and starts remembering the mind-control used on him by the Federation. He changes course for an asteroid and locks up the rest of the crew, except for Vila who seems happy enough to go along with him. The asteroid contains remnants of his old rebellion, including a judge from his trial now defected. Also there is a masked and supposedly crippled man sporting an outrageous French accent. Ham comes off the stranger’s performance in waves. Surely it couldn’t be...?
Anyway, the gang have got evidence against the Federation and a governor willing to help them. Apart from the slightly sticky fact that they’ve used mind control to get Blake here, and the suspiciously familiar masked guy in their ranks, they seem sort of... good? Besides, Blake has enough wherewithal to say - rightly - that they haven’t made much actual progress as freedom fighters, and this seems like a good bet, so why not. It’s a damn good point, apart from how obviously doomed they are.
Avon et al suspect the worst and wouldn’t you know it, Servalan is aware of the whole thing and just wanted to get the rebels together so they’re easier to knock off. Ah well; this is fairly obvious from the outset, but arguably worth it for the literal theatrics of Servalan revealing her plan in a theatre, on a big screen. Finally smashing the mind control device the crew retrieve Blake, who remembers nothing; they make a quick joke about him being his usual nauseating self before we roll credits. Score another one to the Federation I guess.
It’s satisfying when the show remembers what it’s actually about (have the crew of the Liberator actually liberated anyone?), and anything we can do to make Blake less of a cardboard goody-goody is worth trying once. Invoking the horrors of his brainwashing always helps - it’s the most interesting thing we know about him. The ending sort of exacerbates how pointless it all was, but for once the plot - with shades of the Gan episode Breakdown, or Star Trek when Spock randomly hijacks the Enterprise - holds the attention well enough. I like it.
(The cheesy French guy was Travis, obviously.)
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Blake does a yoga pose at the start that I wouldn’t recommend copying. Also a guy gets a particularly nasty knife in the back.
WHO’S WHO: One of the rebels is Pat Gorman, stuntman and rent-a-face mostly spotted during the Pertwee era.
11. Gambit
By Robert Holmes
This one is an absolute mood. Looking for someone who can lead them to Star One, Blake and co visit Freedom City, a casino world that’s just about the campest thing in the universe. The costumes are outrageous and random: there’s a saucy croupier in a top hat and tails played by Doctor Who’s Amelia Ducat (dotty old lady artist), the place is run by a silver-faced guy dressed as a Prince Regent, he bickers a lot with his manservant who has a massive headdress. Travis turns up dressed as the Shadow, for some reason. There’s tinsel everywhere. It’s barking mad to look at.
And quite fun to watch. The man everyone’s after is Doccholi: Blake wants his info, Servalan wants him dead, Krantor (the Prince Regent guy) wants to extract his secret before he dies, and Travis needs him to fix his robot arm, little knowing it contains a bomb courtesy of Servalan who broke his arm just so he’d go and find the bloke she wants to kill. I know all of this because, rather strangely for something by Robert Holmes, the script occasionally grinds to a halt so the characters can explain the plot. (Why would Servalan, of all people, explain herself to an underling?)
Anyway, it’s almost a farce as everyone hunts for Doccholi (including Cally and Jenna making a big distraction so Blake can sneak into a room), but in the midst of all this Avon and Vila realise they can use Orac to win big at the casino. This they do with surprising success; even when Vila arouses suspicion, no one checks to see if he’s listening to that thing on his wrist, so they sort of have it coming. It’s a hoot, even if it results in the kind of limp, stand-around-and-make-a-shit-joke ending we see all too often in this show.
Blake doesn’t get the info he wants, of course: yet again it seems like no one ever knows anything. He’s given another name to go and investigate, but it’s tempting not to get your hopes up. He also passes up yet another opportunity to kill Travis, with even Jenna now rolling her eyes and offering to do the deed. I’m half hoping Travis gets sick of the suspense and just kills himself.
Nothing useful happens, but Avon and Vila have a nice time and almost everyone wears a silly outfit. I’ve no idea if this was any good but I’d watch it again.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! A guy gets bloodlessly shot, and someone loses a life or death chess match in the campest way possible: a puff of smoke.
WHO’S WHO: I nearly lost count! Dennis Carey / Chronotis, Sylvia Coleridge / Amelia Ducat, Deep Roy / Mr Sin, Aubrey Woods / the Controller, John Leeson / K9, Paul Grist / Filer, Pat Gorman again.
12. The Keeper
By Allan Prior
While it is nice that Series 2 is going somewhere, let’s face it, this ain’t exactly an arc plot. The quest to reach Star One means (for each episode) that either you’ve found out where it is or you haven’t. The smart money’s on just tuning in for the last episode.
This week they probably get the right coordinates (judging from what the next episode is called), but there’s another 50 minutes of ho hum until then. What’s the point? It’s just filler.
Landing on a planet that unsurprisingly looks like a dismal bit of forest (be grateful it’s not a quarry), the gang encounters some medieval Viking types, one of whom probably has the brain-print mentioned in the last episode, aka a map to Star One. It’s pretty much a case of checking everyone’s jewellery to see if it has directions written on it. The king fancies Jenna so claims her for his mate; Blake hangs around with the King’s brother to foment some rebellion; Vila becomes the court jester; and Avon stays on the Liberator blowing up what he thinks is Travis’s spaceship. Don’t panic, eyepatch fans. Travis is fine, and apparently he’s back working with Servalan like she didn’t strap explosives to him last week. He probably thinks he’s going to live forever at this point. And knowing our luck...
Jenna sort of plays along with the king, which seems clever until she seems genuinely distraught by his death. Vila makes a good jester - as well he should, that already being his job. Blake... exists. Travis and Servalan are at their most bored. Even the director seems unenthused, throwing away Travis surviving Avon’s attack, and Servalan meeting Jenna and Vila. He perks up later for a bit of handheld fight work.
The whole thing’s like one of the lesser Series 1 episodes fell through a time loop. And, slight tangent, I’m so bored of rubbish planets. If it’s impossible to create alien worlds, why set a series in space? Every planet is either a visit to a random factory or a journey to the bottom of the stock costume box. I wouldn’t mind if the general lack of alien life was making some sort of point about how bleak the universe is - no one here but us humans! - but they always end up going the Star Trek route, and acting all surprised that the alien metropolis looks the Paramount backlot. Just stick to space stations and ships, at least you can do those on a budget.
The guest stars put some effort into it - particularly the king, known for out-yelling Tom Baker as the Pirate Captain - but it’s still the episode equivalent of a meeting that could have been an email.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Some fighting and killing here, but we always cut away.
WHO’S WHO: Bruce Purchase (the Pirate Captain), as well as recurring old man Arthur Hewlett.
13. Star One
By Chris Boucher
Well that escalated.
The Liberator finds Star One. No, really. No, REALLY. And that’s remarkable as no one knows where it is - which just fundamentally isn’t true, or how was anyone sent to work there? Blake plans to blow it up. Unbeknownst to him, it’s not even working properly: planets throughout the Federation are losing their weather control (because apparently Star One does weather) and are facing disaster. The reason? Aliens have taken over Star One, having killed and duplicated the crew. Except for one who just hasn’t noticed. (We all have coworkers like that.) Even worse, mucking with the weather is just a side effect: there’s a whole fleet of alien ships poised to invade, and Star One is all that’s keeping them away. If Blake blows it up, everyone dies.
I mean, bloody hell, where were they keeping this one? It’s got tension up the wazoo, particularly the ending, when Avon and co start an attack run just to buy time for the Federation - whom they hate - to arrive in force and help. And it’s got some of Chris Boucher’s WTF ideas, like there suddenly turning out to be a race of bodysnatching aliens who live next door, but it doesn’t just toss the idea out there for weirdness reasons. It also raises the stakes, reevaluating whether smashing the Federation is what they want to do, and suggesting a world where the Liberator and Servalan may have to work together. For a series all too often unsure of its goals, this kind of What If is exciting.
It’s good (if limited) on a character front. Cally, Vila and Jenna barely get a look in. Blake makes his position and modus operandi clear (he wants to prove he was right - not exactly altruistic), as does Avon (not especially fond of Blake, can we get this over with so I can have the Liberator). And on the latter, Avon’s determination to batter some aliens and probably die trying, all to protect a species he mostly doesn’t get along with, adds unexpected heroism. Arguably more than Blake. Contrast that with Travis (sigh) who has apparently sold out humanity altogether. To be fair, he seems even less popular than the crew of the Liberator, so fair enough. And wahey, he finally dies! Get out the tiny violin. (He is dead, yeah? Please?)
There’s somehow time to squeeze in some of Servalan’s machinations, as she tries to get even more control over the Federation just as it falls apart. And Star One is sufficiently creepy (thanks to the aliens) that it more or less lives up to the hype. (Having Servalan seem powerless against it is a nice touch.) As for the aliens, they’re a sudden lurch into Doctor Who territory, but who cares? They more or less justify the hilarious WTF of assuming Blake is Travis, when he clearly doesn’t have only one eye and a robot arm. Meh, aliens gonna alien.
I’m a bit worried about the next series. Where do you go from here? But ending the year with a bang will do for now. Incredible stuff.
PS: I was pleased to learn that Terry Nation supposedly wanted the aliens to be Daleks. YES. That would have been a great crossover. No Doctor required! Someone go back in time and make that happen, ta.
IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! Avon zaps someone and it just makes... all the blood happen. Jeez. Not for kids!
WHO’S WHO: You’ll need IMDB for this one. David Webb (head alien) was in Colony In Space, apparently. Gareth Armstrong (young alien) was in The Masque Of Mandragora. After that, a few uncredited actors have Who credits. Meh, I’m not Toby Hadoke!
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