Maximum power.
Welcome to Maxima House.
I'm Colin.
I'm James.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Pete, and I'm Cy.
So let's talk about the very 1st episode of Blake 7, the way back.
So, Simon, tell us what you remember.
Remember, remember?
Well, the 1st thing I want to talk about is how awesome the titles are.
The title sequence never gets enough, enough credit, and I really like that Terry Nation wrote something and then they took it and made it better. than the thing that he'd written.
So it really sets up the show, even though you've got this mysterious ship that we don't actually see yet that just appears in yellow in the middle, but it sets up the, um, the cameras watching everything, which is our very 1st shot of the episode.
It's the guards, it's Blake.
Obviously, something has happened to Blake, and he needs to be eliminated, and it tells the narrative almost of this episode.
And I think that's phenomenal.
And it's really, and there's the thing of, is it, is it a camera?
Is it a gun?
I remember thinking that there was a gun in the start and then realising that it's not a gun, it's a camera, which is like, um, well, there is a gun as well.
But, you know, the spinning left to right security camera, which is like a thing that's really going to be a theme through the episode.
They keep coming back to this idea that, imagine a world where people are looking at you through a camera.
It's uh, it's really interesting to get yourself into that mentality.
I mean, the other thing is, too, it continues to tell the story, because you have Blake, his face is sort of looking at the screen, and then he disappears into the distance, like, into space or something, and then the liberator comes out, you know, so the idea, which this episode sets up, but which the show actually never properly fulfils, is that he sort of disappears into space, into exile or whatever, and then comes back in the form of, you know, fighting guerilla. crew on board the liberator.
And so it is telling that story.
Do you remember the, the idea, the concept with the, with the ID cards falling into a tray or something?
That's right.
Yeah, it was supposed to have pictures of all of the regular cast.
All right, maybe a little bit inspired by the prisoner. coming from a similar, I'm picturing that in my mind's eye with him having been cancelled, being stamped across his face at the start of that.
Um, because there's a, there's a lineage, isn't there, of 60s, 70s paranoia, and how, how to depict it best?
So what did the, was, was the ver- I didn't know all this.
Was the version that, that, that ended up being used taken quite, quite different to what was 1st sketched out?
So I don't think it was ever shot or anything like that.
It was just a concept.
It might have been sort of nation's original concept, I think.
It sounds like he put more words into that than some episodes of Dog Who they submitted.
Well, or them because Bounty.
That was a Blake 7 joke.
I don't get that, yeah, because I don't know, we should say, shouldn't we?
So for the lovely ladies and gentlemen listening at home and Alf Centuris and anyone else, that we, um, we're all from a sort of mixture of this, aren't we?
Like I'm pretty lightweight.
I watched it a bit when I was little when it was on, but I remember having conversations in school playground about, like, why is it called Blake 7 when there's no one called Blake in it?
And we just didn't know, because we hadn't seen the 1st 2 seasons, we were too little.
Uh, but I've subsequently watched it through a couple of times.
Does that make me one of the least well-informed people currently on this call?
And what, you're the noob of the podcast?
Other pals will be joining us further down the line as well, of course.
I remember as a child, we had, it was one of the 1st VHS tapes that my parents bought.
It was arc in space and the beginning, the omnibus version of the 1st 4 episodes.
And I watched that taped to death.
Like, I, it was literally, you know, like, there was barely anything left on the tape by the end of it.
Um, So, look, this has been, I'd say at some points in my life, I would have said I was a bigger fan of Blake 7 than I was of Doctor Who.
It, it, was that it was, it was kind of risqué and, and, you know, like a little naughty to watch because it was an adult program.
It was, you know, it was very gun.
Yeah.
But also frog.
Yeah, we'll get there.
We'll get to the frock, but not this week.
Well, we'll get to the some of the darker moments in this episode a bit later, but yeah, I, like, the way back is still quite new to me because when I watched as a child.
It only really made up about 15 minutes of the entire tape, I believe.
And so whole sways of the plot are just gone.
Like they cut it to shreds to get straight into space four.
Yeah, because there's a lot of procedural investigation going on in this episode, isn't there?
And we're finding out, we don't really know who the, although Blake's obviously got his name in the credits and is facing the credits.
There's almost like the guy who's his, um, who's his, uh, defence, defence counsel, does a lot of antagonist.
Sorry, protagonist eat stuff, uh, of actually investigating what's what the mystery that's been going on. and it's like, it plays games with you, doesn't it, over who's going to actually be a character in this series and who isn't.
Tony Nation loves doing that.
They fit so much into that 50 minutes though, don't they?
Like, so you're introduced to the character.
You think, oh, this is an every man, like he's just, you know, like he's going with a friend to meet some people.
And then, in quick succession, you find out that his whole life is a lie.
His former friends are gunned down by the Federation.
Uh, he gets back.
He's put on, he's he's captured, he's framed.
He's put on trial, he's found guilty, and and then, you know, like you have that investigation plotline.
His defence counsel is horribly murdered.
And then he ends up, you know, on en route to Cygnus Alpha.
Like it's, it's, So much happens in that 1st episode.
It's it's quite full of ideas.
Yeah, world building and I think it's one of the best 1st episodes of any science fiction series, and I've, yeah, I think just in terms of world building and how bleak it is.
I'm really into dystopian futures, they seem to be happening.
Uh, but, you know, the, the 1st shot being the security camera, the 2nd the, the 1st thing you hear is uh, like a woman from Rada with a clothes peg over a nose, you know, the president's speech or whatever, you know, whatever.
And, you know, everyone is slowly sort of like zombified walking through corridors because they've been, they're on, the food is all drugged and stuff like this.
I mean, I could, what time did this go out?
Like 7, 7.30, 750?
Yeah, well, it's interesting.
This one, with all of the dark themes in it, went out at 6.15. sorry, at 6 p.m. yeah.
And then from week 2 onwards, they moved it back to quarter past 7, they pushed it back an hour.
And I don't know if that was in response to feedback or if that was the plan all along.
But this came on after a Tom and Jerry cartoon on that Monday night in January 1978.
In Australia, it was on sort of at 8 pm on our sort of sheetier version of the BBC, which is called the ABC.
I won't have that.
I worked for them for a number of years.
You put in the graft.
And it, you know, it was a sort of slightly naughtier thing to watch just because, I mean, this episode, we have, like, a Varron and Maya, do they have sex, do you think?
They do.
Yeah, no, no, no.
They go to bed and they stop. yeah.
They go to bed while discussing the exact nature of the assault charges against like.
Hello talk.
And then he's like, sorry, darling, I just can't go through this. going to have to go to the computer and get all the information.
It's 2 o'clock in the morning.
One good thing for these totalitarian bureaucracies is that their research facilities are very well staffed.
At 2 AM.
Sorry, my husband just can't get it on with me until we found out whether this person is guilty or not, really.
We might have to bring down the government, in fact.
That's how horny I am.
I promise not to keep banging on about Doctor Who, because I bet that's a really tedious and boring thing for someone on Blake 7 podcast to do, but I would withdraw one lovely parallel, which is, as you just mentioned a minute ago.
This starts with a discordant voice in a corridor, which is exactly how Doctor Who starts with an earthy child with some kids in a corridor.
It's like we're letting you in.
These 2 series are both going to feature corridors, quite heavily.
It's clearly a, it's the launch pad.
What I like about this dystopian world that I notice very much watching it this time is there's no colour.
Everything is white and stark.
And the only colour is from the very drab tabards that everyone is wearing.
Obviously in the future, we're all going to be wearing velor tabards all the time.
I'm wearing one now.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, everything is very blank. all the way through and it's only when you go outside and see the rebels and they're in slightly more colourful costumes than anyone else.
Well, they look like they've just rolled in from the nut hutch.
Yes.
Yeah, it is, and the flares are just quite remarkable.
Is this Blake 7 or the Green Death?
I think the most notable thing about this particular dystopia is the prevalence of polystyrene Henry Moore statues all over the place.
That must be even easier to Nick than the real ones.
The real ones are actually getting Nick from sculpture parks.
At least they're not, the recent real ones aren't made of fun of diary.
No hope at all.
I quite enjoy the the multi-layered pleather sofas all over the place.
Well, yes.
The space sofa.
Yes. space sofas with the CSO background.
What's it called, a terrazza or something, isn't it?
There are some brilliant tweeters who've tracked it down and you can buy one for £14,000 or something because it was a limited edition.
It's quite an expensive sofa, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
They spent the entire budget for season one on it.
Yeah.
The left off gallipery.
It turns off on various planets.
Yeah.
Maybe it's like the humans, you know, this bipedal mammal form tends to crop up all over the universe.
So does a certain type of leather sofa.
It's just, it's just like the cyber, it's like cybermen evolving.
It's just one of the natural laws of the universe.
But it's impossible to sit on.
No one looked comfortable on it.
They're all kind of perched at odd angles trying to make it look comfortable while they're discussing how they're going to manipulate Blake's mind and what they're going to put inside it and all of that.
And it's very odd decision.
I had a moment of cognitive dissonance watching it because the prosecutor just looks like Sandy toxic to me.
She's very sandy toss, baby.
I wrote Baby Miriam Markoyles.
Margolese even?
With a Robert Holmes character name.
Yeah.
What's she got?
She's one of those bizarre combinations of a really ordinary name and a space name, isn't she?
Out the morag.
That's the one out.
My name is Colin Morak.
I think that in fact, all 3 of them.
Let's talk about the scene, right?
So we've, we have that sort of weird Blake's been captured after seeing the massacre, and we get a sort of mind fuck scene with Dr. Havant and him, which is sort of sort of notably directed, if not well directed, like there's crossfades and all sorts of interesting things happening.
And then he shouts and then we see that he's being watched on a screen by these 3 people.
And they're all incredibly gay.
And they, like, they hate young people, I think, apparently.
Um, and there is a sort of really weird, like, I don't know that this dystopia coheres, like, I don't know what it's about.
Do you know what I mean?
Are we in?
Are we in Eastern Europe?
Maybe?
So everyone's wearing sort of drab clothes and everything's regimented and stuff.
Like it's not a.
It's not a dystopia that's in any way kind of properly identifiable.
No, it's motifs, isn't it?
It's justopian motifs.
It's deliberately not there.
So you can read into it, what, you know, like, what sort of, what sort of totalitarian these are with their fascists, what they're communists.
I always read them as fascists, not communists.
But it does have that sort of Eastern European people informing on one another.
It's like, you know, it's like Czechoslovakia or something, you know, sort of drab things with sort of public art.
Or East Germany.
Yeah.
I think it is, it is that, but I mean, like, that's a good point.
It is that terrination thing of, you know, let's throw all these things in here and let's make it this as bleak and impossible dystopia that we can.
And I kind of, I wanted a bit more on earth.
I wanted a bit more.
I mean, it's good that it's good that they, you know, they, they, in a couple of episodes of time they're, they're flying about, uh, and everything.
But I kind of feel like that it would have been good to have a bit more backstory into or a bit more depth into what's going on.
It's just like person X popped up and they're from the Federation and they're bad.
I think it's a good point, Nathan, that it's, um, it's not entirely coherent, but I just love the, I love the fact they've just gone for, you know, a computer deciding, you know, the justice orbs or whatever, you know, deciding, like, or and there's drugs in the water and they've never had real food and, uh, and then of course there were these, um, deep fakes, or called viz tapes, where, um, Blake learns about it, his family's death, and he just couldn't give a shit, really.
Well, at the start, he's like, I hear from my family every couple of years, a couple of times a year.
I was like, okay, wow, birthday and Christmas is it.
That's how...
But here I am in this underground 1970s NCP car park with all these people and I'm kind of like, oh, okay, fair enough.
I guess that was a rebel leader.
All right, cool.
You know, I'm back to it.
And loop it, looping back to, to size comment yet about the, about the story, the way that the storytelling really does begin with the title sequence.
That, but if, if, if it didn't have, if you didn't see him screaming in agony in the title sequence.
It wouldn't be the same, would it, for the 1st 15 minutes, where he's just wandering around being shown things.
Oh, yeah. pleasant.
You don't know that this man is about to have something harrowing. is, I mean, you do because it's, it's, it's, the show's named after him and everything.
But you've actually seen him being tortured before it actually happened.
So it's like a, like a Jerry Henderson style coming up in this episode, type of preview almost, as well as a title sequence, isn't it, you know?
Going back to the question of the society.
I don't get quite who is suppressed and who's on on drugs all the time because obviously Dr. Havant and Wenglind and Alta Morag are not drugged and the judge at the trial isn't drugged.
So there's obviously levels of suppressance going on.
Well they work on level six.
Yeah, do we get into that later?
Yeah. some of them are upper class.
Oh, so there is some talk about, you know, they just borrow beta grades and delta grades and stuff from Aldous Huxley sort of later on as a sort of class thing.
But I think that that, you know, there is a clear intention to kind of keep it loose.
They don't want to be tied down to it.
And we're never coming back here.
This earth.
This is the only episode where we see this version of Earth at all.
Um, despite what the episode's title promises and despite the kind of end of the episode.
And so later on, you can just graft on delta grades and stuff like that, if you need to, to, I don't know, belittle Villa, I guess, was the motivation for it.
I don't know.
I, I kind of think that this dystopia is just a kind of big mishmash of sort of Terry Nations, science fiction tropes, you know, and that Terry Nation doesn't have anything really political to say.
And so that's why, like, I don't think he's deliberately leaving it open for the audience to, um, inject their own interpretation.
I just think he doesn't give a shit about any of that sort of stuff.
And, and like when we see the people who oppose the, uh, this dystopian government, they're unbelievably kind of wet and useless, aren't they?
Like, they're so bad.
Oh, we must get, we must get one planet behind us in the next, oh, 2 years. that's right.
I mean, imagine you've got such little age.
It's a centrist uprising.
No, it'd be like the, you know, the rebel alliance deciding that they were going to get, you know, one Death Star cafeteria to go on strike in the next in the next year.
Like they're so dismal.
And it is that sort of 70s student politics.
You know, they're all fucking hippies kind of sitting around and, you know, we're going to offer nonviolent resistance and all of that sort of thing.
A nation has such contempt for them and so does the episode.
So, you know, how many times do we see the shot of, you know, the camera just lovingly, you know, panning.
Yeah, panning over their corpses.
Which nobody has bothered to clean up after several days, I think.
They're all just where they fell.
Yeah, the 20 of those rebels are not going to get very far at all.
Are they?
Really, no.
But I get this.
The thing is, that's, that's, yeah, so it's setting up how, how unusual, the, um, the rebellion that Blake is about to end up bleeding is that there aren't just these huge networks of rebels that he's going, that he can plug straight into.
They were, but they were dismantled by the Federation.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
Like they, they, they, they rebel alliance had worked for, for a time.
Oh, and that's what it's the way back from.
And and and so he, you know, like he was the linchpin and when he was captured and brainwashed, it destroyed all resistance.
And so all that's left is the dirty dozen in space.
And a bunch of fucking hippies rotting in a car park.
Like, yeah.
And that was before they did.
That's the episode title.
But isn't the massacre well done?
Isn't that a brilliant, brilliant set of direction and shots and all the shadows and just the fact that they're not clouding it over with Dudley Simpson music.
It's just the sound effects of the guns and the big shadows and the guards seem really sort of bleak, faceless and they're just there shooting everyone.
And there's a hell of a lot of them.
Well, and the fact is that the Federation Guards actually end up shooting people, it doesn't miss.
I mean, who, you know, is it stormtroopers versus Federation Guards?
That won't last.
Maybe give it an episode.
They were trained on hippies.
But I agree.
It's, it's, it's really well done.
I mean the whole thing's really well directed.
The one thing I noticed this morning was how many times it zooms into someone's eye and, and then crossfades as well, and it's, it's, it's got a, uh, really good feel to it for given the, given the budget they had.
It does look like filming in a, like a, an unfinished tube station or something.
I think it's a nuclear unca.
Oh is it?
Well, there you go.
Yeah, yeah.
Actual dystopia.
It's a little bit like the Sunmaker's location as well.
And I think, do we reuse it for the one with the 4 bald guys?
What's that one called?
Ultra well?
Yeah, no, that's what was exactly what I was thinking.
Ultravox.
Because Michael Lee Bryant's got a lot of Doctor Who under his belt, hasn't a green death, revenge, and robots of death and death to the Daleks.
He's a very death centric director, and it seems maybe that's what got him this gig.
Well, I think he said he could see the possibilities in this show and could see it was going to be a challenge and a chance for him to really make his mark and he seized it with this episode.
I think it was more difficult.
He found it more difficult as it went on because the budget made it difficult.
But I think you can see his episodes all the way through the season are really pushing what you can do.
So when he gets to the web, for instance, and he, he's in a forest and he just says, no, we're, we're going to dress this.
We're going to make it really alien.
He's really trying to push the boundaries of what they can do much more than, say, Pennant Roberts or Via Lorrimer will do.
Although they have their great moments as well.
Because Michael Bryant did, he did several...
I'm right.
He did several episodes of season one but then didn't come back.
I think he got headhunted to more prestigious things.
Yeah, he went on to secret army.
Ah, right.
When are we doing the Secret Army podcast?
We're doing it now.
That's next, James.
It's got to be called listen.
Listen, it's got to be called listen very carefully.
So like, shall we talk about the budget?
Because this show looks really quite good for how much money was spent on it.
It had a smaller budget per episode per story than Doctor Who.
It was made with the budget of softly, softly task force, wasn't it?
It was like, it was a cop dramas budget for a science fiction show.
Yeah, that is staggering, that the BBC worked like that.
But of course they did, yeah. just right.
Give us 50 minutes of drama.
Here's some money, which is space, right?
Just one of the reasons why...
Like, in the agreement, I think, with nation.
It's one of the reasons why every episode in series A is written by Tony Nation.
Because they didn't have the budget to employ anybody else to write the scripts.
Oh, I bet he had to get paid anyway, whether he wrote...
You know, the thing is, is a, is a guy.
Yeah.
You have the budget of a cop drama?
And you have to write every episode.
David Maloney is very cleverly grabbed everyone with talent from Doctor Who to come and do this show for him because they know how to work with a limited budget, doing space stories, and yeah, and Doctor Who suffers because he poaches all the talents. like Roger Murray Leach or all the directors, apart from Via Lorimer, have come from the show.
Chris Boucher, I guess.
Oh, of course, yeah, we lose Chris Boucher from Doctor Who because of this.
Ah, they stole him.
And alter the better.
No, like for Blake 7, not for Doctor Who.
Like, um, Chris Batcher makes Blake 7.
Much more so than Terry Nation, especially after series A. Yeah.
Yeah, that's something I'm looking forward to as someone who doesn't really know the urban flow of it in a way that a more seasoned viewer would.
Because, for example, I mean, one thing about this episode, it's not very funny, is it?
But once we get half an hour in, Villa turns up and again, as a kid, I thought it was a show about Villa and his less entertaining friend.
And because of the way the BBC would do out of season repeats.
You'd watch an episode when someone might leave, let's say.
And then a few months later, there'd be an episode on that they were in again.
And you're like, oh, they're just back.
Maybe it's just random people each week.
And I wasn't following it enough to to be abreast really, what was coming and going.
But yeah, we're half, we're precisely half an hour into the episode before we meet Jenna and Villa. which is just remarkable for a startup episode.
Well, we get someone called Tarrant in the 1st 10 minutes.
Oh, he's obviously going to be a big deal throughout that.
But yeah, no, I was going to say, it's like, what do we think about Villa and Jenna's introduction?
I think this is Michael Keating's very best performance as Villa.
He's so slippery and devious and he feels kind of dangerous in a way that Villa, by Spaceball, has become the comedy character and the comic relief and loses some of that edge.
But I love Comedy Villa.
Comedy Villa is the best thing about this.
I'm not saying I don't.
No, but also, but yeah, I can, and I mean, if the minute Blake had, I mean, the 1st his 1st thing is a bit of a joke about trying to steal Blake's watch and what have you.
But it's, it's done a little bit sinisterly and unnervingly, which is completely in tune with the tone of the episode, rather than him just being all out, you know, raising his eyebrows, as, uh, uh, kind of right in the way that Spock does in, um, uh, in, uh, in Star Trek. spot gets a lot of that, that rate, the one who just, just cuts to him for an observation on how weird all this craziness is, but that's later.
I actually really like Jenna's introduction.
I just think it's super clever.
And it is that where she asks Blake what the time is, just as sort of, you know, just to expose Villa.
And I just think that's terribly clever.
I think it's a definitely Boucher, rather than nation.
Um, and, you know, I think she's really terrific.
I'm not a massive fan of her looking sadly through the bars and wishing someone was here to rescue her as well.
But, you know, what are you going to do?
Foreshadowing.
I just, she's rocking the Susie Quattro look.
That's the full extent.
No, just um, and I think that's one of the, like, the biggest crimes of this show is the way that they treat the female characters.
They're introduced quite strongly. genre is, you know, she's a smuggler.
A free trader.
Yeah, sorry, a free trader.
Yes.
We'll have to do that political discussion at some point in this podcast, but let's save it for later.
She's a strong woman.
She, like, holds the scene and then within about 3 or 4 episodes, she's basically just driving the ship and occasionally having a line.
Same when we get to it with um, with Callie.
Oh, no, Callie's crazy.
She's introduced as a sort of warrior terrorist and she ends up being, you know, kind of wet Deanna Troy.
Yeah, doesn't she?
A nurse.
Deanna Troy, but with backwards telepathy.
Which is the episode?
I think it might be a way off it.
This one where the 2 of them are literally just sat there operating the teleporter for about 3 episodes in a row.
It's like they're just flicking through their mags, beaming the boys down to have their adventures.
Yeah, it's it's terrible.
But they start off really well defined.
The writers don't quite know how to handle strong women, I think, is part of the problem.
And there's no, one thing I noticed that did actually impress me was that they didn't go down the obvious route of there being an any kind of flirtation between, I don't think, in this episode between Blake and Jenner.
Um, he just did not flirt with her in a way that you, I, any, any series would expect that to be a thing and to sort of riff on it, him, uh, some kind of will, they, won't they?
Which may come into it later, but I don't think it particularly does.
But if I remember rightly.
But, um, but the fact that they, they're just interacting as prisoners, uh, uh, rather than there being anything more obvious than that immediately kicking in makes, well, it's, it's the serious tone of the episode, isn't it?
But yeah.
I also just think that Blake's ever never properly does sex.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's just not a theme.
They don't want the letters it would generate.
So let's not go there.
We should probably talk about Blake.
Only half the series is really about you.
Why do we need to?
So I think his backstory is ludicrously implausible.
And so it's clear that he has been a massive rebel leader and then he's had his mind wiped twice.
Remember this?
So he's had his mind wiped.
He can't, he's been captured and tried, and then they wiped his memory.
And then he did a public recantation, which again is a very kind of Soviet era kind of totalitarian thing.
And then they wiped his memory again.
And so everyone that he meets every day, the person he buys, you know, the newspaper from, the little old lady who cleans his flat, all of them know that he's a massive, famous rebel leader, but he doesn't know that, and no one he has ever mentioned has ever gone, oh, you're him off that show trial.
They don't give a shit because they're all stoned out of their fucking gourds.
That's a great point Can I have some?
We kind of need it at the moment.
Yeah, that's my favourite line where Blake says to Ravela, it doesn't bother you that you spend your entire life in a drug induced haze, and I kind of feel like I would say, well, I can see the upsides of it, to be honest.
Well, you've been spending your time in a drug induced taste the last couple of weeks.
Yeah, yeah, those painkillers. an old school writer kicking back against the swinging hipsters of the 60s and 70s a bit.
When the show reinvents the dystopia that they're fighting against, which it does in series D. Do I have to call it series D?
I feel so stupid.
Yes.
Don't you enjoy series G?
It's the law.
No, no, it's...
Excuse me, it's Terry Nations, Blake Saddle.
With an apostrophe in apostrophe in nations, but not in the links.
I love that, right.
Can I just, sorry, this is a diversion, but I love the lack of apostrophe because of what it says about what working conditions must have been like the BBC Creatives in 1978 because a designer, at some point, must have just said, I know it should have an apostrophe, that looks better without, and nobody overruled them.
No one in the grammar department could say, but you can't do that.
In radio times, it's billed as the words.
Blake's 7 SEVEN every time.
They couldn't bring themselves to put the number 7 in the name of the front. people.
Maybe in case they confuse people about what time it was on.
Going back to the Blake's backstory and that no one recognises him stuff.
I mean, at what point does he remember?
Because he's kind of like, well, I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know.
It's like, okay, right, yes.
No, I'm fine now, you know?
It's like, he's just suddenly right, well, okay, I suppose I better get on with this.
There's no kind of, like, 0 shit, it's all come back to me.
Yeah, you know?
Yeah.
There's a, I think there's a line in cyclocate, destroy.
The line is, things keep bobbing back into my mind.
Like it's so like it's really a bit shit.
Like a rubber duck in a bath.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, I just don't think the show is interested in this premise at all.
And it throws the premise away at the 1st possible charts.
And then by the time we even think to go back to earth.
The show has sort of changed around the premise so much that this isn't a place that we could ever go back to.
And the only attempt that they ever try to do is in sort of voice, is it voice from the past?
Where they bring, you know, Van Glindback and he's shorter and has a beard or whatever.
Um, and, and, like, it's, it's clearly written by someone who thinks this is an important part of the show, whereas no one is sitting here watching this in 6 weeks time saying, I wonder what happened to Van Gleen.
Was Terry Nation sort of ousted from survivor, you know, a couple of years before this in a dispute about the extent to which survivors should be either just an action adventure series about people surviving, which is what he wanted versus the Terrence Dudley version, which was, no, hey, let's actually spend a year running a farm and getting help.
Which is basically a series 3 of just what's it like running a farm when everybody keeps getting ill.
It's series 3 of Swan.
Um, But, um, I think I can see why Nation, uh, his calling is just to get them all running around with guns, really, isn't it?
Right, here's a reason to run around with guns, off you go.
And again, that was part of the reason why he said he would write all 13 episodes because he wanted to keep control of his series this time round.
It had such a big dispute with Terence Dudley, um, that he wanted to keep control and he does.
I mean, he's always has an input into the, the, um, shape of each season up to the end of season 3 and that, oh, B, C, whichever one.
I've done it now.
And even when they're planning the final season, they talk to him about his ideas.
So he's always got an input, even though he's he's in the states.
Yeah, he's still a sort of, it becomes a Gene Roddenbury figure, I suppose, to next generation.
And um, Gareth Thomas was, in terms of people recognising him for being a famous um, rebel leader.
They will also recognise him for just having been everywhere on TV through the 70s.
I didn't realise until I looked it up, how much, I mean, I knew, I'd seen bits and pieces with him, but he was just never out of work in the, in the, in the lead up to this.
Uh, they had a bit of a dry period afterwards.
But, um, and I mean, and everyone always, as, as people always say, he was, he was a Shakespearean theatre actor, 1st and foremost, but he's got like, you know, 8 or 9 credits every year, as just popping up in episodes of plays for the for today, and how my house of horror and things like that.
And then, but then he had the lead in Children of the Stones.
I love children.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
And that was just like the year before this, I think, yeah.
It's interesting because his one of his more recent credits before this was Star Maidens.
And he basically plays...
No, he plays he plays a rebel leader in that.
Yeah, and he's he's there because he's been casting as the lead in a in a peak time drama series and he's going to show everyone how much acting he can do rather than he is not, he's not showing up and just, just taking the check or, you know, you know what I mean?
I mean none of them are, but, but in a, in a series like this, somebody with his pedigree.
It's just brilliant.
The head of drama, the BBC, basically said, no, no, we do not want Gareth, Thomas, because he's too well known.
I thought you were going to say because he's too Welsh because he's too Welsh known.
It's too Rada.
But no, they wanted, they wanted a, like a newcomer.
They wanted to have somebody who was completely unknown and they pushed against it for quite a while before they agreed to allow him to to be cast.
He really kind of exposes himself, I think, in this episode, and it is partly because the 1st half completely centres on him and the camera's on his face, and he is forced to kind of do some pretty sort of, you know, high calibre emoting and stuff.
And I think he sort of pulls it off.
I mean, I get the impression that he eventually feels he's slumming it and when the show turns into kind of, you know, space corridors and stuff like that, he's kind of out at the 1st kind of possible opportunity.
Um, but I imagine the opportunity to do the sort of acting that he gets to do here is what he is.
Yeah, there's that moment where he's like, and close up on Gareth and just react react react.
You realise you've just accidentally confessed to being a child abuser and Zoom.
And it's like, yeah, that was not something that he would get from other gigs at the time, from an episode of an episode.
Tell me a child abuser if you didn't watch the omnibus version of this.
Did they cut that out?
Yeah, like, like, it's just like, you're like, we're going to put you on trial and you've been sentenced.
I'm so glad as an eight-year-old child watching this show on VHS, that they cut out the child abuse plotline.
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I think the child abuse spotline, like from a modern point of view is sort of indefensible.
You know, like I just don't think you could really properly do that in a drama that you thought any kids were going to watch.
And, you know, just because triggering and sort of unpleasant and a bit cheap in our sort of...
Well, but it doesn't.
I mean, it doesn't kind of matter, but this is our sort of sort of space corridors, soap opera, and do we need to bring child abuse into it?
But I do think that it is interesting because all the child abuse, because child abuse actually does occur.
There's, you know, the charges are trumped up against Blake, but, you know, Those children are abused.
Yeah, Dr. Haven takes them out of school and implants memories of being, you know, abused.
So they abuse the children in order to, yeah.
They're not abusing the children sexually.
No, they are, because they're planting memories. no, no, no, no. physically abusing them, sexually, they're psychologically implanting sexual abuse is basically the same thing.
It's literally the same Yeah.
It's fucking horrific.
Like, it's just, 0 my god.
I do think, though, that Nigel Lambert does lighten that scene up a bit.
Oh, the guy with the 2 AM shift.
With his funky glasses.
And is bopping to his mu- to his more...
I love that theme.
It's that thing about the banality of evil, that keeps comes up in a lot of dystopian stuff and Nation clearly likes riffing with that too, doesn't it?
All these people that we see and we see it in the next episode as well, who are really cooperating with and part of the infrastructure of this evil regime.
They're just going about their business, really.
They don't they're not they're not fanatics.
No, it's about the bureaucracy and the admin of it all, and it's the admin that gets them found out in the end.
I love the end of that scene where, you know, Lambert, who has been sort of hilarious and sort of, you know, and he's a nobody, like he's just a sort of character who's there to press the buttons and stuff and he does the sort of cute, you know, bopping along with his watchman.
I think we call that box.
Um, and then he just calls, you know, they leave and he places a phone call.
I think it's so great.
It's a really sort of, you know.
Like you think he's, you think he's a joke character.
Yeah, he just leans forward and kills them with a button.
It's like literally, oh, I'd like to report something.
It's like, oh, wow, like, you know, like, on a pinhead, like, he just turns from being this joke character into basically getting someone sentenced to death.
Yeah, and again, that's the Eastern European thing.
Do you know what I mean?
The idea that there are people who will, you know, the communist thing, people will, um, you know, delay you to the authorities at the sort of slightest provocation.
So I, you know, like I think that's, that is kind of...
Yeah, it's the sort of John LeCarre edge to that as well. just, yeah, the grimness of totalitarians and what it does to people.
Yeah.
One other person in the cast, I've got to mention, because she shines in her moment.
She's only billed as screaming female prisoner.
But, um, but I, if I could take that 11 role and, and, and say, let's make this person a regular, it would be Beryl Nesbitt, who not only has a fantastic name of Beryl, Beryl.
Uh, but also it is, um, Good well-being.
And um, she, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I saw, I was just looking down the castle list.
I saw someone who's builders screaming female prisoner and I was like, oh, okay.
I wonder if I'll be able to spot her and 0 boy, can you spot her?
And it helps because it's being dragged away by the hair almost.
Yeah, they're really nasty to her.
And yeah.
And it's in the scene.
That's the one bit where the money shows, I think, the lack of money shows is that the, is the actual detention area that they're all, that they're all held in when we 1st meet Jenna and and Villa.
Uh, it's just a room.
I think you can sort of see curtains in the distance.
Yeah, it's just a big...
It's a theatre set, basically.
And so you've got to have, but having that woman, and having, having her there to, to sort of, you look at her 1st screaming and being dragged away, and then you follow to the other characters.
It sort of stops you from looking too much at the uh, the shadows and the lack of a ceiling and things like that.
It's very posh screen.
I think I think she's really going for it.
Who, who, I think it's Stephen Fry who says that, you know, actresses are mad. you know, and that they all just sort of absolutely go crazy at the drop of a hat in a performance, you know?
And she, she's so going for it.
And I think that that, that moment actually is the most kind of dystopian moment.
Like there's all of this sort of, you know, like I said, Polystyrene Henry Moore statues and sort of bullshit and stuff.
But the fact that that woman is being just carted off screaming and everyone, like no one really particularly reacts to it.
And it goes on for a really long time.
I actually think that that's darker than any kind of, you know, ill judged conversation we have about child abuse or something like that.
I think that, that watching that, that's the moment where it's least like Doctor Who.
It's a long scene.
It's quite uncomfortable.
Yeah, it's worse than the massacre scene because people don't really scream in that.
No, I'm dead.
I'm just I'm just relieved that meeting is over.
You know, like...
Oh, look, there's a hole in my chest.
Well, they at least have paid them to going right to the actors to at least actually look slightly upset about being shot.
I'm so inconvenienced.
I'm going to have to get this dry cleaned.
I'm sure there's one guy that he gets shot.
He falls over.
He rolls over some of the other bodies and in the distance.
He sort of. gets up and just decides to be shot again, you know?
He probably got paid twice.
So, can we talk about the special effects?
Because this is something that Blake 7 always gets a kicking for.
And I always feel that it doesn't always deserve it.
Sometimes it does, quite often it does, but I think we've got some excellent model shots at the end of this episode where the London is taking off and that looks magnificent and I really love the match shot of the great big dome behind them when they're out on location.
Yeah, yeah.
It really all...
This is the one where they've frontloaded their budget spent, haven't they, to make a really good impression in week one, I guess.
It looks great in standard death.
Which is, you know, it's fine.
It was incentive.
Like it was, it was designed for small TV screens, which, you know, didn't have a great resolution.
And until you watch it, you know, widescreen, not that it's ever been recent, high definition, but until you watch it in, like, you know, blown up.
I, I, I totally believe that.
Yeah, I, as a child, I totally believe that that was a domed city in the distance.
I was like, where did they film that?
I think that Blake 70 is sort of super weird because every so often you get like a model shot like the London, which is spectacular.
But there are other shots of the London that are just shit. you know, like where it's an FX model or whatever.
And it's the same with a liberator.
I think that when the liberator comes along and we'll talk about this next time.
You know, there's one model.
Like they've clearly commissioned, all right, we want you to build a really good model and then a really shit plastic one as well that we can use for other shots for no reason.
And so it is sort of super strange, but I think that that glass shot.
I don't think it convinces really, but it doesn't have to.
I really like the image and that's in the credits as well, isn't it?
It is, yeah, that's the start of the credits, isn't it?
So like that's clearly an important idea, you know, that everyone sort of lives in these sort of weird ass cities and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, but I do think it looks amazing and it really sells it and it is something that I think is super notable.
There's some really good articles.
There was a lovely one that we could share in the notes that was published by one of the Broadchus.
Was it the independent, publish that really nice article, isn't it?
Even that couldn't stop itself from ending of the end with them, of course, the wobbly sets.
And I, that's one of the things that always riles me because, yeah, occasionally, but like you'd get that on any soap opera, on any drama series, but people just go, people gun for science fiction, if they see science fiction having the same production values, of other series of the same area.
There's some great moments in Faulty Towers where they're sort of set literally can be seen to fall apart. like under the onslaught of John Clay.
Like it is, you know, it's the period.
I think it looks the period, you know, and they've got the budgetary constraints of having to create a world, you know, like they don't just sort of buy furniture from sort of down the road or anything.
I don't know.
They did spend £14,000 on that sofa, so...
They didn't buy it, Jane.
It was on loan.
I just dragged it in from the BBC lawyer.
My favourite thing is that big door to the outside where they have to go through is basically a bit huge bit of wood that has, they've sort of put silver duct tape around the top bit and the bottom bit.
So it looks a bit spicy and a bit metal.
And that door keeps dropping up through this series.
They're obviously spent a lot of money on that piece of set.
And so it ends on an exciting positive note.
He definitely going to come back.
He's going to find his way back and free everyone.
No, I mean, but he doesn't come back, does he?
He never comes back to this version of earth.
And so, in a way.
I mean, because that final shot is him looking out the window and seeing the earth and its associated moon kind of, you know, disappearing into the distance.
And, and so the show never really pays it off.
And so, I don't know.
There's something about the way that the show takes 4 episodes to kind of build to its actual premise.
Like, you know, everything's in place after that.
But it does take a while to do that.
And I think that's super interesting because it takes us a while to know what the show is and it isn't just a procedural. tuning into the same thing every week.
You know, Star Trek comes to us in a sense fully formed, even though that sort of unaired pilot doesn't have the final cast.
It still has the there in a spaceship.
They go to a planet, an alien thing happens, they solve it, they go away.
But we don't know what the show's going to be.
And we spend sort of 4 episodes finding out.
And, and like, I do think that that's interesting.
But then once we find out, it is just, you know, a procedure with space corridors and stuff like that, and nothing that we've seen in those 4 episodes ever ends up kind of properly paying off.
And so our experience of Blake 7, which was kind of coming in halfway through and not even knowing any of this staff, apart from James, obviously.
Like, it actually doesn't matter, does it?
We can still pick up what the show's about without really seeing any of this stuff at all.
So I think it's something that works on 1st broadcast because I think it is an interesting way of pitching the show initially, but it's not really the premise of the show in any real day-to-day sense.
You need a Travis and a server land.
Exactly.
But I mean, Travis and Servilan are not creatures of this world.
No, you can't sustain the Federation being a faceless bureaucracy for very long.
It needs, you need to give Blake a face to fight against, which they do eventually.
So this, this, this, is this typical of a Blake 7 episode and feeling very much like part one of a two-part story.
It's it is that's atypical, isn't it?
They're normally more self-contained, are they?
You don't often get, it feels like a cliffhanger ending.
There are some cultural theorists, for want of a better word.
Um, who, who argue that Blake 7 is the sort of proponent of, of the arc plot in, in science fiction.
Science fiction before Blake 7 had never really done Nag plot in the same way.
Like the whole series is really about the way back.
Yeah, but I don't think in any sense it is.
And certainly, I think there is an arc plot in series two.
Sorry, B. But, you know, like this thing, these 4 episodes that we're sort of about to embark on talking about, I do think that that's remarkable.
I do think that the job of a TV pilot is to let you know what it is you're likely to be watching every week.
And this absolutely refuses to do that.
And in a sense, maybe that's a bad idea.
But in another sense, I do think that it is interesting, and I do think that for the 1st while, for the 1st half of series A, you'll be tuning in and literally not knowing what to expect.
No, I think there's a very good case for seeklocape destroy being almost a 2nd pilot.
This kicks off the show, how it's going to be from now on, and off we go.
Yeah.
I think okay to destroy series A of Blake 7 is Dalek to series one of Doctor Who.
It reestablishes kind of where these characters are, what they're about and introduces some new exciting threads into it, which kind of relaunches the series midseason. interesting. can't wait.
That's it for the way back.
Next week we'll be back with Space fall.
So thank you very much for listening and goodbye.
Good night.
Goodbye.
Good night, darling.
And goodbye from me.
Switching to Matty.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.