Maximum power.
Welcome to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast, where we are very excited to be presenting the 2nd half of our interview with Michael Lee Bryant.
I hope you enjoyed the 1st half if you've already listened to that, and we've got some great things coming up in this one, haven't we, Simon?
Oh, we certainly have.
Thank you, Pete.
There's some very interesting discussion about drones about the original design of the liberator and picking up an episode where someone else has done the location filming and you're asked at the very last minute to come in when you're not expecting to direct an episode.
So, yes, and we'll be hearing about his return to Wookiehole, having been there on that other science fiction show he's worked on, but going back there for the late 7, and a great debate about, a great discussion about the difference between single and multicamera shooting practises and the way that that's changed over the years.
Let's dive straight back into the 2nd half of our interview with Michael E. Bryant.
Yeah, so the next episode of yours to hit our screens was Project Avalon, where there has been another big enhancement to the format, which is, we do now have, a superstar villain, villainess, in the form of Servalon, by Jacqueline Pierce having joined the cast.
Did you know, once, as soon as you saw her, that this was, could be a, a breakout character, because I think originally she was just designed to be a bit of a villain of the week or, but then very much moved front, front and centre.
I didn't.
I'm certainly didn't know the industry was a casting of Jacqueline.
That would have...
Who's a pursuit of this year in originally?
was a deal.
It was a pin, pin, it was a pin. on one episode prior to project down, hadn't she?
I can imagine that.
Yeah, like imagine there casting Jacqueline, yeah.
I think it was clear from the web that the conflict thing was very, very important of them to keep the stories going for 13 weeks and hopefully more.
Jackie did a sort of nice, since if you know, was the whole thing.
I mean, and you know, the council room, we were all giggling and camping it up because, um, it was so outrageously camp.
And it worked.
She just worked really, really well.
And then Stephen wife, who I've worked with, a lot throughout my career in the past.
He managed in my casting.
I can't, I can't remember, but Stephen will certainly bounce from my repertoire.
So, um, 7 wife and worked.
They worked very well together.
They, they, they hit it off.
And, and Jackie just sort of, she sort of, she enjoyed.
She enjoyed herself doing a chair.
I remember her being beside the desk and oh, and having silly things in those days.
I had a monitor wear on the desk or something, the pictures inlaid in it, and you've got to keep it still, and you've got to, you know, it's got to be positioned exactly.
And Jacqueline, really, she was so on top of her game, that doing the mechanical things as an actress to make the effects work.
It wasn't an issue for her.
She just did it.
I mean, it was just, I mean, all the things can do that, but there are some that sort of can do it without thinking about it without considering it and without it affecting their performance.
And that was what, and that was what Jacobin did.
And yeah, David was a very shrewd producer.
I mean, we could see very quickly what worked and we also had.
I think by this time there was a fair amount of discontent in the, uh, you know, in the home camp, um, that, who had, you know, who had scenes and who didn't have scenes, everyone had dialogue and all the rest of it.
And I think it became clear that we would, we needed other influences.
I, I, I quite liked project, have along when I saw it again.
I thought it worked quite well.
Yeah, sort of through the podcast, that very much came out top for all of us.
That was our favourite episode of that particular series.
So it seemed very Blake 7 almost.
So it's the Federation versus the Liberator crew, lots of action, lots of stump work, lots of jeopardy.
So it was just a really cracking episode.
Wrong stories.
I really, really enjoyed doing action.
I mean, I didn't Pete Spanish, but it doesn't matter.
I really enjoyed doing action.
I really enjoyed.
I've enjoyed the whole place also fight arranging and the whole process of explosions and people falling from great heights and I just really enjoyed doing those things.
And I did, I did change a bit after that.
But, um, It just happened, I guess, I was, I was able to inject all that into, into the project.
And actually, it was the best science fiction story that I did, I felt.
It was.
Real science fiction.
There was nothing there that you couldn't go, yeah, I can believe that can happen, you know.
Because that's a triple science fiction, isn't it?
You have to be able to believe that it can, that it could happen.
And I think Project everyone had that.
And an old favourite location as well in Wookiehole.
That's right.
A national.
Obviously, I did 14-04, um, Dr. Poo, for the cybermen.
So I knew about that location, and I knew, again, it was going back to somewhere where you knew could make it work.
You could find the location.
You could find the set within the location to do the things that you to do.
And one of the, the lady, Dennis Barber made her a forced turn, the girls, in that in that story, when people become...
Or she, she was a, there's a one called Tangier, and she went down and became a next police, and she became a regular in Blake 7 itself in the final series.
Yes.
Yeah, I've never seen.
Actually, it's a photo break settlement. ever so often, even after I was left it, because we were showing you don't necessarily want to, it's not necessary to taste or whatever.
Uh, but I did use some different brakes of very often and then say, you know, and enjoyed it, an enjoying episode.
Enjoy some of it.
Although I thought...
In the way, though, once Gareth left it, I never, it then got taken over by Silverland, and eventually Pinz's character, and Brian Crabshire, between Stephen Griff, and I don't know what happened with that.
I can't remember why I watched Stephen and Brian came in.
Brian was no weight of mine from, you know, I mean, one I've worked together for donkeys years.
Yeah, I think it was possibly that same thing of not wanting him, having said in interviews that he felt he was going in circles a little bit and one year was enough, but they decided to recast rather than replace him with a different character.
You had to deal with a particularly difficult robot as well or location, I think, for Project Avalon.
Yeah.
There was a slight.
Disconnect on Web 7 between visual effects department and the rectors.
I don't know how I work for Panjangero, because I know I can borrow it to discuss it with them, but...
The this effects department would tend to go off and do their own thing.
If you're doing adoption home, You know, sit down there and I'm planning, you would make a list of very eventual effects you wanted, send that list to them and then form, and then you would have a meeting with them in, when you're off in my office, and we'll go through light of my item, what was going to be done.
You could also do that with makeup and costume and, you know, everything else, but particularly with vigil effects on a who.
In Blink 7.
They sort of decided to do things themselves.
They didn't, you didn't, you didn't really come to the direction and say what do you want?
They went, this is what we're giving you.
This is what we've got for, for this.
And I found that disaging.
Sometimes, having had a calamity with a similar sort of robot Colombian space.
Oh yes, yeah.
I can't remember, and it's 50 years ago, okay, but I cannot imagine myself approving of that sort of robot.
Because you could have any sort of robot, you know, we could have an astimov robot, you could have a robots of death robot.
You know, you could have any sort, it's just a robot.
And I guess because...
The pressures, um, for example, which I was describing earlier, was so great.
They would, they just didn't have time for meetings or whatever discussions, and they just designed a robot that could operate in Wookiehole.
I think I probably proved the LMA track because I knew from, I knew that you can put something.
Well, I knew that you're not going to run, you're not going to run any machine to a creature, and garlic, you can run a garlic in wuffy hole other than on a man in my track.
So, well, I obviously clearly agree that it would be on that track.
But the actual design of it, I didn't, I certainly was no input into it.
I'm just so presented with this thing, and I think it was, you know, it was disappointing, but, Is it the rule?
I can't remember now.
What is it?
The door, the door gets blown up at some stage.
I can't quite remember this before they go even after when we came up and it gets blown up.
Visual effects.
Uh, so, uh, we did it with the show, we did a little filming, the gunshots, all the dialogue, all the stuff up to the explosion, the explosion was actually the last thing we were going to do, but just a couple of weeks after that.
And fish on effects.
Obviously, there was a scenery door in there.
Uh, visual effects attached a sort of flashbang thing to the to the door, and we rolled over cameras, and I said action, and they pressed the button, and the thing went off for a bang, and the tool totally filled with smoke.
Oh, no, totally. standing up.
You couldn't see.
You couldn't see a hand in front of your face.
You really couldn't.
You know, I mean, like that, 20 wrist, 25 of us.
So at this stage.
And we discovered that if you got down on our hands and knees, we can actually crawl along to get ourselves a car, but this one, you know, where's the smoke going to do, you know, you clearly got to get out.
You could not get out on full tunnel.
So we got down our hands and knees, and down the hands and knees, it was below the level of the smoke.
All right?
I just see in front of you.
I'm actually crawled out of, out of the area, into the back entrance, and then the door open, and waiting for sort of 15 minutes from when it's all snowed clear.
That's all, you know, that's all official effects.
Well, yeah, fortunate thought about it.
I don't can say, well, they're experts, but it wasn't really their fault.
That whole sort of robot thing was disconnected.
For example, and on the way back, with the video camera.
So, um, just before I went filming.
Um, I said, uh, I wasn't able to, there's a video camera.
And they made, I trained a video camera, something about one foot by one foot, yeah, I mean, a full-sized handheld video camera.
And I went, come on, guys, I didn't know anything about that.
I just meant something really, really small.
Look, it's so easy nowadays, but, you know, I'd imagined.
You know, I imagine something a bit like our mobile phone or maybe an injuncture than a mobile phone, being a video camera in those days, and they produced, and they produced, they eventually produced something, you know, out of stock, and I went, yeah, that's fine.
That'll do.
And this was a sort of disconnect with that department and direction.
I can't imagine it was just me.
I mean, I'm sure.
I think it was pressure of work.
I think it was going for the okay.
Oh yeah, I've got that on the shelf.
Yeah, you know, I think it was that and not having time to discuss things.
So the robot thing was, I bet they had one.
I bet they had.
I think they made it for a previous episode and then said, oh, you can use that one.
Right, exactly.
Exactly.
So can we ask you a bit about casting?
Because we noticed, obviously, as Doctor Who fans as well, that there are a lot of people that you used in Doctor Who, um, in your episodes of Blake 7.
So what's that?
Just because you knew that they could do this kind of acting that was required for science fiction or that they were just the right people for the roles.
We're not under technical pressure, we all were.
I mean, it was it was not a, you know, it wasn't a walk in the park doing big seven.
It was really tough to get it done in the time for a money.
That would be also a precious one actress that you could just warn on.
You want them to be very good actors because that's, you know, that's the basic criteria.
But there wasn't time to take that many risks.
Although the girl who played Avalon, you know, the girl who had the face mask taken, you know, I remember, I remember interviewing quite a lot of ladies for, for that, for that job, and I thought she was the, Pretty much the most attractive of them all who could act.
Responsible casting.
No, I had a I had a castle walk on my career, I always had.
I always had some new people.
I've never done a show over with people out of the little black book.
I always had so new people.
Yeah, I never did a sure why I didn't have far off leading the leading people or the main characters would be new people.
Because in those days, there were no casting directors, the director just sat down and cast every single part, you sat down with a book, you sat down with a book and you went, oh, no, yeah, you can do that.
Yeah, no, he'd be really good for that.
So yes, you used to.
And the guys who have done, the guys have done well for me on robots, it seems weird that they were good people to have back in this situation where I went to them.
Because in the rehearsal room, it has to be a lot of precious in the rehearsal room because, as I say, the element of film to studio was smaller in this show.
So, what a studio time, and therefore the rehearsal time was more fully utilised, and you needed people to be able to recognise your shorthand.
You need to provide me, you know, a bit there, sort of take it out of there, or, you know, faster funnier.
They're talking about rather than unknown quantities.
And just, you also just hadn't got the tooling to interview enough people to, You know, I, I would interview.
Maybe 5 or 6 people for 3 parts, you know, the parts that were special for for that particular episode.
So if you've got 4 or 5 people, 4 or 5 characters, parts that you have to interview for, then, you know, seeing 5 to 6 people from each part, is, you know, there's 13 people, that's 13 half hours, that's, um, it's a long time.
So therefore the casting, the little casting book was really invaluable.
I guess this is why the extraordinary extra Pat Gorman turned up a lot.
Because you know he could do whatever you needed.
The extra single world stores was there were 2 or 3 extra agencies, and it was the job of a PA production assistant, the 1st assistant VA.
It was his job or her job to cast extras.
And classically, they would have an agency that they liked using, and the agency had all had books and extras, but like, spotlight, and you'd gone through, and people like Pat, who'd been in absolutely the infrastructure hall that ever was.
And, you know, so of course you're going to have patch because you knew you knew exactly what to do and you knew what you wanted.
I mean, this was mascot, it was all papals.
Really good.
We'd love spots again whenever he turns up sort of behind the mock or in front of the camera or bits of face show or even get some line.
Just, yeah, it makes them happy.
If ever you find yourself in a battle in outer space.
You want to stand next to Pat Gorman because he'll be the one who takes the bullet and has the exciting death.
You'll probably be all right if you're stood near him.
Right.
That's right Yeah, and the costume mixture is worse.
The 1st assistant.
I mean, certainly, I was when I was a forest assistant, I was a PA.
I mean, truthfully, seriously.
I've been trying to get the right sort of people, you know, the right looking people, the right physique of people, the story, and and, uh, I, I, I bet it doesn't go like that today.
But there's, And you know, a casting assistant that casts extras and, I mean, now casting directors that cast all smaller parts.
And I think tourists, when I'm sort of enjoying TV, where they did have casting records, I just found it slightly strange that, yes, I'd have the final say.
But I didn't have the say from the beginning.
So I couldn't surround myself with people that I had confidence in and then take a few risks outside that.
It was people that casting directors saw were good.
And I didn't always have the same criteria and casting directors I found.
How did you feel about the used to multi-camera shooting and the extent to which that's now not really done drama anymore?
Because we've often found that when you're watching something on multicamera in studio, there's the rapport between the actors, this really could be firing back and forth, which when it's on single camera, line by line, it doesn't seem to be as naturalistic.
I think it's a real...
Well, I think we're treating one of the television studios underground, and then one Grove and Hammersmith at all as well, plus all the visual studios.
I think that was a real tragedy, and that vanished because of accountants, not because of creative people.
It was the accountants taking over the BBC.
The course had to happen.
And matching camera, Absolutely, has the thing, it depends more, actors do actually play off with each other.
I mean, various, and it's interesting that if you're rehearsing watching camera thing, on the right, when you're doing the recording, or if you're done a couple of vessels, and then you're doing sort of recording, when the recording, a little free song of excitement happened, when there was a difference, there was a difference in the action.
It just sort of, I don't think it came up and watch, but it had a, it had a slightly real, real feel about it, and I agree.
In some bang or warehouse in acting out of clapper wall.
In the country, some of the jet planes coming over, it's often.
It isn't quite the same.
And I think directors don't have the chance to take the care over the acting, that, in that situation.
And, as you can, there's nothing.
I think it's sad that most of them have done, whether I guess, no, I think it would still be, I think it could still be happening.
Um, now shooting um, So, after the denials of multi camera.
Um, I would vain from shoot on 2 cameras or 3 cameras at the same time, and so that all the actors were involved.
It was, it was not just somebody standing with his head beside the lens, feeding the line to lectures and shot, and then trying to look natural word or whatever.
I'm trying to do almost whole scenes on a couple of cameras going in the same direction so there can be looked from the same direction.
It's the vinyl versus compact disc comparison that we were talking about before, maybe.
Yes, it is.
And then, yes, and from you have the world on it, yeah.
You mentioned boldly going where other people had gone before.
Were Star Wars looming over you by the time you were working on Blake 7 or was that just still over the horizon?
Absolutely.
It was.
We're on the planning stage, and the pin was a couple balls down from me in his office, and I was in my office, and Star Wars was released, and I didn't want to go and see it because I didn't think it was...
Foundable, planned, and saw it, and came back to the office in Jersey, and the next morning, I mean, it was just going, it was just so what we're doing is just impossible, and there's no way we can be, anywhere, you know, I mean, just one, just one, affecting that was clearly going to cost the entire budget from, uh, forcing more series of log 7.
I mean, so, When I eventually did go to see it, I think I decided it was a different genre, really.
I think I decided that it actually didn't matter.
I saw it, I think, after I'd finished in Lake 7.
And I, and I, I didn't, I just sort of know, actually doesn't matter.
It actually doesn't matter because Star Wars also, Oddly, I'm not Star Wars fan.
It's not...
It's not my sort of science fiction.
What have June is not.
The more mythical.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, they're super mirrors. and and spaceship fighting planes on currently on um, digital, whatever, just doesn't, it doesn't do it for me.
In the same way, the guys who made, what was the famous, the big movie were, uh, called Thanksgiving, uh, Thanksgiving, uh, some...
Yes, thank you.
Anyway, you were going.
Independence day, they're trying to do, they're trying not to do digital effects.
They're trying to do real explosions, real crashes, world, as much as they could.
The triple digital effects, instead of just go, could numb.
Just keeping them.
There's quite a good sort of end of the world film where now drums taking off and the one way is breaking up behind it.
It's a sort of okay.
But you just go, but it's just no way that could happen.
It just wouldn't be like that.
It isn't rural.
It looks real.
You know, it's, it's, you know, down in um, technical terms.
It looks absolutely fine.
Once you get away from doing things that people really, really can do.
Like, can cruise, Being, drink, Richard.
Which is very, very often.
It's completely...
Yeah, just when, how on, it was just nudicrous.
Well, for me, I could do Jack Ridge.
So, you know, a good chance, and it was Catholic Billion.
I could bring Jack Richard.
So if last come home and do, you know, I can't wait for the next one.
And next book to come out.
I've seen one of them.
But you have got this 6 foot 6, um, military views and then who is interested in the drunks and, yeah, can hold his own.
And it's worked out.
But Tom could.
So I guess, I guess that's what my problem is for something links to novels, is you just go, it couldn't happen.
It just couldn't happen.
And also, you wouldn't have fighted violence.
We're not going to have guys in the airplanes 10 years from now.
We'll be glancing in your bones, throw the drones.
They're the drones for each other.
Why don't you put a gun in there?
Why don't you?
Why don't you put the weight of the, you know, the oxygen and the ejection seeds and all, why?
When you can have a blade sitting on a container and...
Mind, do I reckon all those continues?
You're actually, In Europe, not America, I don't believe this concept that there are operators somewhere in America.
I don't believe I talk because I just said the signals will take too long.
I have too much chance of having interference.
I reckon the drain operations are over, the drones actually are at the base, I'm certain of it, absolutely certain of it.
And we've seen Pete's Wi-Fi drop out this evening.
Yes, exactly.
So why, you know, why give yourself a 1000 miles of potential trouble?
There won't be guys in fighter planes, which doesn't want to be feeder pilots, but they won't be sitting in the airplane, and won't be tanks on the, but having, how much I will all have tanks on a battlefield.
I mean, absolutely.
Which is mean for me, Star Wars didn't work course because I just think it wouldn't be like that.
Your style is very much more grounded in that action.
And I'm remembering you mentioning Biggle, of course, at the beginning, and that's real, nuts and bolts, having given the adventure done, rather than on a flight of fancy, of which, what would be more, science fantasies, a genre, isn't it?
I hope that everything I did in Blink 7 was makes honoured reality.
Every, every effect I did, everything I did was based on is this truthful?
Could this actually happen?
Was there any sort of criteria about it?
I don't like Germany's being thrown off cliffs, well, if they're dead, that's okay, but I mean, they've done Mrs. Riper.
I much prefer to have a stunt guy do it on the boxes because it just looks more real.
And of course, at the stop, deliverance.
You had the physical spaceship with the 2 actors in it rather than a model job, which is sort of bringing it back a bit to Blake 7.
That was a really interesting way to shoot those scenes, very different to what we've seen in the rest of the series.
Yeah, I know.
I can't remember, would you listen?
Was it the web, which starts off with a little baby spaceship, the 2 with any crunch on board, and...
Which, you said...
They haven't seen of the episode, there's a small station with 2 people on board it and he's going to replace his father.
He's going to find his father on planet. comes back to me.
Yeah, deliverance, yeah.
I mean, that was actually done.
We actually had the little space ship.
Right.
Oh, because there were a couple of scenes inside it because it has to crash on the planet.
And the reason.
I mean, the reason, um, you know, when we were discussing sort of tuna fortune, David said, really, if you look at Star Trek, the other way, if we're going to be going down on planet for the episode, which is what we're going to have to be doing, you can't have a very spaceship, um, a shuttle, taking off and flying down and landing, and you can't do that, you can take forever, and, you know, you can swing wise into being water shots.
So you would have this, dissolve a mix which, uh, niche improved immersively from our original concept.
So, never been so, we hit it on the web station, because we have to be done all inside it.
And so I put it on a, on a new cloth, and then had a cycle, a big cycle of armour around it, and got which thing to cover the top in blue as well.
And I used the new cream, which was in, 4 man operated cream, which seems in TV studios in those days.
And then I, one guy driving, a 4 wheel drive thing, and then another guy swinging the arm, and the cameraman on the top.
So, I wasn't able to do a shot of, I, I, I could do a shot of, I, which, blanking, most, actually.
I could do a shot of making the crane, crack in and crab down.
I'm really proud of the shot.
Crab, crab down the studio and coming close to the little model, not a model, the little spaceship that we had sitting on a couple of trestles, with the 2 actors in it, and go past the window and carrying the file, which made it look as if the form was floating.
I'm sure improved about that.
Sorry.
Yeah, no, it stands up really well.
So it's really dynamic, start of the episode.
And of course, I think you use the mole crane then on the shots of the flight deck quite a lot as well because there's lots of high angles in that episode.
In the early days.
I didn't see, I didn't conceive the spaceship in enterprise.
I didn't conceive the delivery.
I, I didn't conceive this, it's been...
A manually driven machine.
I mean, for all the reasons that I've sort of talked about that, I believed it would, you know, it just didn't believe that people would pull woovers and press buttons in order to go to web speed.
I just I just didn't think that at all.
My original concept was that you were just going to stand somewhere.
Maybe under a light for the screen, and think what you wanted to happen or, say, what you wanted to happen, and the computer would take over and perform the function.
And I got, I got an adventure by doing independent.
And so we end up with the liberator with all these seats and things.
But it's very very sweet to talk to me, um, I think by, by the channel, I was doing the web.
And he said, well, actually, Michael, uh, Yeah, um, we've come, we've got the Zen, we've ended up with Zen, and that is really what your concept always was, um, originally.
I mean, obviously it was slightly different, but that was that was much more.
I absolutely, I never saw the women I should was being something which, I didn't even set in their seats.
And they saw all this control thing being necessary.
And didn't, and, We're developing something.
I mean, just go with majority.
Well, you know, a choice course, but I mean, you just got all the majority, and they all felt if they wanted these controllers, and I felt I didn't, and David was a really very good producer.
He was a faithful leader.
Because he, yeah, he, he, he, you know, Michael Luger, right.
Um, We don't need all these controls, we just need to be able to talk to a computer and the computer will do what we uh, what we wanted.
Yeah, and you get lots of great shots of the people's face, the cruise faces of their controlling it, or as they're having mind battles.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think it has sort of more acting areas within the spaceship.
I mean, I wanted to see, we had that one tunnel, which occasionally went to somewhere else, but I wanted, um, I wanted to see more of the demasticity of the spaceship.
Get the, you know, I went to see the bedrooms.
I went to see the kitchen.
I wanted to see the rooms.
I wanted to say, you know, I wanted to see all of that, because the actual controls in my head, we would consider our black circle and thought, Mars.
And this little plastic thing arrived and unwrapped it and made it.
And now people have Alexas in their home, which can't do quite that yet, but they're getting there.
Yeah, I mean, I understand in some functions.
My eye controls.
The, the, the, the pilot can walk at things and make it do things, I understand.
So, you know, we're almost there, but I say, reality, of course, is that one of the new infant about in those days was drones, um, events have just changed everything, warfare or only Google dragons.
And if another, if another stations, as it did come from our planet, and I've given up now, I used to go sort of selling the leader, but now I no longer am, you wouldn't send people, you wouldn't send, why would you, you would send another man spacecraft with a dream?
Bro.
Yeah.
But despite the, that lack of, Drones, the, um, the, the camera shots of that, of that huge liberator main control room are always really impressive and particularly in your episodes, it just, was it, was it unusual to have, central, uh, set like that in anything.
I mean, for example, if you think of Doctor Who, there's the TARDIS console would have to be stuck in the corner of a studio.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the tourists...
It's becoming enormous, but...
I think I noticed that they were craving a lot in there because it was over a big set, and it seemed crazy not to try to present a big set and present different action, you know, within within the set.
So, a bit like trying to make that big sitting shot over the beginning with the tiny little figures in the in the bottom of the frame.
Um, I quite like the idea of all the ways of being enormous.
I mean, there's appearance and warmness and level shots, and therefore, the interior should be enormous as well.
So I guess having a high shot.
Because it wasn't actually that at all.
I mean, we seem to, you know, in a TV story, in those TV studios, The lights were, I mean, it probably wasn't, Probably in half as much again, it's the average living room, with the highest you could have a set, because of the lighting rakes being there.
So the liberator set wasn't, it wasn't that tall.
So if you get up high, you can do a big high shot and make it look huge, without shooting off the, you know, shooting off the top.
How did you feel about the way the series has changed from your 1st to your last episodes?
4 episodes.
Yeah.
Oh, we've touched it already.
I know, but yeah, it's a very, it's a very different kettle of fish by the end of that 1st season.
Stylistically, yeah.
Stylistically, but during that steering, you sort of win over, I mean, they were flying so dyed.
Yes.
Sorry, I just mean between your 1st and your last.
Or did it just seem much more cohesive to you at the time because you're cracking on with it?
Just, I, I, I found the Soderland thing.
Sorry, disconcerting.
Um, because I think, I can't quite remember.
I have a feeling that there may have been 3 episodes recorded between My, it was Avalon, my final one of my 3 uh, the weather.
Yeah, everyone was.
Yeah, well, it's way back, the web, then Avalon.
And then I've got a feeling that there might have been 3 episodes recorded by other directors via pennant and whoever was replacing me or whatever. came in to do...
Yeah, definitely came in.
That's right.
So I've got a feeling that there were 3 episodes where 3 hours of material.
So when I came in and encountered um, Jackie and Stephen and the whole sort of land thing, it was a bit like walking for a different show.
Someday the emphasis was no longer on this blast of deliberation site and everything else.
It was on all these sort of marvel silver and sets and these camp costumes, and the show, It felt like a different show.
Not better, not worth, nearly different.
And I think, you know, I think it was a fairly good decision of delegates to take it in that direction away from the confines of the spaceship because fundamentally isn't that idea.
Certain people in a spaceship or other adventures isn't a good idea, actually.
But we didn't do that at all time.
So once you've realised that.
It was very smart to take it away into other worlds.
So we wondered, were you asked to come back for the 2nd series or had you made it clear that you were only doing these sort of 3.5 episodes?
No, I mean, I really didn't want to do.
I really didn't want to do anyone.
I mean, I can't remember why I went on Stwell for that, but it was.
Well, I've been in secret army that you did that.
Army, I mean, secret army.
I just, I thought I grew as a director.
I thought I grew up on Secret Army.
I mean, I thought it became a rule at our director.
I loved doing Secret Army.
It was so well, so well scripted, so well active, so well thought about, based on our reality.
And you were not, you were not being asked to, um, Yes, and I did, you know, I did well glass shot in secret army, and I, you know, I did a lot of 5 sequence and things like that, and gun battles and things were, it was a magical show to do.
And I hadn't moved on.
I did make 7 because they really persuaded me to do it. you know, you've been where he worked at it, he persuaded me to do it.
And I did think we were going to England.
I did think we were doing John Wyndham.
And that's, because it was the script, it was the way back, it was, That.
Yeah, it's so different to everything else that came after it.
That's right Fantastic sort of standalone episode almost.
And I wouldn't have wanted him to come back.
I mean, I I was just working.
And my career was then absolutely on a sort of upward.
Collectually doing, you know, I did a change to the city, there was a literature and I did.
Yeah, I did.
I was just doing things which were very very challenging.
And a director to do.
Whereas, make 7 because of the pressures with, Well, it was your technique that was, it was your technical ability that was being challenged, not your ability to direct.
That's a really interesting distinction, yeah, the difficulty of just getting it, meeting all of those challenges, which no other show really would be.
Certainly a certain, a technical challenge.
But the people like Mitch around, which didn't exist on Doctor Who, in those days, and with the fact that it was contained, This is a big...
Dr. D was never really contained in retardist, was it?
You would have an extinguishing senior, and then senior, and the rest of all happened somewhere else.
Whereas Blake 7 was predicated on the idea that it would all happen in, um, in the Liberator, and then it was predicated on the world and around the Avon, Swivan, um, characters.
So, it was a much more controlled thing, and I was walking into a natural room for the 1st tool of secret army, with Clifford Rose and Bernie Hapton and Orden, who was terrifying.
I mean, absolutely terrifying.
Well, I was walking into, um, gentle fields doing her thing.
We're going on just quite a while.
That's not the pleasure, of enormous pleasure, but a smile.
Were there any, um, any people you would have liked to have passed in an episode of Blake 7, who you couldn't get out, who you couldn't get that spring to mind.
I don't know to what extent you ever had any casting wishes that you couldn't actually get hold of the person.
No, it wasn't.
I mean, I can't, obviously I can't ask most of the way back. myself other than Gareth, of course.
Because of the 3 of us, and David, David was very strong and casting, and David was the same that, you know, Pendant and David and I, we're all on the same generation, but we were also, you know, we'd all got the same background in, um, television.
We've all done our classic serials. you know, whatever.
I said, well, we're all of the same, if you like.
So each step in each direction started casting for Hidden's a new episode.
Yes, the character might carry on through other episodes.
Goodness.
I think when I've seen continued longer. brought back for another role, wasn't it?
Yes, I mean, this was after, this was some time after I've left, but yeah, because when you came to your episode, you might have a character that was going on to other episodes, or you were inheriting my head with the last one, um, I inherited Jackie, I inherited, uh, Paul, I inherited, you know, so...
So no, I mean, I...
In professional terms, between for the proportion of the records, it was a world pleasure show to work on, you know, it was, you know, it was very professional, it was very easy.
And there were, you know, there was a certain standard set for the show, and that worked fine.
Excellent.
So did you cast any of the regulars again sort of later in your career?
Yeah, I mean, I made a film called, yeah.
We had a production company briefly.
I'm going to start in that.
I mean, she isn't eating that.
And then I got a phone call from the head of grandma wore it on the weekend.
And you said, you know, can I come in and see?
And we go, oh.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to see.
It was a pleasure.
I came and sat down.
And we said, to napkins number.
And he said, you just made a thing with her.
And I went, yeah.
So the entire discussion.
They were constant, then see, wait peace.
Ah.
So, he just wanted to know, was she a pro, how did she get on, you know, what the delight was, you know, was she a, You know, did she do it in the time for her anyway?
She, you know, she just wanted no matter.
So I ended up having this sort of hour and half full of head of drama and didn't start the job and I never got to direction with him.
That's very unfair.
You should have got a percentage.
Yeah, I...
I mean, Brian, Brian Crusher.
I wrote Brian work for me, um, but I bought it down before, and then I did a thing called Hideaway that was quite violent, which was 650 minutes episodes story.
It was difficult.
Brian, Brian, I said that.
I mean, I don't think there were any mistakes made on casting a break.
I don't know, or any major, any major errors, or certainly nothing that any of us regret it.
I think there was just simply a problem that you can't have stories for certain people stuck in a spaceship.
And that was a sort of fundamental error that none of us recognised.
They shouldn't have did, didn't recognise he changed it.
Yes.
Yeah, and it was a format that could evolve to run for those 4 years, which I don't know if that was apparent when you were making the 1st episode, that this felt like the beginning of a 4 year long series.
Or did it feel like it was just, it was going to be a one year, beginning, middle end.
I didn't need a force, I had.
I will.
No, you work on a show.
Um, So relating back to Dr. Poo again, I directed 4 or 5 shows within the, within the series.
I hardly watched it in between.
I mean, I didn't know who you didn't mention.
When I came to do some story, there was your engineer.
I went, 0 shit.
No way.
And then I had to, I had to actually get a couple of tapes out and a couple of scripts out.
Read out and find out because they're doing what they did because you don't, if you're, if you're a job in director, you come in and you're invited to do something on a show, now, if you know you want to do it, you can start watching it, of course you do, but other than that, once you've done it, once you've done the gig.
You walk away from it because you're then watching the next show you've been invited to work on or direct on.
You don't have time to be a fan.
No.
I think my kids should watch Doctor Who.
I think they would, they would watch it and I might watch it occasionally, but um, I certainly wasn't, you know, I, well.
I mean, I was a fan of survivors, for example, you know, survivors or what was the episode of.
Or, but I wasn't so keen on.
But yeah, it shouldn't be survived to watch of the episode.
And it's like, now, you know, I would watch, I would watch, well, I can say, I would watch it in bed, Walking Dead, and then, or even going dead, which is good, quite a good spinoff.
I watched those, but I wouldn't watch.
I wouldn't watch, um, what was the thing set in a hospital?
um, Angels, the one that you worked on and...
No, no, well, angels, angels, angels.
I mean, in touch with their angelity on Facebook, actually.
She was one of the horses.
I imagine.
She's acting away, and we seem to have, we seem to, they've seen Facebook pages No, I was thinking of, do you know what, what's it called?
General Hospital, you know, something where the hospital.
It's been recent.
I think it'd be a big sort of fan.
I watch Kobitz.
I thought carnets was very good.
I thought Kodis was very good.
I watched that.
But I think it's not.
I think it's not.
I think it's in certain people's nature to be fans.
I've got an intro channel, and I have, I have people who are friends.
I'm delighted.
I'm glad you like it, but...
So I'm sort of looking back over your career.
How do you think Blake 7 sort of fits into that?
I know it's probably a very small part of a long career?
I can say something to me a problem of...
Super one only, a temperature centuries, treble island worship, not doing that.
And jail, okay, okay.
Yeah, uh, I still love directing Emmerdale.
I just love going up to Yorkshire television I'm doing now.
It was such a breath of fresh air.
I, I look back on week 7.
Well, I looked back.
I mean, I thought Jackie Pierce.
I'm not the gentleman became so famous out of it.
I know the fact that you became so famous and so glamorous, and so, you know, such a jealousy has such a sort of a good aftertaste after Blake 7, she survived in around television or around conventions and things.
So it was flashing about that.
I, basically, for me was a bit of experience.
It was really interesting.
And...
But like I've done my 5 Doctor Who was, I did my 4 break 7 and that was fine, thank you.
You know, I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed talking about it.
I quite, it's been, it's been a real pleasure to, um, look at the 4 episodes that you've sent to me and occasionally I went, oh, I should see the ones in the tree.
I know what they like.
Do you know what I've seen is my working make, sir?
I've seen, you know, Sauveers or Borders.
I'm sure we can sort that out.
Yeah, we'll do it with feeding them short strength.
Well, thank you, Michael.
It has been an absolute pleasure chatting away with you about your role in the theories and your faults.
It's, yeah, it's been an absolute belief.
I'm sure all our listeners are going to really enjoy hearing this.
Yeah, I hope so.
Do a good ebit on it.
I've really enjoyed listening to your audio, your part.
And, you know, I've never listened to new single podcasts.
I've never listened to a podcast in my life.
I'm a visual person.
So, of course, I'm listening to Steve radio seemed an acoustic really.
So, I wouldn't enjoy it.
So I look forward to hearing the, I look forward to doing the podcast.
I'm really delighted for people.
Still like blakes.
I want you to go to Germany.
To do a Blake Southern convention, I think.
Doctor Who?
Blake 7.
I can't remember.
I'm driving to Germany.
It seems that it's high from France to Germany than just fly.
Anyway, it's been a pleasure.
I didn't enjoy myself.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for listening to part 2 of our fantastic episodes with Michael Lee Bryant.
We'd like to say a huge thank you to Michael for giving us an evening of his time and for spending so much time talking about the show, his feelings about it, watching his episodes for the 1st time in nearly 50 years.
And yet just for generally being a fantastic bloke.
We're really, we've been really delighted to spend this time with you, Michael.
We really were and it's very generous and yeah, it's really helped us enjoy those episodes even more with a bit of inside info.
Absolutely.
So once again, we would like to say a very big thank you to Jason Thompson of the robots in your eyes podcast for absolutely making this happen.
We couldn't have done it without you, Jason, since we were both too shy to go up and ask Michael ourselves.
It's true.
And how could we have been shy when he's as lovely as he obviously is, but we were because we're cowards, whereas Jason just got off with it.
Basically, yeah.
We're the villas of this team.
So coming up next week, of course, we will be getting our teeth into series B of Blake 7.
And we've got the full series of that in the can and ready to roll out into your podcatchers in the weeks ahead.
So we really hope you'll be enjoying listening along to that with us.
Yes, so next week we will be taking a trip to Space City for redemption, the 1st episode of Series B, and boy, we love that episode.
Great.
So thank you very much for listening and goodbye.
Thank you, bye.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.