Davros Called, He Wants His Leather Tunic Back

[00:12]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to maximum power.

I'm Colin.

I'm James.

I'm Mark.

I'm Peter.

And I'm Cy.

First of all, I want to thank you.

We would all like to thank you, the listener, for all your support and feedback during our 1st season, season A. It's really good to be back with you all.

So here we are all clad in blue neoprene bodysuits, and the space saxophone is playing as we take our seats around the exposition table that has conveniently appeared on the bridge.

Welcome to Redemption, the 1st episode of Blake 7 series beat by Terrenation himself, which is halfway through the Gareth Thomas era.

So let's start with some general impressions.

Why don't we start with you, Peter?

Well, I think this is such an important episode for Blake 7.

The series had a pretty successful 1st season, but it's fully formed here, I think, for the 1st time with that bleak 7 aesthetic that was maybe missing from some of series 8.

It's kind of what I have in my mind's eye when I picture the show.

[01:12]

So why series A had very individually successful episodes like The Way Back, Seek Locate, Destroy, Project Avalon.

They tended to be more straightforward space adventure, maybe quite serious.

This is space opera redemption.

We had hints of it in episodes like the web and bounty, which I think are really great.

So this story has a bunch of ideas. and some clever plotting and some good character moments all in together.

It's fast moving.

It's serious, but with flashes of camp.

Um and this is my oblique seven.

This is the series that I cherish.

Good stuff.

James, what about you?

Yeah, look, I totally agree with Peter on this.

I think it's much more the show that you'd remember growing up with.

I think redemption is really where I fell in love with Blake 7 because of the, I think the camp aesthetic really ticked my box as a five-year-old child.

And the just the fantastic script editing from Chris Boucher.

[02:16]

Okay, um, Mark, what about you as the 1st time viewer of Blake 7?

Yeah, it's the 1st time viewer.

I was really excited as soon as I saw the pursuit ships, because one of the things that really hooked me from the 1st series was the origins of the Liberator, I thought that was a really good mystery.

I really hoped it would be revisited.

I thought maybe that would be how the series ended, that the original owners might, you know, might turn up and that, and that might be, um, be something that they would end the series on.

I wasn't expecting it, I suppose, this soon in the overall story.

But as soon as I saw the pursuit chips, and you can tell that the design is, it's of a similar nature to the liberator with the sort of the, uh, the bulbust kind of engine bit at the back and the, the pointer front.

I thought, oh, brilliant.

This is the original owners who've come back to get it.

So that immediately piqued my interest early on.

So I was really hooked with that from an early point in the episode.

It's a really interesting idea to open the series with that because you kind of expect them logically to jump back into the Federation plot with Serverland and Travis, but they do this plot instead.

[03:20]

Yeah, no, it's a really, I think it's a really good choice to to hold that back for a little bit longer.

Sorry, what about you?

Oh, God, I love it.

It's just so much fun. this episode.

And after series A, which has been very serious and rather dour in places and it's just so much more colourful and bright from the set design to the costuming.

Everything just seems to have had a really big uplift for the start of this year.

Like Peter and James have said, this is the Blake 7 that I love.

It's floaty costumes.

It's lots of leather.

It's lots of colour.

And the energy that they've got here compared to Aurak is immense.

They've come back re-energized and they're, they know what they're doing.

They've got a bit more money, a bit more time, and it all pays off.

And giant flappy sleeves. absolutely.

Oh, God, I love that costume.

There is no other costume in the world. like that.

[04:21]

They put...

Gotta love June Hudson.

Oh, how could you not love Jude Hudson?

My notes say, June Hudson, be praised for this.

I think that's going to be the next 6 episodes, really.

And it's funny because June Hudson does the 1st half of series B, but there never does another episode of Blake 7 after that.

And while her costuming is, you know, it's slightly operatic and over the top in places.

It really sets this kind of style for the series that everybody else follows.

I mean, they tone it down slightly, which might be a good thing later on.

Um, but it really, she puts her stamp on the series and it, as you say, the aesthetic is something that it will carry through right to the end.

I just assume she done all of it from here on out.

So I didn't realise, so you reckon, yeah, I agree.

Quite often they just reused their costumes as well, didn't they?

Yes, that's true.

So what about you, Colin?

How did you feel about this episode?

I like it.

I liked it more than I because I think it's an interesting choice for a season opener.

[05:23]

It has this way of resolving the cliffhanger in a way you just didn't think was going to happen, you know, and we can talk about that a bit later.

I think it is a good refresh, like, you know, Callie and Jenner have been to British home stores and uh, Laura Ashley and, you know, Avon, uh, Avon's got a new costume that Mark has a good analogy for, um, we can talk about.

But I think, yeah, I'd written down what the fuck is Blake wearing, frankly?

Space Google.

Space Google, that's it.

Well, they are an actual space world.

You know, we get Space World and next week we get Space City.

What else is that?

Space building.

Well, I mean, all credit to June Hudson there, Colin, because I think she's she's thinking about the costuming for the characters.

And so Blake is in Robin Hood colours.

He's greens and sort of earthy colours were sort of the big, the big flappy sleeves.

And so I think she's actually bringing some text to her costume designs.

[06:24]

I haven't thought of that.

Mark, what did you call Blake's uniform?

Oh, Avon.

Yeah, I thought, yeah, I was in there, Davros called.

He wants his leather tunic back.

And it is very similar, I think, to it's got some similarities with Destiny, the Daleks, I think.

I think that the system people are very Movellan, like, they're kind of protein developed.

Or they're slightly darky as well in the way they talk, but I guess the mevellans are quite sort of similar speaking as well.

So it's, again, it's a, it's a, it's another remix of the, of similar things they had before.

Robotic type beings that still like a comfy sofa, aren't they?

That's true.

And of course, June Hudson did Destiny of the Daleks.

So there's going to be some overlap.

So let's talk a little bit more about this episode in detail, and I want to talk about, you know, how effective we think this is as a season opener.

Does it resolve the cliffhanger in the right way?

[07:25]

James, what are you?

To find the right way.

No, no, there's no right.

Well, I mean, I, I, I like how it resolves the cliffhanger, even if it is literally a DSX smashner, it's a godlike machine, deciding to make something happen to make his prediction come true.

And and the fact that that doesn't, you don't get that until the very last moment, like, where, where, yeah, they, they think they're going to be destroyed, the other ship appears, and then or actors get, oh, yeah, no, I scrambled its system, so my prediction would come true.

It's fantastic.

That is fantastic.

I agree.

Aurak is so kind of arrogant, that he's just like, oh, fuck it. this ship up because I've made this prediction.

And if I'm wrong, that's really going to be embarrassing, so I'll just blow it up.

And would lead to his own destruction as well, if he hadn't done that.

I think it's nice that Aurak doesn't actually play a big role in the episode.

[08:26]

We only come to Orac in one or 2 scenes throughout the episode.

So you've got one early on where Blake, Avon, and Jenna are trying to get some answers out of Warak, he's not being very helpful.

Then you've got the bit where they leave the bridge and he just makes that strange little turning off noise and space cassier goes over and just eyes him up and thinks, what are you?

Then there's a mention of him when the system's going wrong, and then he sort of pops up at the end to save things.

I really like that.

I like that he's not overused in the plot.

Yeah, that's really good.

What I really like about sort of the resolution of the cliffhanger.

Obviously, at the start of the episode, you've got the recap of what's happened in Aorak.

So you get to see that same footage played at full speed, half speed, quarter speed, whatever.

But which is fine, because you've got to remind people what's going on.

But there's a really good exchange between, we spent £5 on the explosive.

Well, yeah, make the most of it.

But you get that great seat between Blake and Avon, where Avon has worked it out, but it's going to make Blake work to get the answer out of him.

[09:31]

And it's really great character dynamic stuff, again, from Terry Nation and Chris Boucher, where Avon just is so superior is showing up Blake for not spotting the obvious things.

Yeah, that scene, I think, is a series defining scene at the start of the season.

That scene between Blake and Avon.

It's just tremendous.

It's adversarial.

It's a sort of a restatement of their relationship and a more overt positioning of Avon as Blake's antagonist than I think that we've had in the past.

And Avon's just logical and clever, and they both play it immaculately.

You couldn't ask for a better character scene to start the season.

Where was it, Yvonne?

that Blake couldn't see him.

That's what I didn't get.

He was hiding underneath the gun cupboard.

But there's so many great lines in that scene.

That whole thing where Avon says you looked as though you were planning something you didn't want the rest of us to know. is just peak Avon.

And then that little interchange where they're discussing the nature of prediction, which is really clever and focussed dialogue, and I could be wrong, and it might be Chris Belcher, but that dialogue feels like Terry Nation bringing his A game to it.

[10:43]

And so that whole interchange, whereas let's imagine you're standing on the edge of a cliff, and Blake just fires back at him as long as you're not standing behind me.

That's just gold.

Fantastic, isn't it?

And it really is setting up what will be one of the big sort of themes of series B, isn't it?

The Blake and Avon antagonism and who's going to get the liberator and who's going to come out on top by the end of the year?

And they revisit it throughout episodes, and including at the end of this episode where, if you know, the last scene, the last moment of the episode, is Blake and Avon standing off again, and Blake reasserting his dominance as kind of the leader.

Yeah, but like, get back to your position.

Yeah, which Avon then does.

Yeah.

There was another scene before this, where Blake is barking a bunch of orders, and Avon sort of goes, what should I do with my other hand or something like that?

But then as he's leaving, Blake kind of sort of gently taps him on the elbow or something like this.

Now, is that affectionate or is like, I'm just delivering orders.

[11:46]

I don't mean to be a bastard.

I'm, look, just take it, get on with it, just like as a bit of a sort of confirmation.

Or is it a PowerPlay thing?

I almost took it as an improvised thing between the actors just because maybe they, you know, they liked each other and it was just like, it was so, it's like this very gentle kind of tap on the elbow.

Con visual fraternity.

With a knife in the other hand.

But again, you get it, don't you, after the root attack with the wire coming at Avon and the explosive going off and Avon shooting out of the room and there's a moment between Blake and Avon there as well, where they sort of exchange looks and there's sort of an understanding between them that's really good.

And as well, when there's the 1st attack from the little liberators and they fall to the ground, Avon has his hand over Blake to kind of almost like shield him from the explosion.

It's really interesting playing.

I think everyone's such a more interesting character as well.

There's something very attractive about the way he's, he's so sharp and perceptive, and it made me kind of think, you know, when did the sort of stereotype of a computer nerd come about because this is way before computers were everywhere, and maybe if you wrote that character now who's such a computer expert, you would write him very differently and not so, so confident and aggressive and confrontational, but, you know, computers be in their infancy, they, they can make somebody who's an expert in them. you know, a much more interesting character like that.

[13:13]

Yeah, you look at all of the kind of science characters on Star Trek.

Um, uh, it was sort of in the 90s, the next generation Deep Space 9 Voyager kind of era.

They do tend to be nerdier, the science here, they are.

So yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, it hadn't quite set yet, had it, that stereotype?

Well, because that's because he was using a private computer.

Clever Prime.

It's that thing where you've, you know, you've had an argument with someone at work.

And then like 2 hours later, you remember, you come up with the ideal thing to say, everyone does that all the time.

Instantly.

Except it's not 2 hours later.

No, he's there straight away, isn't he?

And again, you could see Paul Darrow absolutely seizing all of this, this episode, almost making the show in his own image as we know he ultimately will, but he is becoming the almost the lead character, the one that you want to watch.

[14:14]

And so, yeah, whenever he's there, he does really interesting things sort of all the way through.

I always think of the scene between him and Jenna where they're in the cell and he's pacing up and down and then he suddenly stops and spins round and looks at the stars and works out that they're in the right place.

It's just a masterclass in making what could be, they could just be sat in that cell doing nothing, just talking, but he is pacing up and down.

He's tense.

He's not happy. but he's also aware of everything around him and he's taking it all in all the time.

Paul Darrow really doesn't get enough love, I think, for his acting.

He's always the Darrowisms, but he's, yeah, he's a really great actor.

He's a star isn't he?

He dominates every scene that he's in.

And like you said, side, not by overplaying it, a lot of his best work is understated.

And I sort of, I noticed throughout this episode that he's always doing something, even when he doesn't have dialogue.

[15:18]

So there's a really nice moment when the little liberators appear on the screen that are pursuing them.

Um, and there's a very, very long shot of Avon starting to put it all together immediately, just by looking at the screen and seeing them, but not saying anything.

And he just, he shines in moments like that.

This is his episode.

Avon is written as clever and incisive throughout, and I think Paul Darrow just runs with it.

And he's got black.

I think where Akon's recognising the stars.

At the start of the episode, we go, oh, look at the star configuration, it's on the other side of the galaxy.

And then they sort of, you know, go stand by 12 for like 2 minutes.

And then they're on the other side of the galaxy.

Well, that's interesting.

I did wonder to myself if there were no stars and it was just a reflection of Avon studs in the studio monitor.

That's more text by June Hudson.

She took one look at Paul down and said, stud.

Let's put him in studs.

[16:21]

What do you guys think about the model work here?

Like the little liberators and space world?

Mark, what about you?

Yeah, I thought they looked absolutely terrific.

The space station looked absolutely brilliant, and probably quite bald as well to make it black against a Black Starfield, but that just made it look more sinister and interesting.

And I was pleased that it wasn't completely destroyed at the end as well.

I mean, so I don't know if they do come back as a recurring threat, but I, but I like the idea that they may come back and make another attempt to reclaim the liberator further on in the series.

Or maybe they will.

They're not going to tell you.

But yeah, the model work is really, really fantastic.

So we've lost Ian Scones this year who did series A's models, and we've gained Matt Irvin, who comes in with lots of ideas, but again, the battle scenes are really good.

Matt brings in a sense of the speed that the ships are travelling at for the really the 1st time.

[17:26]

We've had lots of shots of the liberator, but because in series A, they'd filmed everything almost as stock shots that you could paste in.

You don't always get things moving at speed, but he's got the fast background that's revolving so that it looks like the ships are travelling at fast speed.

He's worked out how you film sort of planets in the background so that it looks a bit more realistic, so to speak.

As we said before, the design of those little gunships is absolutely fantastic.

It's really really good.

And when you've got the 2 of them chasing the liberator and you know that they're evenly matched.

It's yeah, it's brilliant stuff.

They're quite tense, those attack scenes.

There's kind of amped up performances on the set, quite urgent, and the model work, and also one of Dudley Simpson's most distinctive scores for the series, I think, really helped along.

They do, they do definitely do the Flintstones approach to generating speed with everything zooming behind them.

Yeah, it just feels like that's what they've done.

[18:28]

But I was confused.

I was really confused for a while because I thought there was a dark gray liberator, follow it, following them, because normally the ship is white with a green, with green, um, engine at the back, but this was kind of a gold engine at the back and all black, and I thought, oh, okay, there's 2 little ones and one big one, so I just, I didn't realise for a while.

Colin, there are many liberators.

There's a silver liberator.

There's a white liberator.

They're sort of a greyish liberator, and let's not forget the yellow liberator from the opening credits.

It's the comedian. to the cardboard cutout, isn't it?

They're run by Alta 3456.

But no, even little, little things that could have gone wrong, like the little, liberator going into space world works really well.

That could have been an absolute...

Yeah, they do that really clever thing of attaching the camera to the little object that's going into the big object.

So you've almost like point of view with it.

[19:28]

It's great Yeah.

So do you think that when they found the Liberator, it had just been abandoned by these beings or had somebody else had it in between?

Because just remember in the early series, they found lots of like jewels and then obviously there's all the fancy costumes and things like that.

And I didn't know if this purely logical race would necessarily bother with that, unless it was to, a bit like, whether the TARDIS has got all the wardrobes and things to blend in with if they were going to observe other races or whether somebody else had got hold of it 1st and they'd been looting and plundering before the space battle, which led to it falling into Blake's hands.

There's a prequel series for you.

Yeah.

Yeah, all we know, really, is that the Liberator had been involved in a space battle somewhere that, um, they'd picked up on the London and they'd picked up the shopquaves of possibly a ship being destroyed and Liberator was just sat there.

[20:30]

So we don't know how it got to be there and what those circumstances were.

There's talking this episode about war between the planets that created Spaceworld.

So maybe it was a civil war.

Ah, could be.

Good point.

Do we think this was the inspiration for Doctor Who series 6, seeing the doctor killed at the start and the liberator destroyed at the start and then it actually being a double at the end that we see destroyed?

It's kind of...

That's clever.

Maybe because I've been listening to Flight Through Entirety, talking about series 6, movies, movies on my mind, but it was one of the things that popped in my head when I was watching it, that it's a similar template, isn't it?

I think it is a similar template.

The idea I had in my mind is, it feels like the, it's resolved too quickly.

You could have you could have saved that for 2 years and done it with another episode, which you haven't seen yet, Mark, so I'm not going to say. where something happens.

You know, you could have saved it for a while and sort of had, oh, that, you know, the prediction happened in this way, but it's, it still works, if they kind of like get it out of the way quickly.

[21:35]

It's a good way out and it also adds to Aurac's character.

I think the costume changes and things do make it feel like some time has passed.

Absolutely.

And Callie's had her hair done in between the series as well.

So.

So they can't have been that worried about the prediction.

Is there a cell on in the liberator?

There must be somewhere.

It's next to the wardrobe room.

Kelly just goes and sticks her head in the green orb at the end and then suddenly it comes out perb.

Yeah, so I was going to have one little gripe with this episode.

It is only a little one.

I think there could have been a little bit more balance in the storytelling.

I would have liked to have explored the system.

More and Spaceworld.

Maybe with a little bit less of the lead up with Blake and the live cable, but, you know, they're good scenes, so I don't mind.

It just uh, it feels like it's a very strong setup, which isn't 100% interrogated.

I've got about a two-parter.

[22:36]

Yeah.

Yeah, there's there's a lot there you could unpack around system control.

You know, you could, you could put them in a, well, they are in cells, but you could have them in cells for longer and have them being interrogated and sort of get to what the point of those 2 characters are because they're, they're mainly just there to have stun level, stun level 2 and stun level 4.

Oh, and by the way, everyone gets sent to elimination chamber four.

Apart from you, Blake, you can go to elimination chamber 2. with big sleeves go to elimination and chamber 2.

Needs more room for the big leaves.

I mean, space Betan and Space Cassia there are really good.

That scene where they come in and take control of the bridge is really quite striking.

And it's nice to see female villains who aren't Servolan or Z and Barr or Piri will come up to period a few seasons time.

They do look slightly 70s glam, like we were saying, like the Mavellans, but it works, and the good performances just make them happen.

[23:40]

But I think there's a nice balance between the 2 actresses.

They're doing the same thing.

They're on the same page.

So they feel like they're part of a whole.

Zen changes the lighting to green when they come into the flight deck as well, to make them more sinister, doesn't he?

He's got a sense of the dramatic.

One of them walks in and they're just sort of staring at the bridge.

And I think there's like a little sound from Aurak, and she, ever so slightly changes her aspect, and I thought that was really well done.

I was like what is this?

Well, you should have paid attention because he was responsible for your downfall. kind of one machine responding to the other, isn't it?

Yeah.

Speaking of downfall, my favourite bit of this episode is where the 2 guards that are probably more incompetent federation guards, get their grenades.

Open them up. get Cali beams them back and then they sort of go, oh, shit, what do I do?

throws them at the main character at the main system.

[24:45]

They explode and doesn't seem to damage anything.

It's great.

I love that.

That lovely bit of teleport jeopardy straight back.

And off they go and they're using their means against them and just lots and lots of panic and yeah, it's really exciting stuff.

I like how they kind of do a double take.

And see they're back on Space World and then throw them anyway.

Well, they had to throw it away.

If they kept holding them, they would have been blown up much better.

Well, true.

Cassia gets blown up.

I think that scene actually wouldn't have happened in series A, and it's indicative of where the series is gone and why it's now the series that I love, because series A was, with the best will in the world, a little bit too pothace to have a scene like that.

Whereas Terry Nation, the writer, has clearly thought it through.

He thought, okay, they're leaving Space World.

They're going to try and teleport aboard.

And so he's put all that in. it works.

But six-year-old me, who was watching that scene.

[25:47]

With the guards teleporting aboard and Gan and Kelly running in to teleport them back.

I loved it.

It was the most exciting thing in the world at the end of the episode.

And it's kind of, it's fun.

And it's exciting and it's good thinking from the crew and the whole thing just worked.

Peter, I've just realised who you mean by space Cassia.

Uh, keeper of track into uh, redemption.

Yeah, sorry.

L to one and L to 2.

SpaceCas here in SpaceCas.

Space Better.

And then, of course, there's space, the minor from the Green Death as well.

Oh, yeah, our exposition slave who is just there to tell you the history of Space World and then die, basically.

I'll stay behind to die.

Let me close this door and die.

I mean, it sort of worked because Roy Evans is really good and he looks so tired and worn down and unwell by the work he's doing.

[26:55]

So it's a lovely performance, but he doesn't really get a great deal to do other than tell Blake what he needs to know about Spaceworld and fill in a little bit of backstory.

What about that scene where they're escaping and Blake grabs the the painstick.

He just turns it up to Max and kills the guard. and then just calmly kills some space better as well.

It's just cold blooded killing.

Well, we talked about this last series with Missions Destiny, where he puts that charge on the airlock and blows up an entire ship and all its occupants and looks really pleased with himself when he does.

He's a psychopath.

It would be nicer to see more of that, actually.

It would have made the character more engaging.

That's a really interesting point because you kind of feel that Avon is the psychopath just because he has the quick dialogue and the wit and all this stuff.

But it feels like with Blake, it's almost a mistake that they're doing it. or they're just not picking about it.

[28:02]

It's like, because they don't make enough of it. being a thing.

It's like Blake. that's what I mean.

Yeah.

Si, when we caught up the other day, we were talking about Chernobyl.

We were, you had an interesting story to talk to around the location work for this episode.

Yes.

We're back at Oldbury Power Station, last scene in everyone's favourite series, A, episode Time Squad, and I think we can all agree that Vier Lorimer perhaps gets a better use and more dynamic shots out of the location than our lovely old friend Pennant Roberts did in Time Squad.

I think it's a really good choice of location.

They sort of add a bit of set dressing to make it look like it belongs to Spaceworld.

[29:03]

So you've got lots of bits of the set, pasted around the walls, which looks brilliant, and lots and lots of explosions in a nuclear power plant. which led to Jan Chappell's sort of favour story of having a clause put into her contract after this episode saying, after this, I will not be filming in nuclear power plants again.

You can understand it.

They're letting off some big explosions, particularly with the big orange smoke, which is toxic anyway in a confined and dangerous condition.

But I think it works really well.

And because they've got such high areas, there's lots of levels and you get that fantastic stump fall with the guard tumbling off the top tier down to the ground when Blake's doing his little bit of fighting, that's one, again, a really dynamic and exciting scene.

And also, I think one of my little favourite scenes, and it's a tiny, it's a sort of almost minute and a half scene, just of Blake, Avon, and Jenna walking with the altars and the guards with Dudley Simpsons Federation March playing in the background, but they're all looking around and they're all reacting differently, and it's, it's a really just a nice piece of direction from Via Lorimer, who I don't think we always give enough praise to.

[30:33]

I think he adds some quite a dynamic episode, this one, and he keeps the pace going all the time.

He's very good here.

Yeah, I mean, he will direct some of the lesser episodes of the series, but he also directs some of the very best.

The scale of the location makes it very epic, doesn't it?

It's such a, that you're saying it's such a huge high thing.

It reminded me of the pirate planet, the I don't know if it's the same location, but the scale of it, you know, just makes it seem really epic.

And like you say, the bits where they're, they're running through it and the camera's moving as well and there's explosions going off around them.

That look fantastic, like an action movie. really really good.

And the fact that the whole cast is there as well.

Yeah, that doesn't happen very often this year at all.

Well, last year, it's attempted to take turns at going to the planet or being hijacked, didn't they?

towards the end of the series, kind of notice that pattern, that's...

It's your turn this week.

Yeah, man, the teleport.

Which button swipe breath?

Oh, it doesn't matter.

[31:34]

Because it's the 1st episode as well.

It's really nice that everyone has got a good part to play in this episode.

The focus really is on Blake Jenner and Avon as the big three, but Cali and Villa and Gan all get good moments as well, which is really good.

So again, it's part of the continuing Terry Nation thing of giving everyone something to do, which we won't see a lot of this year.

There's always a couple of characters who are sidelined while the others get on with things.

So that's a really good thing for the start of the series.

It's a much underrated aspect of Terry's writing, I think, especially for the series.

In that he created all of these characters, and so he has an instinctive feel for how each character would react and what their contribution to a scene would be.

So rarely in one of Terry's scripts does a character get left out.

I do think that, you know, he fell a bit in love with the character of Avon.

He saw Paul Darrow's portrayal of it and it really appealed to him, as, of course, it did to everybody else.

[32:36]

And so he does focus in on Avon, but he doesn't forget the others.

And he pairs up Avon and Jenner for the 1st time since, I'm thinking, Cygnus Alpha.

Yeah, because they have a really fascinating dynamic between the 2 of them that he's picking back up on again.

Yeah, and they work really well together.

I think the actors spark off each other really well.

So Jenna is the only character, I think, among the crew who, when it comes to Avon, gives as good as you get.

Oh, without a doubt, the others kind of capitulates against him, but she will bite back at him and challenge him.

She's always going to twinkle in her eye when she does it as well, which is fantastic.

Yeah, I think it's like Nathan says, there's always that bit of, from Sally Nevette of the smile as she says something that's a bit catty or the not quite believing in all of this, but that works for Jenna.

She's yeah, she's really, she's still really strong here.

I think we do see in this episode the start maybe of a little bit of agency being taken away from Jenner and Callie in particular.

[33:39]

We'll see it through this season.

I mean, they're still great characters, and I think that the performances are still really strong and they suggest a lot through their performances.

But I just noticed that in this episode, they're much more reactive than they were last season rather than being proactive, and so you get a lot of Jenna and Kelly asking questions of Blake and Avon rather than coming to the conclusions to themselves.

And it's not particularly noticeable, but I did notice it a couple of times in this episode, and I think it's a shame.

But like I said, they just, they absolutely elevate the characters with just their, their likeability and the competence of the performances.

I did wonder with Callie, when she uses the Tannoi to try and raise Gan, could she not have just psychically called him and then she would have made me more idea what was going on with him?

Definitely.

I think sometimes they get.

Sometimes they forget that the character has those powers.

And sometimes, you know, they're not sure how the powers work.

Maybe her new perm had dampened her powers. experience.

[34:45]

And how do you pronounce inherent?

Inherent, inherent.

Avon says inherent, doesn't he?

Well, he is ever so posh.

Is that do you all pronounce it like that down south?

Is it me that's wrong?

No, depends how south you're talking.

Southern Hemisphere.

I can't do an Australian accents, I wouldn't know.

Okay, folks, any other thoughts on redemption?

In the future, why do people build such unhelpful computers that just give you pieces of information and clues and then refuse to elaborate or give you enough information to actually help you?

Well, computers can be awkward.

That they actively withhold things that they know, just, just seems like a, maybe a bit of a design cul-de-sac for computers.

Part of their evil plan.

Computers are going to come out on top at the end of lake seven.

That's my prediction.

[35:46]

Space Betan and Space Cassia pointing the way.

I just think this is this is a really great episode.

It's a step up in every way from last season.

I mean, last season, as I said, did have individually very good episodes, but everything just hits the mark here.

It's well mounted, it's tense.

It's sprinkled with good dialogue, that that bit, which closes in on Avon, where he's talking about the liberation rejecting them.

And he says, we are the cause.

It is rejecting us.

It's just such a terribly dramatic moment in the story.

It just totally works for me.

Yeah, it's an assured start.

It's confident and fun and colourful.

They've worked out how to make the show.

They've worked out how to make the show better, sort of between the seasons.

I'm sure David Maloney in an interview somewhere said sort of looking after series A at series B. We wanted to put the money on the screen.

So you give more money to costumes and to sets to make sure that you're showing what you're what you're paying for.

[36:51]

And I think that really pays off in this episode and through a lot of this series.

And of course, they've got a full rack of teleport bracelets now, which, you know, just makes my fanboy heart sing.

Yeah, I think they were down to about 4 at the end of series A, weren't they?

They got the cardboard of scissors out again.

That seems to start where Jenna and Callia are sort of working in the teleport bay.

Do you think we're meant to take from that, that they've just built these new teleport bracelets.

Because Kelly's got her little probe and she's doing something to them.

I think they'd seen the feature on blue pizza where you could make them our cardboard thing very quickly.

So yeah, they just run a few up in between the series.

Isn't there an anecdote about that that like the Blue Peter ones were better than the ones that were made for the series?

Jan Chappel tells the story that she got a letter, I'm asking for a teleport bracelet prop, and so she asked one of the prop guys, and they said yes, and gave her one.

And when she was filling out the return address.

[37:53]

She noted that it was to someone who was in prison and appreciated the joke.

That's brilliant.

Great, well, that's it for this week's episode Redemption.

Join us next time for Shadow.

Thank you very much for listening and goodbye.

Bye.

Destruct, destruct.

Destruct.

Switching to manual.

Maximum power on all drives.

Maximum power.