Another Tool in Her Toolbox
Horizon
Series B, Episode 4. First broadcast on Tuesday 30 January 1979.
Episode 20
Sunday 27 November 2022
And now on Maximum Power, despite space fatigue and too many space crises, the crew are ready to discuss Episode 4 of Series B of Blake’s 7.
This week, in an unlikely turn of events, Nathan becomes the Liberator’s nurse, Peter reveals he’s not an ideal teacher, Simon admits he’s not an ideal pupil, and Si, well he’s not expendable, he’s not stupid and he’s not going!
Join us on a trip to the tropical mining world of Horizon!
Recorded on Saturday 13 November 2021 · Download · Episode Gallery
Transcript
Maximum power.
Hello and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast, loosely based on EM Forster's, a passage to India.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Peter.
I'm sorry.
And I'm Simon.
So this week we're talking about series two, episode four.
No one's leaping into correctly.
It's really disappointing. because I silently agree with you.
Oh, it's all coming out now. heresy.
So it's Horizon written by Alan Pryor and directed by Jonathan Wright Miller and guest starring the beautiful Darian Angardi.
Let's talk about him first.
In fact, that's Roe. who is our chief guest character for the week.
How do we feel about him?
I think it's the anchor of this episode, his performance.
It's really an intelligent and dignified performance and very subtle, and I think that if he wasn't cast so well, The episode would probably be a bit lesser for it.
He's really pretty too.
Oh, God, yes.
It is a very smooth performance.
You can tell that he's not long done, I, Claudius.
Yeah, he's done BBC Shakespeare productions.
It's a very TV, Shakespeare, TV, sort of like Claudia sort of performance.
He gets so much subtext into the delivery of a lot of his lines.
It is absolutely beautiful and it's one of the reasons why I really rate this episode really highly.
And you know, he's a really interesting person as well, because doing a little bit of reading on him, he was a boy treble, and you can find some of his performances on YouTube, and they are really astounding.
And he sort of grew up in this really artsy environment with sort of George Harrison and people like that dropping in for dinner.
And so it was, yeah, it was really interesting background.
But also, unfortunately, he took his own life 2 years after this.
Yes, I was very sad.
I was really shocked to read that this morning.
His mother introduced the Beatles to Ravi Shankar.
Wow.
Cool.
These are really cool things.
Yeah, yeah.
Like it was a very, very wild and sort of exciting household, I think.
And he's the youngest son, the youngest of 4 children.
I just think it is an extraordinary performance and I think it's striking too that you've got those 2 leads who are non-white in an episode that is just largely about colonialism.
Oh, absolutely.
It's a really fantastic episode, I think.
And Darian just gives such a brilliant performance.
He's so vulnerable.
You could see him thinking through how he should react as a federation officer and also as the leader of this planet, and there are so many moments so well judged.
The bit I always think about is the bit where he loses his temper almost with the commissar, where he says, you're always telling me to act like a leader.
And then when I do, you tell me I'm wrong.
And yeah, it's just so, so brilliant.
He's treading such a fine line with the character and everything, you can see it on his face all the time, all the conflicts that he's the character is going through.
Yeah, that's what I thought as well.
Everything's written on his face.
Everything that's happening in that character you can see on his face.
Yep, without a doubt.
So he's in the same uniform as the commissar and the assistant commissar.
Very nice uniforms, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
Good old June Hudson. how to use quilting.
What would we do without it?
And so he is very, very much a sort of federation person.
He's like someone who has gone and been educated with the Federation.
And so he's in complete support of what the Federation is doing on his planet.
And we discover throughout the course of the episode that what they're doing is using his population as a slave labour force, exposing them to deadly radiation.
And one of the things that I thought was really amazingly interesting is the idea that it's this. what monopasium 239 or something like that.
Yeah, Madronine. 239 today.
It's being used to launch the Federation into other galaxies is the idea that they're going to sort of head out from here.
And it is this thing where the Federation basically is reinvented every episode.
So last week, the Federation was sort of a lot of fun camp nonsense and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah, you know, the week before that, the Federation and the Koza Nostra.
Is that what they're called?
No, they're nostra. nostra.
Of course they are.
Coza was last.
You know, like every episode we see a new face or a new facet of the Federation that never really gets followed up.
But here it is very much, you know, the British in India, isn't it?
Yes, or maybe not India.
Well, India and anywhere else where there was a native population that not enslaved is not the right word, but Exploited.
Yeah, exploited, especially the idea, as you say, you know, the young Indian prince or whatever goes off to Cambridge and seems the education comes back and is has his ear whispered into by Nigel Hawthorne or someone. about how they should be doing and he's the one rather than wearing the traditional Linden costume he's wearing a suit.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's, that's why I think, you know, Rowe is wearing the, the, the purple or maroon or whatever it is.
What colour is that?
Yeah, it's a beautiful sort of velvety thing happening.
Yeah, quilting.
Quilting.
As much as I would have loved to have seen Nigel Hawthorne in the role of the Commissar.
William Squire is really good as well.
And those 2 hander scenes between Rowe and the commissar are the best of the episode.
And I didn't realise he's the shadow in Armageddon.
Which is on concurrently with this episode.
Wow.
So you just, it's on everything.
He's in everything.
And in fact, we had that last year as well, didn't we?
Because Arctics from Spacefall and Signus Althur was concurrently in Underworld.
Yeah, is slightly better.
Only slightly.
But if I can go to those scenes between the Commissar and Row, it's not just the performances which are both spectacular, it's also the way the sound is treated, it's silent and you have this lovely echo.
It is a real sense of space.
I don't think it's just the performances.
I think it's the way they've made it as well, which really makes it so fantastic.
Everything's very quiet in those things.
Yes, quiet.
Yes, quiet.
We were saying this when we were doing shadow that Jonathan Wright Miller is actually a bit of a find for Blake 7 and it's such a shame he only does the 2 episodes because they're both really startlingly well directed.
He tells stories visually.
Those shots at the start of the episode where you have Villa and Jenna superimposed onto the Starfield just to give the idea that they're really, you know, running out of steam.
I don't know if that was in the script or not, but it's like Kelly in shadow.
It's a really impressive piece of visual storytelling working within the environment of the studio.
It's a beautiful set too.
That set where, you know, he's in a throne, like he's on a throne.
He has a throne.
He's the leader, but he really, really only properly becomes the leader at the, at the very end.
It is like that TV Shakespeare thing.
You know, Shakespeare is obsessed with the king and, you know, what the king's role is, um, and we see Rowe assume that position sort of at the at the very end.
And maybe it's partly, you know, that Shakespearean or stagey thing too, that the set is quite modest.
It's quite simple with that throne.
It's quite empty and it doesn't really feel like there's a 4th wall.
Yeah, there's only room for a throne and a couple of torture chairs.
If you really look at it, you don't really get a sense that it's a real place.
Yet somehow because of the performances and because of the way it's shot, you just accept it and it all, it all works consistently.
I think consistency is something that makes these things successful and lack of consistency is often why they fail.
That's right.
And the location work, which is also amazing.
It's beautifully filmed and lit with that sort of all of those high shots looking down into the gorge and the dry ice and everything, sort of feels as one with the studio sets, moving on from that as well.
The performances are all on the same page.
And so the director has been completely across this production, like he was in shadow, I think.
Oh, absolutely.
It feels like it's a planet with a proper culture and it has existed before Blake and his crew arrive and will carry on after they've gone.
It doesn't always feel like that in Blake 7.
And also the way they've dressed the exterior with those plants to make it feel like it's a bit tropical.
It's a bit South American and that sort of South American flavour is what informs the, you know, the tribal outfits that they're wearing at the end and the stone and everything.
It's very, you know, misoamerica.
Is that location work?
The gorge?
Yeah.
Well, it's not in the studio.
I thought that might have been a, you know, on film at...
No, no, no.
I think it's proper rock that they're chipping app. which makes a change, like in the rock chamber.
Yeah, no, no, I think that's on the case.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just think when they arrive, it didn't seem like locationate.
The reason it doesn't seem like location is that it looks too good.
Yeah, it doesn't look like they've gone to kind of Black Park for that.
They found a really interesting location and dressed it well and made it look quite alien.
So I wasn't sure whether it was night filming as well, again, because there are shots with Avon where you've got sort of daylight behind him, but as soon as you're in the mines, it all feels very dark.
Could just be the fact that there was little natural light.
In fact, that's why maybe it makes it feel like some of those shots, like when they arrive, that it could be a set because it does feel like it's been lit.
And also if we think about the time of year that this would have been filmed in, they did all of the filming for the 1st 6 episodes ahead of the studios.
And so it would have come right at the start of the production block, which would have put it like March, April.
So not a whole lot of natural light.
Okay, okay.
But it's all those things on the planet where you've got the plants with the little cameras popping up and turning round all the time and the little sound effect that they make as they turn round.
It's all just really yeah, really spectacular stuff.
And I was struck particularly by a really good piece of editing, which you don't tend to get in 70s, mainly studio bound television, which is where Avon is shooting the guards, when he comes down at the end, and Blake pops out from behind something, not realising it's Avon, and Avon fires at him, and like ducks back as it explodes, and it's really tightly shot.
It's a great moment.
And then he says missed.
So good.
Let's go back to the beginning of the episode because the episode starts with something that I actually really like about Blake 7.
Maybe in spite of myself. which is 10 minutes of just them in the liberator talking.
Yeah, I think if you're doing 50 minute self-contained episodes, I think that's 10 minutes we can ill afford.
It does take a while.
That's my one, the one thing I don't like about the episode is it takes a little bit too long to get going.
But you know, this is why we think of this as an ensemble show because even if you have episodes which concentrate on one or 2 characters, everyone plays a role in the group scenes and there are plenty of them.
You know, they've all got, what, space?
They've been in too many space crises.
Yes, we get...
I did Terry Nation right now.
We're adding to the list. space crises.
Yeah, she says, oh, yeah, we've been in space flight and space crisis for far too long.
Here's some space adrenaline and so much.
Okay, when I was watching this this morning, Brianton asked, when did Callie become a doctor?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, isn't that interesting?
Because she's taken over Gan's role.
Gan was the medic in series A, Nathan.
Okay.
And now they've given it to one of the female characters.
I don't know.
They only had to wait another week or 2 and she could have just taken it anyway.
She was in preparation.
I mean, it is a little bit sort of tragic the way that she starts as a sort of terrorist and ends up as ship's nurse.
Like that is a bit of a shame.
And she's got sort of much girlier hair this season as well, I think.
I think we said last week that she'd stuck ahead in the green orb at the end of the liberation and it'd come out perfectly perfect.
But it is funny with Gan as well because I watched this out of sequence to record this and I was happily watching the episode and then suddenly old Ganza voice in the teleport room.
Oh, yes, Gan is still...
And then, you know, when they move location to the teleport room.
He then goes somewhere else.
Like it's almost like he's not where the action is.
Well, a little bit of background on this episode.
It was meant to come later in the season after Gan had died.
They moved it back.
Spoilers, Peter. time squad.
So yes, they had to move it back and they had to put him into the episode and I think it shows.
Ah, yeah, because he spends heaps of time unconscious strapped to something.
But he's also bizarrely being given lessons in how to operate the teleport or something or how to repair the teleport.
Yeah, just lessons from Aurac in general, which is just bizarre.
What is already?
Lessons in life.
Well, that'll do him good for another couple of hours.
Good luck with all that learning, Gan.
It does give rise to one of my favourite moments, which is when Gan is in the teleport and Kelly comes in.
And we said that Kelly's getting girlier and she is. but she's still, Jan Chappel still has this really interesting component to her performance where she doesn't react sometimes and it's totally a performance choice.
So Gan cracks a joke.
She says, Orac's not a great teacher.
And he says, I'm not a great pupil.
And before he's even finished the line, she's turned around without acknowledging these talking and walked away.
It just, it's a really interesting choice and it reinforces that she's alien.
Ah, yeah, okay.
Well, I mean, for me, I think that this scene was kind of what I wanted when I was watching it as a child, and I actually have really, really strong memories, I know exactly where I was, you know, which of my parents' friends' houses we were at when I commandeered the television and we watched Horizon for the 1st time.
I thought you were going to say you were down the mine.
And it is just the crew interacting and, you know, seeing what they do and what their sort of days are like.
And I just love that stuff, even though it is completely marking time.
And, you know, they're going through the field thing and they're tired of running and all of that sort of stuff.
Like, I love that.
It just makes the show feel a bit lived in, I think.
Yeah, there's some very interesting character work all the way through this episode, and it's really surprisingly for Alan Pryor, a really sparky script, so I don't know whether this is one that Chris Boucher has again had his hand in, but there's a lot of really snappy and brilliant dialogue all the way through this, and the attention to detail of all the all the characters get really good moments all the way through.
But I think the focus is particularly on Avon this week.
He is superbly characterised.
Hmm.
So this is the kind of B plot in a way.
So we have our crew go down to Horizon, and you know, initially it's Blake and Jenna.
And what, Blake says that he's taking Jenna because he doesn't want to leave Avon with a pilot because he suspects that Avon's going to run off.
He's watched Signus Alfa and those tickets and the telephone.
Probably on the same screen that they watched redemption.
Yeah, and and then Cali wants to go down.
And the interaction between Avon and Callie, who I think are a great pairing.
That's really good because he's all reason and she's all kind of intuition.
And so that's not the focus of the Avon plot, but it is really good character work for both of them.
It is all about Avon, that the plot, and all of his interactions with other people, reinforce his character.
When Kelly comes to him and says, I feel that there's a problem.
He calls her on it and says, you don't feel it, you know it because they haven't called in.
And so...
It's perfectly rational to feel, yes, uncomfortable.
You've rationalised it.
Yeah.
And so that's that's reflecting Avon's character and setting him up for the scenes later on.
Also, though, Callie is convinced that they're not dead and she has no reason to believe that she does simply feel it.
And so there is this sort of thing where Ava doesn't know that they're still alive and even when he eventually goes down to the planet, he's sort of surprised to see that they're still around.
Does his best to shoot Blake missed.
And so what, Callie goes...
Oh, what Gan goes down with...
Written into those scenes at the last minute.
I like the fact that they're going down in pairs or one by one down to the planet and exploring and things happen to them and on the ship they don't know what's happened.
I think it just adds to that tension.
It's something slightly different to what we've had before where they've gone down on the mission as a group, but we've never seen them sort of go down and investigate what's happened to the others in small, small blocks like this.
I love that.
That's why this episode, and I really do think it's very good. doesn't strike me as your regular Blake 7 episode and it doesn't even strike me as a particularly great example of Blake 7 because the interest in the plot is not about the crew going down and exploring.
They actually don't do very much.
They sort of go down one by one, get picked off in the same way, one by one and end up in the mines.
And yet it does add that kind of interesting uncertainty to it where you don't think this is going to be an episode about Blake.
It's an episode about Rowe.
Yes, they're putting the minds as a kind of a holding pattern to sort of get rid of them while we actually have the story that we're interested in seeing, which is the one between Rowe and the Commissar.
And yeah, that is unusual for Blake 7.
There aren't very many episodes which are kind of more about the guest cast than they are about the regulars.
In fact, in fact, the regular cast member who gets the most to do is Avon.
You call it a B plot.
In some respects, I mean, Paul Darrow makes it an A-plot. an equal A-plot because he's got, yes, and partly because the sequences where he's rationalising it all out are so beautifully played, but also because you're actually genuinely interested in what's going through his head.
I'm not expandible.
I'm not stupid and I'm not going.
Yes, that's brilliant.
Oh, yeah, mine.
Very good one.
But it is outside the normal black 7 comfort zone, and I don't think we see anything quite like this again.
No, and I mean, the name Alan Pryor will become synonymous with like 7 fans with fear and yawning.
But I think...
This is actually...
I think this is actually a really good 1st effort.
I don't recall those 2 episodes.
He goes on to do hostage, the keeper, volcano and animals.
Oh my god.
Goodness me, that's quite a repertoire.
That's a plummet down the slope.
Does that mean it's been saved by the director?
No, I think it's genuinely a good script and it's also light years away from the show that gave us something like Time Squad last series.
Yeah, I mean, there's a real sort of concern to say something worthwhile politically, I think.
I really like the scenes.
There are 2 things that happen in the mind scenes, which are otherwise just sort of terrible. and, you know, like Michael Keating and...
I don't need to... they both...
Garrett Thomas's torsos.
That was unnecessary.
Unfortunate, isn't it?
Unfortunate choice.
So like Jenna had to show her midrip.
And you thought that those wings were in his costume.
But the 2 details that I really like.
When the other people, the primitives, stand aside to let Selma get her food first. because you do get a sense of her being important or royal or having some special status that they recognise.
She says almost indignantly.
I'm not one of these people.
Yeah, incredible.
Yeah, really brilliant.
Drawing on a caste system, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then you get the scene where Blake stops them grabbing food and orders them to take food one at a time.
And that's slightly awkward, I think, because, you know, this is a people where lots of white people have descended from the sky and started telling them how to run their lives and he's...
Now, he's just going to do the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is a character moment.
I mean, it's clearly intended as a character moment because Blake is interested in fairness.
He has, you know, a political goal that is to do with, you know, fairness and equality and stuff like that.
And so I think that's actually quite a good character beat, even though it is slightly awkward.
It would have been lovely if she'd have done it.
Yeah.
That would have been a better choice.
Yeah.
Or even just one of the other characters.
One of the other regulars might have been nice.
No, it's still the thing what Nathan was saying is someone coming from off-world and telling you how to, you know, run your mind.
But also it's consistent because Blake loves nothing better than to tell everyone what to do.
So when Callie finally goes down.
So she's the 3rd kind of landing party, I guess, and she's going down because she's discovered something, and we don't find out what it is, do we?
It's something written on some cellophane or something.
That's right.
She says it's something which Aurak has dug up, but she doesn't tell you what that is when she's on the ship.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so we get a rare moment.
And again, watching this as a child, you are always desperate. for Callie to do some telepathy, I think.
And it's really, really well used here.
So she's strapped to the chair, you know, the torturing chair and she warns Roe in a way that the commissar can't hear that the commissar killed Roe's father and that he will kill Roe if he has to.
And I think it's really, really terrific.
And one of the things that's terrific about it is, it's the 1st indication, I think, that Roe values his own culture because he recognises her as a mystic.
And although the commissar is dismissive of this as sort of superstition and as a sort of throwback to his own sort of primitive culture.
He doesn't push back, you know, like he demands that she's treated properly and so on.
I do wonder whether it's a nice character beat as well for Cali, where she works out that she can use her telepathy because she's got a glimpse of this civilisation so she could use that in a really interesting way to make her point in a way that maybe she wouldn't just as an alien teleporting down onto the planet.
She really utilises her skills sort of very cleverly, the way she's sort of saying, oh, Movo knew you for what you were and things like that.
She's, yeah, she's, it's really phenomenal, it's a great bit of character writing again.
Yeah, she's smart.
She does exactly the same thing that Blake does because Blake uses the story of poorer, and I really like the kind of the slightly muddy storytelling where, like, we were talking about with Callie on board on the liberator having the information, but us not being party to it yet.
We didn't see Pora in Space 4, and I went back and had a look and there was no one who looked like they came from Horizon on London.
But it's a really interesting backstory which has been woven in.
And I think coming from a writer who was not a regular writer from the series, that's intriguing, because he's obviously watched it and worked that in.
And so Kelly hits upon the same strategy as Blake. she's got a couple more tools in her toolbox.
I did think that the poorer thing was just a little bit too convenient.
Yes, I thought so too.
And I'm wondering whether that's a grafting on, given the fact that, I mean, I know Blake says Horizon at the beginning when, you know, Zen or whoever it is announces the planet.
He does say it in an interesting way, as if that's familiar.
But then I think there's too much of a leap to when he's telling them about poorer later.
There needed to be something to bridge those 2 things together.
Yeah.
Like he maybe needed to tell one of the crew something rather than just telling Rowe for the 1st time because it just seems a little bit too convenient.
Even something like what I'm saying, you've heard of it?
Possibly.
Or something.
There just needed to be something to make it look like.
Yeah.
Perhaps you could have just said, oh, it bobbed back into my memory.
Yeah, yeah.
You're coming back to me. yeah.
If only they hadn't cast Tom Kelly as Nova.
They could referred to him.
Yes, Nova told us all about it, and then he died of shaving foam.
It would have been quite a movement.
It would have been a nice conversation for him and Jenna to have when they're coming down to the planet because they were both on the ship.
And it could have said, oh, do you remember?
Yeah, I've got this feeling about, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. that's right Blake wasn't the only one on the London.
No.
We see the London.
Do we have a sort of spot the London segment in...
We should do because we'll be seeing it again.
I thought I recognised it.
So we get this sort of backstory that kind of is gradually revealed that basically the commissar has killed everyone that Roe has ever kind of spoken to or loved or anything.
You know, his best friend, his dad.
He wasn't iClaudius.
Used to it. cynically, cynically installed himself as a father figure.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. yeah.
He sent his girlfriend to the mines because she's obviously a danger to him as well.
Anything that is going to corrupt his federation view of the world is quietly removed. there's that chilling moment, isn't there, where the commissar turns to his aid and says he's not the man his father was.
Yeah, isn't that aide played well as well by Brian Miller.
Yeah, Mr. Elizabeth, yeah.
In a very sort of in not a very minor role, but a role without many lines, but he's really on board with everyone else in making those scenes work.
Yeah, not hamming it up.
No, not at all.
It is kind of lack of draft ISIS with that discussion of poorer.
It's like they suddenly decided they needed something to make that scene work so that Roe would start to believe Blake and the others that his future is not safe there, that he is in danger from the commissar.
And so I think the, so I think that poorer story is kind of just laid in there and then they don't worry about going back and fixing it elsewhere.
Do you know what I mean?
They drop it into that scene to make that scene work.
I think, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah.
The fact the fact that both Callie and Blake have different news that they've got from different sources that's directly relevant to Rowe is a little bit of a coincidence and it doesn't quite work.
And I kind of think the fact that Roe really kind of has his change of heart when his life is being threatened, that's not as good a reason as perhaps in realising that his, you know, the population of the planet is slowly kind of being killed and stuff.
I have a similar, but slightly different reading of it.
And I think it's, it is a more realistic.
I think they are trying to do it relatively realistically because it's quite clear all the way through that Roe is uncomfortable with what's going on.
You know, he doesn't like all the things he's having to do, but he sort of talks himself into doing it.
So it's just the fact that but he keeps doing it, I think.
Well, there's a sense I get the sense that he's still playing along because he can't see another way out because he doesn't want, you know, the population to be wiped out or he doesn't want even more enslaved.
He doesn't want thing to get worse.
Kind of like, you know, what's his face in Day of the Daleks.
He sort of has this view that I'm saving my people from what could be a worse fate.
And it's when he finds out that his life is under immediate threat that he realises, well, what am I really doing that for?
There's no point because they're going to get me in the end anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
And if I'm not here, they're going to get my people.
Yeah, exactly.
And if I'm not him, yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't think it's as heartless as it's only when his life's under threat, only then will he act.
I think that's just when the penny drops that there is no other way out.
Or it's worth it's worth the risk of killing them, of getting rid of the federation. because it's going to happen anyway. where, you know, my people could be killed anyway.
It kind of happened simultaneously in the storytelling that Roe loses his faith in the commissar, and it sort of chipped away out all through the episode, but there is that moment around about the same time where I can't remember the line, but the commissar says something and all over Rose Face, a great moment from Darian Angardi is just hurt and betrayal that the commissar was thinking of taking this course of action.
And I think that's the point where he realises this wasn't the man he thought he was.
And so the Federation is not the future he thought it was for his planet.
It's also that thing, the colonialism thing.
I mean, there's that altruistic part of it where you're trying to, you might be absolutely trying to bring a better life to, you know, the people you're colonising or, you know, you want them to have, you know, better healthcare, better education, all these sorts of things.
And so I think Roe sees that in the Federation, that opportunity because he does acknowledge that his people are, you know, very primitive.
They don't have all of those things.
And I think that's why he's conflicted by it.
It's funny how little the Federation gets compared to the British Empire.
Like it doesn't happen all that often, does it?
The only analogue I can think of is in traitor.
Traitor is the other one, really, isn't it?
Where they're very colonial.
The way the Federation leadership team are behaving is, yeah, incredibly colonial, isn't it?
Yeah.
And of course, that's the only federation-based episode that Robert Holmes writes and he was always going to look at it through that lens.
Yeah, of course, because he has a problem with the aesthetics of colonialism, I think.
He thinks colonialism is ridiculous.
And so he makes ridiculous federation officers in that episode.
But it is played very straight, and it is interesting, I think, because we see so many different sides of the Federation, and we see it.
They never attempt to pin down what the world is like in Blake 7, I think.
I don't think the federation that you see in the way back is ever seen again.
I don't think, you know, the federation that was depicted in shadow we ever see again.
I think it is really striking how the show doesn't want to create a consistent world and it doesn't want to tie anyone down to writing the show in a particular way.
I don't think, though, that it's because they don't want to.
I just think it's because they just don't.
No, I think there is a difference because, you know, in the modern era, you know, there are these 87 volume Bibles that the showrunners put together to make sure that the universe that they're creating is entirely consistent from episode to episode.
Back in those days, they didn't do that.
They just kind of made it up as they went along.
So different writers had different ideas of what the Federation was.
So Terry Nation will be portraying it as Nazism and Alan Pry, he is portraying it like the British Empire and then Robert Holmes does a different kind of British empire. know what I mean?
And so, but I don't think they think about that is the thing.
I think you're giving them too much credit by saying that they don't want to.
Maybe you're right.
I do love it though.
I mean, I love that this every episode is like a little corner of the universe.
Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it's bad.
I actually like it because it means you can imagine so many more possibilities.
And you can experience so many more little facets.
And I don't care whether this doesn't quite fit in with that bit over there and this bit here because you can kind of, if you really want to, you can sort of create a little bit of head cannon and make it work because audiences in the late 1970s are seeing these once. and they're not given the opportunity to worry about that sort of thing.
I always think of the Federation as sort of this multi-stranded thing where there's all different bits doing different things, but they're not talking to each other because of bureaucracy.
And so...
Star one broke down.
Yeah, exactly.
But you've got the strand of the Federation that is trying to leap into the next galaxy to take that over.
You've got the military bit that is trying to chase Blake.
You've got the administration on earth keeping the populace drugs.
And because it's so big and unwieldy because they've got such a huge empire, there's no way you could keep all of those strands all consistent.
It feels quite real in that way, I think.
I really like the messages that the Commissar sends out.
You know, that he sends a message to Flotilla 9 or whatever, Flotilla 13.
Isn't Flutilla 13?
I may be wrong on this.
The same flotilla that is sent by Servoland to intercept the aliens in Star one.
Yeah, well, they only have one flotilla.
They do call it 13, so it seems like.
There's a lot of them.
It's like when they talk about the 5th quadrant, I have that.
Yeah.
So there's there are distance away.
And this sort of weird thing where the assistant commissar has never heard of Blake, like just doesn't know about him at all.
But the commissant does.
And, you know, he sends a message to the flotilla, but the flotilla can't tell anyone because they're too distant.
And it really kind of sells the idea that this is a strange outpost in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, we forget the idea that the Liberator is so well connected because of Aurak, whereas I think the idea is that the Federation is not well connected with itself.
It's like sending messages by pigeon and horseback and all of that.
It's that old communication thing that it's going to take days to get a message back to London about what's going on and then days to get the message back.
Yeah.
Yeah, days to get a message from the London to London.
Yes. to London on the London.
I really like the fact that there's the 4 iterations of the Federation just in consecutive episodes here.
So in Weapon, it was all about Servlan and Travis, and that's operatic villainy.
That's sort of, you know, the Federation is the big bad.
In pressure point, we'll return to Earth and we'll see more of kind of the Earth side of the administration. faceless one.
That's right.
In trial, following that.
We'll see kind of the more noble side.
So there's a suggestion that there's officers who are trying to do their best for their men and who are following procedures and putting people on trial, not just saying eliminate them.
And in this episode, it's the banality of evil, because so much of what the Commissar and the Assistant Commissar talk about is kind of, you know, toying with people's lives and sort of smirking over things behind Rose Back and, you know, having knocked off his father and stuff like that.
And to them, it's just a day's work in advancing the cause.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that the Commissar is astonishingly evil.
Like he's an amazingly good villain, but he underplays it.
You know, he's got a very sort of posh accent which he needs to have.
Yeah, he wouldn't have been allowed on tailing otherwise.
1979.
But yeah, William Squire had done a kind of similar role in Callen.
He was one of the hunters in Callen, and he'd been the slightly bureaucratic leader who'd sent Callen on his missions and it's a very similar thing.
He's doing things behind the scenes that you're not quite sure of, his motives all the time.
So it's a good piece of casting sort of from television history, I think.
So...
He did seem very familiar, but then when I looked up that he was the shadow in the Armageddon factor, you can just see it, even though you can only...
Although you don't get the laugh, unfortunately, in this one.
He's hamming it up somewhat more.
Yeah he is.
He's got a great voice, though.
I mean, it really is.
He's very distinctive.
Yeah, it's a great performance.
So let's talk about the way that the 2 plots dovetail and kind of resolve themselves.
So we mentioned Flotilla 13 before, and Avon has done the calculations, hasn't he?
That he doesn't need them.
He can fly around in the spaceship.
He can put a new outfit on every few hours.
He can roll around naked in jewels.
He's got enough food for a 1000 years.
Enough.
It's a size series.
It doesn't sound very appetising.
By series D, you will have eaten most of it.
It's all impossible burgers, I think.
That's probably what it means So he's done the calculation that the only thing that he can't withstand, you know, on his own without the other people around is an attack by 3 pursuit ships.
It always 3 pursuit ships.
It is, yeah, it's the stock footage.
You should have given up then and there.
She said 3 words. always got to be three.
Well, one of the things that I thought was, when we hear about Flotilla 13, they're still...
When we hear about Flotilla 13, they're still 2 hours away.
So I'm not quite sure why he just doesn't decide to fuck off at that point.
You know, it's just like, all right, they're here in 2 hours. going to go.
But instead, and I think it's really wonderful, is he's amused by the fact that he's kind of been outmanoeuvred by fate and he just goes down to rescue them.
And the thing...
It's so good.
There's that interplay between him and Aurak too, about questions.
You know, I didn't ask a question.
That wasn't a question.
Is that a question?
And that's really properly funny.
And, you know, it's just even talking to a box of flashing lies.
Look at it.
It's so much fun and he's really, really good in it.
I'd almost be prepared to just watch the version of the show where he left all those bozos down.
Avons won.
It talks to TVs.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's really nice.
I really love that it establishes that relationship that we'll get now through the rest of the series between Avon and Aurak, which we haven't seen before, and all those interactions between the 2 of them trying to outsmart each other.
It's just fantastic stuff.
It's really good, isn't it?
And then he goes down and just shows that he is the most competent person on the crew, like the rest.
So why haven't they worked that out when, you know, Gan and Villa go down and when Callie goes down to take the little zappy thing to neutralise the...
Yeah, no, they're useless.
I couldn't quite, I shouldn't rewound.
I couldn't quite understand when he got down there.
He's like, well, how did he know to do that?
But Aura, he got Aurak to do a bit more digging about what was on the planet, hadn't he?
I think that was what sort of the implication.
Yeah, but that's my point, I suppose.
It was like, well, why didn't the others do a bit more digging before?
Because they're not as small.
Comrades had been killed.
Because they're not as smart and cool as Avon is.
That's the thing.
I entirely agree with her.
Avon was prepared.
He'd done more digging.
So if he got captured by row, he could have told another story to row, which would have moved him a bit further along.
That's right.
The commissar killed your dog.
You wouldn't find Paul Darrow in a mine without his shirt on.
No thank God for that.
But you also get that great bit where we talked about where Avon almost shoots Blake.
And again, he does the thing that he does in Aurak, where you've got the very blank face that you can project anything onto.
So you can see whether he's really thinking that he's going to kill Blake or not.
It's such a great performance again from Paul Darrow.
It's so good.
I like to think the fact that he almost hit Blake is just amusing to him.
Oh, well.
Well, in the same way that sort of discovering that he actually needs the others is amusing to him as well.
And so he goes down, he shoots 4 guards and doesn't miss anyone.
He blows up a whole bunch of cameras.
He really is so much better than anyone.
It's what you were saying earlier, Simon, about the soundscape in this episode.
The location filming has really good sound, like episodes like Terminal Will later on.
And all of those shots from Avon's gun have this echo to them which make those scenes really effective.
Yeah, that really helps.
Even the way it's shot too, that we just sort of, it's quite quick cutting for Blake 7, which tends to be directed in a more stately way, I think.
This is the antidote, pennant Robert Sitis.
I think I think I think you're absolutely right.
Exactly right.
Because if Penet Roberts was doing this episode, it would be very dull.
Very dull.
It would be dull.
So let's then talk briefly about that final confrontation between Rowe and the commissar that wraps up the A plot.
He comes in with his shirt off as well.
He does rather. don't mind that scene at all.
More of that, please.
I mean, Blake 7 is not known for its hotness, but on the on the Blake 7 scale of hotness from Agrarian through to Nova.
I think Row ranks quite highly.
Yeah.
Yeah. he's got beautiful eyes Very extraordinary eyes.
Yeah.
And so expressive.
There's so much going on in there.
The eyes are acting as well.
Yeah, he's he's really good.
And then just when he comes in. and he is in this tribal thing where he's completely rejected the federation and the wonderful blow dart that he just kills him with.
It's so wonderful.
Very slowly.
So you think the commissary would be able to get out of the way.
Ah, well, I'm so surprised that they're blaring that ceremonial garb.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Or by his chest hair. can't take his eyes off for his chest hair and doesn't notice.
One of the things we didn't mention before because the blow things are established, aren't they?
Because, you know, we have federation guns, but I guess they don't have a stun setting and so we want to stun them and so we use the blow darts.
But the moment where Villa gets shot with the blow dart and he just sees it in his chest and goes, It's so funny.
So great.
Oh my god.
I really like when Jenna gets done with the blow dart in the back because she does this really great fall into the camera.
It's quite impressive.
And of course, you need to take Gan down.
Yes, yeah.
But no, I really love the way going back to the execution scene.
I really love the fact that, you know, just the way he delivers that line when he comes over and says, it's the, it's the death serum.
You're going to die and it's completely calm sort of rational way. very nice.
So well.
Oh, he's so good.
Yeah, and that scene is shot really well because it's all done in close-ups.
There's no wide shot in that scene.
So when Blake teleports down, big close-up on him, big close-up on the assistant commissar being shot, close-up on row coming in.
So you can only sort of see from basically his nipples upwards.
And then a close-up of the commissar being shot with the dart.
It's really very effective and taut.
But I think, because the director knows that if you did all that in Longshaw, it just doesn't look like anything.
It looks boring.
You do all that, because it's a very simple, quiet act of shooting someone with a dart.
It's a really impressive shot when Roe does enter in the headgear because you know exactly what's going to happen and it rounds off that A plot in the episode really nicely, visually.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it had the potential to look silly, didn't it?
Um, because it's, you know, uh, traditional costume designed by the BBC and it could have looked ridiculous, but it doesn't.
He looks really impressive, I think.
I'm very surprised that Romana wasn't wearing it in Megloss.
I love the bit where Blake says, oh, still Horizon, and he says, we can't go back to the whole of the past.
We've got to keep moving.
So they're reimbracing their past, but only sort of within reason, within certain parameters.
He is going to move this planet on.
Yeah, he's embracing their culture.
He's not rejecting the culture.
He's embracing the culture, but he's not rejecting the future.
Yeah, embracing the past has not been rejecting the future.
I think that was quite a nice little message.
It's another planet where Blake says, you know, I'll check in and see how you're going.
No, that'll have been an annihilated.
The next fleet of spaceships come back. to defend themselves with darts, for God's sake.
I do think it's the most beautifully named planet in Blake 7, not Horizon, but Sil Marino, which is the original title.
And I just, the ages sat there thinking, what does that remind me of?
Sil Marino, Sil Marillion.
Yeah, yeah.
And then, of course, it's one of those Blake 7 episodes that ends with a joke. beats work.
So Villa Villa, earlier on when he gets told he's going to be put to work, goes work as if he doesn't know what that is.
And then he's been working.
And then they all come back up and they all have a shower before going down. apart from him.
He's got into a fresh new uniform, but hasn't washed his face.
Jen is still in her grubby uniform, which I like to think is why she's in such a bad mood throughout the whole episode.
Although that explains because Blake was the only one who had time to shower and he was hogging it for the rest of them.
Yeah, he'd used all the hot water, hadn't he?
That shower is placed right next to the telepath section on the floor.
Yes, they may have a 1000 years of food that they only have...
You would have thought Aurak would mention that actually earlier.
Section leader Clegg in the future.
So, did you check the shower?
No, I can imagine that, you know, Row and his girlfriend.
I can't remember.
Who's your girlfriend's name?
Selma.
Selma.
Row and Selma are able to Selma?
Selma.
Selma.
Selma.
I like to think that afterwards, Row and Silma are able to, you know, sell this, uh, Monopeys him 239 or whatever it is.
Yeah. at a fair price, you know, 20 credits per unit or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, and, and they all, they'll, uh, heavily ever after, but I suspect no, they get shot.
Yeah, probably.
Well, maybe when the aliens invade at the end of the series.
Oh, yes, yes, yeah. the 1st victim Star Wars.
Or maybe maybe that's all happening in the other spiral.
The other spiral.
A little noose as well.
I'm not sure how to say the actress's name.
I think it's Suard for us.
A little note for her performance as well because she doesn't have many scenes.
She doesn't have any lines, but she really lends a lot to that role, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, when the 2 of them appear, finally, you know, in their traditional outfits, I think it's a wonderful moment of triumph.
But she manages to carry that sense of she's an aristocrat all throughout, even in the mind.
All right, so we've reached the end of the episode.
Do any of you have final statements, perhaps?
I just think this episode deserves so much more love than it ever gets.
I think people see the name Alan Pryor on the credits and instantly write it off.
But there is a reason why the Blake 7 Fan Club called themselves Horizon, and that's because this is a really good episode.
It's somewhat overlooked now, and I'm pleased to have found 3 other people who really like it as well, because this was one of the 1st episodes of Blake 7 I saw after I saw series D back in the 80s, and then in the late 80s, I saw 4 episodes of series B bizarrely on cable TV before the channel got wiped off.
So this was one of the ones I saw then.
And I just loved it from that moment on, I thought this was always a really strong and interesting episode and it explores really interesting things that Blake 7 doesn't touch on very often.
I had a different experience where I had thought that this was a sort of fairly middling episode of Blake 7.
Um, and it certainly, you know, wouldn't be one that I would have sort of put myself forward to talk about on the podcast or anything like that.
And then just watching it again yesterday, just being astounded by how much better it was than I remember.
And I think it is a really, really solid, you know, I think it's a top tier Blake 7 episode easily.
It's probably interesting, serious storytelling.
And I think it gets overlooked because it's a one-off episode. not one which involves kind of our regulars from the Federation.
So no serverland, no travers, but it just tackles things from an interesting point of view, and it also finds time to really build on Avon's character.
And so, you know, it's all you could ask for from an episode, really.
Yeah, no, I agree.
It's one of my top tier episodes.
It always has been since the 1st time I saw it.
But I think the 1st time I saw it was a late pickup because Peter, I don't think it was one of the ones that you had on tape all those years ago because that was how I experienced Blake 7.
It was this selection of a significant selection, but nevertheless, a selection of episodes.
And for some reason, I don't think it was part of it.
But I just keep coming back to those performances.
The performance of Row is just so beautiful and and those scenes are so quiet and it just reminds me of those, you know, BBC period dramas, things like iClaudius, which I was watching as a sort of similar time. drew me in.
Now, do I want every episode of Black 7 to be like this?
No, because much of what we like about Black 7 is not in this episode.
But having said that, it is so great that they tried this and it is so great that it was so successful.
Yeah, cheers to Darian and Gardi.
We own him and we're very happy about that.
That's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next week to mount an attack on central control on Earth in pressure point.
I have a good feeling about that mission, I think.
Yeah, it's going to go well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So we'll see you then.
Good night.
Good night.
Bye for now.
Bye bye.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.
