Power.
Welcome back to Maximum Power, the only Blake 7 podcast, which is now 100% more diapeticistic.
Let's introduce ourselves.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James I'm Brendan.
And I'm Simon.
This week, we are talking about the series B, episode seven, which is killer, which is Bob Holmes's 1st script for the show, and it's directed by future Blake 7 producer Via Lorimer.
I want to start an argument.
Which one is the A plot and which one is the B plot?
Ah, well, I've said other like 7 episodes have had 2 B plots.
I would argue this has 2 A-plots.
And that's one of the reasons why it's so fantastic.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
You think it's just about stealing this crystal.
And then the other plot starts burning.
And as soon as I saw that ship, I thought, okay, this is another time squad.
We're going to have men running around in leather gear, which should be attractive, but it's not.
Aren't those the outfits from the tribe of the Sepatine?
Yeah, but yeah, all the interesting bits cut out.
What?
Louise Jameson.
Yes.
Yeah, I think I think you might be right.
Obviously, the virus plot is the one that gets the title, and I think it's probably the most surprising one.
In a way, the getting the crystal plot has actually been done before last season in Zeke Locate Destroy.
I would argue, and we'll come back around to my thinking on this, because it's at the end of the episode, I would argue that the other plot is also worthy of the title in a different way.
Oh, yes, I was trying to make that work in my hand because you always want a title to be kind of, you know, ambiguous or applicable in all sorts of ways.
So in that case, let's start with the 1st A plot then.
Which is...
Is that the double A plot?
That's it.
Which is obviously Avon and Villa heading down to the planet Phosphron to steal the crystal.
Is this the 1st proper time they've been paired up?
Without anyone else.
Yes, probably.
We haven't had gambit yet.
That comes later and they're obviously paired up for that.
But it does seem to be a particular Bob Holmes thing.
He'll pair them up in gambit.
He'll pair them up later on in orbit.
Well, they have such wonderful kind of bitchy chemistry.
How can you avoid it, especially if you're Robert Holmes?
My favourite exchange. is the one where Villa says, oh, you know, I always knew you had a friend.
You know, like, I said to myself, Avon has a friend.
And then Avon's comeback is, and you were right, this must be a novel experience.
Yeah, this is great.
Great double act there.
But once again, they seem to be only capable of teleporting themselves down miles away from where they need to be, whereas Blake gets to teleport down later, right into the middle of the base.
Yeah, I don't know why that is.
We have to burn some money on location shooting, I suppose.
We had to expose the cast to it yet another nuclear power station.
Is that what it is?
Yes.
It is another one.
Like on the seven.
Right.
But but dumb Jan's not there.
I think the girls refuse to do it after...
Redemption.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And funnily enough, Jan Chapel actually had it written into her series C contract that she would not shoot at nuclear power stations.
What a hippie.
Wasn't she unpregnant at the time they were filming redemption.
So she was kind of anxious about that.
I mean fair enough.
Yeah, close.
She was breastfeeding.
And she was told you're not allowed to have milk and eggs and she's like, well, can I have some?
Now, the interesting thing about sending Avon and Villa in.
And it's sort of a, it sort of really points to Rob Holmes writing style of Villa's there to give Avon someone to bounce off because Villa does almost nothing.
Like when they're breaking into the base, Villa's like, Avon, how are you going to break in?
And I'm just sitting there going, no, that's your job.
Yeah, I didn't actually think about that.
I hadn't watched it for a while and I was kind of expecting that it would be Villa's job to kind of pull the thing out, that I even would do all the computer identifying where the crystal is and that Villa would kind of pull it out.
But he really just does seem to be there to kind of make snarky remarks, you know, as him.
Yeah, which brilliant.
Oh, yeah.
There's nothing.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just kind of like, you know, we've had David Jackson leave us because he's underused and now Michael Keating has to do a script where it's like, Villa's one job Avon does instead while shooting off witty bomb mos. ironically, it gets more lines in this episode than most.
Yes.
Yeah, it is a good episode for Villa, even though he doesn't seem to do anything.
I mean, we've had that sort of bitchy interplay and that's sort of a hallmark of Chris Boucher's sort of editorship.
But I get the feeling that this is homes.
It doesn't sound like Bouchers.
Holmes with a Boucher polish.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, is it one of those sort of Russell T. Davey slash Stephen Moffatt things where the Robert Holmes scripts don't get polished as much as perhaps others of the era might.
And I just think that I think that the interplay between them is good because I think Boucher kind of moves it up a whole other notch into sort of full camp sort of exchanges, whereas I think Robert Holmes, at least in this script, keeps it just the right side of the line.
And I really, really like that.
I think it's very, very cleverly done.
For me, this is a turning point for Villa because I think Bouchers Villa, when he sort of bandying with Avon, Avon almost always gets the last line and Villa kind of looks a bit shamefaced, whereas Holmes Villa, absolutely is not phased by Avon's insults and just throws another one back at him.
And I think it's, I think it's really effective.
And so we meet Avon's old friend, as I alluded to before, Tinus, who has a terrible name.
Terrible, terrible space name.
Well, you call him Tinnitus.
And who is dressed as a vinyl cockroach for this episode?
Giant vinyl cockroach.
Thanks, June Hod.
Yes, the costumes are the most puzzling creative choice.
They're also fabulous.
Yeah, no, they work.
I think they work better now than when I was seeing it for the 1st time in the very late 80s, early 90s where they just, I was thinking, my God, this is awful.
She's got a job lot on a new type of like PVC and...
I think that fabric, like that's obviously the kind of vinyl they were covering sofas in whatever the equivalent of freedom furniture was.
Yes, it was all on discount.
Or they just finished that colour and they had all the stuff left.
Her last episode.
Oh, is it?
4 Blake 7, like she done 6 this season.
Yeah, okay.
No, I knew it was her and I desperately hoped it was her.
And it is that thing that we talked about when we recorded Weapon, which is that they could just so easily have been wearing sort of space overalls or whatever.
The fact that June decides to dress them in such a stupid way actually kind of makes it more Blake Evans, I think.
But yeah, I mean, I said it was sort of puzzling creative choice.
But I think the great thing is that she's actually thought about it.
They actually logically all do work in their own way.
And in a logical thing, like the firefighter outfits, fighter fighter outfits have the, like the sort of shield around them and the Michelin men are the, you know, obviously because they're, you know, quarantine and I'm not entirely sure what the logic is behind the brown cockroach vinyl, but it's still, it all works with itself.
It's not like a hodgepotch.
And I think that's that's good.
Yeah, they're all kind of mental.
I mean, the firefighter costumes are not really very practical because they have no kind of shoulders, like their arms are sticking out in front of them.
And they're right, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I think that may have been a failure of execution, right?
I think that the cockroach outfits are designed so that Avon and Villa can put them on and then go in to the big room with the computer banks and be undetected.
They kind of makes more sense if they landed on a planet where it was constantly raining with this downpour because they kind of look like sort of anorexy spots of things that you'd go out into a like prison guards where when they're trudging down the thing in the middle of the rain or something, you know?
Yeah.
I think we didn't mention the glass shot of the complex on phosphron, which I think is great.
Yeah, really, really good.
What's the deal here?
He's an old friend of Avans who's been written into the backstory of the fraud that got him arrested.
Yeah, the implication is that he was the other party in that fraud that got Avon arrested and had him appear in series A. Avon does say that his mistake was relying on other people.
Yeah, and Tinus is the person he relied on.
Yeah, that's definitely the impression I got.
You know, it's it's not like in um, in series A, where suddenly Blake has this nemesis who is the person responsible for the 1st massacre, but Blake remembers it now, whereas Glyn, Glyn Foster, Bran Foster.
Bran Foster.
All Bran Foster didn't tell him previously. that, oh, by the way, you've got this nemesis who will come after you.
Yeah, so stupid.
And Tinus, of course, is played by Ronald Lacy.
And yeah, he's quite a big thing.
He goes on to be in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Oh my goodness.
As the Nazi.
As the main Nazi, yeah.
Yeah.
But with less hair and quite podgy.
So he, I have to say, he goes downhill in the space of about 4 years, quite some...
We all have...
And he also may be familiar to some of our listeners as a, I think, two-time, possibly three-time guest actor on the Avengers.
Ah, including the really great episodes.
Don't look behind you and Legacy of Death, which also features Richard Herndel. in a glass coffin.
Best place, really.
The thing that excited me most was Maurice Barry as Wiler.
Yes.
Yes, isn't that incredible?
So that's Maurice Barry who has acted in Doctor Who.
Oh, Morris married the same Morris Barry directs, Tomb of the Simon, et cetera.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just assumed it was a different bloke.
No, no, it's the same guy.
God, he must have been a child when he was in when he was directing.
Well, he's, yeah, he's a bit, he's quite old here.
So he's he's Dr. Weiler.
He's also in Creature from the Pit, so he appears on the screen as Tolant in Creature from the Pit.
One of my favourite screen appearances of Maurice Barry is in Day of the Triffords.
Oh my goodness.
Where at the episode 2 Cliffhanger, Bill and Joe are driving a car and they're trying to drive it slowly, but a bunch of the people who've been blinded hear it and they're all hammering on the car and you get a great close-up of Maurice Barry is shouting, get the bastard out.
I think my favourite Morris Barrett performances at the beginning of the original Tomb of the Sum and VHS where he sort of fades up and he goes, I worked on Doctor Who.
They have at least said, let's just start that one.
Sorry, we only have one.
We only have one today.
Clearly evidently.
Mommy's closing.
Yes, yes.
Appropriate for 60s, Doctor Who, we only have one take.
Should we should we move and talk about the 2nd A plot for a second?
Which actually becomes the 1st 8 plus.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that this is really extraordinary and that this is the kind of horror that Blake 7 rarely does.
So we literally have a zombie here.
And we have unseen aliens.
Blake 7 doesn't reach for aliens all that frequently.
And there is something really kind of bleak and terrifying about this, I think.
But can I give a shout out to that autopsy scene?
Because it seems to be one of the most adult sequences in any of these programs that we love and watch.
It is so well done and seems so professional.
Now, I don't know.
Probably real autopsies obviously don't work quite like that, but at least it gives nods to the kind of procedures they'd go through, partly because of the execution, I think, I think, the way they tell that story and the way they certainly the way the actors are performing it makes it very dark.
Yeah.
Especially because Bellfriar is such a lovely character.
He's great, isn't he?
Like, even before Blake arrives, you know, he's being jovial with his staff, but also will occasionally go, oh, for God's sake, what's taking him so long?
Hey.
And he's shown to be a decent human being almost immediately when Blake arrives as well.
He says, you know, you may have heard me.
My name is Blake, because it's like, oh, but we're very forgetful scientist.
Gabrill actually says whose name?
I think is so great.
It's a great performance.
I love that character and I think that's he, that actor, give that role to someone who's thinking this is a space drama.
It would be unbearable, but he plays it like he's playing in something like Secret Army or something.
He's playing a completely straight part and I think the program is so much better for it.
And that's when these shows, I think, get really good is when the actors are taking it seriously, as if it's quote unquote real drama.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he's so charming.
The actor is so charismatic, I think.
And he's got a great name as well.
It's a great Bob Holmes name.
You know, we've got Tiner space name, you know, in the other A plot.
Yeah, Brule and Tack attack.
For Christ's sake.
But we have Bellfriar, who gets a proper sort of rather romantic sounding name that isn't a space name at all.
And Holmes is so good at creating those names, I think.
On gamble.
Yeah.
I like how he he's sort of set up that at 1st you think he's immediately going to go off to the space radio and tell Serverland that Blake is here and he doesn't.
It's just that he's a kind of slightly stiff, awkward person, you know, and that subverts it, of course, because it's Tinus who makes that call. immediately.
Immediately.
Yeah.
But I have something else to say about Gamble.
And I think peaked over in the UK is going to be very sorry he didn't do this episode because Gamble is played by Colin Farrell.
No, not that one.
Yes.
At some point, the IMDb credits got merged.
And then that Colin Farrell's face was popping up.
Well, that's probably why in recent years, he took a bit of a break from acting, but he has been acting in recent years as Cole Farrell, better known for appearing in a Doctor Who episode called Orphan 55 as Benny.
Oh, you're kidding me.
Oh my seriously.
Gamble is betting.
Oh my god.
That's glorious.
Which, you know, lends a bit of weight to Bellfryer constantly going, Gabriel.
Gabriel?
Gabriel where are you?
It's in his contract.
His character's name has to appear in dialogue. you know no less than 20 times, I think.
So I think maybe if there's any choice, we have to we have to give this one to Pete to edit, but not tell him.
I wonder if he knows.
Well, he hasn't mentioned it.
He didn't ask to be on the episode.
Sorry, Pete.
The other cast note I have.
Yeah. is tack.
Yes, who's terrible.
Who is Colin Higgins?
And now he does go on and have a longer career as well.
You astound me.
There's a Miss Marple.
Body in the library where he's he's actually very good.
Is he the titular body?
No.
Which version?
The Joan Hickson.
Yeah, a few years after this.
But his big job before this was in Star Wars and New Hope.
What?
He is in the rebel briefing where he says that the thermal exhaust port is too small a target.
That's him.
Right.
Because he was originally cast as Wedge Antilles.
Oh my goodness.
Now, after that scene, he was immediately replaced by Dennis Lawson, who is the familiar face wedge, until he still voices him to this day in projects and what have you, what happened was Colin Higgins was so used to doing television that he turned up to record this film, because the original Star Wars was recorded at Pinewood, and of course films do rehearse record.
And so he didn't memorise the lines.
He thought there'd be a longer rehearsal period.
And he originally had a few more lines with Luke in that scene and then would go on and do the space battle and whatnot.
And he had so much trouble getting the lines out that they just cut him down to that one line because that was the line essential for the scene.
And then and then fired him.
Because they had originally wanted Dennis Lawson, but he wasn't available for all the dates.
Right.
But once they fired him, they called up Dennis Lawson and said, well, can we get you in because now you now you only need to do scenes by yourself in the cockpit.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's it's a bit disappointing.
Burn those lines.
Yeah, isn't that funny?
As an actor, he doesn't know how films are done.
It's crazy stuff.
He is not very good.
So he is Tinus's sort of guy. that right?
Well, he's barely in it.
Yeah, there's one scene.
There's one thing that ends with him doing just the most ridiculous, goofy, smiley response to some rather limp witticism of tinynesses.
Is it him that sort of drags himself?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, right.
See, I foolishly assumed that was a different actor in a different character.
So much attention had I played to him. looks out at him if...
All the fire stuff.
It's airborne.
And it's this, you know, like, it's making us rethink everything about viruses and we have an epidemic on the base.
It's, you know, it's just like real life.
What I find really odd is the way that Blake keeps getting given lines, which really, you know, they're medical people, one of them's like a, like a virologist or something. and they, Blake keeps being given lines, which really should be in the mouth of one of the doctors, like Bellfries.
Yeah, why doesn't Bell fryer think to turn the air conditioning off?
air conditioner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. for an airborne path.
Or, you know, talk about plague blankets.
Yeah, yeah.
You see, it's funny to me, and this is the beginning, I think, of the whole Jenna and Kelly get left up on the ship.
Yeah.
Because the person who has shown the most medical knowledge in this team is Cal. and she's the one who knows the most about what she senses from that ship.
But the show is called Blake 7 and, you know, Gareth is already thinking, why aren't I doing the RSC?
So they give it to him instead?
Yeah.
The amazing thing about this episode is it was actually produced immediately after redemption.
And so a couple of short scenes with David Jackson had to be cut out.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Yeah, because...
It was supposed to be like episode 2 or episode three.
Yeah, yeah.
We got pushed back to seven.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, Horizon, a couple of weeks ago was meant to come after pressure point.
Right.
But they'd already decided to move it up before they filmed.
But that's why when they all beamed down to the planet. everyone else is sent to the mines and Gan is just strung up on a wall because he's like, he doesn't have any lines.
And I was just kind of going, yeah, but he's the strongest person and he's like, mine.
It doesn't have to happen.
It doesn't usually happen.
It's the strong silent time.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think I think sort of Gan scene was beaming down.
Sorry, putting down Avon and Villa.
Right.
I actually quite like the way that Callie does that.
You know, like Avon is sort of a bit brisk with her and says, you know, do it quickly and so she just does it immediately before they have the chance to turn around and face the camera. you know before beaming down.
It's a thing.
I think that's sort of cute and she gives a little impish sort of thing.
And I quite like the way that she detects the thing.
She has an important plot role, even she doesn't do anything very much.
Unlike Jenna, who just gets stroppy at Blake.
And then apologise for being a mouthy woman.
Sorry, I'm being I'm being melatraumatic.
That thing, because it's a zombie, her she has to detect it because it's kind of supernatural.
And so it's her telepathy that finds it.
If they just scanned it and found signs of life.
That would have been much more boring.
And the body in that autopsy scene that you mentioned before, Simon, is gruesome.
Like the feet where the bits of it are spray painted black.
And and the way that um, Weiler describes what's happening.
You know, the eyeballs are soft.
Yes.
That's so gross, and the fingernails are loose.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yucky.
Yucky. actually yucky.
Yeah, but in a good way.
Yucky, not because it's gore, but yucky.
It's just the words.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All that technical terminology as well.
And I think Holmes does do that very well.
He does lots of techno babble, but it's all real.
You know, words like biologis and prophylaxis and stuff like that.
And, you know, names of bones and all of those kinds of things.
And I think the TP crystal technobabble is pretty good as well.
And he doesn't use technobabble.
I mean, he uses it, not really to convey information, but to convey character stuff, to make Wyler and Bellfry seem like plausible doctors.
It's not the resolution.
It's not the explanation as to why this is all happening.
It's just it's window dressing.
Yeah, yeah.
It's character stuff.
I think it's so good.
It's the thing that Holmes does is he creates a bigger world.
Yes.
There is a bigger, and that's the thing.
Yeah, you feel like there is a bigger world There is a whole base there.
There's a whole institute of people doing all these different projects and works and I believe it.
I don't just think it's all just 3 rooms.
Well, and they talk about a space plague and, you know, there's a name for it.
I can't remember what.
No, no, no, no.
There's a previous outbreak that gets referred to.
So there's some kind of history.
And he brings in things that have never been in a Blake 7 before.
So we've never had any real idea of when this is set, when is Blake 7 set in the 3rd century of the 2nd calendar or whatever.
Yeah, and and the ship, the, is it the Wanderer class or something like that?
Yeah, in space for 700 years.
It's one of the 1st Space Explorers, which probably sets this somewhere around the 30th century.
Yeah, and so and so we start to get a sort of real history as well.
And referring to Lord Jeffrey Ashley, you know, some pre-space thing, which would never have happened in Blake 7 before.
Have they ever referred to anything from Earth?
history ever.
And sandwiches and pickle barrels.
Yes, yeah.
Like, it's very homesy.
And that 61 Signi thing, which I think is properly terrifying.
Like, I think the zombie is terrifying.
But I think the idea that there's something that is trying to confine us to our own planet, and we don't know what it is, I think it's really properly frightening.
The great other name for the area of space as well, the darklings.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, the Terran ague as well, the word ague, which is sort of Shakespearean, isn't it?
There's an Andrew Agu cheek, I think.
So Toby Belch and Andrew A. and Gue Cheek.
What are they in?
I can't remember.
They're in one of the plays.
All I can think is David Agnew.
But it's an old-fashioned word.
So the Terran AQ.
And it's a thing that they all know about, you know, the 3 day sweats.
There's a kind of reality to it.
But all sort of delivered in dialogue, which is relatively speaking, just thrown away.
And that's why I think it helps that world building. world building works when those sort of aspects are thrown here, thrown there, they're scattered, liberally throughout, rather than there is a moment where someone says, well, let me tell you about this place.
We have blah, and there were the 3 day sweats and all that.
Do you know what I mean?
Then that's just just terrible.
And part of that, for instance.
And it ties in with how the dialogue creates the characters, is when we're waiting for Wyler to start the autopsy.
And Belfry, you know, has to intercom him a few times like, are you getting in there?
And it's like from a pathologist point of view, what's the hurry?
It's a dead body.
Is there a line in there?
I have done this before.
Exactly.
But so while they're waiting, you've got to fill that space with something.
And so you have Bellfriar and Blake discussing what they do there without it being, as you say, the whole, hello, this is our secret facility.
Would you like to see our decoding room?
Otherwise known as the Chris Chipdle style of the script, right?
Yes, but also the way Belfry deals with the personality of the autopsy guy. the way he sort of just says, sorry.
You know, he's just, you know, he just adds to the to the picture that this is a real player.
And it makes it matter when he dies.
You know, he's got a, he is kind of well characterised.
Yes, in a single scene.
Fussy and annoying, you know.
Now, obviously, we should, you know, a lot of this is Robert Holmes and, you know, absolutely full credit to him.
It's a spectacular script.
I just want to sort of reiterate the importance of the performances, but not just the performances, the direction.
The one thing that I found, about I noticed right from the get go, was that everything is relatively speaking, quite subtle and moody.
All the most of the lines of dialogue are delivered just a little bit a level lower than the sort of the heightened performances you often get.
And also, the whole production just feels so much more quiet.
You know, it's not just the music and there's less, fortunately, there's less Dudley, but when he interrupts, unfortunately, he really does interrupt.
But also the set noise.
There doesn't seem to use as much set noise as you often get clunks and footsteps and things banging and stuff like that.
And I don't know whether that's just the set people doing a much better job or whether the sound people know to put the boom mic in a different place or what it is.
But, you know, there's no, you know, random bits of noise that you, or few random bits of noise.
I mean, the noisiest things are the vinyl outfits, frankly. which you can sort of hit hair creaking about the place.
And also there is there is poise when people are delivering lines.
There's often a little bit of silence.
The lines are still said with urgency, but they're not, you know, line, line, line, line, line.
Sometimes it's just often there's just a little bit of a pause before someone delivers a line and it just adds to the sense of kind of foreboding and and it just the moodiness of the whole piece.
I just think those sorts of choices and those sorts of decisions cannot be understated as to contributing to why I think this is such a strong episode.
Do we know what else he directs?
He does quite a lot of Blake 7, doesn't he?
I mean, he goes on to be the producer, obviously.
Like, so, I mean, apart from producing series D. He directs a dozen episodes, starting with Signus Alpha.
Okay.
And cyclic destroy.
Breakdown Aurac Redemption, killer hostage, countdown, aftermath, city at the edge of the world.
There are some really good ones.
Yes, and breakdown, I need to say. breakdown is saved by him.
Yeah, maybe right.
He is a good choice for series D, but I think he ends up being a bad producer.
Well, yeah.
But we're getting ahead of that.
Well, maybe everything, for whatever reason, whether it's, I mean, via Laura, they all play their part, is what I'm trying to say, for however, however they get there, they manage to, I think, respond to the, maybe it's the script.
Maybe they're all inspired by the fact that there's been some good.
So they do take it seriously.
And I think that is important.
But I think so often, you know, there's either the director or the guest cast or the set designer or whatever. one or one or all of them will think it's a bit silly.
And so they, they, they make choices which are not in the best interest of the show.
Yes.
For example.
I haven't watched it yet.
I'm so looking forward.
I love it.
I love it, but you'll get what I mean.
It's not as bad as you make out in the episode that we talk about.
It kind of is.
I mean, you're right.
It's not as bad. it's worse I mean, I've been finding that Brian Croucher isn't as bad as I had heard he was for years.
Although if he was in this episode, um, it would be spelled differently, wouldn't it?
be killer.
Well, he would ruin it.
Yes.
They weren't really any particularly complex effect sequences or anything like that.
Now, I'm wondering whether that means, you know, all the time that gets chewed up having to set those up and get them right, which means you only get one take to do the talkie-talkie scenes in the office.
Whether that also helps give those scenes more time for them to be worked on.
And that's one of the reasons why.
Because everyone hits their marks.
All the camera works much better.
You don't get those things where even in, you know, the 70s and 80s, you get the camera doesn't quite, isn't quite, everyone, they don't quite hit their mark and the camera's sort of catching up and so focussing.
And I wonder if that helps add to the level of overall quality.
I think I agree with you on that.
And also, I think the choice not to have a lot of special effects to, whether it was a choice where they just couldn't afford it, the choice to have certain things happen off camera, to use lighting effects to kill tinus, to not show the, they're probably barely holding together. zombie getting off the table. he's top comes up and you can see that he's actually a man in a suit.
To do that, actually, that's some great direction.
It actually like it makes the story stronger by not trying to show it all.
Yeah.
I have to wonder if Bob Holmes being the writer that he is, watched a few previous episodes and went, okay, I'm going to give you something that doesn't need explosions.
It doesn't need video effects so much.
That gorgeous model shot that moves around the liberator is one of the unused shots from Spacefall because you can see the London is attached by the umbilical.
Oh my goodness, really?
And it is used a couple of times, but it's an absolutely gorgeous shot.
You can only just see it because it's sort of white, the liberators white, and I see that and I think, 0 my god, what might have been for those early episodes where the individual directors were like, well, no, I didn't direct that.
I'm not using it.
Someone should drop it back in.
Yeah.
So I think also that the fulminating blisters that we see, like the actual effect of the virus, which is credible.
You know, it's attacking the nervous system.
It's really, really gross and terrifying, isn't it?
Yeah, it's really great makeup.
Yeah, it's so much worse than what we normally see.
I think that, you know, when Holmes 1st takes over Doctor Who, we get Arc in Space is his 1st story, where the monsters want to eat you alive.
You know, it's terrifying.
You know, they're not just rubber people who point guns at you.
They are literally going to lay eggs in you and eat you from the inside out.
Yeah.
Like it's super terrifying.
And this I think is just as terrifying.
And it's funny.
There's another thing about this where paper is a thing.
I don't think paper is in Blake 7 before this.
They're always handing one another sort of boxes and shit, you know, like, and so there's paper all the way through.
And just about the 1st thing that Blake does with Belfry is give him a printer from Aurak to read.
And that moment at the end is so unforgettable where he just says, oh my god, I've forgotten how to read.
It's so frightening.
And I think what makes that work is that the deaths we've seen from this all add a bit more to our understanding.
So I think the 1st death we see from it is backs.
Like, we call back to the medical office and backs his sitting there dead with the bus tools on his face.
Then gamble, isn't it?
Yes.
Yeah.
Then Gamble, who we see the seizure and we see him fall down and we see the pustules and whatnot.
Then when Bellfriar dies.
That's when we see more of the psychological effect of it.
Like Gamble does... forget what he's meant to be doing.
Yeah.
But what he's meant to be doing is informing the guards about something.
It's important, but it's not as important as reading out the cure.
Yeah.
And I think if we hadn't seen those earlier desks or if they'd all just been the same.
The line, oh, God, I've forgotten how to read, has the danger of being melodramatic and silly.
Yes, but it's not because there's sort of a fatal inevitability that that is what is going to happen.
It's attacked his brain.
Yeah, but he cannot read anymore.
That is horrifying.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
It's just this buildup.
And I think part of that, as you were saying, Simon, is the scarcity of music and sound.
Like during the autopsy scene, There's no strings, there's no low drone as a buildup.
You know, I think even in the late 70s, we've had George Romero zombie films, the audience at home are expecting the body to come to life.
They're expecting like strings and attack and what have you.
And instead, we don't see the body get off the table.
No.
Gamble sees it and shouts out to Wiler.
We cut to Weiler and the hands come into shot.
No, doesn't he see the electro encephalograph thing?
That's what he's reacting.
Sorry, you're quite right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
He sees the electrons.
But yeah, we don't see the body get up and suddenly it's right there.
It's so good And because it's an actor.
It's very clearly an actor rather than a dummy.
So I think we are expecting that it will get up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, there is this inevitable sense of dread throughout that is so effective.
And it's another example of it being more terrifying because of what you don't see.
As you said, you don't see the body get up.
When Tinus gets electrocuted.
You don't really see tinus get electrocuted.
You see Villa's reaction to Titus getting, like, cheated.
And his hilarious scream.
And like flashing light.
Flashing lights and so on like that.
But if you don't see, because it would have been worse if you'd have seen the actor going, ah, you know.
He does slump to the ground, which I'm slightly disappointed by because I even did say that he would be so crisped up that...
Oh, yeah.
What's left wouldn't fit in a sandwich. kind of hoping to see that.
Never mind.
See, this is the scene where I think the other plot earns the title as well.
Oh, yes.
Because Avon has not been this ruthless before.
Yeah.
And basically, I think the other killer of this is Avon.
You know, it's kill or be killed in this situation.
Yeah, but Villa is unable to help.
So it's all down to Avon and Avon's like, well, I'm just going to have to chuck him in the incinerator, basically.
And we'll still get away with the crystal.
And then when they are back up on the ship, Avon's like, there's a plague, Serverland's on her way, one +one equals 2 Blake.
Yeah.
Yeah. that kind of that kind of attitude.
It's totally understandable.
Paul Darrow is brilliant.
There is sort of a gleam in there that, like, you know, this is 1st blood.
Yes, he's, you know, he's shot people with a laser gun before, but that's very different from throwing them into a machine where they get electrocuted.
There is a funny scene between Villa and Avon where they're talking about Avon's character.
You know, like a thing where Holmes is taking the time to tell us a bit more about Avon.
And it is funny that Holmes suggests that Avon's going to take over at some point, like as early as this.
I actually think that this is an example of an episode which most successfully fulfils what I think was Black 7's original read, which was to produce an adult science fiction series.
A lot of the rest of it is great.
I love, you know, I'm not saying I don't like it, but I love it all, but when it's straying into the camp and the sort of silly, that's the sort of black 7 that's famous or perhaps infamous, you know, that's the stuff that we love and we laugh with, if not that.
But it's adult in the sense that it's a thoughtful and well-drawn out story that doesn't rely on, you know, questionable villains or poorly executed action sequences.
Now, I wonder whether sort of slightly younger viewers actually found or find this episode, you know, a little bit dull on the dull side.
I mean, you know, there's a lot of talking.
Well, there's a lot of people.
He does have a zombie in a plague, but there's a lot of people sort of sitting around desks talking to each other and using things.
So maybe not dull with a capital T, but less interesting than perhaps some of the other episodes.
But, you know, and I think it is, it is certainly dry, and in the hands of a less good director, less good actors, it would be somewhere between dull and embarrassing.
I think.
But yeah, I just, I just think that the, um, that this is where the series, I think, could have gone further with because it is an actual genuine, genuine alternative to Doctor Who, which I think was the whole point of the program. was supposed to be an adult show.
And an adult show doesn't mean, you know, sex, you know, yeah, it doesn't mean...
Yeah, exactly.
It means the plots are heightened.
The plots and the ideas behind them are more higher concept, intellectual.
The kind of place where StarCops ends up going, I think, perhaps less successfully, but that's where sort of you end up with StarCops.
Because like it does have, you know, the pleasures of the, you know, the gross makeup, the zombie attack, the horrible pustules and all of that sort of thing.
But it also backs it up with like a very terrifying, completely incomprehensible threat that is just talked about or theorised about and that we never see.
And I think that's great.
It is a shame that Blake 7 is a show that will create a whole galaxy and then have forgotten about it in the following week.
Like, you know, it will obviously never be followed up, but I love that idea, like the idea that there's something malevolent that doesn't want to kill us, but wants to put a stop to what we're doing.
And it's amazing, I think.
And you know, they're playing the long game. kept this thing for 700 years.
But I think it's more interesting to us as adults, whereas I think younger audiences aren't as terrified by that.
I suppose to say we are, I think we think about it more and we allow ourselves to think about that sort of thing more, whereas I think if you're 14, maybe you don't, it doesn't sit with you as...
I seem to remember being slightly creeped out when I 1st saw it, I think.
And you saw it 1st saw it back at the time.
Yeah, yeah.
And despite being completely unseen and only theorised about these aliens are much more successful than the ones that appear at the end of the season.
Except that I do like the sort of goopy aliens. you know, like the how goopy they are.
I think that's kind of awesome.
And I do think they're frightening as well.
In, you know, they're a bit crap, I think, is that's probably...
The Vardens of Blakes.
But I think there is something frightening about them as well.
Because again, Blake 7 doesn't do aliens, really.
Apart from decimas, I guess, and stuff like that.
But yeah.
There's also the ending ethical dilemma for the crew as well, which is...
Does that does that happen again?
I'm reminded of... familiar, isn't it?
Well, yeah, it is it is familiar in the way that the, you know, getting the TP crystallas.
Is it TP?
TP.
Toilet paper.
Yeah.
I've tried to make a joke about that earlier.
Yeah, it is familiar in the way that the getting the TP crystal plot is also familiar.
This is a more interesting moral dilemma because you could argue, well, you could let server landland and you could you could get, you know, they could all get infected and hopefully they'll all die before the spaceship.
Yeah, exactly.
Or just as they're getting off planet.
But the risk is too great.
He said, you know, the risk to, you know, the entire entirety of humanity.
I think the last line of the entire episode is there has to be a warning, Jenna, that has to.
That was probably the worst line of the episode.
They should have ended on a laugh.
They should have all laugh.
Scooby-Doo ending.
Hey, Blake, is it possible you brought this thing back with you?
I was standing in the corridor with a guy whereborn, for God's sake.
I mean, for goodness sake, someone passed COVID in Westfield, Mondi Junction, unless contact come out.
I mean, Villa certainly should be dead.
I think what sells that moral dilemma, particularly, is the intensity of Gareth Thomas's performance.
Yeah. his reaction to Avon, because, of course, he's seen it.
Even though Avon was on the base.
I don't think Avon ever sees anyone suffering from it.
And Blake has made the point before where Avon has talked about attacking certain targets.
Blake's like, well, no, there's civilians there.
We're trying to free people. and destroy the authority, not destroy indiscriminately.
So, I mean, that works for me.
I think there has to be a warning would work if Jenna had some sort of reply.
She'd had her 4 lines for the episode.
You just had some mansplain the pot.
Well, talking about mansplaining.
The one thing we haven't talked about is the total and arta, lack of any women in this base.
Yeah, that's homes, isn't it?
Well, it's got to be the director as well, I guess.
But any of them, any of them could have been cast as a female.
Well, to be fair, there were maybe there were women in those Michelin man.
But that's the thing.
I don't think you ever get any female extras.
No, it's all men.
Yeah, it's like ordinary choices that are made.
I mean, you know, it's, you know, it's just interesting that, you know, it just wouldn't happen now.
I mean, it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of it, but it's just that little bit of, oh, that's just such a shame. any of them could have been a woman.
Season 12 all over again.
Yeah, yeah. at times again.
Yeah.
Now, I have heard recently that, you know, Philip Hinchcliffe and Bob Holmes felt that they faced a catch 22 because it's like Doctor Who and by Extension Blake 7.
You're gonna have a reasonably high body count.
You don't want to kill the women.
So you just don't include them.
It's like, I think, you know, a couple of weeks ago we had Jane Sherwin and Yolanda Palfrey. in pressure point.
Now, one of them ends up dead off camera, but it's highly effective and it does make the world feel more real.
You know what I mean?
Because when I saw Jane Sherwin's character in that.
I'm like, yeah, a woman as a resistance leader.
Yeah, that's right.
Kasabi, so we have no idea whether she's a man or a woman.
Yeah, she's...
And, you know, I know we had Avalon last season, but Avalon was kind of more of a...
Kasabi felt like more of a real character is what I'm saying.
It could be the performance. it could be the way it's written.
But yeah, I think maybe, you know, gamble, as a woman, yeah.
I mean, you wouldn't want to have lost that actor.
No, you wouldn't have wanted to realise that actor specifically, but just conceptually.
Yeah, yeah, literally any of them. literally any of them.
But actually, I didn't realise that was the reason.
I mean, maybe, you know, it's obviously going back to the era where, you know, women weren't serving in the armed forces in the way they are now.
So that was just sort of like what they may have thought.
But now that you go through that, you go, yeah, the female characters that are in the Hinchcliffe area, the homes, Hinchcliffe area, don't die.
You know, Vara, Amelia Ducar, Betan.
They all survive.
Yeah.
Whereas it's all the all the blokes get mown down.
But everyone has to die, like all of the guest cars die in this one.
Well, I just, there's no excuse for it.
Even in the 70s, there's no excuse.
No, it's poor.
And I think maybe that's a little bit of kind of retrospective self-justification there.
Yes, quite possibly.
Also, look at the other dated kind of attitudes in this, in this episode, deeply problematic.
Yeah, yeah, when they're talking about the smallpox blankets, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Look, I actually think, though, that we're in a situation where the germ warfare thing is bad.
I think that reflects poorly.
It's not like this is a thing that was good to do, but they're hostile tribes.
I wonder why they got so hostile.
Why would that have happened?
It's kind of the dialogue does position the 1st nations Americans as being aggressors as opposed to an indigenous population who has been having genocide committed against them.
Yeah.
And, you know, Holmes then juxtaposes that with the human exploration of space and another race going, well, no, no, no, we don't like this.
Go away.
Fair enough.
Yes, the analogy would have been more accurate had it been in the Native Americans would have given the infected blankets to the people encroaching on their land.
Yeah, and that would have been more fun.
Different attitudes, different areas.
But it's interesting that the retrospective justification, you're saying.
I think the real excuse is we just didn't think about it.
Yeah, I think that's it.
And that's just the way it was.
And I think that the science fiction things were shows for boys.
They're boys' own adventures.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In a way that is how it was seen without...
Sorry, you go on.
No, no, no.
I mean, in a way that shows like this aren't now and have strong female characters, the way that, you know, Doctor Who does, where everyone in unit is a woman, you know, in Capaldi's 2nd last year, you know, it's it's just a thing.
I think these were positioned as shows for for man.
A few years ago, sort of at the height of gamer gate.
There was a lot of research done into how many women playing video games.
And it basically came back as 50-50, really?
Yeah.
It led to sort of other areas, such as science fiction and sports being examined.
It's like how, actually, how into these things women.
And a lot of the results came back like 50-50, yeah.
51, 49.
And so I think that's, you know, television, I think, moved faster than video games or even sport, really.
I mean, the women's leagues have been around for ages, but it's only, and I can only really think of Australia because I don't take that much of an interest in sport generally, but it's only recently that things like women's basketball, women's football, in Australia have started to get as much prominence as the men's ones.
Yeah.
It's the way that we watch these shows as well.
Like, we don't see gay characters, you know, until sort of new who.
And sometimes we read ourselves into the shows.
But I think, you know, science fiction TV has massive female fandom.
And what must it be like for them to watch this stuff and just not see themselves represented at all.
You know, we're a small minority.
They're 50% of the population and they're absent from this episode largely.
Well, I think we agree that this is a pretty great episode then, and we are, what, 2 this season?
I thought we thought horizon was pretty cool.
Horizon is pretty good too.
I think this is better than Horizon, but I think they're both, for me, they're both very strong stories for all the reasons that I've stated.
Strong guest cast, taking it seriously, an interesting plot which elevates things higher than, you know, bang, bang, shoot them up, sort of...
I think it's more successful than Gambit, which we'll talk about in a few weeks time, which is also by homes.
And I think it's because Gambit is slow and a bit silly, I think.
I mean, it has charms all its own.
It's home's doing a different type of Blake 7.
And doing it well, I think.
But I think that this, I think I agree with you, Simon, that's just the level of seriousness here, that really works surprisingly well.
What I love about this episode is that I think we touched on this earlier, the fact that there are 2 A plots, those plots are actually really well intertwined.
You think it's going to be, oh, what are they doing up on the ship and then it turns out that the whole thing comes together and the 2nd day plot completely changes the 1st day plot.
Yeah.
And that it's some really, it's a really strong story.
I really love this story.
I've been impressed with every episode, this series in some way or another.
I felt that some episodes have been slightly unbalanced, but I haven't hated any of the ideas in them.
This one's not quite a 10 out of 10 for me.
I think what it what it's really missing, you know, aside for some better female representation, and especially for Jenna and Callie.
But also there's just no not even any lip service paid to the idea that Blake Villa and Avon have been wandering around in a plague pit.
Yeah, yeah, that'll be fun.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's the liberator, the liberator has this advanced stuff, just some stuff of, oh, you know, I've given you a broad spectrum, blah, blah, blah, you're fine.
Thanks, Kelly.
You get an extra line this week.
There you go.
Enjoy the extra 2 quid.
That's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next time for some family friendly dalliance with our attractive cousin in hostage.
Oh, God.
I haven't seen that one.
Yeah.
So that'll be fun.
Until then, good night.
Ta-ta.
Bye.
Bye for now.
Oh, and if anyone listening has the number for June Hudson's dealer, can you just?
I think it's Matt Irvine.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.