Maximum power.
Hello and welcome back to Maximum Power.
I'm Colin.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Mark.
I'm Pete.
And I'm Cy.
So, this week we are going to talk about episode three, Cygnus Alpha, but 1st of all, I want to chat to Mark, because Mark has a lifelong Doctor Who fan, someone that has seen a lot of Terry Nation before in the past.
We have put you in handcuffs and pulled you across the floor of some religious monastery on a distant planet and forced you to watch Blake 7 for the 1st time.
How are you finding it?
Yeah, indeed.
First time ever in my life, I watched Blake 7 last night.
I watched the 1st 3 episodes.
Uh Yeah, I really liked it.
Thank you for joining us.
No, I do like it.
It surprised me in a few ways.
It wasn't what I thought, but what I thought of it, I'd only picked up from Twitter and probably all copies of TV Zone that I was reading in the 90s.
I think I sort of thought it was a bit more like an American sci-fi show, you know, where and it's a massive generalisation, but generally American science fiction is people doing their jobs.
It's all ships and crews and rules and missions and stuff and British science fiction's a bit more sort of freewheeling.
I kind of thought it was like that, but obviously it isn't.
And I like the ongoing story nature.
It isn't just like, like stature next generation where it's, you know, it's all wrapped up neatly and there's no consequences from one week to another.
And how adult it is as well, to be honest.
I sort of thought because probably the Doctor Who fans know that like it, they're slightly older than me, must have been watching it when they were kids, but it's it's not the sort of family viewing that Doctor Who is in a way, like the, you know, the idea of using kind of inception technology to put, make children believe they've been abused is, is, probably incredibly horrific, and then the threats to Jenna from the, the 2nd in command of the spaceship and that type of thing.
Yeah, it's I thought it was probably of a piece with Dr. in that way.
Well look, don't worry.
It will get a bit more sort of meandering very soon.
It is really interesting hearing someone's fresh approach on the difference between Blake 7 on doing air quotes.
Blake 7, the concept that everyone's heard of Blake 7, but what you actually get, and particularly what you actually get with these 1st few episodes, is not at all what Blake 7 has ended up being remembered as, is it?
Yeah, no, it's it really isn't.
It starts in a much darker place than people necessarily assume about the series, but there is not to preempt it too much.
There is a lot of darkness throughout, mixed in with a lot of what people think it was.
And I think possibly the lighter qualities have been emphasised in people's memories, possibly because when the dark stuff happens, like, you know, a big plot point, the 1st 2 episodes, being these implanted memories of abused children.
Um, people just kind of go, oh, no, no, I don't I don't choose to remember that.
I choose to remember Jenna wandering around in a wonderful petal flower, um, puffy collar shirt.
I choose to remember that rather than the other thing.
Yeah, she does find the TARDIS wardrobe very, uh, treasure room as well.
Whatever aliens were flying that ship around, we can guarantee they were fabulous when it came to a tire.
That's clearly the...
And humanoid.
Yes.
Yes, I think it takes them a year to find the really amazing costumes.
They're probably hidden somewhere at the back of the room and that they haven't quite got to yet.
So they're, all the new costumes that they keep, keep finding are all a bit drab this year, but Jenna looks fabulous in pink.
It's got to be said.
Yeah.
Yeah, it takes until about halfway through series B. Blake's been eyeing off that big sort of gull wing sleeve blouse and he's like, can I, can I pull this off?
Can I pull this off and through it, still be threatening?
Can I?
And then he finally goes, oh, well, I can wear it.
That's some.
Okay, well, yeah, the night the time is running out on the 1970s.
I'd better get this over and done with quickly.
If I'm ever gonna do it, 1979 is my last chance.
So this is almost a part three, 1st three.
It's halfway, I'd say, between the sort of standalone introductionary episodes, and we were talking last week about how this is not the universe that Terry Nation necessarily wants to keep telling us about.
He wants to sort of have the crew run off and do different daring kind of bank robbery type things every week.
It's starting to form, I think, into what Blake 7 will become, which is sort of beamed down to planet of the week.
It's sort of tying up, you know, Jack Rolf and his mermaidship boatyard, dropping off prisoners, they're gone, and getting the, getting the 1st semblance of the, of the crew together.
What do we think about the crew of the unknown alien spacecraft figuring out how it works?
Oh, God, I love those scenes.
I love them sort of wandering around the flight deck and just admiring everything and finding the handguns, which are so unlike any other gun ever.
So they go through this whole scene of don't touch this gun.
Oh, touch this gun and then can you touch this gun?
And then you touch this gun, you know, you can't have more than one.
And then Blake just hands Jenna 2 guns.
Oh, yes, yes, I noticed that as well.
That's my very 1st note.
It'll only give us one, one, one, one.
Yeah, I could have all the guns.
That's felt like a very terry nation logic problem thing. that I'm a bit familiar with from Doctor Who over the years as well.
It was, it was, it's like, yeah, here we are, through characters are just going to talk this problem through, and there we are.
We solved it.
And you're like, and what did they actually do?
It doesn't matter.
They've sold it because they're clever.
Yeah, and we'll never mention it again because it will slow down each episode when we've got to get down to the planet and everyone's got to collect their guns and then you're only allowed one and then, yeah, we can't do that every week, but it feels a few minutes this week, doesn't it?
Just makes the liberator. there's a real sort of feeling that they're trying to make it the most alien ship you can imagine and things are odd on there and it's not your usual kind of shit which I really like.
Yeah, and it's a really nice, still, that they're still working with these characters quite clearly, and I don't know if Chris Boucher gets the credit for that.
I'm learning my way in Blake 7 behind the scenes law here.
But, um, the, the, you've got Avon is sort of, is the more, the really intelligent one who comes out, we can do this and that, or as Blake is taking the overview, and Jenna is the, is the sort of the practical one who can actually sort things out and actually flies the thing.
At that point, I was thinking, these 3 would make a great series.
I'll just watch these three.
I felt exactly the same way in the scene where they're exploring the teleport and sort of they're bouncing off each other and each of them is contributing ideas to what the function could be, how it could work, et cetera.
There's also earlier on on the bridge where they're like, okay, Jenna, just press any button and, you know, then they get wind machined in the face.
We might all die.
And they never go as fast as that again.
No, well, would you?
Maybe after a particularly heavy night and you want to get rid of the eye bag, certainly, but aside from that.
Well, I didn't understand was at the end of the episode, they say maximum speed, and I'd expected them to then have that same thing and black out and have the...
That's a good point.
I think it's possibly because like, you know, back when Star Trek was commissioned for a series.
Gene Roddenbury did sit down and write down what warp speed meant and how fast it was.
I don't think Terry Nation has done that.
I love how I love their specific, how specific they are about the technicalities of speed at the start, Jen.
It sounds like generally just guessing, which is standard.
And then at the end they go, maximum.
Okay, yeah, those are the two.
But maybe Zen is taking these.
Maybe Zen has taken the physiognomy of these humans on board when Jenna puts her hand in the thingy and has a little orgasmatron moment of bombing with them.
Frankly, if flying a spaceship is always feels like that.
I'll have what she's having and I will pilot that spaceship. because she's really taken to a happy place by Zen when they bond.
And maybe that's when Zen learns, actually, you need to do a gravity setting when you're taking humans at squillion miles an hour to stop their faces going all blobby in a time-consuming effect sequence.
Well, you thought this through.
Thanks.
I can hear Ken and Matt.
Yeah, and it gives selling the vet a chance to do all the acting there.
Yeah, I hope she got it out of the system. because if I remember rightly, she doesn't get all that much more.
But no, but that's cynicism.
In the back of my mind from when I last watched 10 years ago, I have a horrible feeling she gets parked when Villa turns up and I love Villa, but Villa starts getting, Jenna gets loads of good jokes in this episode.
All of them, just one liners, just just banter.
She's very teat. teasing Avon several times and it's really funny when they're at the when they're working the teleporter and trying to beam Blake back up again.
And she's like, no, not that button, that button, have a nice little moment.
Um, which I once Villa arrives and becomes the funny one.
I wonder if the other characters start getting less chance to be funny, but we'll see.
Yeah, especially when they're working out the teleport as well.
It's good news that Avon has brought with him a bunch of coloured whole punch reinforcement rings just to label things.
And has this weird way of sort of, you know, pressing his thumb backwards on a button for some bizarre reason.
It's trying to make this scene as sort of intense as possible.
Yeah.
How shall I approach the button?
I can just see him thinking.
I've been listening to his autobiography on Big Finish and I can just imagine him doing that.
I'm not going to press the button in a casual manner.
I think for me that the mystery of the ship is the thing that is most interesting to me at the moment.
So where did it come from?
There's, You see, like, whether it's aliens or it's from the future or something like that, the way that Avon could immediately read that the life pods have been ejected, but they couldn't seem to suss out on these other controls.
So I think, um, as a new viewer, find out, find out a bit more about the ship and who the original owner, so it's probably the most compelling part of it.
But I like the character stuff as well, like you say, is really great, the way nobody trusts each other yet because they've all just kind of been prisoners and just thrown together, all that sort of side of stuff's really good as well.
There's a moment where Avon pulls the gun.
Yeah, that's a really good moment.
And there's the brilliant moment at the end, sort of 3 quarters of the way through the episode where Avon and Jenna are talking about we could just go.
We've got money.
We can have it.
We can do this.
This will bring us power and anonymity, and we can disappear.
We don't need Blake.
Just leave him to it.
And there's a really interesting byplay between the 2 characters, particularly Jenner's, we'll give him the time that he said, and if he hasn't come back by then, then we will go, and it's really interesting to see. no sort of loyalties formed almost between them all yet.
Yeah, and we've got to mention Star Trek, haven't we?
Because at this point, everyone in Britain has seen every episode of Star Trek multiple times.
It's just been being shown on a loop pretty much since since the early since it was 1st shown when they disgustingly cut Doctor Who's episodes down from 40 something a week.
But, um, but, but, this must be such a, a contrast with that, you know, so space.
Oh, yeah, space, that's that place. like you were saying before, space is that place where people go and they're all part of a team and they do their job together, like the Federation, but of course, having the Federation is the baddies. is a really nice twist or affederation.
So it's not the same Federation.
Twisted the logo as well, haven't they, slightly the ones?
Well, maybe that was profound rather than being just, oh, let's nick the Star Trek logo.
It was, no, we're doing a twist.
See what we've done there.
So the London lands on Signus Alpha in some really good model shots, which will serate over time, but really, really good sequence there, and we drop, and they're dropping off the prisoners, and then we're introduced to what is pretty much a religious cult of the week, 25 minutes of, you know, Brian Brassard comes in after 25 minutes, and Pamela Salem, who is glorious as always.
She doesn't have that much to do in this.
No, it's, and then she, and she's amazing.
She's so fantastic, and she just exudes everything that Kate O'Mara or Joan Collins has got, Pamela Silen has got it and the dose of Louise Jameson as well.
She's one of those people that baffles me that she isn't an absolute megastar, and I don't know if she just had had that extra proper front starring role in something like Tenko.
Do you think she would have been?
Because, yeah, in this, she's a small, it's a small role, but even then it's just, it's brilliant. the camera just loves her.
Yeah, she's beautiful as well, isn't she?
She looks gorgeous in those robes with her hair all flowing.
And the 1st shot of her, when they're doing the night filming in the quarry, and she's just there sort of standing all ethereal.
And if it, wow, who's this?
She looks magnificent.
What's this about?
Yeah, and the night and the night filming.
There lots of night filming, isn't there?
And you can tell it's real, I think, unless I'm reasonably tricked, because I know they sometimes just bung a filter on, but you can usually tell when they've done that.
But this is proper.
And this is our 1st visit to a quarry, isn't it?
We should be celebrating that.
But, hey, quarries look great.
And it turns out, we now discover from the movie of 2020.
Yes, space does look like quarries.
We have now confirmed that.
We've spent 100000000s of dollars to go to various rocks and discover that they do look like quarries in the south of England.
This is pitchiest.
It was on Twitter, wasn't it?
And it was an asteroid and it looked exactly like a quarry and it was even like a flat smooth bit that the Daleks could have moved around on. how incredibly perfect these Doctor Who locations have been over there yet.
Well, the night filming in the quarry does look fantastic.
And in fact, all the filming, the exterior filming we've had so far has been at night.
And I do have to wonder if that was an effort to make a statement about this series because, you know, Doctor Who rarely gets to film at night.
And so night filming immediately adds this, I think, air of prestige, as well as literally coding the show as being dark.
And for each of these 1st 3 episodes, you have a very distinct setting.
So in the 1st episode, you are in the Futuristic City Dome.
In the 2nd episode, you are in a claustrophobic spaceship.
And for the 3rd episode, you are in the hero spaceship and this desolate planet with its Gothic castle.
And it's sort of what Russell T. Davies will eventually do when he brings back Doctor Who.
We have Terry Nation saying, okay, you're going to have several kinds of stories.
You're going to have stories on spaceships.
You're going to have stories in these idyllic space cities that are actually corrupt, and you are going to have weird planets where society, despite the fact that we are in a science fiction thing, the society has degraded.
And something I found very interesting about this is, you know, publicity around the show say that we are in the 3rd century of the 2nd calendar.
But Brian Blessed's character, Vargas, says that he and his family, his forebears, have been ruling over this colony for 500 years.
This colony likely predates the federation.
I always took it to mean that the reason we're in the 2nd calendar is that the party came to power and told you not to believe the evidence of your own eyes and changed the calendar.
The other interesting thing is I've been thinking, you know, what does the word federation mean?
And it means a collection of states, in this case, a collection of worlds with a central government, but who manage their own internal affairs.
And Vargas totally admits that, yeah, this is a raw.
I know it's a raw, but I get special treatment from the federation, but now I can go out into space and make everyone think what I want to think, and it opens up that, when not everywhere we visit is not just going to be a federation outpost.
You going to be visiting places that have their own way of doing things and because they need to make a distinction.
These own way of doing things are gonna be a bit nuts.
It's very interesting sort of to have religion in Blake 7, particularly because I think next year in pressure point, there's quite a lot about religion being banned and churches being destroyed and things like that.
So to have a religion on a primitive planet.
I think is, again, I think Terry Nation will come back to this later in the season and several times afterwards.
It's almost like religion is seen as a way of keeping together a primitive population.
But when you've got the sophisticated dome dwellers.
They don't need it.
The Federation will keep them together.
I think it's pretty successful as a, you know, it is a very Star Trek-y type episode where they sort of beam down.
They find some, it's not, I say, successful as who watches the watchers in next generation or or some of the other ones, but it's, for Blake 7, it's, it's, it's about as Star Trek as they get, I think, with sort of, you know, anti-religion type stuff, the, the, they're not really ill, but uh, they've got to keep taking this pill.
Which, um, literally the opiate of the masses.
Yeah.
Yeah exactly.
Alka salsa tablets, yeah.
There's a potential for confusion at the start when Pamela Salem says, I am the servant of your God.
Neil.
I didn't think that was gone.
We finally know God's name, but then Gan kneels and gets hypno kiss and we understand what that means.
Or was it...
Don't tell Sue Perryman.
Did she magically hypnotise him with a kiss or did she just kiss him and he fell under her spell literally?
I wasn't quite sure whether that was a metaphorical or real.
I took when they had a connection because when they brought Gan in to be sacrificed, she had a reaction and then she sort of cries out to warn him as well, doesn't she?
So I took it that they'd had a little...
Yeah, of course, yeah.
That was that was my reading a bit.
But the thing about the using the drug as well.
That's on earth that they're using this, they said they're using the food and the drink to control people and then on the prison ship as well, is it the pumpkin suppressants into the air?
So it's like a through line of control.
And it was a surprise.
I remember the 1st time I saw this episode when it cuts back to the London again.
I thought, oh, I assumed, right, they've got the spaceship.
They going to be often have their new adventures.
And it's a surprise in episode 3 to actually turn out to be a continuation of episode 2 rather than a new story. that sets up, yeah, this is this isn't going to be just like Doctor and Star Trek.
This is going to be more like survivors, isn't it?
which was just a few years before, wasn't it, of um, an ongoing thing.
It's odd.
They kind of, um, they kind of sacrifice a bit of episode time for 2 recaps, which, uh, again, you know, Captain, I'm going to call him Jack Rolf from Howards Way, because I can't remember.
Well, he has his report, which he seems to sign off by just sticking his hand on a bunch of transistors weirdly, and then, uh, but that's played.
And then there's a black and white recap.
So it's like previously on Blake 7, which never really happens.
It's, it's, you know, well, just, I don't think it happens again, but, um...
I wonder if that's the director Villorimer thinking, because this Villorimer goes on to is a stalp.
Yeah, and he's a stalwart, isn't he?
And I looked on his IMDb is amazing.
He goes back, he's been directing since the 50s.
He's done it.
In fact, basically he's done everything except Doctor Who, but particularly anything that's got a policeman in it, which I guess is where we end up having Brian Blessed, because anything that had a policeman in it, had Brian Blessed as that policeman before he became Prince Boltan.
And this is Brian Blessed's show reel for Prince Voltan, isn't it?
Because he was doing, I, Claudius, a few weeks earlier, being all Shakespearean.
And in this, he's going a little bit beyond that.
Well, he's doing his, he's doing his classic kind of high voice and then low voice shouting in the same sentence.
I do I do like the high voice scenes though.
It's just, how did you come here?
He's got a real sense of menace and danger to him all the way brew.
He's he's a big, powerful figure, and you can see why he's the figurehead on this planet.
He's, yeah, he's crafted that that figurehead role really well.
I do I do have a note here.
Are Brian Blessed shoes deliberate?
because we get it.
We get a close couple of shots.
We get a couple of close-ups, but he's also moving the robe as if he's trying to cover them, and I'm like, okay, either he's wearing these shoes and the robe isn't quite long enough to cover them, or this is meant to indicate that, yeah, he is he is corrupt, and he is aware that the robes are nonsense and what have you.
And I don't really know which one of these.
I'd like to think it's the latter that knowing how chaotic sort of Doctor Who and Blake 7 production is, it could easily be the former.
That's a really good I have fallen archers.
They are the sacred Adidas trainers that have been handed down from generation to generation and are very comfortable on set.
But you can just, you can just imagine cardio conversation.
Oh, my robes will cover my trainers.
I'll wear these.
I love you uncomfortable.
It's interesting you should say that because he has one line in it that I think you can take 2 ways and that's human souls are the only currency.
Our god is bankrupt without them.
And and is he saying, well, I've got these human souls and um, that this is the currency for in sort of enslaving these people, or is he saying, um, no, these souls are real and, you know, God needs them?
Well, the souls of each trainers.
Now you've mentioned the trainers.
I think I know what tied them on.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Yeah, does he really think he's a god?
I don't, I think he thinks, I think he thinks he knows how much power he has, but he doesn't, he knows he can't fly, for example, you know, you know what I mean?
So, so, so, so I think, I think it's the, it's that was supposed to be shocked by the commodification of the soul in this planet in the same way that, you know, it's just showing us.
Basically, is this series just going to, every week show us how there are a 1000000 different ways of running society and they're all terrible?
Because, I mean, we're only 3 episodes in, but that seems to be the general bedding of it.
So we also get to meet another new character this week, and that is Zen.
What do people think about Zen?
Oh, I love Zen.
I love his calm voice.
Peter Tottenham does such a brilliant job of making him sound human.
He's just so calm and lovely and he's confirmed and he's just booming away in the in the corner of the studio.
Although it's probably quite dated.
I really love the great big hexagonal sort of frontage of him and his lights flickering all the time and the big central one that just matches his voice.
I just think that's a beautiful piece of design and I love, I love it. so characterful, the way that he says something like, I perceive that you require a visual interface and then this beautiful thing appears.
It's like, oh, I get I know what impresses the likes of you.
It's basically what he's saying.
Wisdom must be gathered.
It cannot be given, he says.
So, I, I, and again, I think that, Terry Nation is doing quite a good job of giving him a character, certainly, certainly until Aurak turns up the all-knowing computer, but he's not, you always get a feeling, he's not necessarily on the side of the people he's with.
He's not giving them everything.
I'm always referring to him as a he because he is a proper character, I think.
What is so interesting is that around this time, of course, computers and robots were very much in the Zeitgeist to science fiction and moving forward from what they were in like the 50s and 60s, like very, very often they were just kind of either comic relief or villains and sort of with canine, with R2D2 and C3PO and Zen and Aurak, they start becoming characters in their own right.
And I think that, um, funnily enough, just in the last week or so, as we record, uh, something called escapade has been uploaded to YouTube.
And for listeners who don't know, this was an attempt by Brian Clemens to adapt the new Avengers for the American market.
Basically just with a new version of Gambit and Purdy.
And their missions run by a funny computer with whirring tape banks.
Who's spanking a high pitched English butler voice and didn't understand.
Are you the man or are you the girl is one of the lines in the thing?
And that was made in 1978.
So at the same time, you've got Terry Nation going, what would an alien computer be like?
It would have thought processes that weren't necessarily, as you say, Simon, necessarily on the side of the people it is serving.
And it's like, I will serve you and I will help you, but I will not allow you to gain knowledge you're not ready for.
And it's almost like Zen is testing them.
Yeah, I think the closest we've come to a character like this before is probably Tim in the tomorrow people for anyone who's seen that.
So he's a very plummy English actor voicing a computer who's very condescending towards the young children that he's got in his charge.
So, then slightly different, I think, but yeah, there's there's a precedent, yeah, Wonder Woman had a supercomputer in her last series as well, didn't she?
Iraq.
Which is the same.
Oh, cute.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
But yeah, yeah, legit IRAC.
Yeah, but.
Nobody tell Reagan.
But it's one of those generic, you must go and rescue the delegates type things, not actually being personable, like Zen and Noraka.
We've got more potential characters who could be part of the 7 down on the planet.
And I'm very interested to hear from Mark about this because as jaded Blake 7 fans who have seen these episodes, lots of times, we know who are going to make up the actual 7 of Blake 7.
How did you feel about who are they?
Arco and Salmon, who are the 2 potential people who might be joining the crew.
I was trying to work out who, uh, I was sort of counting them up who the who the other 7 would be.
So there's already Avon and Jenner on the ship.
So I was thinking, yeah, there isn't, there isn't probably quite 5 unless they're going to take like Pamela Salem or something like that because I thought Gan was maybe going to turn her was maybe going to turn her, but she seemed sympathetic towards him.
But yeah, Arco in particular, because Villa was kind of running around after him and and his name seemed to be used a lot in the way that you would with the main character to reinforce the, you know, with the audience, that character's name.
So, yeah, I totally thought that him in particular was going to be a main character.
And it's a great, it's a good name.
It's a good space Blake 7 space name as well, to be to be blown on someone who's not going to survive.
You think, okay, they're definitely trying to trick us with that.
Yeah, Arco.
But shockingly, having seen his other work in, um, in, in the Doctor Who mark of the Rani.
I discover he's not really a Geordie from the northeast of England and his accent and that had completely convinced me.
If you want to see a true linguistic variation of an actor's repertoire.
I do go and watch that, Doctor Who decide.
I'm quite impressed sort of thinking about the scenes on the planet.
It's very interesting to see how Gan takes charge of everything down there, which is quite unexpected, considering how the character ends up, sorry, spoilers mark.
But he is, he's completely in control of what's going on amongst all the prisoners and they seem to be defaulting to him as their de facto leader.
What do we think about that?
I found that really interesting because I think David Jackson plays it incredibly well. sort of as soon as they're let out of the holding area, Villa is, of course, being scared and Arco's arguing with him and Gan just goes, okay, we're going this way now.
And he doesn't, he doesn't sort of wait for anyone.
He's just like, um, and yeah, I'm gonna go do this thing.
He's no nonsense, and I think that gets watered down as simple.
By, by some perceptions, but yeah, he finds a dead body and he's sort of kneeling by it, paying his respects when everyone finds him.
I think where the disconnect kind of comes from is, you know, he's this huge man.
But they give him the shirt that make his arms look tiny.
Like his his arms kind of disappear and and also David Jackson as an actor is so well spoken. that you, you know, you may be expect this rough kind of voice to come out of Gan, but instead, you know, it's like, um, it's like, Blake, no, we can't leave this planet.
We'll die.
There's a drug.
It can take care of us.
And he's got a beautiful voice. that you just don't expect to come from him.
No, surrounded by all these.
I mean, it is space rider anyway.
And for then to take the character who is meant to be the, the, and Rada could be a Blake 7 thing. take to take the one who's supposed to, who we we find out more later, but we can clearly say he's the heavy.
He's the strong man and making him the poshest, most gentlemanly of the lot of them.
When he doesn't have all, and in this episode, he's a bit more at the forefront. we get to know him a little bit, we still don't know as much about his backstory as we do even do the others.
I think he makes less of an impact as time goes on.
For me, he just becomes like a pound sharp Hodor as time goes on.
It's just like, I don't know what to do with him.
He's just sort of there and is sort of, you know, vaguely beating people up and stuff and then, yeah, it just doesn't work for me after the 1st few episodes.
I think they, they, they run out of things to do with him.
Interestingly, having finished intergalactic last week, which everyone is talking about as being the, the, you know, the Blake 7-ish thing.
There is a character with spoiler alert, a chip in the back of their head, who needs that chip in there, otherwise they're, they're gonna go off and do bad things.
That's got to end up in court.
That thing.
And unless something has actually happened.
There's no way Terry Nations are staying together like that.
That just stick over.
Sure, if the Orville can get away with doing what it's doing.
Oh, preferred cuddles, the monkey.
So how do we feel the relationship between Blake and Avon is shaping up?
It seems to be forming a bit more.
There's a great bit where they're looking at the gums, going back to that scene.
And, you know, and yeah, Avon is theorising and saying, well, it could be this and maybe they're that.
Don't touch it.
You can see that I think termination is definitely deliberately setting them up to be conflict over who's the alpha dog and who's going to be calling the shots.
And I love the line where Blake says, are we sure it's a gun?
And Avon says, well, it's a bit elaborate for a toothpick, to which Blake replies, depends how elaborate their teeth were, which is just a really nice bit of character.
Those, you could put those lines in other characters, but putting it on them.
Yeah, it keeps the viewers on their toes as well.
Apart from the, we know the show is called Blake 7.
If it wasn't, if it was just called the Liberators or something.
We might be thinking, oh, wait, that's actually, that's a good name for a show.
But um, I wonder if I'd get sued.
But they, yeah, they're setting up a dynamic that can run for, for, a good seasonal and more.
Yeah, there's a very interesting conversation between Avon and Jenna, again, about Could you kill someone?
And I've been, there's sort of that seeding of, could it be Blake, you're thinking of killing?
Could it could you do this?
And what I'm, what I find very interesting is that it's implied that neither of them have killed anyone before.
Whereas in a few episodes of time, they'll be gunning people, guards down with, with, with abandon all the way through.
But it's, yeah, it's very interesting to see how sort of, again, there's a nice character dynamic between those 2 and you've been, yeah, the 3rd person in this conversation is missing here.
I really like the way that ended, where Jenna basically implies to Avon.
If you kill Blake, I'm going to kill you.
I read it as that.
Yeah, with a smile and a just so you know.
JSYK.
Yeah, and even though a few minutes ago, it was like, oh, I suppose if we uh, we don't see him in 6 minutes, we can fuck off.
Anyway, you know?
So can anyone explain to me where Brian Blessed teleports up to?
Is it the teleport room behind the cameras or something?
There seems to be another teleport bay next to the teleport bay that we never see again.
I think the implication is because you've got so many teleport bracelets.
And really, with the teleport chamber, because it's a set, it's a 3 it's a 3 site.
Well, not even a 3 side. a two-sided thing. a corner.
And so you could imagine that it is, in fact, a horseshoe.
And they mainly use the bit that's just opposite the console.
But it's yeah, it's implicit that you could beam up 20 people at a time because there's this big, this big tray full of bracelets.
So if you imagine that he's at the other end of the horseshoe.
If you imagine he's at the other end of the horseshoe for no adequate explored reason. just about works. sneaked into the back door.
Yeah.
And we never see so many teleport bracelets again this year.
I love the way they pronounce it.
They're all so posh.
I think it's Blake himself who starts from calling it the teleport.
And that becomes, they always say it as if it's 2 words.
I'm going to the teleport.
But when we don't say beam down, do we?
Well, beam me up.
That's prohibited Of course not, because that would get the other law is involved.
But it's when he gets the, the, I mean, it's the poshless level does increase massively.
But it's like when you get, he's going to the teleport braces, going, hello?
Hello, hello.
Another thing.
Going back to the bit of the could you kill someone bit?
Did you notice, and I don't know if I've got this right, but in the big fight at the end, is Villa, who, rather brutally, stabs someone in the back in order to save Blake's life.
And is that the 1st killing that any of them have done on screen, I think?
I can't remember.
There may have been another one earlier in the fight, you're not quite sure, because they're being bundled here there and everywhere, because that's just after the conversation up on the ship about with those 2 saying, you know, could you have you ever killed anyone?
And then, and then we cut a couple of scenes later. actually the class clown who ends up being the 1st one of them to brutally kill someone.
And there's an odd edit I noticed.
And I noticed this because I'm doing a little thing.
I've mentioned on the previous episode that we should have a poll for shriek of the week.
And that is now becoming a real thing.
I've done a little montage of the best treats from this episode.
I'll go back and do the previous ones too.
And he gives a really good shriek, this guy who gets stabbed.
But what's interesting is there's a few frames missing.
You see a close-up of this guy's face as he's like sort of trying to strangle Blake, and then you see that something's happening behind him, and then suddenly it cuts, and he's moved back, and Villa has stabbed him in the back. who cut the villa holding the knife, even though the actual stabbing wasn't in frame.
The moment that was a close-up of this man's face as he was being stabbed in the back out of camera is cut.
So it just jumps from him a moment before he's been stabbed in the back to a moment after.
And that could just be a glitch in the master tapes.
But I just wonder if there was that they thought, no, that's going too far.
We can't have his face on screen at the moment he gets stabbed in the back.
We'll just have to clip a few frames because it's a very specific few frames to miss.
They're finding their way here, aren't they?
They've not got the, the time slot's not that different to Doctor Who, but they know they can do stuff that Doctor Who can't do, even in this period.
But it's the stuff that, of course, Doctor Who's been told to rein in a couple of years earlier, isn't it?
So they're, yeah, they're like, no, we can, we can, can we do stabbings?
Yeah we can do a stabbing.
Do you think I thought it was interesting about, say the conversation about, could you kill somebody?
Is Jenna is the one that points out that room full of treasure?
to Avon?
And she must know, you know, she kind of has an idea, think about his nature. that that will tempt him to just say, well, look, let's leave Blake behind, you know, because she does it while Blake's on the planet and stuff.
And she, again, you're not quite sure about her, I think, what her motives are, because she's very sympathetic to Blake when in the 1st episode, just at the end before the ship takes off saying, oh, it's still time for you, be a lawyer basically to come through for you.
But yeah, I felt like that was quite a, quite a shady sort of move was, uh, was different aiming off to the, to the treasurer at that point.
Almost to put that temptation in his way.
Yeah, and sometimes in ensemble things where there's a lead character.
They forget to give all the other characters interactions with each other.
And they all, you end up with a small group of people who all have a one-to-one relationship with the central character, Chris Tribnall, and don't have necessarily the bonding moments with each other that they would benefit from.
It can get overlooked.
And so yeah, that's a good building ground, isn't it?
That it is as much about the 7 as it is about Blake.
And I think that's something that does continue, at least through this season. everyone has an interaction with Avon, particularly that sort of defines their character.
So Villa and Avon particularly form a double act, don't they?
And Avon is always very dismissive of Gan.
Avon and Cali have a very interesting relationship that's explored through the next, however many years they are together, and so on and so forth.
I don't know whether it's, It's deliberate, but it really feels like it's everyone's relationship with Avon that is their pivotal relationship, even if it's not explicitly stated, but that's how you get to know the characters through their interactions with Paul Darrow.
The other sort of pivotal character moment I see in this episode, aside from the, you know, would you kill anyone scene?
Um, it's when Blake is chucked into the cell with the rest of the prisoners and they all shy away from him and they're all saying, you know, if you don't give Brian Bless of what he wants, he's going to kill us.
And Blake just rounds on them.
And, you know, he, he wasn't that aggressive towards Brian Blessard's character, maybe, because he had a gun on him, but just the way Blake, and we haven't, we've seen Blake be angry in the previous episode.
Like we've seen him be angry at Raker.
We seen him be angry about what happened to him, but for him to turn to his fellow prisoners and be this angry and lambast them for their cowardice and what have you.
It's like, oh, okay, this character has layers because Avon's been talking about, you know, Blake's a crusader.
He's not a survivor, I suppose, in a way.
Whereas that scene, it's like, no, no, no.
Blake is out to protect himself, but he wants to protect other people at the same time, but if you're gonna get in his way, it doesn't matter if you're friend or foe, he's going to go through you.
And the thing that then brings that tension down because you think, uh, Blake, there's about 10 of them.
And um, they can just beat you up.
The thing that brings it back down is not even 2 seconds after he finishes talking, Gan just goes, yeah, right.
Yeah, Blake has got that gift of the, he's got the gift of the gab and can win them over. yeah.
Yeah.
And I think also it's a conscious thing with Gan's character as well that Gan just, you know, Gan just kind of needs the facts laid out before him and he'll go, okay, yeah, I accept that.
But he's but he's not stupid.
He listens and makes the decision quickly and sticks to that decision, whereas Villa is looking for the angles to play.
On the topic of Arco, who we were talking about earlier, in the original treatment, Arco was the master thief, and Villa was his cowardly apprentice.
So there was going to be this dynamic between the 2 of them, and we'll see as the season goes on who that dynamic gets transferred to.
That's very interesting.
I think a Gareth Thomas is very intense all the time, which is always fascinating.
He's doing all the acting.
We've noticed this already in the past 2 episodes.
He's seizing every chance he gets to show.
He's a fantastic actor.
And there's lots in this character to do.
But also, I think there's a feeling from Blake that he's come all this way to rescue all these guys, and they're so ungrateful that they don't want to take the chance to get away from this awful desperate hole in space, this rocky outcrop with nothing going for it, and they'd still take the chance to stay there rather than take a chance with Blake.
I think that's a real, again, that's a really fascinating choice.
Those prisoners have made.
Was the sort of prison yard dynamic a bit there as well, isn't there, that he has to win them over with a bit of aggression and forcefulness.
In terms of what you're saying about Gan being the leader as well, having a bit of a leadership role.
He's physically the biggest, strongest character there.
So the dynamic sort of changes once they're on the ship and it's no longer in that sort of prison environment.
Yeah, it's working out who's top dog, isn't it, really?
So one of the things that's introduced in this episode, as we've mentioned, is the teleport.
What do we think of the effect of the teleport and the sound effect and, of course, Dudley Simpson's brilliant choice of making the wonderful teleport music that accompanies them every minute while they've got to do the matting shot and nothing is actually happening.
So he's got to cover this and he just goes for it and it gets better and better as the sim.
It's the whole thing about it.
It's like music from Heidi High when Ted pulls off the stage or something.
It's the sad trombone.
It's just like next door.
There's something called the radiophonic workshop, right?
Get Dick Mills, the banger drum, play it in reverse and put it through an oscillator and use that.
Don't go, bobble, bobble, b, b, b, b, b.
And now Terry and June, you know, it's, I hate, it's my 2nd least favourite thing about Blake 7.
We'll get to the most least favourite.
What?
In a few weeks.
Cliffhangers.
I have to say, I greatly respect that when Big Finish started doing the Liberator Chronicles, not only they had to recreate the teleport sound effect, because the sound effect itself is classed as a piece of music, much like the TARDIS materialisation is, but they also recreated the Dudley Simpson musical queue to go with the teleport effects.
The thing that struck me about the teleport watching at this time, because I'm trying to watch it with a bit more of a critical eye, is the teleport effect arriving on the planet with the outline slowly, well, defining and then the person appearing makes a lot of sense to me.
The women wiggly will.
Is that how they actually did it?
And I'm doing the action deal this now.
That's how they actually did it.
They don't know what I'm doing or what I'm wearing.
But the wibbly wobbly woo.
It just occurred to be watching it this time and really paying attention to the conversation where they're talking about, you know, what if you're not put back together properly.
This is experimental, da da da.
How terrifying must it have been for Avon and Jennifer a few seconds because what they've seen is that Blake's body has suddenly occupied a space 3 times the size of fusion.
He does rapidly shimmying from side to side and then disappearing with a loud sound effect.
It's a good thing Blake does immediately say, yeah, I'm fine.
Im fine.
Don't worry.
Yes, I'm fine.
It's all fine here.
How are you?
Yeah.
Yeah, there are just certain operational aspects of the series that we've just got to get over and done with.
And like, yes, they've got to teleport it.
It works.
They just pressed the buttons and it worked.
We could have had an extra 5 characters and kill the 1st 3 in attempt failing to use it properly.
The only downside to this episode.
But I don't see why they're doing it, but you're about 20 minutes in and still most of your central cast are up on the spaceship reading the instruction manual.
And it's not a traditional, but that's because it's got that job to do.
A normal episode.
Well, obviously plunge them all in all into the action.
So, but it's not doing that. is still doing the setup works, fair, fair, fair, fair.
But I love when not beaming down, teleporting down, both times that he does it.
Blake lands wobbly.
Like he does proper...
I've landed with my feet side by side, but I'm on a hill, so I'm toppling slightly acting.
But that's the Rada showing in him, I think, as well.
Yeah, he's pulled that.
He's pulled that through.
I really love the line where, after all that, that Brendan has just explained about his body being pulled apart, and Genesis, well, he said, well, like nothing at all, really.
That's it.
I like the sort of, and the figurativeness of that, the effect when they do materialise is so 2D. you know, that 2D line coming in from the sides of your screen and she said, Brendan.
That's something that if you're actually there, you couldn't see it like that because it's a flat line.
So is this supposed to be representing like a 3D haze that comes together.
But it does the thing that old science fiction always does, which is putting some of the effect into your brain.
You know that that's not exactly what everyone there is seeing, and your brain is sort of finishing it off.
Yeah.
That's just, that's why I like shonky effects is what I'm basically saying.
There's a little bit of direction and scripting.
I noticed that I liked.
And I think it happens twice in the episode where the last word of the previous scene becomes the 1st word of the next scene.
It happens for the 1st time at the end of the recap. when Captain Leland says that the prisoners who escaped were prisoners, Blake, Stanis and Avon.
And as he says that, we're in the teleport chamber and Blake immediately says, Avon, look at this.
Okay.
And then they have to run back to the flight deck because Jenna notices they've stopped and Blake says, okay, move it, then you can't back to Signus Alpha and Arctics is saying to the prisoners, move it.
It's almost like listening to a long-running podcast trying to work out who's who. helping us out.
We're keeping our listeners guessing as to how many of us there's going to be on this one, for example.
Is that why you asked Australians to be on this to give people a bit of a chance?
I assumed you're on this one because it's a peanut belly.
I think the archo of this podcast has just bravely identified himself.
At the end of this episode, it comes with that nice little bit of momentum building.
Oh, there are some ships on our tail.
They're not going to catch us, not this time.
And it's, that's a nice, not actually tying Terry Nation into having to pick up a get up next week.
Can't remember whether he does or not.
But it just establishes that this is going to run. you know, this is this has got momentum.
It's not this is not just episodes of the week.
Even when it is episodes of the week.
It's going to have some pace to it through the series, which is a really nice way of ending an episode.
Yep, we've nearly got a full crew.
Maybe, perhaps.
Who knows where we're going next week?
And it also ends with the promise that they're not going to run away every time.
You know, Blake clearly says that the reason they're running away is they don't know how to work the weapons yet, but as soon as they understand this ship, they're going to stand it by, but he is being practical. which kind of runs up against what Avon was saying earlier.
The reason Avon wants to leave is because he knows Blake is going to, you know, run in and get them all killed and like, of course, isn't privy to that conversation, but makes it clear that, no, I'm not going to go into a fight.
I can't win if I can run away.
And I think that's sort of how he tries to talk to Vargas as well because he doesn't lie to Vargas.
He is one of the prisoners, but he doesn't volunteer the information that he has this that he has this ship because he doesn't know if he can trust him.
But as soon as he has no choice.
He is completely upfront because he wants the best chance to get out of this situation.
And even when they do eventually do their prison break, it's not just, we're going to run into the throne room screaming, it's like, no, we're going to use subterfuge, we're going to get as close as we possibly can before we launch the attack.
He's not a bull in a china shop.
He's he is a man of action, which I always find kind of amusing with Gareth Thomas, because they figured out at this point, he doesn't look good while he's running.
If you look at the way back and there's that bin where he's running and gets whacked on the head by a federation guard.
His arms are flapping about everywhere.
Well, when he's running in this, it's all sort of close-ups and quick cuts and angle, angle, angle, you know, also because I only lit one part of the quarry.
So he has to run through that several times.
But it does obscure the fact that Gareth Thomas.
Gareth Thomas does not have a dramatic exciting run, like say David Tennant.
He's not nimble, is that what you think?
I'm sure that they're sure that part about sometimes in episode one as well, don't they?
The bit of him running through that tunnel.
Yeah.
Patrick McGuan resigning it ain't.
Yeah, what you're saying there about not fighting if they don't have to.
It made me think because they do they do generate a little bit of sympathy for Captain Leyland, is it?
And the other surviving crew member that basically careers are going to be over because of because of what's happened on this on this flight.
So yeah, I guess it's they're not just going to blow up federation ships, I suppose, if they can help it, because just doing their job, aren't they, I guess, in a way?
Yeah.
And even last week in that, once Raker has quelled the rebellion, Blake and Leyland talk about how Raker's actions were an overreaction to the situation and Leyland says it's going to be in my report, he's going to go on report.
So, yeah, there is definitely sympathy there.
And I think that's, again, deliberate on the part of Nation to say the Federation is the enemy in this show, but not everyone who works for them is the enemy.
And I'm going to have, there's going to be Shades of Grey here.
And I'm saying nation at this point because I'm sure that for these early ones, he was a lot more hands-on.
Yeah, and we make, I've made a couple of cracks about determination, right, about some of the writing, but I mean, that is in the contest of this being an amazingly well-written show, that a fantastically written, the work of a genius, getting this up and up running and putting all these pieces in place.
It's just such a good script.
Yeah, we're hitting the ground running.
But will we judge to a halt next week?
So that's it for our look back at Sickness Alpha.
We'll be back next week to have a look at episode four, Time Squad.
So thank you very much for everyone who has taken part today.
Thank you very much.
Bye everyone.
Goodbye.
Thanks.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
So power.