Maximum Power.
Hello and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Empedoclean Blake 7 podcast that would happily jump into a volcano just to make some stupid political point.
But before we do that, let's introduce ourselves.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Col, and I've got blue flashing balls.
And Mark.
And I'm Peter.
Do you know, my 1st bullet point in my notes today is about how the robot has blue flashing balls.
Oh, so sorry.
We could do that again.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no, no.
No, it's absolutely the most noticeable thing about the episode.
And perhaps the best thing.
The less said about 2 P3PO, the better.
It's very high up in my notes as well, especially when the Android just moves into shop just to stand there, hands on hips and just inevitably draws your eyes to its 2 flashing bollocks.
It crazy.
So this is the new status quo, right?
We spent 2 episodes getting here and now we are here.
So what do we think?
Why did we bother?
So, Peter, what do we think of this new version of the show?
I mean, I love Siri C.
It's absolutely my favourite iteration of Blake 7 as I keep on saying, but this is not a stellar entry into the canon.
It's Alan Pryor Strikes Again.
It's his usual muddled storytelling with nothing very well developed, but a few fun lines, you know?
I'm trying to sort of work out whether this is a normal Alan Pryor kind of thing because do you remember we did Horizon and found, to our surprise, it was really good.
Now that just might be because...
Yeah, yeah, probably good.
And, you know, it had some pretty great actors and it was well directed, I think.
So there's that.
But maybe he just had one good script in him because after that, we have hostage, the keeper, this and animals.
Which is pretty much scraping the bottom of the Blake 7 barrel.
Yeah, he's down there scrabbling with Ben Steed at this point, I think.
Because he's in a slave pit on her, surprise.
I think the problem with this episode is it's kind of just boring.
And I was thinking, well, what's Michael Goff been in that he's actually been interesting in?
And then I thought, Arcum Infinity, Batman.
Nothing.
He's counsellor head and Colin.
What does he play in this?
Counsellor Harrow or something similar or something?
He's actually really phoning it in, I thought.
And there is a scene where he's talking with Dana, and he fluffs a couple of lines so badly that I'm surprised that the director continued.
Yes, that's about a 102nd pause between words.
Yeah, yeah, it's really, really quite bad.
So he's kind of not bothering.
And I guess, well, let's talk A-plot then.
The, this is, I'm calling this the A plot, not because it's interesting or good or anything, but because it gets...
Or indeed that there is a plot, a plot.
But it gets the title, right?
So we have the Pyroans, we're on the planet Obsidian.
They're pacifists and Dana has gone down with Tarrant to kind of do something.
I don't know. they want to stay there for a holiday or recruit people or something like that.
Then there's a B plot, which is lots of space things and serve land and stuff going on.
And I think the B plot is kind of woefully generic, but it's so much more fun than the A-plot.
Absolutely right.
There's just some really odd bits that don't make sense.
I don't get the bit and I've watched this twice.
When the 2 brothers come to meet Serviline and the Federation and they're sort of phasing in and out of existence.
Right?
Or is it, is that what they're trying to show that they've got some weird powers?
Or are they just, is it supposed to be like a time lapse thing because it's such a long way to walk to run that they were, they just sort of they just sort of showed them to show parts of their journey rather than just show a little bit of it.
But then nobody mentions the fact that they've just appeared and disappeared and to say phased in and out as they come towards them.
And then it's never mentioned or commented on or explained.
But sure, this is an ability that would be useful to the Federation, if they could adopt that technology, you know, sort of they could go on missions, they could sneak up on people.
It's just what was going on?
No, I mean, absolutely. that your takeaway from that scene would be that they have this magical power, but I don't think that that's what it is.
I think it's just a directorial flourish from a not very flourishy director.
He's just, it's just confusing because we don't know if they're magically doing it or if they're just showing the passage of time.
But there's a sound which is digetic, which makes you think that they're actually doing it.
It's very muddled.
Well, and then Milus and his brother something turned out.
And they're kind of, they're very kind of ethereal and stuff.
And so they're kind of weird space people.
And so that reinforces the idea that this is a thing that's really happening.
But because it never gets referred to.
Like, I just think they must have had like 5 minutes of footage of those people sort of slowly jogging up towards, you know, and then...
Like in the Holy Grail when they roam towards the castle.
And they just use the best bits, like maybe a pigeon landed on one of them at some and like one of them got distracted and they just sort of faded those bits out or something because it's a bad, like that's not how you do passage of time.
No, do you think you could have cut away to serve land for reaction shots or something?
It's really stupid.
Yeah, that would have been really funny.
Maybe they did that.
Maybe it was like they're walking from the very long distance away and then sort of Servilan and that guy, what's his name?
Murray.
I thought he was called Murray.
So Murray and Surverland look at each other and then they run a little bit more and then, you know, the the, the troopers shift nervously from foot to foot or something and then they run a bit more.
And then they kind of fall over and die sort of thing.
I mean, they're they're stupid and they're sort of ridiculous science fiction people.
And our 2 main people, like our 2 main Pyroans, which are Michael.
Yeah, I know.
I don't know what that is Oh, well, because they live near a volcano, right?
On the planet, Obsidian.
Yeah, yeah.
Why aren't they obsidians?
I don't get it.
But they live near a, yeah.
Anyway.
And why is there even a volcano in it?
And why is the episode even called volcano?
Because it's just around a volcano?
It should just be called, you know, terror of the pacifists or something.
It's just so unconnected.
I mean, those 2 things do go together.
But I guess the, the, like, there's that really shitty visual, you know, the really shitty sort of plastic visual of the volcano on the screen where like, and it looks like, like it looks like the planet is supposed to look like there's just a big volcano in the middle of it, right?
And so I guess they're kind of final threat, their threat to kind of wipe themselves out and destroy the planet is kind of central to where they are and what their political position is and what's going on with this planet.
And it's the centre of the planet.
But we can't do the visual because we just can't, and that sort of deplorable, lamentable kind of polystyrene globe that looks like it's kind of fallen on the floor a bit, and then they've painted it.
Like, it looks really, it looks really bad.
So they can't have the big, they can't have a volcano as big as they want.
They can't realise a volcano on location because they're in South England or something.
No, rocky outcrop in Yorkshire.
I think you'll find.
Oh, echo, right?
stock footage, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I can see why they call it volcano.
I can see why that's sort of central to the idea, but like, who thought that they were going to be able to kind of bring that off in any way that was going to be satisfactory?
I mean, being blown to bits is pretty much what they deserve for being such a boring lot.
But I actually found it quite similar to the plot device from Countdown last year where the self-destruct weapon was planted inside the planets, in that case, by the Federation.
So they're kind of repeating their ideas a little bit.
And also, I think too, that the, that in a show like Blake 7, where you have pacifists, um, that's not really a kind of sensible political kind of thing that we're doing.
It's just super B movie.
It's like Planet of the B movie, pacifists, and they're full of shit because like they, they, do you know what I mean?
They burn out a bit of your brain or something and they brainwash them and stuff and they all live in sort of, you know, complete happiness and things like that.
And, you know, they're pacifists who have a robot that they can just tell to fire the gun instead of firing the gun themselves.
Like, I'm not quite sure what the moral distinction is between telling a device to use a device to kill your horrible, ugly son, Bersha, to just kill yourself.
You know, like, so, you know, remember the pacifist in the Daleks where they're just stupid, you know, and Ian outwits them and explains to them why their position is wrong in about 5 minutes and they kind of go, oh, yes, we'd never thought of that.
I mean, that's what they're doing here.
There's nothing really more interesting than that.
It is just while we're here.
He's an incidental swipe at pacifists and let's kind of straw man them and make them look stupid.
It's just a bit pathetic, I think.
Pacifism is not an idea that you can do justice to in a show like Dr. or Blake 7.
So you mentioned the Daleks.
How about the dominators with its incredibly boring characters, and that's what it becomes.
So in this episode, the characters are all totally boring because they're pacifists.
It's awful.
I don't think you get a sense of how many Pyroans there are either.
So when Michael Goff proudly says, you know, there's no war.
Yeah, exactly.
And we don't fight amongst ourselves. then there's 8 after Milus and his brother get killed.
Yeah, you'd think half a dozen people should be able to get on without wars or fighting without electric shocks and psychological propaganda.
I was thinking this morning.
It's like, okay, you know, they're trying to explain something about pacifism and it doesn't work and you're always going to need a stronger army.
Wherever you are, you're always going to need an army or defences.
I just don't get the bomb at the end.
It's like, we can't have this perfect thing, then fuck it, everyone will die.
It really just, it stops it from hanging together in any way.
But I gather the idea is that that's a threat and that that thread has been very successful.
And then, like, that little bit of better. which I quite like about Servoland, which is obviously the threat can only be like at some point you have to carry through on the threat. like parenting.
It's like nuclear war, yeah.
Yeah, so they do explode themselves and sort of no one else very much nearby.
But there's that great bit where Servoland, it's not that Servoland didn't think they would do it.
It's just that she didn't really give a shit.
And that's super fun.
Like, that's fun characterisation for Survland, I think.
I mean, I think it's bad characterisation for Dana because they actually have Dana admire the pacifist ideal.
They say, oh, it's brilliant.
You know, you've really achieved something here and you think, what, Dana is saying that.
Don't they hang a lantern on it though?
Don't they say something like, doesn't Tarrant say, 0 my god, like that's coming from you?
Like they do at least sort of acknowledge that.
Yeah, okay.
They saved it.
Well, let's just leave them for a minute because they're all dead anyway.
And let's just talk about the fact that we open with our 2 new regulars interacting together on a way mission.
Do they call it that?
They're down and safe anyway.
No, no, they're safely down.
Yeah, safely down.
Yeah, yes.
They don't know the terminology yet.
Yeah.
Apparently it was written for Blake and Jenner.
So this might explain why Alan Pryor is so shit because if he wrote Horizon and then very quickly followed Hostage, the Keeper, and this, then maybe he didn't have time to make anything good.
But apparently it was meant to be Blake and Jenner.
And so this was written for like the last season format.
Like Blake 7 never really properly kind of commits to like long-term character arcs or anything like that.
And part of the fun of watching Blake 70s thinking about the relationships between the characters.
There's something coming up, I think, in series C where, where because Avon and Callia are kind of the only adults.
Do you know what I mean?
Because Villa's silly and the other 2 are like terribly young.
They're new.
They have quite an interesting relationship and they seem to rely on one another, but it's not something that you could say that anyone sat down and thought about presenting.
And here I think Chris Boucher does at least acknowledge, you know, he gets them to talk about how they feel, you know, um, Terrence still doesn't trust anyone.
Dana's a little bit more there, but they're just kind of talking about being the new people and then upstairs on the Liberator.
They're also talking about them as well, which I thought was, you know, that was something.
I thought that that was pretty good.
Yeah, it is good.
And I mean, it does sort of set up.
Previously, it's been the Avon and Dana show.
They've been the pairing in the 1st 2 episodes of this season.
And so there was no guarantee that actually we were going to have Dana and Tarrant as a pairing.
But I think going forwards, they are sort of paired together the most, and it's not just because they're the newbies.
They do work well together.
I think it's new characters is quite interesting.
They seem a bit more hard-edged than maybe some of the there's some of the original crew. you know, they're both quite sort of handy, aren't they?
And they, you know, they'll kill people quite, quite easily and without compunction.
So it feels like it's from, from my point of view of, say, watching through for the 1st time.
Maybe they're going in a slightly different direction with that.
And I thought it was interesting.
They're looking for a home base as well, which isn't really something they've discussed or had a need for before, and I don't think I really thought that that was going to happen here with these people.
Well, if they can't find home base and they can find B&Q or Texas.
Just preempt.
I thought that would be your dad joke, Mark.
Everyone's wearing a judo outfit this week on the Liberator.
There's that line where, you know, they make that joke about, uh, the volcano's bubbling away or Aurax bubbling away, and the look Avon just gives them a, it's like, fucking hell.
Yes, remember, everyone, they're waiting by the rim.
By the rim.
You know, I actually think that Kelly and Villa look pretty great, but they're the only ones.
I think this episode is let down heavily by its design work.
I mean, what is Dana wearing?
That white and peach thing that she's got on is just so unflattering.
But actually, I think everything in the episode looks fairly awful.
We've got a few things here which are new, which will recur through the season.
We've got Servland's new reptile ship and that weird sort of uninspired command deck and the new look mutoids.
And they're all quite sad looking and not as good as the fabulous space command donuts.
So I think it sort of, unfortunately, sets a bit of a tone for the season.
The mutoids are shit.
Yeah, so they used to wear like leather or something.
They used to be pretty creepy and, you know, like, uh, the, uh, was a duel, I think, one of the episodes where, with the, they're really creepy in that, where it's this.
It's just someone to give exposition about where the ship is.
She's like a receptionist, isn't she?
She's like one of the ladies in Day of the Daleks.
You know, he's...
Yeah, I think that is a shame.
And their outfits are like foam and they've got like space silver foil on them and it looks terrible.
I mean, it's not as bad as they will look in coming season, so I'll just say that.
Oh, no, the geometric bob in animals.
I love that.
I'm glad that the mutoids start going for that.
That's tremendous.
But even Servoland's outfit is pretty grim.
It's kind of a sort of 80s space outfit, which is super unfortunate.
And then the stupid space people, let's talk about their outfit.
You know, the the Pyroans are all wearing white.
You know, it's that that we've, we're people.
Because that's pacifist.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
They just wave Milus when they want to surrender.
I mean, they're kind of wearing space robes, aren't they?
It's awful.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's super terrible.
And the other thing too. and this director will do this next week is there's a lot of 70s shag carpet and stuff and like on the walls and things.
And it's something that we commented on in aftermaths.
Remember the, um, the tacky, I mean, the very, very shiny coloured walls of Dana's kind of space grotto on the planet Sarin.
And then we'll get that sort of thing here and we mentioned Shrinkers Cavern from Rumours of Death.
And, you know, it's also coming up in Dawn of the Gods.
And that's a very, very kind of Siri C look.
And it reminds me of kind of the houses of like my school friends when this was on, like the kind of the kind of cooler ones.
Do you know what I mean that had lots of kind of thick carpet and glossy surfaces and lots of oranges and stuff like that.
And that will go away next year.
And I'm going to miss it, I have to say.
Nathan, that's because they didn't live in houses.
They lived in space stations that had been grounded on the sea bed.
That's right The other bit that didn't quite make sense to me is when, um, I can't remember his name, Michael Goff's son asks Tarant, if he knows Servolan, and then the scene ends and it's sort of a dramatic end, like, oh, how do you know about Servolan?
And then that's not followed up, and the very next time you see them, is Tarant and Dana quite happily sort of trotting out onto the planet's surface to be accosted by the Federation troops, and sort of that's when the son has betrayed them and hands them over.
So it just seems why mention at that point that he knows who Servolan is.
Yeah, because they don't react.
They still follow to...
Yeah, and there's no there's no next scene where he goes, how do you know about Servilan?
and then he has to lie or make an excuse, but then why bring it up in the 1st place?
So yeah, get another very odd piece of writing or direction or whatever.
I think it is the writing.
I mean, we mentioned even in Horizon, which is an episode which we loved.
There's curious dead ends in scenes and things which don't just don't follow on.
And so, either the editing process goes awry on Alan Pryor scripts or more likely he just lets threads drop and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. makes very unsatisfactory viewing.
Do you guys remember the TV show Police Squad?
Yes.
Okay, all the naked gun films, but there's a...
Okay.
Okay, thank God.
There's a scene where Leslie Nielsen and someone else are shooting at each other. and it's all filmed like on Leslie Nielsen, on the other person, on Leslie Nielsen, on the other person. and it pulls back and they're just next to each other behind 2 bins and it is just like that on the shootout on the liberator where Avon is just like, hide behind the sofa, get up and put the gun directly in someone's face.
And it's just like, like, at least space them out a bit more.
And I will have them running through the ship, which you can't do because the sets don't connect.
But it's like a really weak kind of another episode of being on the liberator and the federation have boarded.
It's pretty weak.
In Avon's defence, he thinks there's only 3 federation troops aboard because Callie's telepathic messages.
Avon, there are 3 of them.
Three of them, and there's four.
She's watched 4 people teleport aboard.
I didn't know in the shootout whether this was like a thing where he was only expecting to be hitting 3 and that's how he managed to get shot by one of them.
What is that?
Because that must be ADR.
They must have shot that part and known that there was 4 troops by then.
What's what do things going on with that?
Is she trying to take over the liberator?
Is she not even killed?
No.
It's yes, another thing in an Alan Prior script that just doesn't quite add up.
I mean, I have to say that sequence, while it is quite poorly shot, I think, is possibly the best sequence in the episode, just because Avon is actually quite clever in turning the tables on Maury with his covert orders to Zen and then shooting the troopers.
I think it actually adds some welcome excitement to the piece.
It's actually quite clever, isn't it?
Because he goes Zen, and then he gives an order, but he gives the order in a weird way.
And I think both you and the troops on board are kind of going, wait, what the fuck?
What's he saying?
And then kind of go, oh shit, he's just, he's just ordered Zen to fire on the other ships.
And that is actually pretty good.
That's right, because he finishes a sentence with Zen and puts emphasis on it and then goes off on this tangent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, conversationally drops the order in sort of conversationally, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's yeah, it's really well done that part, yeah.
It's like the way that you accidentally trigger Siri during a conversation, like conversation.
And they knew about it back in 1979.
So I think that is pretty great.
I mean, how many times already has the Federation, I guess, not counting the break between seasons.
Did it happen in series 2 as a federation taken over the ship?
They're going to do it quite a bit from now on.
Well, they are.
And I mean, I think that's actually one of the problems with this episode and then it feels like it should be given a lot of important deal.
Yeah, Servolan is trying to take the liberator from them rather than destroy it.
Although in this episode, she does try and take the liberty from them and then retreat and then come back and then decide to destroy it anyway.
So she's not really, you know, lacking in motivation there.
And then decide it isn't a threat without Blake as well, which I thought was interesting.
She says that threat without Blake.
It wasn't a threat with Blake.
He was the one who was making it, not a thread.
It's all just quite muddled, but I think because this season, Sorry, Mark, spoilers.
Servland will make a number of efforts to get hold of the liberator.
You know, I'm thinking harvest of Chiros, children of our on, and of course, terminal, and they're all much better than this.
And so in retrospect, it just doesn't look very good.
Well, it's that bit where she goes, what should we do with the ship?
And it's like she goes, no.
And then she goes, oh no, fuck it.
Blow it up.
That's awesome.
That's not inconsistent.
That's just her going, oh, yeah, like what the fuck?
Thatll be fun.
Let's do that.
I really like that bit.
Yeah, me too.
It's truly excellent.
That's, again, her not giving a crap the way that she didn't care whether the Pyroans killed themselves.
I just think that's awesome.
So, I mean, this is kind of what the show has to be about now, though, isn't it?
Because we wiped.
It funny.
We were talking in our aftermath episode about how the show has been kind of reconceived at this and has been given a completely new premise.
And here we've walked it back a little bit because I think Tarrant says there's still a sizeable remnant of the Federation battle fleet still operational. 20% if you believe aftermath.
Yeah, okay.
So it's, but, you know, he's saying sizeable.
So Servoland has her own sort of crappy melted ship and and we've got the liberator and stuff and it is what the opening titles say, isn't it?
It's just we're in the galaxy and people are chasing the liberator which is running away and that's our new premise.
And so the only thing that Serverland can really think of doing now is to try and take the liberator, I guess.
I mean, it would have been more exciting trying to see Serveline consolidate her position as president now that she is president.
I would have liked some more politics, a bunch of meetings, perhaps.
Well, you could have brought back old, you know, Brontaine and Burkhole.
I would have loved to have seen them in her office.
Well, actually, didn't they get sucked out the side of the space donuts when the burrito attacked in trial?
But yeah, no, I would have liked to have seen more of that.
And actually, we will get on to that in rumours of death.
We will see her actually leading rather than just being off on a melted spaceship trying to chase a liberator and it's more interesting.
Yeah, there's that one great moment at the end of Star one where she says, I will not be president of a ruined empire, which is so good.
And unfortunately, that is what happens to her.
She is, though.
Oh, yes, you're well loved.
Yeah, yeah.
So if we're taking the ship, you'll note that Ben Howard's Murray has been tasked with a job and is he Travis, if we thought this was going to be in series B?
He's absolutely Travis.
No one else gets away with that kind of attitude towards Servoland.
And he's played by Stephen Senchman from the Green Death, and he can't pronounce Orak.
He's really actually quite bad, I think.
And there's there's that scene where, you know, Milus and his stupid brother.
That it.
He kind of goes, what?
What?
You know, like, what?
It's really like terrible.
And then he turns around to them and says, go on, run.
And given what he's just seen with them running for 5 minutes across the filter, he's just thinking he'd be asking for that.
Yeah, you would think if they're going to run, they'll just disappear.
There's another space commander who's just like in a chair all the time like this. like, hello, Serverland, how are you?
He's got no eyes as well.
It's really... yeah.
That's amazing.
And he's all unshaven.
It's a bit weird And he's in a completely different room altogether.
Like he's not with any of them.
They're not even kind of, they're just telling him his lines and sort of inexpertly cutting the conversation together because it usually takes a few seconds longer to react than, I mean, maybe he's had a recent blow to the head or something.
You know, but he's not really engaging with with Serveland, you know, in any kind of realistic way.
No, and if we're putting the boost into him, he's ugly as sin.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, in terms of Murray, it's interesting that he does seem to have some leeway to question the orders because he says something like, oh, yeah, that's the only reason I'm going along with this or something, isn't it, to get the liberator as if he's got any choice because surely she is the commander of the armed forces and everything, but yeah, he does seem to get away with a little bit of questioning.
Yeah, it's clearly absolutely meant to be Travis and not late season, Travis.
I thought it's meant to be, kind of, you know, pretrial, Travis.
Although it does give rise to that quite nice line from Servland later where he says, oh, you know, don't forget about us.
And she goes, no, of course not, and cuts the channel and says, you have Aurak.
Yeah, that's great, yeah.
So it was interesting that Aurak seems to help Murray and the other Federation troops by given the coordinates to arrive on the planet.
So Cali having already betrayed Avon by giving him misinformation about the number of intruders on the ship, then Aurak is sort of turned to traitor as well and gives Servolander coordinates so that the ship can come down undetected and whether that's a self-preservation thing or what. sure, but I think it is that or I again kind of is above all that and doesn't really give a shit.
And it's not the only time that he gets captured and just freely gives information to the enemies because he's more important or, you know, like he's arrogant and stuff like that.
Or he's just a machine.
You know, he has no loyalties, but I kind of, I do kind of like that.
I mean, he's a bit of a blabbermouth to Dorian and rescue, isn't he?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And do Tarrant and Dana not know that Callie's a telepath?
That would, sure, that would be some usual information.
Right.
You have told them.
I mean, it possibly would have helped if Callie's telepathy worked at any point in this episode.
The theory.
It's funny, isn't it?
When I was a kid, if Callie did telepathy, I was just hugely excited.
It's kind of like, oh, she's doing telepathy.
She can do that.
And, you know, like, obviously it's a kind of stupid thing and it really only matters a couple of times.
There's only, you know, a few times in Blake Seven's run that it matters at all.
But I think he, and do you know, Nathan?
All of those moments are written by Chris Boucher.
So it really matters in shadow.
It really matters in Death Watch.
He uses her telepathy properly and aptly and no one else does.
No, and so she's talking away to herself while Avon's in shot paying no attention to her.
And you kind of think, I mean, you read that as just, you know, Avon's a prick and he's busy dealing with the attack or whatever.
And so he's not listening, and then eventually he does start paying attention when she starts telling him the wrong number of troops, I guess.
But it doesn't work on any level because that never gets addressed or like you would kind of expect it to be said.
It seems like an odd thing that we get no explanation about why he doesn't hear.
And then, and then we get that woman's voice thing down on the thing and, and again, that's just sort of slightly crappily done, I think.
Yeah, by the rim, Nathan.
Don't forget, by the rim.
But then she says at the rim.
Do you know what I mean?
Like she's heard something different.
Yeah, it's very confused.
And it doesn't work on a character level because they could have made something out of it because Callie and Avon are as close as regular characters in this show can be.
And so you would think Avon would be able to pick up quite easily on it.
Whereas because Kelly doesn't know Dana and Tara, that would be a reason for them not to be able to pick up well on it, but they don't highlight that at all.
I know, and she doesn't say, hey, it's Callie.
I forgot to mention I'm a telepath, you know, this is me speaking inside your head.
Don't panic.
I know it's kind of weird and I can't hear you, by the way, so you needn't worry that I'm sort of eavesdropping on all of your gruesome sexual fantasies.
But like none of that happens.
You know what I mean?
She just says something and like somehow they get it.
So it's kind of half-heartedly done, isn't it?
It's a bit of a shame because it can be great when it's done right.
And, you know, like 10 year old me was very excited.
I think she has been eavesdropping on villas, though, with that, you know, we've seen you not really noticing frequently.
And then you get that bit of music from the, like, good life musical, Ronny Huzelhouse music.
It's very, it's very Chris Boucher.
It's very A, and it's quite good, I think.
We get Villa drunk.
He hasn't been drunk since when, since Freedom City or Space City.
I can never remember which is which. one of those.
What's the one that gets blown up in series one?
Is it Freedom City or Space City?
Space City probably.
That'd be the name they reach for first.
Freedom City, the Casino, is that?
Yeah, that's right.
Freedom Cities Casino.
So it's the...
Yeah, it's the 1st 1st one, isn't it?
where he gets sort of horribly drunk.
I mean, I think he was introduced to adrenaline and soma in a previous Alan Pryor script and, you know, that was the end of him.
Although, you know, Villa actually does have some fairly good moments.
I like just before he gets drunk on the adrenaline soma when he sees off Servland by saying, I'm in charge here and I can see you, you're at these coordinates.
It's actually quite a nice villa moment.
It kind of offsets him beaming them all up, though.
Yeah, which is ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, and Kelly, like, what is it?
It's just some weird voice, like, you would have thought, I mean, Villa was there when he yelled, teleport, teleport, teleport, and hostage.
Do you know what I mean?
He knows that you don't just beam up the person who says teleport teleport a bunch of times. could be anyone.
All right, this episode is shit.
And they half-heartedly put a lampshade on Villa actually sending Callie down to the planet with Murray and Co because they're ready to teleport down and she doesn't have a bracelet on and he puts the bracelet on her and she says Villano and he says, no, you'll be safer down there.
It doesn't make any sense to do that.
It also gives rise to one of my favourite bits of I'm over this shit from Jan Chapel, where she's gagged and she's about to teleport down with Murray, and her bracelet falls off to the floor with a platter.
And she looks down at it.
Then she looks offset to the PA, presumably waiting for a cut, then realises, no, we're really going on.
Yeah, well, we're happy to let kind of Michael Goff fluff his important line.
So obviously we don't really care at all.
I thought for a 2nd actually, because I mean, like obviously I've seen this a bunch of times, but unsurprisingly, it's not one that I go back and sort of watch by choice kind of normally.
I thought that he was rushing into the teleport bay to take her bracelet off so that they would beam down and she wouldn't.
Is that how it works?
What if you hold hands?
Yeah, so Nathan, you're talking sad.
But I just don't know what the deal is.
Like, does it, like, obviously beams you down in your clothes and like, or like, in a box and stuff like that.
But does it beam down someone you're holding?
No, in fact, we will have an episode later this season where Kelly says that by touch, her bracelet can boost other bracelets, but everyone has to have one on.
Well, well, there you go.
So what the hell?
What was with that?
He just wanted to get rid of her.
No, I think she's super judgy about the adrenaline and soma, actually.
And he was so happy to see her last episode.
It's quite harsh when Michael Goff has his son killed.
He, you know, he says that my son, the animal rules you, but I think maybe the son needed to sell that a bit more like he actually needed to lose his temper.
Have we seen any hint of passion or anything?
Yeah.
He just sort of says, I still believe in the theory of peace, which is sort of a weird thing to say, which phrase it, I thought.
And then he just killed, gets the Android to shoot him.
So that's the same thing that they use to put Tarrant and Dana to sleep.
But only thought, isn't it?
And then, it's a dose.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's the spray gun that makes you go unconscious or if you're given enough of it, you slowly lower yourself to the ground and then die.
I knew you'd say that.
I'm watching this episode twice.
I thought he's going to say slowly lowering yourself to a friend.
It's the best example of it.
It's really pretty good, isn't it?
It is pretty great.
I mean, all of the guest cast, including horrible, ugly Bershire, are taking cue from Michael Goff, who is entirely energy free.
Yeah, yeah.
But is it because he's a space person and a pacifist?
So it's like 2 ways of being boring, like 2 motivations. for not showing any emotion or anything like that.
It is, it's that sort of B gradness.
And I guess, I guess all that we have.
And, you know, Horizon does this as well.
Like Horizon has space things happening as well, doesn't it?
It's got a kind of B plot with space things and even back on the ship.
You know, I mean, it is, it's something that Alan Pryor does and it is something that the show does.
And it's just a shame that the space things are so kind of half-hearted and uninspired because they're the best bid.
You could almost ignore all the sort of horrible space people if there was some really exciting stuff going on.
I mean, Mark, you mentioned duel before, I think.
Well, someone mentioned duel.
And, you know, it has a space thing going and a thing down on the planet.
They kind of echo one another.
They're both kind of tense and interesting.
Like there's no reason that this material had to be quite so half-hearted, but there's a kind of sloppiness to the scripting.
And I don't think Desmond McCarthy's direction helps at all.
So he'll be here next week for Dawn of the Gods, but then he never comes back, right?
That's correct.
And, you know, thank God for that.
So even by Blake 7's exacting standards.
He was their pennant Roberts replacement for Siri C and everything's as good as that sounds.
But yeah, it just, it just, it points out how important the direction is to Blake 7 because Horizon, while undoubtedly a better script than this, benefits from having a really good director at the helm who gets everyone on the same page gets them all delivering really nice nuanced performances.
The central performance, Darian Angardis Row, is really great.
And the design work is brilliant.
And so you have a script which is pretty good, which is made excellent by the production team.
And here you have a script which is not very good at all, made worse by the production team.
Isn't the production team and maybe the like the cast and the designer and the director who decide to make horizon a little bit like the British Raj.
Like the Federation become the British Empire colonising people.
And so it manages to be about something, like it's not just space people doing things.
Whereas this one is just absolutely not about anything.
Like, it's about pacifism, Nathan.
I...
And that's the ending.
Like the ending is so, so miserable, isn't it?
So it ends on another crap joke.
It's another Blake 7 that ends on a crap joke.
And it's the crap joke about, like, Callie decides, is it, that the Pyroans are the only real winners here?
I mean, Servoland got to blow people up and got rid of horrible Murray and and, you know, live to fight another day.
She got to head off in her spaceship in the middle of the episode, giving a dramatic monologue, which, like, you know, that must have been a high point for her.
Villa got to be drunk, and yet the Pyroans who've all exploded themselves are the real winners here.
And then, like, the final line is Villa going, Well, if that's what you call winning, I'd take losing any day and you just think, Jesus Christ. is no one putting any effort into this at all.
All you needed was a Scooby-Doo freeze frame with people chuckling.
Because they say, well, they were dying anyway, don't they?
But we never actually found out what was killing them because they have a conversation about it.
And Taryn asks Michael Goff, or is it this?
Is it this?
And he goes, I don't want to talk about it.
I thought it was that the thing was leaking.
They all had radiation because someone put a bomb in the volcano.
But it's like they go, they're trying to link, is the radiation leaking or all this stuff and then they can't be asked to figure out what's going on.
So they just say, oh, I don't want to talk about it.
We'll probably blow ourselves up before it becomes it.
They were dying.
Well, thank you for removing our final reason to care.
Yeah, that just seems to be another thing, doesn't it?
It's like he's stuck this in.
I mean, it's so muddled towards the end there where everything's sort of come together.
They've gone and got Callie, who was taken down to the planet for no reason, and Dana and Tarant have just been let go after being held hostage for a bit.
Um, and then they, they head back up to the Liberator and Serve Land's Ugly Commander says, oh, you know, I can destroy the Liberator for.
And she says, yes.
So then he heads in, but he doesn't actually go and destroy the liberator, even though they can't get away.
He goes to the planet and the planet blows up.
And by that stage, like the Pyroans, I'd lost the will to live.
Well, that's all we have time for this week.
We'll be back next time to do some unsolved dynamic flux equations with pencil and paper in Dawn of the Gods.
Until then good night.
Good night.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.
How are we doing?
That's an hour.
I reckon we should wind it up.
Yeah, that's an owl.
That's an hour.
I think that's an hour.
Oh, so we'll do a music thing and then while I do a thing?
Who does?
I'm do a thing.
Oh, like an outro?
Do you reckon that's an out enough of an out or do we need to?
Yeah, I think I think that was, I think that's fine.
I think so too.
I, yeah.
Is there more to talk about it?
It feels like there's more much more to talk about.
It feels like we've been ringing it out.
I think we have.
This is our outro, by our saying.
We've had enough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're just filling airtime like Avon and Servlane running around on location for pretty much no reason.
Oh my god.
I remember watching this when it, like, maybe when it 1st screened, like, on the ABC, and I have, like, I've got really strong, like, that time I watched Horizon, remember I watched, I said that I had a really strong, like, we gone to my friend's place, and I said I had to watch Blake 7, and they put it on, and, like, I remember that.
And I remember watching this really, really like, I can't think why.
And I think it was just the, the way that they were kind of doing the volcano on location.
The one thing that we didn't mention is, of course, how does he get killed?
How does um...
Oh yeah, Dana throws a shoe bomb.
It's the 1st of, it looks like tampon bomb.
No, no, no, no.
So there's her vange bomb, which turns up...
No, no, no, not a badgeball.
It's tampon bomb.
She takes out of her shoe.
Do people put tampons in their shoe?
I don't think they do Well, no, they don't, but it's sort of long then, and it looks like it's got a fuse coming out of it.
And then maybe it's not.
I don't know about these things. something I'm expert in either.
But and then he falls in and it's the same effect, isn't it, that they kill Travis with, so they must have thought, we'll just get some gloop in the studio and put bubbles through it and then he can fall into that.
Yeah, but slow down to about a quarter speed.
Yeah, so you could do that now.
Look at all the fabulous fake volcano in dark water.
So good.
All right, okay, well, I'll do a thing.
So, uh, so if there are no final statements in that case.
No, fuck.
What am I going to say that?
Well, that's all we have time for this week.