50 Shads of Grey

[00:03]

Maximum power.

Welcome to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast where, this week, we are off to the harvest of Cairos.

I'm Pete.

I'm Cole, and a man and a human being and a man.

I'm just Peter.

I'm Cy, and I'm Simon.

And none of us are computers.

But in now, in ancient Greek, I have discovered, chiros means time, almost specifically sort of timeliness, this might be an episode that's of its time, or it might not.

It asks as challenging questions like, what is a man?

What is a script?

And have you ever been to a harvester before?

And just, oh my god, what the hell were they thinking?

is another question that pops into the mind a few times during this episode.

Sigh. sorry, where would you start with this?

Well, be a moth?

I think Ben Steed has a few problems. he has some things that he really wants to get out of his system.

[01:05]

And across his free scripts for Blake 7.

He really, really gets those out of his system.

Because this is the first, isn't it?

This is his 1st shot.

His 1st shot at the Battle of the Sexes, about how men are superior to women in just about every single way.

It gets worse from here.

And that's the worst thing of all is that this is just the start.

And by the time he gets to Moloch later in the series, we've got real, real problematic material.

This one at least is fun and isn't, isn't too bad, but yeah, it's, it's a really interesting story.

And is incredibly enjoyable, but without actually being very, very good.

Although there are brilliant, absolutely brilliant moments all the way through, and it's one of the most quotable episodes of all.

[02:07]

So I, it's not that, I don't like it, it's just, I don't understand where this was coming from.

I think with sort of nearly 40 years, over 40 years on.

It's very much a product of a time before it was even made.

I've seen one online comment saying that it surpasses offensiveness to deliver hilarity or something like that.

Actually trying to be is it trying to be offensive and actually doing it being so incredibly silly that yeah.

So I don't you think it stands to reason?

After all, he's a steed, some might say, a stallion.

So he's a man.

He is definitely a man, not an artisan.

We just going to sit here for an hour and quote the episode, aren't we?

We're just going to, yes, react the episode.

I mean, I have to say that those opening scenes do set the tone for the campness of the episode.

And that opening scene with Servolan and her worry wart, Daster, who was the guy in Monster of Paladon, if you hadn't picked up on that.

[03:12]

Yes, he's...

They had just played to the hilt by Jacqueline Pierce.

That line, an artisan.

It's so camp.

And the dialogue.

It's not, his name is Jarvi. they call him Jarvik.

So his real name's probably Wilbur or something.

Yes.

There are movies.

I love that.

Servolan is dressed like she's shot down a fairy godmother and stuffed it and that's like half of her costume.

I think we had a new costume designer in this week for of the one who's worked with Shirley Bassey a lot, which shows.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely her campus outfits so far.

And is that is not going to, this doesn't even reach the heights that her, her series D costumes reach, which are the pinnacle of camp.

But here, I think the costume really suggests her performance as well.

So she's in something that's really camp and flamboyant.

So her performance becomes really camp and flamboyant to match that.

[04:13]

That makes sense because everyone else is dressed in the way that they behave as well, i.e. Terenceyn attracts you.

Callie's in a dressing gown.

Avon's been to millets for some camping gear.

No one's really showing up particularly well.

And the guards are, the guards are very fancy with their shoulder padded uniforms.

There are moments where this episode comes perilously close, very enjoyably close to carry on Captain Chad.

Hello, sir.

Is it like that is this soldier that we've had so far?

He really, really is.

And there've been some posh ones.

Yeah Now, I have to confess that I have a very special relationship with this episode, because this is, was my very 1st episode of Blake 7, because Peter here, back in, I think it must have been 19, that's him.

In 1990. when Doctor Who had just left the Airways for the, well, what we thought at the time was the final time.

[05:16]

And I'd heard of Blake 7, I knew that it existed, but I'd never actually seen an episode of it.

And Peter lent me still quite early in our friendship.

So he was lending me this very precious thing, which was a 4 hour tape, which contained Dawn of the Gods, Harvest of Chiros, City at the Edge of the World, and Children of our on.

Wisely, he had forwarded the tape through to start at Harvest of Kyros.

And so I sort of thought, okay, so I sat down completely low.

Like he wasn't in the room.

So I took this home and I put it on and instantly, instantly, it had this incredible I was completely stepped away.

It had this incredible familiarity, of course, because it all looked like, you know, Graham Williams era era of Doctor Who.

And you have to remember, at the time, this was only 10 years earlier, this has gone out.

And so for me, this defines, or this is Blake 7 for me.

And I absolutely loved it from the moment it started.

And that scene that you were just talking about with Servoland and Ortron, having that whole, they call him Jarvik.

[06:21]

It absolutely captured my imagination.

And of course, I'm seeing Jacqueline Pierce after I've already seen her as Cassini.

So everything kind of fell into place and made sense as I started watching it.

And I absolutely love this episode and I'll defend it to the death.

I have to 2nd that. great.

This was one of my favourite episodes from childhood because I saw it in 1979, 1st transmission, and then I saw it repeated at midnight in 1981.

I remember looking forward to this episode and even watching it now.

There is so much to enjoy in this episode and so much that I think is genuinely good.

Yes, there is so much that is genuinely good.

Obviously, there are some things that haven't aged well, if I can express it in those terms, but I think the whole thing just hangs together so brilliantly.

And it just walks the right side of the landline of campness and ridiculousness.

It's quite wide of that line.

I can't be I can't be angry.

Yes, but I can't be angry with you.

I can't be angry with with anything that's wrong.

[07:23]

I know there are things that are wrong with it.

I know we're going to talk about those things in detail, but, I don't know, it's just, it's just brilliantly fun.

Gerald Blake is directing this one of invasion of time fame is the 1st thing that springs to mind when I think of him.

There's rather, though he's done quite a lot of other things, isn't he?

But there's, I think this is only one.

Oh no, he does another one like...

That 1st fight scene, though, where Jarvik overpowers the guards and they sort of politely stand waiting for him to grab hold of their heads and very gently bop their heads together.

It was a beautiful little one.

I think they were hypnotised by the fact that he'd done zipped his shirt to the waist and were standing there with his hand on his head.

No, no, no, no.

The tunic, the tunic becomes more unzipped as the episode progresses.

So after he's captured the liberator, the zip is practically all the way down to his crotch.

Whereas earlier on, the zip is the zipper is at a more modest level.

But there is actually something wrong with the execution of that scene.

You're right, because when Serverland, much as I love the moment, when Serverland, she goes, will you obey me, it's all a bit like, I think we needed another shot somewhere or there's a bit of editing that was required.

[08:32]

It's a bit clumsy, you're right.

And so as soon as you said, oh, you see, in directed invasion of time.

I go, oh, yeah, okay, that's what.

But it's true.

She's saying to her guards, oh, take take him.

Will you obey me?

And yet her arms are right in the way of the guards getting anywhere near Jarvi.

As if she's about to protect them by her sheer fabulousness.

Yes.

I will shield a song.

I will shield you from this madman.

But if Dudley Simpson had fed in the opening bars of a big spender, that precise moment, she could have just burst into it and it would have been absolutely fitting, not a tonal shift at all.

I mean, we absolutely will talk about the problems with this episode because they are Legion.

But there is more nuanced to it than you think at 1st glance.

So that scene where Servilane is completely unafraid of Jarvik, when he's holding a gun on her, and a guard's been knocked down like bowling pins.

She never sees her authority to him.

Never.

And she's always in control.

I'm somewhat reminded of the moment, and absolutely fabulous when Safie is appalled that the pictures in the newspaper of a political scandal. and and Safie goes, that's degrading and appalling for women. and Joanna Lumley goes, what do you mean?

[09:45]

She got the whip.

That kind of vibe.

Zevland doesn't actually have a whip, but she's server land, so she's got to worry.

No, and she only gives in in private when she's in her boudoir because there is no other word for that room than her boudoir.

It's a battle boudoir, isn't it?

I think.

Battle Boud with a purple lit corridor outside.

Yes.

But even then her instruction is, her instruction is, I should like you to do it again.

Like, she's in she's in command.

She says, you will now submit me to that disgusting and primitive integrating act again.

I just love the way she purrs that line.

It's a fabulous moment.

It's actually a prelude of the way the performance develops over the rest of this season and into the final season.

I think it's where I think the endgame of Serverland kind of properly kicks into gear.

[10:47]

I think it's this, it's a serverland that I know and love is basically from here on.

Oh, actually, not Switch, right.

From aftermath on.

Basically, it's when server layers, like when they just throw away any pretence at realistic performance and just go for it.

Jarvik is such an interesting artefact of the time, though, because, I mean, there was never any, there was never ever, you know, in a lot of these sort of BBC dramas.

There was never any men that in the modern, sorry, there were very, very few men that in the modern era now you'd look back on and think, oh, four, he's a bit of all right, they've always got this kind of weird, heavy, quite heavy features and quite, quite unattractive.

I mean, they're obviously what, like a sort of a straight producer in the 1970s thought was an attractive man.

They didn't actually ask someone who might actually find him attractive because this guy actually has done those sorts of roles.

Like he's, I mean, I know he goes on to be vanguard in terminus, and he's obviously let himself go in the few years, in the intervening few years.

But he's kind of playing heartthrobby type things in Emmerdale, isn't he?

[11:49]

that right?

Yeah, that's right. yeah He was Fraser Heinz's brother in Emmerdale for a year or two. in the early 70s.

Yeah.

So he was he was a housewife's favourite, I suppose, would be what sort of thing that was on his TV.

That's the phrase they used.

Well, that's what I think when I look at him.

I just go, oh, yuck.

Like, like, it's just completely the antithesis of what I consider to be an attractive man.

But it's that thing that like he doesn't like the computers, like he's sceptical of that.

It's that it's not hippie, hippie's not the right way because of course it's post hippie and is in no way hippie, but it's like that back to basics back to the caveman.

Like, you know, it's that Luddite sort of thing of we shun technology and technology is for wimps and for nerds and all that.

And I'm a real man because I know how to, I know how to beat people up with my fists, if you know what I mean. rather than hide behind all their magical technology and pretty guns and so on and spark the uniforms.

Yeah, and he has the respect of the men as soon as he speaks to, like you said, his very posh person who is a pilot.

[12:59]

I do remember how much I enjoyed fagging for you.

No, that, mate.

Maybe that needs, no, actually, we'll come to that later because there's a whole...

It occurred to me you could do an interesting parallel of her repressed Servilands repressed dysfunctional relationship with Travis with this.

Is he her ultimate rebound from Travis and maybe we're going to say this every week on seriously with every man she speaks to?

Because with Travis, it was all about repression and there was, you know, there were hints, but nothing more than that.

She was always too contemptuous of him to ever really, despite their shared fetish interest in terms of their clothing, perhaps.

But is this like the completely the antithesis of Travis as a different type of henchman.

I don't know.

I doubt I don't know if that much...

Yeah, I think of Travis continued into series C.

I wouldn't be surprised if the relationship, you know, with a 3rd actor, perhaps.

We can only...

Whether that relationship would have kind of become like that.

[14:01]

But we do get hints of that kind of serverland before.

Like, you know, you are the sexiest supreme commander, whatever the line is from whatever the episode is.

You know, so, so, Simon, are you talking?

We have seen that.

We have seen this side of...

No, I'm talking about Max from...

Carnell from Webber.

But, you know, it is, we have seen this side of Serverland kind of seducing or allowing herself to be seduced by the thing.

Do you think, are we supposed to, is the 1979 versions of ourselves?

Are we supposed to think that Jarvik is actually a bit of a dickhead?

Or are we supposed to think, yeah, he's he's my kind of guy?

I think it is interesting because I wasn't sure if it was trying to lampoon both the sexist stuff or and because it's trying to, I think it's trying to say something like everyone's incompetent this episode.

It doesn't matter.

You know, if you're a computer, you're a softron, or well, softron is the one that saves the day, but I wasn't sure if it was just trying to just be so ridiculously over the top that it's bound to fail.

[15:07]

I think that's what it was trying to say.

Like this guy is always just going to fail, right?

And it's so, and whether or not I was trying to say something about like overconfidence and macho and like who's more macho, Tarant or Jarvic or an Avon this week's going, you know what?

I'm not doing any fucking matcho at all.

I was going to play play with Iraq.

Avon's Villa this week, isn't he, basically?

He's off doing a little comedy side quest.

And there's that big explo- moment where there's that big explosion.

His rock makes everything explode.

And he just turned around and goes, sorry.

It's like...

Sorry?

unsarcastically.

Maybe they wrote some of that for Villa.

Going back to my previous point about this being my 1st Blake 7 episode.

This is therefore my 1st opportunity to see Avon.

And remember, I've seen Paul Taro in time in timeline. this is actually what I think this is how I'm introduced to the Avon character and I am incredibly captivated by this kind of thing where he's just going off and doing his own thing and just everyone else is getting in his way to find out what the Sopron does and what it actually is and gradually tricking everybody else into seeing slightly greater versions of themselves and so on.

[16:20]

I just love...

Simon, you must have enjoyed going back to series B and seeing Avon in that sort of secondary protagonist role to blade because that's really what he plays in this episode.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Well, I didn't like Blake, though.

So, you know, it may have been called Blake 7, but I don't have to like the title character.

But this episode is really positioning Taron as the captain of the ship and the leader of this crew. sort of more, I think, than sort of any other episode that there is.

So it's all about Tarrant versus Jarvik and Tarrant leading the crew and having to put up with Avon's plotting and doing things and taking Callie off the flight deck when he desperately needs her, and it's about his piloting skills and rolling the liberate, rolling the liberator.

Oh my god, that's really cool.

Yeah, it's trying to position him.

But to bring him back down to earth massively, you know, because he's like overconfident.

And it's like, oh, what could possibly be hidden in these, like, sheds they bought from B&Q and booted yellow that A1 has...

[17:26]

Wait, what do they do?

Right?

So this is not interesting, but it's obsessing me when they when they beam into that room, where they all are, with the wheelie thing.

Well, so Tarrant beams in first, says it's all clear.

Then he just opens the door and everyone else walks in.

They're on the freighter at this point, I guess. and then they just wheel the things out.

So I guess I'm trying to imagine them wheeling those things on coasters up that little jangly corridor that they've got, to the liberator, about that hose pipe.

Which is basically, why didn't they just beam the hole all over it, but you can't...

Why didn't they check them first?

God.

There was a lot.

I wrote that down and then Bloody Jarvik says at the end, did you know?

Jarv, very briefly, while he's having his post criticises the script.

Of course, Tarrant would be too arrogant to check what was in those boxes.

It's like, oh, yeah, you thought of that quite late in the drafting and I did that, didn't you?

Somebody added that.

I imagine Chris Boucher added that.

I think it's interesting.

This episode's a bit of an aberration because of its focus on Tarrant, and I think it might be an artefact of the original character who became Tarrant, who was meant to be the captain, quote unquote.

[18:34]

Um, and I think was meant to be maybe um, a federation officer who you weren't sure where his loyalties lied.

And so it's weird to hear Servland talk about Tarrant is doing this and Terrence doing that.

Like, he's the leader of the group now.

Yes.

When she's never even met him.

And later on, she says they are his crew, whereas you would just automatically think that she would assume was in command now.

Well, exactly, considering where they've been at the start of the season with the Battle of Wills between Avon and Serverland in aftermath.

This feels very, very odd that they get that single little exchange on the flight deck and that's it.

Paul Darrow is standing at the back of the crew, which is really, really unusual.

He's usually front and centre at this stage to sort of have him behind Tarrant and Dana is a really odd and unusual positioning.

Have you seen his comment about the script?

They just said, yes. after filming that episode?

I decided that if they would film a script like that, I'd have a go at writing one.

[19:36]

By which means it was a script which Avon, it is not an Avon episode, isn't it?

Oh, is this not infamously the episode where Jan Chappell decided she wasn't going to come back if there was going to be a 4th season?

There's a moment.

Really?

1st sees the Tiropan insect on location and you can just see her face and she just cannot disguise her absolute, almost disgust at having to act against this thing.

And I think that's the moment when she falls...

I've had enough.

I've had enough of this shit.

I can't do this.

It's like that Early Simpsons episode where is it Ralph Wiggam gets the that gets the Valentine's card or doesn't get a Valentine's card and you see his heartbreak and his face would go down. needed the freeze frame on Chan Chapel, and there's the moment she decided to leave.

Yeah.

But isn't but isn't the carapan thing so cute when it kind of bends over and sort of eats the little piece of carapan that Dana's thrown at the foetus, sort of goes...

Yes, a little munchy.

And it's just the way it wobbles off on location and wobbles off to its nest.

[20:40]

It's lovely, but you can understand the...

Yeah.

Well, Dana has to stand there screaming because she's got a bit of cobweb on her foot.

And it's like...

Someone, baby, it's 10 feet away from me.

And he just runs up to her and grabs hold her and just moves so 2 feet to the left.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's not good episode for female characters.

But, Peter, going back to your previous point about saying with Tarrant and so on like that, where the script comes from, being another captain, it's not that this was left over from the previous season and like that's supposed to be Blake.

And so Serverlaves just Blake and they've just literally replaced Blake with Tarrant.

I mean, it's very possible because we said during Volcano that Servland's commander in that, Maury is clearly meant to be Travis and is reacting as Travis and speaking to her in a way that none of her underlings except Travis have ever spoken to her.

So yeah, it absolutely could be a relic of that.

I don't know if it's probably already been covered, but in previous episodes, but that Stephen Pacey is a lot younger than the people, everyone else they were looking at to play Tarrant.

[21:48]

Like he's only 22.

And so I think...

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Some, yeah, the script was written with him and Jarvik having been old schoolmates, or, you know, that's how it's sort of talked about, but as Java, it's 10 years older than him, at least.

At least When I 1st saw this on video in the 90s, I just thought they've obviously just gone through the script and crossed out Blake and put in Tarrant.

I didn't realise that it had this other period of its development where it would have been a different sort of older character who was more captain-y in his aspect, which makes a lot of that make a lot more sense.

But it can also be that sort of thing where it's just lazy, like they've just decided that Taryn's going to be the captain and so that's just how the script's written and the fact that there's been no episode yet where Serverland is bet Tarrant kind of doesn't matter.

I mean, that's kind of the way television worked back then.

And that's certainly the way I was watching it.

I mean, having seen this first, but then seeing it subsequently in the broader context.

It didn't seem to really bother me.

I just thought, oh, well that's just the definition of how things are.

[22:48]

It's weird because I think there's a missed opportunity there because one of the problematic things about the episode is that it weirdly pitches Servlan as buttoned up and rigid.

Like, she's lost her practicality and her perspective through command, which we haven't really seen before.

And I think it might have been interrogated better with the relationship between Jarvik and Tarrant like that.

So you're looking at the point of difference being that Tarrant had become reliant too much on computers rather this instinct and that, and would learn the lesson by the end of the episode to rely on his instincts more.

That seems like a more natural interrogation of that.

Yeah, yeah.

There's one thing I really, really like about this episode, and it's just kind of dawned on me, is that the soft run thing is quite clever.

That it's defence mechanism as a life form, is making anyone around it think that it's more powerful than it is, like Aurak and the liberator crew when they think it's like Herculaneum and, you know, go faster stripes and everything.

[23:54]

I think there's some good ideas in there here and there, but it's just so, it's just so off-putting with just like how lame Jarvik's death is and like all these surplus labourers are just hanging around in a grass field.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

And the rock, Avon's pet rock could have been much bigger.

It's nice and subtle.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I guess they backgrounded it deliberately, so you weren't sat there thinking all the way through, oh, I bet he's going to do something with that at the end because they're trying to distract you from the fact that he obviously is.

Otherwise, why would it be there?

But a nice bit of dystopian dread feeling of those guys being left behind, you know, Survil and giving the order to abandon them all because they're heavier.

It's just a foreshadowing of a...

Yeah, that just started closing the coal mines at that point because it feels like it feels like...

What year is it?

This is 1980, so it's still quite early in her reign of terror.

[24:55]

Yeah, yeah.

The guard who gets his comeuppance.

It's clever because you really, the guard who's gloating at them and then gets left behind, sort of get, I don't know.

It's like at least at least one of the people who had a horrible death actually deserved it.

I wish Dana had shot Jarvik, though.

I think it's pathetic with the guard, just going, 0 shit, it went off in my house.

Yes, you know?

It's like David should have had so it's like, I am sick of this.

This guy's been pissing me off for the last 20 minutes, you know, of this episode.

I'm going to shoot him in the head or something.

But it just seems like such a lame...

No, no agency.

That's where it just, you know, all the campus does wear a bit thin when you're like, as a defence of it, because it is, they're just seems they just couldn't continents having the girl kill the big man, so he had to get shot by accident by another man instead, that actually would have been a much more fitting ending to it and would have done a bit of subversion of all the stuff that they've gone through.

Or even if Survland had just turned around and slapped him to death, I would have been up for that.

[25:57]

Grab that rock and smack it around the edge with it.

Now that would be a fitting.

I don't think this is a scriptwriter who's got any kind of subversive ideas in his head at all.

So this wouldn't have occurred to him to have Dana kill him.

It would be just an accident like that.

He thinks he's created a new Tarzan sort of character, doesn't he?

Oh, I thought you were going to say Target book.

I mean, how fabulous is it, though, to have Servoland on the Liberator for the very 1st time?

Yeah, it's easy to forget.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And commenting on teleporting.

Would she say something like, not unpleasant way to travel?

I mean, those scenes with her outwitting the crew, I think, are series high points where she outwits them with Zen.

It's amazing.

And we talk about Ben Steed and how he's obviously a man's man, but how does a man's man write dialogue this camp?

Servant teleports aboard and the 1st thing she says to Kelly is, ah, Kelly, how lovely to see you again.

[27:05]

It's on the scale.

It is.

This also this episode also has an interesting place in Blake 7 history as being the episode that was the 1st to inspire what science fiction erotica connoisseurs refer to as slash fiction to be published about Blake 7, just a few weeks after this episode was broadcast.

A fanzine published a story called License, which went in in a very, apparently, non-explicit way, but nevertheless made it clear.

The backstory of Jarvik and the young cadet who stole his heart, Dell Tarrant, and that it wrote, it wrote.

Oh, I wish everybody's faces could be screen caps.

Okay, we are recording.

Yeah.

I'll share a link to it. there on the internet behind lots of content warnings, but then you get to it and it actually says non-explicit.

Non-explicit.

But yeah, the 1st Blake 7 slash fiction to be written was about those two.

And apparently, Tarrant turned him against men forever.

[28:06]

I mean, you know, if I do for the moment that he is.

I don't know.

I haven't actually time to read it.

I think this is a very different kind of content.

I might have bought us if it was Jarvik and Captain Shadd.

Hello, sir.

We want to read your, we want you to write that fanfic now.

Benches of space, captain. 50 shades of great note.

Carry on, Captain Shad.

Sorry.

I do think that the heist elements in this are really well done.

Each side's plotting and counterplotting and backup plans.

It's very entertaining.

And I think that moment, there is a lot going on.

And there's a lot of things that should actually be quite consequential.

It's not as consequential as it should be with Serve Land 1st getting our hands on the liberation and that because like we said from voice from the past last year, the tone is very slightly misplaced in its campness for the gravity of the events that's going on.

[29:10]

But having said that, that moment where the chiropan cylinders open up and the guards come out and you just see the liberator moving off into space is terribly gripping.

And it's quite interesting that we don't actually see the crew being overpowered.

It just happened between scenes.

Yeah, and I think Joe Blake is very good with some economical things in this directing, like when we never see the shuttle on the ground.

We see the shot from behind the ladder of the cast climbing up the crew climbing aboard it.

He's got some tricks of the trade there and allows some things to be done off screen to save money, I guess.

Yeah.

But that's very, it's very refreshing because quite often you'll get some awful crappy spaceship taken off from a model sort of thing.

And we avoid all that by just, as you say, shooting it from the other way.

And yes, it does look a bit bizarre because we do just get this green field with this very wobbly fence in it.

And there's, there's nothing much beyond that, but it's kind of the equivalent of them saying, there are 1000s of them out there.

It's the same kind of principle.

We don't need to see a rubbish creation of that.

And so we don't get we don't get a crappy fight scene.

[30:11]

We don't get a crappy fight scene where they're being overpowered and liberated. towards the end of the episode.

We will get that.

The thing lifting off Chiros and floating through space.

So we do get that as well.

One of the things that I found interesting in this episode, and it's not something I'd picked up on before, is when Tarrance says there is no federation anymore, is there something that I've missed or something that is just a scripture problem, maybe it's an early draft of an early idea for the season, but this is something that have I have I missed something?

Or is it just Serverland is trying to get all her power back and every week she's using up her guard captains who then get killed off and she's trying desperately to put the empire together and then manages this by rumours of death when she's obviously completely back in control.

I mean, you get the impression that the Federation from series A and series B no longer exists.

[31:12]

It's now kind of serverland's personal fifedom.

And so she spends a lot of series C with things like children of our on thinking, you know, if we're going to get back on our feet, we have to have these planets which were neutral before.

But it's not really until series D when they have the Pylene 50 program, sorry, spoilers, that it actually starts to expand and become a federation again.

Yeah, that's a good point.

And we've lost references we often used to get to her saying things like, you know, as I have argued for years and there's this stuff in the past, she's had this bureaucracy to deal with that she was concerned about and we're not getting that anymore, are we?

That little Apollo space capsule. bigger on the inside, isn't it?

It is.

Seating for 5 just in case there might be 5 people.

I love the idea that they'd find something from the preinterstellar age.

And there's a nice call back in there where they just turn to Villa and say, yeah, open the roof.

You're good at opening things because he did that a few in Countown.

That's the one, yeah.

Nice little touch for him. don't need to go into that.

[32:12]

He's just dealt with that offscreen.

We not actually going to build a hatch in the roof of this abandoned military pace in hot.

Of course it was bigger on the inside.

Weren't you paying attention?

It's bigger and more powerful than the liberator.

Oh, of course, that merely my perception.

I imagine that in the script they might have hoped to have an image of the magnificent ship appearing on in Silverland's mind's eye on the screen.

Although surely what's being shown on the screen is what Zen thinks it is.

That's where you get layers, isn't it?

No, that's just the visual image, which is contrary to 37, the other 37 scanner.

That's addressed, isn't it?

Yeah, it is addressed.

Could Jarvik have stayed?

Could you have become a recurring character through this season?

Oh, God.

No, that would have been terrible.

Every week we'd have had to stop for a bit of a tournament between him and Tarrant sort of facing off against each other.

It's, yeah, it doesn't bear thinking about, really, does it?

And also, he's just a terrible...

[33:15]

Well, the writer of that class fiction would have enjoyed it, but I think it would have got a bit tiresome for everyone.

He's also just a terribly boring character.

There's nowhere to go with him because he's just a man and he doesn't trust technology. okay?

We get it.

Yeah, he hasn't got a sense of humour.

He hasn't got very much to him at all other than he doesn't trust technology.

He likes men and likes fighting and probably likes a...

He likes a company of men.

He probably likes...

Yeah.

Probably likes a good ale of an evening, like a real beer because that's a man street.

Space Nigel Ferrage.

But he does get the last laugh, though, because he is trying to say to Serverland, don't trust all this computer crap.

You can see that it's just, you know, the Apollo 11's spacecraft.

You don't need to, you know, what are you doing, you stupid cow.

And so I suppose that the moral of the, there is a sort of a moral of the story there, I guess.

[34:15]

Yeah, and maybe that's coming true.

Trust your own art.

This is coming true now when we're in this world where artificial intelligence is going to destroy the truth completely within a couple of years, you know?

All 5 of us, extravagant, you were extravagantly disposed to using 5 podcasters, will be replaced by 5 AI podcasters.

I've already been replaced.

Or have you?

The thing about Jarvik is, he does win.

He gets the liberator and very few other people have actually managed to take over the liberator.

Only Travis when he's dressed as Siobhan, which I know I shouldn't ever bring up ever again.

Stop, stop, stop.

Yeah.

But you know, he wins that.

And he is, as you said, he is absolutely right with Serverland saying, no, don't believe this.

This is absolute nonsense.

Since you did bring up Travis, can I just say?

How has Serverland heard of Zen's impudence?

[35:17]

Who from?

I think Travis must have given her a debrief from his time aboard, is she done?

He said, oh, that flight computer is so impudent server land.

I took offence at how rude Tarrant is being to Zen at the start of this.

I think it is, I guess it's meant to parallel, well, it does parallel, Jarvik being rude to Servoland, but like every time Zen says something, Taryn's like, yes, well, I do that, or, yes, just as I, just as I thought, after Zen gives him some information, it's like, no, you didn't.

Yeah, I didn't want to, I did not want to Tarrant at this point.

I think he just comes across as really smart.

Yeah, and then you've got Dana standing next to him saying, oh, you are brilliant. aren't you, Tarrant?

Aren't you so brilliant?

Look at this.

You done this.

Wow.

It's like she's just amazed.

Yeah.

To be in his presence, even.

He still teleports down like Spider-Man, though.

What dick?

This is a question we'll come back to sort of through this season.

[36:20]

Is Tarrant a pig?

No, he's not.

Has he done much too much, much too young?

Because if he has, that's the UK's number one for me this week.

Oh, you'll be playing it.

Excellent.

Even if we decide that Terrence's not a dick.

He has a dick and we know this because he is a man.

Well, okay, let's not go.

The camel toe incident on the location footage is not something that the family podcast needs to go into, would you?

I've seen it have not.

This has never been a family podcast.

I think the problem with Charon is that he's just inconsistently written throughout this particular season, and that's that's the main reason, and you're right, I don't really like him in this, and I don't really like him in City at the Edge of the World either.

But then later I do an earlier I do.

So it's just inconsistent writing because it's being written by people who haven't seen the character act yet.

The actor action.

Does Jacqueline Pierce ever commented on this episode, particularly, whether I know she often just says she has no memory of any of it.

[37:21]

It's quite hard to get precise quotes from her about anything.

I don't know if she ever did, whether she might have enjoyed just having something so different to play to what she usually had to play or whether she felt, you know, that it was putting her character in its place and teaching teaching her a lesson rather than giving her a little bit of extra dramatic territory to go into.

But yeah, I'm stretching there to try and analyse something that is really just a writer who wants to write Tarzan.

That's the way I've come to pass.

It is one of those weird things that even though I don't think it's a good episode for Serverland.

I don't think that what it does to her character is that great.

Perversely, she has some of her finest moments in this episode.

I mean, I think it's a great episode for her.

It's some of the some of the utmost iconic server land...

And no one can sip blue milk through a bendy straw quite as seductively as she manages to go.

[38:23]

Which is a real talent.

She did one of her most flamboyant ever photo shoots in the costume from this episode, and there are a number of amazing photos of her posing in this costume, sort of on a big blue background, and she does look amazing.

It's like, I have get the feeling she really enjoyed this one.

There's the way that she walks onto the bridge of the Liberator.

It's pure catwalk.

She triumph comes down that staircase.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's coming down those steps in our heel.

She had no other option.

That's true, yes. boy, that's not a stylistic choice, is it?

How the hell do I get down at staircase?

I think the problem is that even though Servland actually, as we said earlier, doesn't cede her authority in this episode and remains in command.

There's 2 things.

There's one, it's problematic through a modern lens that Jarvik grabs her and kisses her without her permission, um, and it turns out that women supposedly like that, judging by her reaction to the company.

[39:28]

That is absolutely...

And that's what the message of this episode is.

But also, I think on another level, it places Servland as being the irrational woman, quote unquote, who won't believe the evidence of her own eyes versus the rationality of hard-working salt of the earth Jarvik.

And that just doesn't really sit that well.

No, that's not the person that we've known.

I don't think that's a masculine versus feminine thing.

I think that's just a someone who surrounds themselves with technology versus someone who wants to surround themselves with like the natural world, however, that's defined.

Yes, absolutely.

I think that's what he is, which is why I said earlier that I think this particular plot might have been better played out with Java and Tarrant.

Yeah.

Just with the unrequested kiss that Jarvik gives Servoland and that she subsequently decides, you know, she really enjoyed and she'd like to do it again.

You have to remember that decades after this is made.

This isn't something that was then suddenly terribly problematic like a couple of years after, 10 years after, even 20 years after, because 20 plus years after this is made.

[40:34]

When Adrian Brody wins the best actor, Oscar and Halle, presented by Halle Berry, he goes up to the stage and basically dips her and gives her this massive kiss.

Now, which she on the lips for an extended period of time.

Now that's, I don't know what year that is. 2001 or 2 or something, something like that.

Either way, it's more than 20 years ago now, but it's also more than 20 years since then.

And that was just seen as something that was acceptable and fun.

Because the following year, Adrian Brody, when he's then presenting the next year's best actress, Oscar, he then, before he says, and the winner is, he then gets a little mouth freshener thing and goes in his mouth as if he's about to kiss the winner of the best actress.

This is something that was just considered normal and funny this century. you know what I mean?

So that's why I think we can get carried away.

A bit.

No, I think this would have got criticism in 1980, though.

There would be, you're right, people were still getting away with it.

But just, yeah, I know what you mean, though.

Yeah, but people would still get away with it.

The tide has not yet turned.

[41:36]

Yeah, but there was certainly.

But it's also interesting what you say there, Pete, about criticism from the time because this was the episode that Clive James infamously reviewed.

And he absolutely lambasts it as worthless.

Everything except for the fact that it has a quote unquote statuesque knockout in it.

And so the only thing that he's concerned with is the fact that Servaland is sexy.

And Clive James, who you think would be a more erudite commentator on things, has no words about the gender politics.

So clearly it is seen as pretty normalised.

Exactly.

It's just, it's just like, I mean, there were, there were, yes, Prime Minister. minister episodes about where there's kind of a sort of a, not anti-feminist per se, but where there's kind of they're taking the Mickey out of the feminist character.

And it's, it's, it's just the, quite a typical storyline of that era.

And I, as you were saying before, Peter, about the sort of the campness of the script, it just, it just sort of, it almost doesn't go together that you've got this, this, this man's man saying that, you know, men are this and and I'm going to kiss you because I, because you woman, you are beautiful.

[42:42]

And then overlay all that with all this kind of bizarre camp dialogue.

It's an interesting toxic position.

Yeah.

And it's the kind of thing you'd get in Barbara Cartland books, which I do from very small, a very small insight into that world because I once bought a huge box of them for a pound and I gave them to all my mates at Valentine's Day.

For several years.

For several years, I gave them to all my friends at Valentine's Day and never told them who they were from.

Oh, it's coming out amazing again.

Are they full of women being kind of just, you know, spontaneously kissed by some allegedly...

They wanted to be... completely...

Ravaged...

Simon, do you remember the lyrics of that fascination?

song where they talk about historical romances and they said there's women being ravaged and it's always furtive.

Yeah.

It was like the Benny Hill.

I mean, you know, Benny Hill doing all those kind of, you know, titty tits and bums sort of thing, you know.

And basically women just being casually groped in all of these programs and it's funny that they are, you know?

[43:47]

And in fact, you even hear, you even hear stories about the actors making fun of the women and groping them and flashing them and all that kind of the rest of it, you know, as part of the, that was just normal.

It was terrible.

It's nasty.

It isn't like the treatment of women that we get in Moloch later in the series by Ben, again, by Ben.

And it's just gnawing up.

It is a bit, which is vicious.

This one at least is played for fun.

Whereas there's a real sinister undertone, I think, in Moloch, and again, in power in series D, about that he is making about the position of women and what they're for.

This one at least has Serverland standing up for herself and not taking it until she is ready to take it and she's got some power and some agency.

Yes, whereas characters like Chesil in Moloch have nothing, nothing at all other than a tight denim catsuits.

[44:48]

Yeah, and the opportunity to be given to their men.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, he gets worse, I think, which is a big problem.

As Pete said, this is just him warming up.

Yeah, it's like the opposite of the trial of a time lord.

Is your defence?

Did you improve?

No, my defence is it gets much, much worse in the future.

The women are not helpless in this episode.

They're not, I mean, Callie and Dana are not particularly well written, but they do have some agency, and I think this is lost in his later scripts.

I wonder how much of that is also the way it's performed as well.

I wonder.

And there's just no room for that in those other those later 2 scripts too.

Could be.

Or either.

No, I was just going to say, I mean, I mostly agree with what Si is saying there.

And I think because this is so cant, this episode, there is also room for that redemptive reading of the fact that this is a piss take of masculinity.

But actually, the thing that I find the most difficult to take about this episode, regardless of the gender politics, that, you can make that, it's a legacy of the time, it doesn't particularly affect my enjoyment of the episode.

[45:58]

I think there's several moments where the female characters are roughly manhandled, and I don't like to see that.

So Jarvik picks up Servland, throws her onto the, let's say, bed, and then grips her by the throat before telling her to shut up, which is not pleasant at all.

And there are other moments, like when Tarrant goes to find Callie in the quarters with Avon, and he physically pulls her away from Avon and pushes her out the door and, you know, the less said about Dana versus Johann, the best.

But yeah, and I think that moment with Callie could be on the liberator could be as much of it. everyone, right, obviously there's the moment where she's confronted with the prop, but I think in terms of her character, if I'd been on a show for that, you know, nearly 3 years and you're now just the woman who gets shoved aside so that 2 men can have an argument, who wants that for a career?

Yeah, I find that much more difficult to watch than kind of the idea of the gender politics.

And the over the shoulder bit. is deliberately take it into absolute fast by doing that sort of caveman move.

[46:59]

It's almost like I think he's trying to be a parody, even if the script isn't actually necessarily telling him to, and the scriptwriter's later work indicates that he's quite sincere, that that is what he thinks real men ought to be like.

But I think you've got, and sometimes that can make things the output that you end up with more interesting when you have got a script pulling in one direction and then either the actors or the director trying to either compensate for it or put their own spin on it and I don't know if I'm reading too much into it.

But that over the shoulder moment was like something from a Captain Caveman cartoon.

It is, but then it's followed by the most horrible bit, which is his hand on her throat, which is, again, did they even think about it?

Did they just say that's what it says in the script, let's do it.

Or did they try to put some layers into it?

It's hard to dissect.

I mean, are they still doing that thing?

Yeah, are they still do they do that thing like the way Doctor Who was shot, where you have, you know, a week at acting or whatever the hell it is, rehearsing it all, and then they go into the studio on Friday night and do it.

[48:00]

So those are the sorts of things that are...

I mean, look, maybe that's the sort of thing that's developed in the rehearsal room and then, or maybe it's just the kind of thing that when they actually get on the set, in the studio and there's this couch there and he goes, oh, I could do this.

And we do that during the camera rehearsal and that kind of sticks.

It'd be interesting to know the origin of that because if it has been built up and developed over the course of that week to be then filmed on the Friday night or whatever it is, it is odd that no one has thought that there's anything wrong with that.

But as I said before, it's so hard to apply our current knowledge of what is appropriate behaviour to stuff like that that just appears.

It's just that's just littered throughout television and film of this era and before.

And since.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's an interesting, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a lot more about this episode, which I really do like.

Oh, no, you can't.

I don't think you can use you can say that...

No, no, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that some people...

[49:04]

I think they're more worried about other things than her being picked up and thrown onto the sofa, isn't, aren't they?

Like the other the other elements you're sort of saying you don't mind so much, the woman you are beautiful, et cetera.

Or just the crap monster.

It's one or two.

Is it a crap monster?

Oh, well, that's a that's a whole different reason.

That's a whole different reason.

We're talking about the problematic. genre category.

So is there anything we've missed?

I was just going to say one more thing about the Jarvik juxtaposing him with Avon.

He is, especially with Avon carrying on about the Sopron and all that sort of stuff and being the computer guy.

Jarvik is the anti-Avon.

And Avon is our hero.

So I don't think that's just, for me, the interesting juxtaposician.

I would never, even if I'd have seen this, you know, when I was a kid, I would never have identified with the Jarvik character, I would always have identified, and I wouldn't have identified with Tarant either, actually, I'd have always identified with either Avon or Villa.

[50:05]

Okay, it's Avon that tells Tarrant to kind of, oh, shut up when he's about to sort of eulogise Jarvik.

It's like, oh, you know, we just had enough of this kind of guy.

Yeah, and Avon and Avon gets that moment bursting in when they're all being overwhelmed by the guards the 1st time when they're, uh...

So it was inevitable... little moment.

Yes, the script doesn't forget that however clever Tarrant and Java are meant to be in the Battle of Wits, Avon is still cleverer than both of them.

Yeah, he's just got something more interesting to do this week as far as he's concerned with his rock.

I absolutely love his put down of them all saying present company.

He's going full on Darrow to juxtapose all the nonsense going on around him.

And I like that.

Do we think this is where he where Avon starts to just become Paul Darrow?

Do you think that's already happened?

Yeah, I think we're already there, aren't we?

[51:05]

Yeah, I was done. yeah.

There is certainly a line you can draw between the bigness of Jackie Pierce's performance and the bigness of Paul Darrow's performance and it's just whoever is ahead at the time.

Thank you, listening, as 5 guys deal with sexism, we can.

Other opinions and possibly more insightful ones are available, but we're just here to talk about what we want to see.

And yes, it's interesting that none of the, none of the female members of our posse signed up to do this episode.

Una wants Una wants to do power because she said that that's what made her a feminist.

So we're in for a trial.

Fantastic.

And she's seen she's seen all the notes that the BBC, I think, sent Ben Steed back when she went to Caversham.

So that's going to be interesting.

Oh, of course.

Oh, wow.

She's had access to the...

So she knows about the episode we could have got as well as the episode we did get.

That's going to be very interesting.

[52:06]

Can I be controversial and say that I think Power is absolutely Ben Steed's best script.

Okay, we're going to get you just earned yourself a place on that episode, Peter.

Just, yes.

I was about to say, if Power made Una a feminist, and this episode made me at like 70, I'd say the thing we can take away from that is Moloch didn't make anyone anything.

That is what I would say.

Awesome.

So thank you for listening to our degrading and primitive podcast.

We should like you to do it again.

Good night.

Bye.

Bye bye.

Goodbye, sir.

Switching to manual.

Maximum power on all drives.

Maximum power.