Maximum power.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast, where finally, after 3 years, we've got an episode all about Villa, and an episode where Simon and Mark are meeting for the 1st time.
I'm Cy.
Hi, Mark.
I'm Pete.
I'm Simon.
So, yeah, so here we are.
We've got Chris Boucher back for his 1st episode of series C.
We've got an episode that focusses on Villa after his young children ask, why do you never get an episode all about you, daddy?
And so he, Michael Keating apparently went to the production team and said, look, isn't it about time?
I got an episode where I get to be the hero.
Can I be the goody for a change?
And we've also got an incredible guest star.
Well, I say an incredible guest star.
We've got a series of incredible guest stars.
So, Mark, what did you make of this episode?
I really liked it.
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about the fact that we haven't had Villa before as the as the focus of the episode, but I think he's so charismatic and he's, yeah, it's such a funny likeable character.
It's weird that the writers didn't think of that themselves.
And I think, yeah, it really comes with Trump's here.
And like you say, guest star wise, you know, Colin Baker is fantastic in this episode.
You can see he's got kind of leading man potential.
And I think he just delivers that sort of Blake 7 tough guy dialogue, a lot better than a lot of guest stars have across the episodes.
Can I throw a different view in about Colin, if I may?
Because I absolutely love his doctor.
That is a very important era of the show for me growing up.
But I sort of watch this and I'm trying to work out whether he's okay or terrible.
No, I think he's got the bride.
I think he's got the Brian Blessed memo and it's we've already had Bli and Brian Blessed.
Give you gives a bit of a Brian Blessed.
I think he wants to be Brian Blessed.
Please tell me he doesn't listen to this podcast.
It starts out as a very grumpy episode.
I know like they're all just really cross at the start.
Yeah, that Tarant Villa confrontation at the beginning is quite off putting, I've always found.
It feels out of place for me.
I could toss you off this ship at any minute is a line to a bit mean to mean.
I know that's important because it has to set certain things up.
He has to be mean to be in order for certain other things to happen, but it's just a bit off putting for me.
But, yeah, I mean, I love the episode, I should say, up front.
I'm not, you know, I think it's a really great episode and it's quite an important one to me.
I'm just picking at it.
All right, what is the podcast for?
It's not.
You may have talked about this last week, but I find it odd the way Tarrant has become, like, the main guy, and I'm guessing this is because they didn't know maybe that Gareth Thomas was leaving, so he stepped into the Blake role of driving the missions and, you know, kind of being the leader, but it doesn't massively feel earned so far.
It feels like there's been some offscreen adventures that we haven't seen that have built this amazing reputation for him and and now he's sort of in charge of the liberator.
Yeah, there's very much something that we've just covered in last week's episode on the harvest of Cairos, where Tarrant has been positioned as the leader, sort of unexpectedly, and it's not something that lasts for very long.
And we did wonder whether that was because the character was originally designed to be an older guy who was a Federation captain who you weren't supposed to be sure whether he was good or bad.
And so there was sort of maybe sort of more of a history and more of a almost Blake-like presence sort of within the crew who would take command of things like this.
So it doesn't quite work with Terence sort of being a younger man as well.
So it sort of comes across really badly and Tarrant doesn't come across well in this episode at all.
It's quite interesting writing from Chris Boucher because he's obviously done it deliberately and Stephen Pacey plays it really well.
So he's very, very menacing in those early scenes with Villa, but it doesn't make the the audience warm to the character at all when he's only sort of 5 or 6 weeks into the series at this point.
Well, it is halfway.
Yeah, because like now in our eyes, I imagine, it's all so obvious that Avon should end up being the leader.
Were they hesitant at the start that Avon's got such a distinct point as being the one who's rebellious and not the leader and that's what makes him interesting?
Were they wary of, of, uh, in some of these scripts of just putting Abon at the helm of the whole thing in these early episodes before eventually deciding, yeah, of course, we're going to do that, is Paul Farrow.
Yeah, I mean, I think I do think where the scripts were designed to be Blake or not, and, and, you know, they probably weren't, who knows, but I think it is just that lazy sort of 70 style TV thing that they do that, you know, you're basically replacing a character with a kind of a carbon copy of that same character.
And so I think that's how it's written.
And also going to the sort of the nastiness.
I wonder how much that's to do with the fact that, you know, this is supposed to be adult science fiction and they're supposed to be, you know, outlaws and we don't want them all chummy and getting onto.
Well, you know, they've got there's got to be conflict within the group and all that sort of stuff.
So, and that's why I wonder whether it's a little, feels a little bit manufactured here or unnatural, especially by this point, like halfway through the season.
It's like, whoa, where did that come from?
Where does this argument come from?
I'll throw you off the ship and all that. doesn't sit right.
It doesn't sit right, does it?
No.
Okay, I think there was also some kickback from Paul Darrow on the early episodes where Avon was written a bit more heroically than he had been before and a bit more of a goodie, and I think there's speeding from Paul that that wasn't true to Avon after that had been established for 2 years.
So I think there's a bit more of a pull back on Avon for a little while and then he comes back to the 4 again later on.
It's lovely that sort of Avon says he finds Villa really irritating, but he knows that he's got a place in this crew that is irreplaceable because he said you can get a good pilot anywhere, but thieves are really a good thief is really rare.
That's almost like touching from Avon.
We don't get moments like that.
And it's interesting that he would never say that to Villa's face.
Yeah, yeah, that nice moment, yeah, where he's just been really horrible to Villa.
And then he goes out of his way to engineer a system so they can take keep track of Villa because to look after him or at least track his digestive system if he had swallowed that thing. like that.
He seems to have he seems to have come to a halt out behind a bush about...
Yeah, you don't want to beam down there.
It's quite subtle, I think, as well with Avon that he obviously does actually care about Villa, but won't say it and he sort of hides it behind your sort of pragmatism, doesn't he?
And saying, oh, well, you know, we need his skills, but there is, you know, there is an element that he obviously does care about him and, you know, he sort of, you know, saved him a couple of times, so it's nicely done that it's not over the top.
You just you just get it from the performances.
And there's that nice, just that little, almost warm, welcome back villa that you get at the end from Avon, again, which is just acknowledging it, just enough.
And it's, it's just really, it's a really nice performance from Paul Darrow, I think.
Really, really good character work.
You're saying that this was written with Villa in mind to be very much the central character?
And he really does.
Michael Keaton really does such a spectacular job.
He's one of the few actors in this kind of program who can basically sustain a whole lot of dialogue with themselves.
Do you care what it was?
Do I care what it was?
You know, all those all those kind of things are just so nicely delivered, whereas in the hands of another actor, it would all be a bit forced and dicky and stilted, don't you think?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, he's spent 2.5 years playing this character in the background with to various degrees he's been around the show.
I think he seizes every single opportunity in this script to play it beautifully.
I love those monologues where all those sort of bits of dialogue where he's talking about the designer of the force shield and why he's done this because it shows that he's really intelligent and really smart and clever.
And because none of the rest of the crew are there, he can almost naturally show off this side of him that he doesn't get a chance to show among the others because he doesn't want them to know what he's really like, that joy he has in the line where he just says 002.
This is like he, he completely admires the person that is his sort of nemesis who is designed this force wheel, this false wall that he's got to break.
And it's just that little admiration, but also that showing that he's really clever and he's worked it out and he knows what to do.
Yes, but he can make just something which is 3 numbers.
And, you know, he could have said 747 or something.
But he, he, the, and Michael Keith is able to actually give it meaning like those numbers mean something to that, to that character that he's playing.
And it's, it's, he, he's really underappreciated, I think, and comes to the fore in this episode. flushes out the other week when he'd crashed in the escape pod and he was on his own and he's, you know, pretending to talk to these, these, these men that he's supposed to have, you know, stationed around.
So, you know, it was almost like an audition piece, isn't it, to get his own episode because I thought those scenes with him were brilliant.
And yeah, all that stuff about the way his philosophy is that when he's trying to break into somewhere, it's a contest between him and the person who designed it and he needs to know what's being protected because that will feed into what protection systems they would use.
Yeah, you really get a real insight into the way he works, so his mind works, and then, you know, jumping forward a bit, you know, why he can't see him just settling down as a pioneer on a planet that's got absolutely no, you know, kind of no infrastructure or anything.
But he does assume that the design's a man, doesn't he?
Which, you know, is not very, not very enlightened.
Well, that might be because the sidekick that he's acquired for this sequence goes from being this hardened criminal and bodyguard and so on to suddenly being this girly girl who screams at things.
She does the full gener in 45 minutes, basically.
They really...
They really crack.
She does it in the space of one scene, basically. where he's describing to her all about the guy who's or the person who's designed the force field and the whole system.
Basically, she transitions in that one sequence and then by the time you see her again, she's dolled up in the local outfit and got her hair done.
I think it's as soon as she's away from Baban and the rest of the sort of mercenaries, isn't it?
So it's like the act is when she's around the rest of that team.
And this is the real...
And then the... parallel with last week, but...
Yes, yes, yes, a bit more softly doing.
It's really a woman underneath.
And all the things about how smelly she is. the opening station.
I don't imagine that. don't imagine villains all that.
I don't imagine villas all that fragrant, but we don't go. that's what they call negging, isn't it?
Oh, God, yeah.
It's not a good message that it works so effectively.
And she's um, and Carol Hawkins.
I've just been googling it.
Yeah, because she's been in a couple of carry-ons, lots of sitcoms.
She's a familiar face from mainly from sort of, yeah, sitcoms and things like that. isn't she?
All through the 80s and 70s.
So does she play more the kind of the Dolly Bird role or...
Yeah, generally.
Yeah, she's sort of, yeah.
She's got those eyes.
Very much the standard beautiful woman of 70s sitcoms and things like that who turn up for an episode and sort of seduce the lead character or something like that for an episode, that kind of thing.
And I know Michael Keating was really pleased that she got to play Carol because he said she was just outstanding and Bill got a beautiful woman.
And she, yeah, and she's really good at it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't like that sort of 70s when she is dolled up.
There's that 70s hairstyle very, very late.
I've never liked that hairstyle.
Maybe it goes traumatised by it as a child or something.
But I actually prefer the grunge hairstyle, which she's got.
It's a bit more punk, you know.
But and even when they do, even in that environment.
There are still moments where her and him are figuring things out together.
So she's she's searched, she still has a little... useless.
No, no, she does have agency. just the fact that she just says it's complete 180.
Yes. on a dime, as they say.
She's very much written like a 70s Doctor Who companion.
Yes.
He was a big gutsy.
And um, a bit scared, but she's going to do it any she's very much like Sarah Jane.
She's going to do it anyway.
And Villas turned back, but she's going to go through.
She's going to see what happens.
And she, yeah, she's going to do it. an excellent comparison.
So can we get me to Colin Baker, if I may?
Yeah, yeah.
Isn't he young, isn't he handsome?
Oh, well, I wouldn't go that far.
But he is certainly young.
But just to put him in context because it's not a program that we got out here, which was the brothers because this is what basically he's kind of known for.
Is that right at this at this point?
Yeah, he's a bad guy.
He's the man you love to hate on...
But also, but from a few years ago, isn't it?
That was that was mid-70s.
Oh it's already a few years by then.
Oh, he kind of, yeah, he was he was flavour of the week 4 or 5 years earlier and is now doing character parts like this, yeah.
Yeah, he hasn't been on TV for a little while.
So there's sort of little breaks in his career every so often where he goes off and does fear to work sort of off the back of something that's really popular and then makes almost like his big TV comeback.
So I think he viewed this very much as I've got a role on TV and I'm going to seize this.
I'm back.
And he does seize it with both hands.
He does.
And it's not...
I mean it's not really a huge role.
Well, he's a character that they meet, but, you know, he's one of those Blake 7 characters that you get who's part of the web of the story, but it's not like he's the someone with a master plan that they have to face down.
It's not quite that lead buddy of the week thing.
He more just part of the puzzle that they're solving.
I suppose my problem with these performances is that, I mean, I know it's a kind of, you know, cardboard cartoon part and, you know, he's being a baddie villain and he's a thug and all that kind of stuff.
But I just can't believe it.
I just don't believe it when I'm watching him back.
And I know that in these kind of, you know, BBC multi-camera dramas of this era, and before and after, everyone's performing with these terribly plummy voices and they're all being very tough and everything.
And for some reason it works, I can believe it.
It all kind of works within the setting that we're watching.
Whereas for here, I just find him far too obvious and mannered.
And I sort of feel like I'm watching Colin Baker give a performance as opposed to, I'm watching an actor.
Well, I'm watching a performance.
You know what I mean?
I don't know if I'm explaining that right.
Yeah, because sometimes the dialogue and the performance are working against each other, I think, in certain scenes.
So Colin delivering lines like you stupid son of a slime ball doesn't quite work, does it?
No, I love it.
I'm going to defend.
I'm seeing the process, but I'm seeing the acting process.
I'm seeing him say, I'm going to make this face or I'm going to raise my voice in this way when I say that line in that way and it's going to communicate this.
I'm kind of seeing it all.
It is a choice.
Seeing behind the curse.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, there's one way of putting it.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think it is, but having played a sort of a businessman, a baddie who was just doing boardroom shenanigans and backstabbing deals and things, I think that's why he's going a bit more off the leash here.
But I don't think it's as, I remember people joking around the time of time lash.
None of the cast had ever said this, but it became the sort of received fan joke that Paul Darrow decided to go really over the top in time lash to try and steal the limelight in the same way that Colin Baker had done when he was in Blake 7, but they hardly get any scenes together.
It's like, he's mainly, he's only stealing the, you know, he's only got his hench persons around him, in most of his scenes, or Valentine Dial, who we've not got to yet. legend, British TV, radio, and film.
Radio mainly.
It seems like really a huge star in the 40s and 50s when 1000000s and 1000000s of people were listening to the radio before TV even came along.
And I think that was what made him a real household name to the extent that when he turns up in things like this and Doctor Who and Secret Army.
He's a real high calibre special guest that your mum and dad will go, oh, that's him, you know.
He's that kind of tier of guest, isn't he?
doing his bit tier.
Yes, and then he'll say that the answer to Life of the Universe and everything is 42.
But the way he sort of says gives everything everything he says, like he could just say hello and it would be terribly portentous.
There's a wonderful story that Mark Strickson told about working with him.
He said, oh, we said, how do you get that really deep gravelly voice?
And he said, oh, come to my dressing room.
He said, and I'll show you the secret.
And it was just, he'd had, um, he was just smoking a pipe.
And it was just that, that, that was enough, just be, just before he went on stage almost, or in front of the character just to get that gravel and that part of his voice to work. started doing that before podcast.
Yeah, I thought the pipe would make it more gravelly, whereas this is more, this is just so rich and deep and it's just impossible.
It's impossible to mimic, like, you know, in the same, it's like the opposite of when a soprano sings and glass shatters.
It's like whatever the opposite, like things assemble because he speaks, like, you know, it's almost like he is the voice of God, you know, let there be light, and they'd be, you know.
And he could deliver those portentous lines about the future of Kazan and that bit where he's delivering the monologue on the spaceship about what the plan has been and how clever they've been and the reversion to primitiveness, as you just believe, every single word is saying, because it's delivered with such richness and gravitas.
His voice on the spaceship, isn't it?
Yeah, it didn't need to be, did it?
There's no plot reason for it to be the same voice.
No, in fact, it's kind of a bit odd plot-wise.
It just so happens that his ancestor had exactly the same voice.
If you've got Valentine's.
Especially because when he's the when he's the present day character, he barely says anything.
So, you know, it's not making best use of his best talents.
Well, that made me think that that was going to be the reveal that he was 1000s of years old and that he had designed the door that they can't get through and the portal and everything like that.
So I thought when they got back and Villa and Kerrill would recognise his voice and go, oh, you've been my opponent because they made such a thing of a villa, you know, kind of playing this contest against an opponent that that was all going to tie together.
So yeah, I found that odd when that didn't happen, really.
See they don't think these things through properly.
Quick, let's focus voucher in 1980 and tell him.
It's a better idea actually.
I like how it plays with a lot of the curse of the mummy's tomb kind of things, you know, that are going through these puzzles.
A bit better than the ones we get in Death to the Daleks, as they yeah, have to navigate.
Well, but in some reason, yeah, but in some respects, we saved all that because all they do, all he does is get through a door because Carol just opens the door to the teleport thing.
There's no like, there's not some stupid puzzles that they've got to do over and over again.
No, they've just got to walk down a corridor and open a door and stand on a dais and it's done.
Yeah, they've honed it down to the fact that actually you don't need to do 6 puzzles doing one is fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they really draw that out with, you know, with the villa talking to himself.
But I love the teleport effect, which is different for both of them when they stand on the dais thing in that other room.
It's so simple, but it's incredibly effective that all something funky has just happened.
That's one of the 1st uses of Quantel in Blake 7 as well to manipulate the image so that you could get that image and move it further away by manipulating the picture digitally rather than trying to do an analogue effect.
So it works...
Without seeing seeing the studio surrounds.
Exactly, yeah. and having to pull back so far just to get this one shot.
It's a really nice and it's quite a subtle effect.
And then we go to this spaceship and Villa and Carol, get it on, which is just incredible.
And for Blake 7.
This never happens.
Well, it's implied that it happened last week.
Oh, that's true.
I think we do see Servland postcord.
I think she'd like us to do it again, you know.
I think Michael Keating went to the producer and says my kids have been asking why I never get a love scene with a beautiful woman.
Had they really, Michael?
Or what you just say, exactly.
But it does lead to one of my favourite and funniest moments in Blake 7 where Villa and Carol start to kiss and sort of beginning to undress.
And then we go to a big close-up of the liberator prawn. just makes me howl every single time I see it.
And I just think, be a Lorimer, you know what you're doing here.
You've got the idea.
It's a bit different to panning to the fireplace.
Yes.
When there's so much dialogue about Kerol's legs.
Why do nobody think to put her in a dress that doesn't cover up her legs entirely?
It seems like one of those sort of weird disconnected things that would have made more sense if she'd been in a shorter skirt.
Yeah, otherwise it's like you've got beautiful calves, you know, because that's kind of all you'd see.
Ankles, yeah.
Ankles, yes.
But yeah, and Villa getting the one small step for a man.
So how do I get back?
He's still always so true to his own character.
It's lovely having the whole the rest of the, and so the rest of the gang basically are teaming up to try and rescue him.
Well, as the B plot is, they're hot on his heels coming to his rescue if he needs them.
And that just gels really nicely of them of a unit and we get Dana's little cyber mat that she's invented, which seems to trundle across the floor quite slowly and blow up in a gullible person's face.
She could just chuck it up.
I am still trying to work out, where did she hide that?
Because she teleports that?
And there is no, there's no bag. that she is... definitely not got pockets on that cat suit.
No No, I think it's one of those just just add water or something and I just think this is, there it is.
Very unfortunate.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
All right, Trunket.
Good point, Mark.
It's actually interesting going back to that kind of the, well, not just this suggestion, but the very obvious suggestion that they've had sex.
Because, I mean, we are supposed to, the whole, one of the points of Blake 7 is that it's an adult science fiction series and you're supposed to have this kind of stuff.
And it just doesn't happen very often.
It barely happens at all.
It is it's surprising that it didn't that there aren't more sequences like that.
Once the relationship started to develop, I did start to really worry about Carol because I thought I can't really imagine her joining the crew.
So I thought she was going to, I thought she was going to die at the end of it, which, yeah, it was, you know, kind of, because it was, because she, it's quite a likeable character by that and Villa was obviously, you know, kind of really fond of her and everything.
So I was quite pleased that she didn't die, albeit that they're separated.
And yeah, do you think that Villa was changing his mind?
Because it seems like when she says to Phil, when Carol says to Phil, I love you, and he says, oh, Carol, and it seems like maybe he's about to change his mind before Baban comes in, how did you read that?
But I read it that he was tempted.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's very much the case, and particularly when he's thinking about it at the end where he says, I've made the biggest mistake of my life.
Well, I may have, yeah.
But I really love the way that he's very protective of her and he sends her through the door so that she is not going to be killed and he steps up and takes on Baban so that she is saved.
And this is something we see in Villa every so often, which is just this fascinating, sort of almost survival instinct that he's got that he will, if his life is threatened or someone that he really likes is threatened, he will step up and do something.
So there's a lot of very fascinating things about Villa in this episode that come out that I really like.
And Chris Boucher does the character proud.
I mean, yeah, Mark, I really like that sequence at the very end where, you know, he says, I may have made the biggest mistake in my life, and he was really, he was, was he thinking, was he actually changing his mind, and David comes in literally like 5 seconds too early.
Otherwise, he would have also run through the door with her.
It's a shame that we don't get a little bit more made of that in that last scene.
Like there isn't a little bit more melancholy.
I mean, there's not much in the program that has that kind of melancholy, but it would have been, it could have been a really nice moment just to sort of ran that home.
Yeah.
Yeah, because that planet was beautiful, as they say, wasn't it?
I don't know.
Rockpool.
That was an unfortunate production choice that was full storm, was it?
Because it was supposed to be filmed on location.
And they'd found a beautiful location, but the weather was dreadful.
I mean, the weather, when they're outside in this episode, is absolute, you could see the rain pouring down on them and they couldn't, and there was high winds and all sorts, so they weren't able to film the sequence on location in a beautiful place as they expected.
That's interesting.
So they had to mock it up in the studio.
Right, because with a little pool and the lovely moonscate, which was just bizarre.
Because that was, I had that noted down.
I thought, why on earth would they not have a lovely luscious bit of forest or something?
And, you know, because it's just the 2 of them on location.
It would have been so easy to do.
So that's a great explanation.
But even if it was raining, couldn't they couldn't just make it like this, pretend it was tropical and misty rainforest or something, add a bit of smoke machine or something.
I don't know, but yeah, it's very unfortunate that they're supposed to be on this ideal planet and it just looks like this bizarre moon, complete with black sky.
I mean, it's not why are they leaving this beautiful...
Stop somewhere you could have settled down.
All the population, all of the population of this planet to walking through this portal to get to this planet.
They're better off staying where they were.
There's no reason, like, it's not clear, apart from the fact that they want to be able to colonise other planets in the soul, in the whatever solar system it is.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why they need to leave the planet that they're on.
Is there?
I understood it that because when they become technology advanced again, that they need other planets nearby to spread out onto, which is why their civilisation collapsed in the 1st place, but it's very, very long term from where they are now, isn't it?
Given that it's taken 3000 years, for the spaceship to get to that other planet.
It's...
Because when he's like 7 set, do we find, do we ever find out when it's set?
We only know it's the 3rd century off the 2nd calendar.
Right.
A long whale ever, ever told.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love the whole reversion to barbarism thing, which is so terrible.
It must be Chris Boucher.
Absorbentary. putting this in just to, yeah, just to say, oh, look, Terry, I could do this too.
Look, you'll love this.
Look what I've done.
It is also very much of the era. like, you know, we're going to have this we going to have a nuclear war and which is inevitable and we're all going to be thrown back to the Stone Age and there's all that sort of thing.
I mean, at the time, back in that era where there's all that sense of empires rising and empires falling, like, you know, the Roman Empire and the British Empire and all these other things.
And so you can't just have a civilisation which keeps developing onwards and onwards indefinitely.
There has to be a fall and they have to go back to primitive lifestyle.
It's just.
You've used up all your resources.
What are you going to do?
We've used up all the oil.
We've used up all the oil, so therefore we'll we'll just go back to farming or something.
I don't know.
It's just all the time.
The other thing that looks odd, going back to that, the moonscape bizarre thing.
The other thing I think where people haven't had a conversation, different departments haven't had a conversation with each other is the fact that, you know, when you look off to the city at the edge of the world, it's a sort of a Stonehenge ruin sort of thing.
When you actually have the model shot, it's this incredible like moon-based thing with spheres and domes and things that gets blown up at the end.
It sort of doesn't...
I don't know whether there was a glass shot that they were supposed to do and they ran out of time or it was too wet or whatever the hell it is, or they just couldn't be bothered.
But it's one of those things that you get a lot of in the 70s where the inside and the outside just don't match.
We've got our 1st 1980.
All the sets made out of metal palettes set inside the city, which we will see again and again now in the show and very much at the same time in Doctor Who.
This is the BBC future.
This is replacing the white walls.
So everything is gray and metallic suddenly.
But yeah, it doesn't quite fit with what you're seeing elsewhere.
Everything is just slightly not quite right.
That's a science fiction idea, though, that every, every 25 years. somebody, somebody can open the gate and get through and go and check on the spaceship sort of thing is, yeah.
I mean, it's bit sort of hit and miss, isn't it?
But 35 generations is the precise measurement that they use.
Why?
There should be more than 2 skeletons then, shouldn't there?
I know, yeah.
Maybe they're the only ones who got that far.
The other ones couldn't open the door to the teleport.
Yeah.
It's the spider in the car.
Yeah.
Retrospect. they had a wash-up meeting once they all got there.
I was like, how about this 3000 year plan?
It does like the crotons, isn't it?
sort of like an intelligence test for the.
Yeah, exactly.
And I like the fact that Baban turns up at the right time, so they think it's him, but he's really thick and isn't the right person.
But normal knows the way to manipulate him to get the right person by promising him all the riches and everything sort of from beyond.
So just enough to tantalise him to get the right person to actually do the job.
Baban in turn then manipulates Tarrant to get someone to fight to do this job.
Sort of all these layers of manipulation just to get someone correct to do this job.
It's really quite nicely done.
And this is 2nd week in a row where it's somebody that Tarrant already knows, isn't it?
He's met Baban before, and he'd met, he'd met the character.
So, like, Pete, I really enjoyed coming back his appearances.
I wanted him to survive and come back.
I thought he'd be a good kind of recurring enemy for them.
But yeah, it didn't seem to go anywhere. the fact that the fact that he was already known to Tarrant, other than supposed just to sort of build up his legend a bit, isn't he?
the 2nd most wanted man by the federation.
Another mention of Blake as well, which, yeah, it just kind of makes you think, you know, it kind of keeps reminding the viewer that he's still around.
Do you think it's one of those episodes that leans a bit more into the sort of the Star Trek style, leaving aside the fact that Terrence arranged for villas to go down there in exchange for the crystals, for the weapon system and blah, blah, blah, blah, leaving aside that way in, but sort of everything else about it from that point on, the way you've got, you know, this mystery around this door and there's a gateway and there's a civilisation that's got to pass through it once every 35 years or whatever the hell it is, 35 generations.
It just sort of reminds me of a Star Trek style of episode.
And they pop up from time to time.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
I think you might be onto something because the title is obviously very close to the title of the most popular episode of the classic series of Star Trek, which was being repeated all the time on the BBC sort of throughout the 70s and literally on a loop constantly.
So the city at the edge of the world is not very different to the city at the edge of forever.
It's entirely possible.
This is Chris Boucher having a bit of a laugh and thinking, oh yeah, I can I can do something a bit Star Treky a bit.
The viewers will know sort of instantly because they're so aware of this show as well.
Yeah, and having, yeah, Villa gets the girl in a Captain Kirk kind of way.
Yeah.
But then they get separated at the end, also in a Captain Kirk Conway.
A big finish ever gone back and discovered Villa's love child. on the remote planet as a result of his as an account result of this encounter.
That's got to be ground for them to go at some point.
I love the way you said that like Star Trek, the classic Star Trek was shown like on a loop on repeat on the BBC and yet they wouldn't actually share their own programs on a loop on repeat.
Oh, good, though.
I think it probably was.
Someone hasn't thought that through.
Yeah, I know.
I know, it's all ridiculous.
I bet it was easier for them to show an import than because they didn't have to negotiate with equity, yeah.
Yeah.
Let's think that through a little closer now.
Not cheaper, probably.
That would be amazing.
Yeah, but I think that was probably the consideration here.
But I think I might say big finish have revisited Babe and the Butcher, haven't they?
I haven't heard it, but I've seen that advertised, I think.
Did Colin did Colin play him?
Yeah, that's.
Yeah, yeah.
Colin loves it.
Yeah, he's all Colin back.
I think they've done it in 2 different timelines as well.
So there's one, there are some with Baban, as an older man, as Colin now is, and there's other where Colin is playing him as he was.
So there's prequels and sequels, I think, to all of them.
Oh, yeah.
Of course there are.
There is no universe that cannot be extended even further.
And I think it was a performance that Colin was proud of.
It was one he went to Eric Saywood and said, oh, look, I played this mercenary.
What am I brilliant?
And is that what got him?
There's the story then that Eric Saywood went and wrote Orsini as the way that he would write and have a mercenary played in Revelation of the Daleks just to sort of bite back at Colin a bit.
Right.
And so you show Derek Saywood an episode where everyone's just arguing and fractious for no reason.
That's how drama works.
Yeah.
But come on, that sequence at the end where he's shooting the force field and these chin is disappearing into his chinic, that is just slumwhat more than somewhat embarrassing.
There is no holding back at that.
At least at least he's definitely committing to the moment.
Exactly.
But then we've got to believe that he's mad enough to fire that gun, which everyone has repeatedly told him. will just blow him up as well as the building he's in.
So, yeah, he's got to convince us that this bloke is completely unhidden.
Yes, that's true.
I'm definitely convinced of something.
I'm not sure whether that's what I'm getting.
I noticed a little thing and that it's annoying me that I haven't been looking for it previously because I don't know if this is the 1st time it happens.
In the final wrap-up scene between Aurak and Villa.
He says when they're talking about it.
All right, gives a little sarcastic chuckle at one point in response to something that Villa says or goes, ha ha, like that.
And I think that might be the 1st time that we ever see that from Aurak.
And certainly something that comes back later in the show.
Right.
So that'd be interesting.
We'll have to watch out for this movie and see if we can spot some more instances.
I may well have missed it earlier.
Our listeners may be able to point us to earlier instances, but it just I noticed it this time.
Yeah.
But back on the script, if I may, because I worry we're sort of getting a bit negative about some aspects.
I do think the script is really, really good and it's, you know, some great voucher dialogue and not just when Villa's talking to himself to himself.
I think I think there's some lovely rhythms to a lot of the dialogue.
Or better still, the girl who killed Babe. you know, all that kind of sort of the, those kind of sequences.
It's all very, very, very, very polished dialogue.
And not speaking well.
They run out of those.
So they say the man who killed Babe and the woman, the girl.
At times only left with sort of the pilot.
It doesn't sound as good.
The bully.
The guy who got us into this in the 1st place who killed Babe and...
But I do like Terrence's little snarky line to Babe and where he says, oh, well, he's sort of inferring he should, our baby should remember him.
And he just says, oh, yeah, that's that's always the way with celebrities.
You never remember the little people. which is brilliant.
Right, it's just so well said.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that's the good thing about the Chris Boucher dialogue is it doesn't sound, even though it is obviously heightened and unreal, you don't feel like it's unreal when it's happening.
It just all looks like beautifully placed pieces of dialogue.
Yeah, one of the things I, one of the lines I really liked was Avon saying to Villa when he turns up sort of unexpectedly, he says, but every silver lining has a cloud and Villa just turning around is saying, I'd say you got that wrong, but you haven't.
It's just really, really nice.
I do like some of the, you know, bubble brained idiot and stupid son of a slime crawler because it's nice when they make an effort, they don't just use the same insults that we would use now that, you know, things have moved on.
That, that, they could be absolutely kind of the worst things you could say to somebody in, in the far future.
You know, it's it's kind of a bit of world building, isn't it, if they don't just don't just use the insults that are in common usage now, I think.
Brilliantly.
We've got John J.
Carney playing the other sort of henchman whose name escapes me now, who had played Blood Axe in The Time Warrior, who is always playing that sort of really, yeah, really thick sidekick. just there for his muscle and not there, not there to think.
And so he plays all those scenes really well.
He's so good at those scenes, those scenes where Kerol is getting the better of him and the scenes where he's just really subservient and doing exactly what Baban says because that's what he does.
And I love that Villa also gets the better of him in the way that other characters usually get the better of Villa.
So this is sort of showing this level of almost thickness in the sidekicks that is wonderful.
He's just not got such a great way of looking like, oh, what I don't know.
I don't understand what you're saying at all.
But that poor actor, I mean, he has he has the perfect thick looking face and idiot features kind of thing.
And he's probably an incredibly a cultured and sensitive new age kind of guy, but he just looks like that.
And so that's the that's the roles he always gets.
I think they did sneak in a rude joke at the beginning where Villa says walking makes you go deaf because a word similar to walking is what would have been said in playgrounds of schools at the time.
What did he say?
He was saying it to the menti ads or whatever they are that were sort of that were accompanying him at the start.
Yeah, type people they have.
But it's also really sort of cleverly done like that, that even though I don't like that original confrontation between Tarrant and Villa in the opening sequence.
I do like the whole thing with the little tracking device that Villa decides he's not going to swallow because he's scared and he doesn't trust them.
It is actually all very, very well done.
It doesn't feel last minute.
It doesn't feel thrown together.
So, you know, sometimes these things happen by accident, whereas that's all been properly scripted and planned out and I think it's easy to sort of gloss over those elements of the story in the script.
It's been crafted.
Yeah, when it goes out smoothly.
We all forget that they're doing this mission because they want the crystals to repair the liberator weaponry system, which is just a bit of a plot McGuffin, but just the fact that at the end, when you've completely forgotten that that is why they got into this in the 1st place, Villa just produces those crystals and puts them down on the teleport console and he's done what he was told to do almost without thinking and without the viewer sort of noticing, because you forget that that was what this was all about.
And he's done it anyway.
We should have remember when he's picking it up on the planet when you kind of know that that's what the crystals he's picking up on the planet, but yeah, you're right.
It's all tied up. tied up in a nice little bow at the end without it feeling trite or twee.
No, exactly.
And it's not like you've had a reset switch just to get back to the end at the end.
Oh that's right.
We needed some crystals.
Oh, it's all right.
We found some extras in the hole.
We're fine.
I did wonder if at the start, it's like crystals of the week because we were all after the crystals last week as well, but these are different crystals.
Different crystals.
And it reminds you the crystals are on the planet and drives that argument between Villa and Carol as well, doesn't it?
Because that's when she realises that he doesn't just want to stay there with her.
Yeah, yeah, it hasn't even occurred to him to stay there with her until she proposes it, she suggests it, yeah.
And that whole conversation about a thief isn't what I am.
It's who I am.
It's just, it's really, it's just really lovely.
And that, what I love in Villa in this episode is that he's almost written as being sort of very innocent, like, he's, he knows who he is, but he's kind of not worldly, but he is really worldly, and it's that, that sort of payoff, that he's not someone who is, is good with women, and he's not, and he doesn't get things right, and Carol gets really cross with him because he's going to stride off and go back, and he doesn't quite get why she's why she's upset about this.
I really, it feels real.
It feels true to the character.
It's not like they're reconstructing Villa to be the hero in a different way to how he would react normally.
It's that's sort of smart character works for Chris Boucher, who is the master of these characters.
Yeah, it's not like, yeah, I suppose what you're saying is it's not like to extend on that.
It's not like you get, sometimes you'll get programs where a character, there's an episode about a particular character where they sort of turn into a different character for that episode before came back and they don't do that at all.
It's all completely 100% develop.
Thank you very much for listening to this episode, you stupid sons of slime balls, and I hope you'll be back with us next week when we are going to the planet hour on.
Yep, thank you very much for listening and goodbye.
Bye bye.
Goodbye.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.