Avon Suffering Beautifully
Rumours of Death
Series C, Episode 8. First broadcast on Monday 25 February 1980.
Episode 39
Sunday 17 December 2023
This week on Maximum Power, Col’s been in a Federation interrogation cell for five days, he knew if he held out Si would show up eventually, meanwhile Nathan’s crawling across the grounds of Servalan’s Presidential Palace with a yellow box strapped to his back in an attempt to block the building’s surveillance, Una’s plotting to overthrow the government, and James finally finds himself chained to the wall of an underground room, it’s an old wall, it waits.
Join us as we discuss Series C, Episode 8 of Blake’s 7 - Rumours of Death.
Recorded on Saturday 10 June 2023 · Download · Episode Gallery
Transcript
Maximal power.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Maximum Power, the only Blake 7 podcast that asks Chat GBT to generate portraits of ourselves to put up in a cave.
I'm Cole.
I'm James I'm Nathan.
I'm sorry.
And I'm Una.
So we're all here in Star.
Sorry, Residents One, our new presidential palace here in Oxfordshire.
Or is it checkers?
We've all been gently karate chopped.
We've been bleeding on the wrong bit of floor, but that hasn't stopped us from getting together to discuss rumours of death.
So join us as we start a revolution to get rid of that sexy Ety honey monster, Boris Johnson.
I'm sorry, serverland.
So without further ado, let's hand over to Uno.
What do you think of this episode?
Well, some days are better than others, aren't they, section reader?
Rumours of death is, of course, as any sane and right thinking person would say, one of my top 3 episodes of Blake 7.
I absolutely love it.
I completely adore it.
Um, I mean, well, you know, it's great.
It's wonderful.
It's, it's, it's cool.
It's it's even suffering beautifully.
It's server land in that incredible dress chained to a wall.
It's, uh, you know, those interrogation scenes with shrinker.
It's Paul Darrow's stubble.
It's, you know, the whole thing is brilliant.
Tarrant doing that little hand thing.
You know?
Everything about it is marvellous.
I only drink to be sociable.
Sorry, I mean, 50 minutes I can do this.
So that's the podcast over then.
Okay, bye.
I'm surprised that Avon's fees haven't got a mention. his bare feet in that opening scene.
I thought that was a little bit kind of forward of him.
That's a specialist interest, I think.
I have to say I agree.
I think this is really absolutely one of the best Blake 7 episodes.
And it seems to have kind of happened by accident in a way.
It's sort of amazing development from some scenes in countdown where Terry Nation was giving, you know, Dell.
What's that guy called?
Dell Grant.
Dell Grant.
I'm Dell, Tarant something.
Where Terry Nation was giving Avon and Dell Grant something to talk about.
And, you know, it was written at a time when we didn't know that he was going to become the main character.
And then you get Chris Boucher coming along and interrogating it and changing it for the sort of character that Avon is now.
And I think it's really just terribly cleverly done.
I can't disagree with that.
I, I think there's so many great things in this episode that, um, so many great character moments in this episode, which I think make this one really special that everyone gets a, a good moment.
I mean, this is Chris Boucher, so of course he's going to give everyone a good moment, but, um, again, just the dialogue once again is a cut above the norm as well.
And what I I love is this is almost against every other Blake 7 episode.
It starts in situ where things have already happened where we're not, the liberator's not coming into orbit around Earth.
They're not teleporting down, explaining the plot.
Avon's been captured.
We don't know what's happened to him.
It's a really, although it's a slow start.
It's a really exciting start because you don't know what's happened.
How's he got here?
What's this about, what's going on?
And then that moment where he switches around and it's all been planned to the nth degree, and it's the, and the, because you think, oh, the homing beacon, they haven't found him, they can't get him, but it's the switching it off, that is, it's all those things are just so cleverly done, and that star is, is magnificent.
And I don't think Paul Darrow is rarely better than in those early scenes where he really does seem broken and tired and...
Superb.
It's um, It's almost as if you could read that scene as if it's a flashback to when he was originally captured.
Yeah, I think so.
I agree.
I think like we're getting a sort of, yeah, a sort of, because he flashes to to Anna, doesn't he?
So I think he as well, he sort of imagines her in that situation.
But yeah, I think we're getting a sort of clue to what all their experiences were before we saw them, loaded onto the London.
Yep.
I have a slightly different view.
You're right.
No, no, yeah, no, I am wrong.
I think I am wrong.
I mean, this is why I do this podcast.
It's because I have a bunch of, you know, I have a bunch of thoughts and we talk about it and I end up feeling differently, you know?
And so, uh, but I think the 4th time I've watched it this morning, I did actually start to go, yeah, okay, yeah.
No, I think it's pretty good.
Um, I just think it's struggle you watched it this morning, Col. That's right.
It's quite, yeah.
It suffers a bit from a bit of direction problems and a little bit of miscasting.
Ooh, I'm not sure Shrinker is particularly threatening or Sula Stroke, whatever.
You know, she's very, very potion stuff, but they all are, I suppose.
Yeah, it's Blake 7.
It's Blake 7. get away from that.
But I just thought, uh, there's, there's some directing bits that I think just come across as a little bit weak, probably like fight scenes and corridor stuff and it's like, we can't, we can't possibly have a good fight scene when we're actually in this house in Oxfordshire.
We have to wait till we get to the studio set to do that.
We don't break anything.
That's right, yeah.
Yeah, because you could just give the owners the camera going, don't touch that vase, you know.
I kind of, I, I do, I do like it.
I think it just sort of took me a took me a while to figure out everything that was going on on all the stuff that was coming and going.
Uh, but the, the one question I had for you guys is, is Cali the most competent person in this episode?
No, in the show.
She's the only competent, only competent person in the show.
Except when she's been taken over by Alien Intelligences.
Yeah, yeah.
See next week.
That's not her fault, though, really, is it?
Which he literally serves. probably more competent than Gan.
Oh God.
Which he literally says at the start of the episode, something like, do you guys need me in this episode?
No, I actually really like that because one of the big problems with series 3 is that it's aimless.
We've destroyed the Federation ride.
And so we just kind of touring around seeing what happens visiting a volcano one week and stuff like that.
And here now, it looks like what's happening is now Avon is doing payback and he's got the ship, you know, perhaps he was always going to do this.
He was never going to be Blake.
He was never going to go to the planet phosphoron or centauro and steal a communications thing, all that stuff's over.
So this is an odd thing.
And I think that given that Callie is, she's gone from being a sort of hardened freedom fight is being, you know, ship's handholder, do you know what I mean?
Like, she is now the kind of moral centre of the show.
And I think she's the right person to object to that.
And I think she's right to object to it too.
Like if killing shrinking.
That's cool.
Like do that a 100 times.
All right, you know, but, but, you know, just deciding that now we're going to concentrate on settling Avon scores seems like a bit of a kind of comedown.
I think I preferred Shrinker without the beard in Siclocate Destroy.
Yeah.
It's really interesting, isn't it?
That scene where they're all taunting shrinker on the in the teleport bay and they're all circling round him and it's...
Yeah, it's really intense and it takes Callie to come and say, stop this.
You're all behaving like animals and it's contagious, isn't it?
Isn't it?
It's beautiful writing.
That line.
I remember that hearing that line, the 1st time I watched this episode when I was, what, 8 or something, and I just thought punk things in my brain sort of gave me a moral awaiting, yeah?
Well done, Chris, you know?
I think, yeah, Cali's absolutely the moral heart of this.
I always read this episode is the middle of a trilogy of a, of the, of the change in relationship between Avon and Cali, like you got, the previous episode.
Cali has the most devastating loss.
This episode, Avon has the most devastating loss, and then the payoff is all in sarcophagus.
And I don't know if that's intended, but certainly I think the actors play it.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's almost certainly not intended.
And just watching because I watched sarcophagus again today because of why wouldn't you?
It's brilliant.
And you can see something in that scene between Avon and Callie that you never, ever see in the show at any other time.
But the show seems to be written without an awareness of what's been going on and that's what Blake Seven's like.
It is very, very episodic, despite the kind of overall arc.
And so we can't really have a proper repercussion for this.
But I do think the end.
You know, let's skip to the end, that final moment where even just wearily says slightly exaggerated, the rumours of my death have been slightly exaggerated, is so good, and that's understated.
Do you know what I mean?
no one's kind of wringing their hands.
It's not at all overwrought.
It's in character.
And it's a proper admission of some, you know, him being really devastated in a way that you've got to hear from him.
Nothing bad, hasn't he?
Yeah, and he's not going to show that in front of his friends, such as they are, because that's not Avon.
So it, it's played.
I think Paul Darrow is is exemplary all through this episode.
He is given one of his very, very best performances.
I don't think he puts a step wrong all the way through.
And it all feels very true to Avon, which is the best thing of all that this is exactly what Avon would do.
If you asked anyone, if Avon had, um, had one great love, what would he do to, he'd go all out to find her, he'd get all obsessive.
He's that kind of person.
And this is what the story's about.
It's about Avon's obsession with Anna and finding out what happened and why.
And unfortunately, the story of Anna is completely tragic and he's misread the whole thing.
And of course, it being even, we're doing spoilers, aren't we?
We're not going to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This being even, of course it has to turn out that the great love of his life is that because Avan is one of the universe is cursed.
Oh, yes, you said this before, didn't you?
Yes, yeah, the curse of Avon.
Well, I think what's really beautiful is that, although we see Paul Darrow's reaction, we see Evans's reaction from the point of view of his of his colleagues, he delivers that line with his back turned to them.
So, um, you know, if you, if you put yourself there as one of the crew listening to this guy you've hung around with for 3 years or whatever who's just gone through 5 days of torture for his lost love and all you see is his back, uh, saying this line.
Um, I think it's incredible. lovely direct.
But we, the audience, are allowed a little bit more of a look into, uh, even if it, if it's back into us.
It wouldn't have had the same emotional impact, I think.
And Darrow's little little.
Lips are, you know, just hor- little eyelops.
Just on the edge of cracking and it's sealed down again, except until that scene at the start of sarcophagus with Kelly in the next episode, where he cracks it open again for Callie.
It's all lovely.
The other thing I like about this episode, is it?
We're talking about continuity and how, you know, Blake Seven doesn't really have it.
I think we also see some of the continuity that's happening in Chris Boucher's head.
So he's like clearly got this massive backstory about what the rebellion was like on earth.
So there's a whole show that's happened.
In Chris Boucher's mind, instead we've got to see Volcano and Dawn of the Gods.
But just briefly, we've seen this sort of political thriller of, you know, the rebellion going rotten and what happened on earth and all these sorts of things and we've been doing stupid things on the liberator.
So I feel like Chris Boucher has this story in his head that for some reason he never puts on screen. except for these brief moments.
Yeah.
It just feels all those lines between Shrinker and Nathan, they just feel completely true.
There's a story that's been happening here.
Oh, I love it.
It's it's funny, isn't it?
Because we have the destruction of the federation in aftermath.
We have to go back to Earth to see it.
And and I guess the last time we did that was pressure point.
And so are we wondering what, you know, Veron has been doing all this time?
Is that the problem, she she fucked it up and now the now the rebellion doesn't, you know, isn't effective, but that is sort of super interesting, isn't it?
And it is a bit of a throwback, I think.
It is a bit season 2.
And, you know, I think nation kind of downplays it because he doesn't think that his new main character cares that much about the federation.
But then Bouchers, you know, created this, this incredible backstory in order to get him involved again.
I think it's just so well judged.
It's really funny.
It's exactly what you were saying, Una.
It is in countdown.
It is just his girlfriend, the one woman that he loved, the one person. that he had ever, that he ever had any connection with.
And Boucher's going, no, no, no, no.
It's Avon, you know, it can't possibly be that.
It's so terrific.
It's so horrendous.
And I love those flashbacks.
The earlier ones without the mirror on kind of tube that we're...
That is...
Why is she looking at her down?
Yeah, anyway.
That's so where it's strong.
But even just the fact that she's not wearing a top, you know, like it, this is ridiculous, but we were watching Doctor Who at the same time as we were watching this and we were kids when this was on and it just seemed impossibly adult that he would be speaking to this like, no clothes on.
That's faint, isn't it?
And even though she does look like she's just, you know, she's just about to pop out to Waitrose or something first.
That's nice.
No.
She, she, like, she thinks he's funny, like, all of his kind of posturing bullshit that he normally does, all that sort of camp posturing nonsense that he usually does, she thinks is hilarious, and I think that's wonderful because Bouncer's writing all that posturing nonsense, and we love it.
We eat it up.
But the fact that she thinks it's ridiculous is just wonderful.
Like you like her immediately, I think.
Yeah, and what I love is that you don't see Avon in those scenes.
You're seeing it.
Because normally in flashbacks, you get to see both characters or everyone sort of, and what they're doing, but just seeing this from Apon's point of view, and he's quite obviously in bed next to her.
And so you've just got this, this image of what's, what's happened and what's going on, and it, it's really clever, and it's something Blake 7 doesn't do things like this.
So this makes it feel extra special.
Yeah, it's true, isn't it?
I'm struggling to think of, because Blake 7 can be so static, and you know, it can be, it can be like, you know, a, uh, 2 talking heads, and you don't really see direction like that.
It makes it sort of.
I mean, why I like this episode is for, is that the kind of intimacy of personal relationships are all jumbled up with the politics and are kind of implicated in it, that there's no kind of, um, pure love is always going to be kind of corroded by the political situation that they're in.
And it just, it just does that absolutely brilliantly.
I think it's great.
For all the shunkiness of, you know, the slow fighting. extremely well.
And the way that the um, we've alluded to this already, the way that the um, balance of power just shifts.
So in that opening scene, or in that interrogation scene with server line, which I think is the bookend scene, isn't it?
You know, she's literally there chained up.
And then he he mentions anagram and she goes.
All right.
Let me go.
I'll tell you whatever you are.
And then she walks in and Severance like she does that, um, Patrick Stewart triple take, you know?
I'm going to look at your reaction now and suddenly she's back in control.
It doesn't matter that she's chained up and the dress is all wrecked.
Servolan is running this show again, her and she's got this card.
And those shifts of power are just beautifully done, I think.
Really clever.
I love it.
It's that line of dialogue, isn't it, where Terence says to Avon, convince her that it didn't happen.
And then, and then she says to Avan, can you convince yourself that that didn't happen with Anna?
Like she absolutely takes control.
And of course, Boucher kind of signals it in dialogue.
Yeah.
Can I give a shout?
I always give a shout out, I think.
But how brilliant Stephen Pacey always is.
Because I don't think if we, I don't think if you sat down and talked about Rivers of Death.
Oh, it's a great Tarrant episode, but he's like this sort of clue that holds it together.
So there's a really scene with him and Avon at the start where he almost touches Avon's arm, yeah?
He just kind of go, he's kind of going, are you all right?
You know, I just want to make sure you're all right.
I mean, I want to make sure that, you know, I'm only making sure because we're men and rebels and about me.
But actually, you know, it's it's a sort of genuine concern for this man's sanity.
And then he's just a sort of quiet clue.
He does a very good move back when he realises that, you know, this is Anna.
He just does this sort of, holy fuck.
Simpson backing into the hedge.
Whoa.
This has gone choppy.
But I always think that um, uh, and he does that.
It's him who gives Abron the feed line at the end, isn't it?
The rumours my death have been, you know, grown exaggerated.
Greatly exaggerated.
It's, it's Taryn, who's sort of the, it, it's almost like Taryn has to be an, the adult in the room because Avon isn't.
And Callie's checking out of this madness.
So Tarrant has to kind of step up and um, you know, adult.
There's that wonderful scene too, where they turn up in the teleport bay and he's dressed as Blake and he's announcing, you know, it turns out, you know, we care, we care what happens to you.
We're surprised, certainly one.
Yeah, yeah, but then we're as surprised as anyone. isn't that Dana?
Like it's so hilarious.
Yeah,ously funny.
Like, she's so sweet and so funny in it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You may be a bastard, but you're our bastard.
What do people think about the 2 security folks in this?
What's the point of them?
So that's a very voucherish thing, and we'll see it again in death watch, won't we?
We saw it in soil, didn't we?
Yes.
And it's a Burkel and...
Yeah, mhm.
So he'll have 2 characters who are involved.
Yeah, yeah.
But their job, like they don't barely interact.
It's a little bit unusual. like Major Grenly's left alive after the attack and is actually in that final scene until he sort of dies conveniently.
So he doesn't have to be given any lines.
But I think they're really, really great.
Like, like the dialogue is funny.
I still say if it wasn't free, you'd pay to see it. like all the time.
And there's another line in that scene as well that I think has just entered my vocabulary.
It's so good.
It's so sharp.
And like, I don't care. when I left.
No, I owed of money.
You know, he does that smile like David Hagues.
Like, he's Pangol. like me and months later.
He's so good.
He's so great.
He's so young and so brilliant.
Even this early in his career.
And it's it's no surprise he's gone on so well.
In Boucher's head, these people have got inner lives and, you know, and they, you know, they are stereotypes.
They're put upon, uh, you know, officer, um, and the, you know, the cheeky, the cheeky squaddy.
I mean, they are, you know, a kind of, you know, stereotyped, but they, you feel like they've had lives before they, and they've both gone fantastic, cushy job.
Residents won.
Fuck, rebel attack.
On the 1st day.
Yeah, yeah.
That wonderful, we're under attack and then we, you know, we get the alarm and all of that sort of thing, like when it's finally announced.
Like that's almost worth having because it just makes that attack a little bit more, more vivid and interesting.
I think they're really, really properly good.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just brilliantly scripted, brilliantly imagined.
And then these guys just perform it like a they must have had a hoots, do you?
Oh, and don't forget every part of moving part.
That that line that they keep keeps coming up some days are better than others. that's they say that where I come from, sir, loudly, I imagine, on the day you left.
Our mother cried when I left, I owed him.
Just doesn't stop.
The other, the other thing I do with episodes like this is I always count the number of scenes that these incidental characters are in because I was, I was thinking, how, how quickly do they have impacts, yeah?
And, um, I, I was expecting there to be a lot less with these because actually this, I don't know how unusual this is for Blakeson.
Turns out there's quite a lot of cutting to quite short inserts of those two.
So I don't know whether I don't know how it was recorded.
Um, but usually you get quite lengthy scenes.
But in this kind of context, little shout out for Cesco, who's in one scene.
And...
But he, and again, somebody who's completely realised and delivers this sort of, you know, this pompous speech sucking up to the boss and she undercuts it and then he's sort of...
The look he gives it this kind of grief.
Your husband.
Yeah, and he clearly loves it.
I'm your wife, so you're with my wife.
That's all over now.
Yes, I actually love how, you know, like, I'm not sure she's a rebel now or she's paid by the rebels.
We believe that.
She's not Bartholomew.
She's changed.
No one could accuse her of being doctrinaire either, I guess.
And she's still openly dismissive of Serverland, you know, like that wonderful thing about her being a tasteless megalomaniac or something.
You know, the speech is pompous and vulgar and gross and she'll absolutely love it.
Like his contempt.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, she can just openly say that.
I don't, I don't, in a way, because, of course, I've imagined loads of backstories in this episode.
Um, I don't mind that they're all posh in a way because I sort of feel that this is a kind of, this is, this is Anna Grant paying off a kind of elite.
You know, it's it, it, it's like David Cameron and Boris Johnson, yeah?
This is something that goes back to school that's being played out because they're powerful.
It's being played out.
Um, you know, with a with a country or an empire as the kind of playing fielder Eton or the equivalence.
You know, there's a personal grudge that goes on there, or that's how I read it anyway, you know.
Um, and these poor, these poor lads that uh, Anna Grant has got in to do her dirty work, are the sort of foot soldiers that she, she throws at Servlan.
So, um, but I do, I like to think that Anagram got converted to Marxism or something.
I think she sits on the table and goes, you know, a fitting or to wet the appetite.
She's really behind this idea of a people's capital in a way that only posh oxbridge people are behind oxygen, you know?
And she's having to deal with this rappel of men who, yeah, who, who she accuses of not thinking and only thinking of their, almost like thinking with their stomachs or whatever.
And the men want this and the men want that and they do fight and they do die.
He's terrible.
In a, in a, in an every so great performance.
He's awful.
I'm sorry.
Best thing that happens to his character is getting shot.
Yeah.
He's like Ray.
He reminds me, do you remember Ray, the person in Serverland's 1st scene who...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's been having enough air with.
Just that sort of slight, a bit ginger and very pale skinned and not very impactful.
Yeah, he isn't very good.
One thing I...
The great women have got a type.
Yeah.
Well, there's a bit of primitive animal magnetism in all of us.
Speak yourselves, darling.
But that whole sequence where, again, it's obviously for budgetary reasons where our guys are sneaking around the background of this revolution.
And in fact, you know, we see the those very sort of limp fights, um, just so that we can see the building and stuff, I guess, and to try and sell it.
But when when it's won, uh, and she's speaking and Hobbs is speaking to the men, that's all happening in the background in another room completely.
And we actually see Sula leave the room where she's just given a speech and sort of start being in the same space as our characters.
So there is a big story going on that we just get to be at the margins of, um, and I think that that's, that's very good, you know, like because Blake 7's never going to do it.
It's never going to be able to do that.
And so to make it a virtue, I think is a pretty good thing.
You take something which is a budget limitation, you turn it into a stylistic flourish, which actually adds the drama, that these people are, you know, creeping around the background of what is would be a revolution.
If you didn't kill off the instigator, the basement.
Can you imagine if this was the expanse?
We'd have had like 3 episodes setting up Anna Grant and Chesco and what's his name?
When are we doing the expense podcast?
we're doing it now.
Let's do it.
That's one for my Una bingo card.
Expanding.
I'll have to watch again.
If I start watching the expanse again, like I'm not going to move from the sofa for 3 weeks, it's just...
But pull it down.
The one bit we do get to see is obviously Sula and the men taking down Serverland, which is great.
But we don't see the violence against her, which is all then implied by the makeup and when we see her chained to the wall.
But that confrontation between Sula or Anna Grant or Bartolomew, whoever you want her to be this week and Serviland is really, really great.
And Jacqueline Pierce plays it magnificently.
Oh, when she rises from that desk.
Yeah. herself.
Oh, they finally, you know, I always knew they were going to come at some point.
I always knew that door would get kicked down and I've thought through how I'm going to present myself and I'm going to be like a queen, yeah?
I'm going to be the empress, yeah?
And then you're right.
There's a sort of there's a scene we don't see where they give her an absolute kicking, isn't there?
Did expect Jack Nicholson to come through the door after the way it broke down?
But I think I think that we don't see Servoland as the victim of violence in that scene for the same reason that we don't see Avon Lovestruck that we those characters wouldn't survive that.
We don't want to see it.
We, you know, must...
Yeah, yeah.
And it's Fiona Cumming directs it, right?
And she absolutely makes sure that we don't ever get to see those character breaking moments.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's really, really interesting actually.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
And you don't want to see it.
You don't want to see several unhumiliated, do you?
No.
You want to see her.
I mean, you know, for all her obvious complete absence of any moral core.
You want to see her standing in her palace when the guards arrive, brushing down her dress, going, what took you, gentlemen, you know?
And by the end of the episode, she's right back to that because she's had, like we said earlier, she's had that moment of, she's been vulnerable.
She's been taken down, but she's got the better of Avon, and she's stroked him with the gun, and suddenly she's back to being Servolan.
And so she can do this again, and she will, she will carefully box that up in her head and, and, like I said, pretend that never happened, and off she'll go to, to deal with Moloch or whatever.
And who will tell?
The Tony April, you know.
Stop telling.
Yeah.
They don't actually kind of properly sell it, but she ends up escaping from her bonds, finding a gun, shooting the leader of the rebels dead, we think, you know, as far as anyone else is concerned.
And so, because, you know, Tarrant is concerned that she doesn't come back from this, you know, once she's been chained up to a wall in her own palace, that's it.
She's done.
But she's not done.
The show doesn't actually kind of rub it in, but she absolutely wins at the end, even though she doesn't get to.
She actually, she actually wins the episode in a way.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's great.
Nobody, she can she can tell those guards.
I had to see these people off single-handed.
You know?
Well, no.
And they didn't damage my pearl necklace at all.
Little damage to that.
The way she just delivers that line.
I'm going to send your friends a corpse is just...
Corpse reviver.
Yeah.
Fabulous.
That's, doesn't it?
I've seen that dress in someone's collection.
It's like seeing a holy relic or something. like a churi trout.
Pierce warm this.
This is an only relic.
I literally feel that about everything that she wears though. like just in every episode.
The shiny, the shiny metal boob blizzard.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All the red thing in Gambit.
Oh, yeah, film, egg, listen.
Yeah, awesome.
I think that Villa should have been drunk.
How about this?
I think the script wants Villa to be drunk and Fiona coming doesn't want him to be drunk and I think that he, because he does that hilarious line that Una quoted earlier, the I only drink to be sociable, cheers or rack.
And it's beautifully directed by Fiona. because he's kind of a bit embarrassed about doing it Norax in the foreground and he's sort of awkwardly in the sort of side of the shot.
But then he kind of fucks up, uh, like I think that there has to be the reason why he fucks up, um, pulling them out too early.
And then when they say, well, what happened to the input coordinates, why didn't you check them?
And he says, I forgot.
Clearly, again, he's kind of meant to be drunk, but we don't kind of want to quite go there.
That's kind of because, you know, you think this is going out at 7 o'clock.
Yeah.
They just kind of, But it's all there, isn't it?
You've got the bottle that's full. then shot later, the bottle that's completely absolute.
Why is he drinking out of it like a sample bottle?
It's not as bad as a few episodes where when he was drinking Tabasco.
Spike, he's on the bleach or the cough.
I'm here alone with only your act for company.
I might as well just.
Drinking swap eager.
And I actually love the bit because and he sidles up to Avon and gives him a drink in that final scene and Avon takes it without snuffing, without saying anything and he drinks it.
I think that's really good.
And again...
Phyllis saying, this is what I do when I think.
Yes.
But he's right, and Avon does it as well.
I think, and again, it's so rare to get moments of the characters apparently caring for one another because it's all sort of hilarious Boucher dialogue and sort of match her bullshit and stuff, but just that sort of thing.
There's a bit of it in this episode and that, I think, is wonderful.
The little villa moment at the end.
And it's almost like a callback to the end of city at the edge of the world where Villa has just lost the love of his life and Avon responds in the way that only Avon can to almost put him down, but almost just sort of give him that moment of, yep.
Look, I know what you've been through and welcome back, Villa, that's all you're getting and that's as warm as it gets from me.
And then Villa does the same in kind to Avon here and helps him in the way that only he can.
Yeah.
Alcoholism.
Yes.
Drink.
How is Dana in this episode, do we think?
Does she get enough to do it?
I mean, Dana in general doesn't really get enough to do it.
She's got she's got that nice scene where they they kind of bitch about Aurak.
Yeah, and which is sort of a nice little moment of humour and something, obviously, I think she sees something in Avon where she can make him smile and sort of take him out of it for a moment and sort of break his mood for just that bit.
And she does that quite a lot through this season.
There are lots of little lovely scenes between her and Darrow, which are absolutely great.
Colin, have we persuaded you of the...
Yes, yes.
So you are wrong.
Yes, please stop.
Yeah, to quote Peter Capaldi in Death in Heaven.
I am an idiot.
No, it's, it's, I, I think you've, I think it's like a strong sort of 8.3 out of 10. you know, it's good.
I like it.
You had the Todd experience.
I always have the thought experience.
It's always good.
What was it before we started recording?
What would you have awarded?
I think I was kind of like at a six.
But I think I think I just wasn't as familiar with it as I needed to be.
And I think this morning's viewing, I was like, okay, I understand Grenley and Forrest, and I understand what they're trying to do with it.
And I could feel more of the backstory kind of emerging like Dana saying, what the hell happened to the rebellion, you know?
And so it does...
There is a lot that happens in this episode.
Like it's packed.
There's 3 different sort of strands of plot, really.
You've got the snarky, the snarky security guys.
You've got 2 A plots.
Yeah.
And then all the stuff is shrinker at the start, which is just sort of, you know, that's just setup, isn't it?
I didn't count his number of scenes.
I think it's probably it's probably slightly more probably, I think, 3 or 4 because they cut away again, don't they?
So Evan's got a couple of um, A couple of scenes.
Um, oh, there's some great lines in that in those as well, isn't it?
Paranoia is the occupational hazard of the torturer.
Mr...
I like, I like, um, was it their festidious, does them, fastidiousness, does them credit or something like that?
Yeah, yeah.
He's got it in the lousy jumps.
It's so good, isn't it?
It's so great.
That also has the, you know, shrink of moving from side to side. and even going, no one can accuse you of being doctrinaire.
Like I think that's absolutely brilliant.
And it's super black.
It's super bleak, isn't it?
It's really black.
That, that, like, it's hard to believe.
Like, we were never going to see even just shoot some guy in the head, right?
He can do it in a fight and stuff like that.
He can't shoot an unarmed man in the head.
We can't see that, particularly not now that he's our lead, but just leaving him there.
You will even in a cave that you can't get out of with a gun.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's fastidiousness did in credits.
Yeah.
No, it's so...
I want to know which one of the crew went down and painted Anna Grant's face on that wall.
Which one of them has former acts?
whole subgenre of Blake 7 fan fiction about that picture of Anna Grant's and, you know, whether Avon has it in his back pocket on the London, you know, in, I think it's in, uh, Space 4, Avon is looking at a kind of piece of paper and, you know, is that the picture of Anna and these kinds of things?
I found that picture baffling as a kid because I didn't realise it was her.
I found it baffling last night.
Yeah, yes.
Oh, that's her, right. okay.
Right.
I've just done a lot more of this now.
I actually think it's the same person that painted John Pertwee on the wall.
Yeah, and Katie Pentagon.
Oh, yeah.
But not the same one as paints that amazing full-length Jackie Pierce in Traitor.
Oh, oh, great.
Yeah, that's really great, isn't it?
I talked about that set before as well. because I'm a big fan of the sort of shiny plastic rocks in Blake 7 thing, which we got in aftermath, and we get here.
We get it a bit in horizon.
You know, like it's a very, very blank 7 look.
Yeah.
And it lets you have the studio lights in shot.
Do you know what I mean?
Because they've set up the lighting so that I even can be dramatic.
You know, he can turn the lighting on and Anna appears dramatically, you know, like it's all perfectly set up.
It's uh, yeah.
I really like that.
I just think that's a terrific...
There's an implausible shot in that scene and I think I know now what Fiona Cummey is doing.
Apon has his, so he's over on the right-hand sign of the screen facing the camera and he's got his back to shrinking.
You think a shrinker, just jumping, yeah?
But it's actually a mirror of the final shot of the show, isn't it?
Because he's over on the right with his back to us.
So I assume she either liked that shot or she consciously echoed.
What was going on there?
So, um, uh, but I mean, I look at that shot and think, you know, Shrinker could have just clocked him on the back of the head at this point, so that would have been.
Don't you think it's a convenient way of getting both actors faces in a 2 shot?
I mean, I can't remember having a conversation with the back of someone's head, ever.
You know, like, I think it's just...
Although, the way you... you do look like you're doing that.
Do we think Avon's persona sort of noticeably changes after this?
I think it, to me it does in season four, D. He's certainly like all out for it.
But I think he's, he's, he's sort of, his performance, you know, he's doing so many things so deliberately, like even the way he switches on Aurak, the, like, the, the sort, he's almost punching Aurak to switch it on.
And whenever he gets a gun out, puts a gun away.
It's not the sort of clip clop clip clop, horseshoe sound you normally get.
It's just like, bam, you know, he's being very, very sort of deliberate, and then I feel like, um, he, I think he's still a little bit, you know, the same in at the end of, towards the end of this series, but series D, I think he's like all out.
Yeah, he's doing he's doing his kind of full Western thing by that.
I think if you do a I mean, that's that's Darrow sort of let loose to do whatever he wants.
If you try and think of a sort of in frame reason.
I think it's the death of Callie that tips him over.
Right.
Yeah, like, I think, but likely establishing the next episode, it's, um, uh, Cali, Cali has become a sort of moral, Cali's become an emotional anchor.
Yeah.
She keeps him centred.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that once that anchor is gone.
Even, yeah, you know, and none of the others can stop him because my reading is Villa's really quite drunk by then.
And Taryn and Dana are quite rightly sort of detaching from this pair of...
This drunkenness, lunatic, they're sort of, I sort of imagine Dana picturing her way out a lot of the time, Taranto.
But yeah, in frame, it's Callie's death.
I think in real life, what happens is Glenus turns up and sees what Paul is doing and just says, I'll do that.
And so Paul has to take it even further.
You know, just so that he'd be noticed. basic on the screen.
I mean, if I was doing, you know, if I was in charge of this show, it'd obviously be amazing if I was in charge of the show.
Just have, um, uh, Plinys, Barbara and Paul Darrow on screen together. all the time.
Well, they get those beach chairs, the banana lounges at the front of a slave.
They could just live there, you know, on the screen.
And snipe at each other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just tremendous.
It's a dream poster, post Blake show for me is Zulin, Avon villa in Aurak, kind of in a tiny ship.
But I don't know if it's significant or not, but this is the 1st time that Avon is decked out all in black.
Never more black to this extent ever before, and this sort of sets the pattern then for the rest of the series.
So almost like, as well with the, um, with Serverland wearing black and white.
It's like the, the cusp of, this is where the show's going to go, and this is like the handover to what's to come.
I mean, obviously that a lot of that's sort of with hindsight, but Avon does wear a lot more black after this than he ever has sort of before.
Yeah.
I mean, he has basically only 2 costumes in series D. There's a handful of episodes left.
And, you know, he wears black next week for very clear thematic reasons.
Yes.
Yeah.
I think he looked pretty good. earlier on where he was wearing the lobster outfit, but he didn't have the top on, you know, so he just had the sort of black turtleneck and I think he looked pretty pretty good.
That's what happens after you break...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
After you show...
More flash inside.
You can tell I don't eat seafood.
Yeah, this does a leather that never really did it for me.
I like the, there's a, there's a green one that looks quite good on him, I think. sort of greyish green one.
Yeah.
I'm glad there are other people that pay as close attention to. yeah. are very important to Blake 7.
It was a website once that documented all of Sulin's her styles, but I think that was one.
But do you remember, do you remember the kid in Traitor, the young man in Traitor who's wearing Avon's leather outfit with all the stunts?
So I think that when Liberated explodes in terminal, somehow the wardrobe remains intact and lands on that planet.
Hellatrix.
It's an ASOS standard.
They have more Ashley everywhere.
Even in the system.
I think one of the things we've not really spoken about is, and we've sort of touched on it briefly is just the scene with Anna and Avon at the end, which is is so important and how have we not spoken about this before?
Obviously, who's just chomping at the bit to murder savings about this?
Oh, well, I can't, I really can't say enough how important this episode was to me when I, when I watched it when I was 8 or 9.
And then, you know, it came out on video when I was, what, 18 or something.
I just watched it again and again and again and again.
That's, and then I wrote reams of fan fiction about anagram, loads of fan, I think, this episode is sort of my 1st exercise in really sort of going, well, what, what, what really is happening here and, uh, what must have happened behind this?
I've got loads of anagrams backstory in my head.
Because you, what you've got on screen clearly has a depth behind it, but you're not being told it. you're just sort of being given the performance.
Uh, and that scene is, um, God, it's so, yeah, I sort of remember being maybe, uh, I had, I had an offer copy of this as well because we, we were early adopters of VCR technology, so I, I had this episode on videotape and watching it again and again.
And um, Just as the, as you get a bit older, maybe as you sort of, you know, you watch it maybe you're 14. you kind of go.
God, this is really sad.
And I think, I mean, I absolutely believe that, you know, Anna made the dreadful mistake of falling for him.
Because who wouldn't, you know, perfectly reasonable too, fall in love with Paul Darrow.
It's beautiful.
Yeah?
Um, so I, I think Anna made that, and that's just tragic, you know, she's locked in this situation, and has to, has to see it through.
Yeah, it's great.
I love it.
Just that line at the end.
Yeah.
I let you go, my love, yeah?
And I was only ever Anna Grant with you.
It's just devastating.
It wasn't all lies.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
She was on Anna Grand.
Like, she she was Anna Grant.
Like her brother exists unless he, that was an elaborate kind of cover as well.
Yeah.
There are some, I think if you think it through, you go, how is she, how has she managed to read, if, you know, several I know she was both all immune, Anna Grandma's Bartholomew, how has she resurfaced as Sula Chescu and what did Chescu know and all these sorts of things?
And I assume that Boucher's got on it had an explanation in his head.
I'm not sure that quite makes it all on screen, but you can scrutinise these things too closely, I think.
I wonder too.
I wonder how we're supposed to read what she says because we've seen her with her other lover.
Um, you know, in at the beginning and that's all false and she's kind of lied.
And so are we to just assume that because it's a main character or because things of, you know, come to a head and everyone's pointing guns at one another and we don't know whether we're expected to live or anything.
And so one of the things that I think works well is the fact that it doesn't really come down on any side, is she telling the truth or not or is she still spinning?
And I think, because if she's not telling the truth or if even can't tell, that's actually quite a good outcome as well, that he can't even know for sure what she thought whether she was telling the truth.
And I guess it's only the I let you go, where it just sounds, well, yeah, you know, like, yeah.
But, you know, like I, I did find myself wondering how, how I was supposed to read that, like what I was supposed to think of what she was saying.
She's spending like hell at the start of the scene, isn't she?
Yeah, I mean, she playing the S. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My husband, he didn't mean anything, blah, blah, blah, all of that.
Yeah.
I changed, why won't you touch me?
You know, it's all it's a, that's the play.
But I completely think once she's lying on the ground and no, she's dying, I think, but she's, you know. that she's got nothing to lose.
She may as well just speak the truth.
Can you convict yourself?
Or is it?
Or is it a last way of getting him?
Do you know what I mean?
Like she shot him.
No, I shot him.
He shot her, rather.
He's shot.
I think this I think this is the kind of thing where the interpretation reflects on the reader.
But what I do...
Are you a are you a dye the world cynic or is there a little bit of idealist inside you?
Yeah.
Yeah, but I don't want I don't want Avan to be in a position where he can be certain that there was one good wholesome thing in his life, that, you know, and he isn't, like, by the end of this.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right So he shot first, which makes her gribo.
Yeah.
Yeah, does she fumble it?
Or, uh, I can't quite, I'm not sure the choreography of it.
That's what I meant.
Yeah.
It's not very good, is it?
And it's the same thing where she does it where Servland doesn't get to shoot even because someone comes in and she looks away and neither of those, I think, work.
Like they're not, they're not that well directed.
I think...
Yeah, look, I think Fiona Cummings great, but I think maybe that sort of action is not her forte. perhaps.
Yeah.
My suspicion is that at the root of it is that, well, of course, you've got, you've got the thing, you, you've got the narrative logic that, of course, Avon, it has to come out of this scene alive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's always a really difficult thing to plot because ultimately you have to do something dumb like Servilon looks away.
But also, I think there's a, I think there's a sort of, of course, he's going to fire faster.
He's the man.
I think is probably maybe a thing going on there and I think Fiona Cumming can't direct that because she doesn't believe that.
And you can't you can't do something well, I think, if ultimately you don't sort of believe what. and then it's hard to subvert.
And the only way you can subvert it is that Anna lets him get a shot off before she shoots, which doesn't seem very realistic.
Um, But maybe her own ambivalence slows her down.
I don't know.
It's hard, yeah.
That's why I love it.
Even the thoughts a bit, but you kind of, you know, speculate about the characters, which means the character work is good.
Yeah.
There's 11 line that I just want to kind of mention, which is the, it's an old wall, even, it waits.
I hope you don't die before you meet it or some reach it.
And I'm not sure what that is.
And I'm kind of getting a little bit of a kind of, you know, the wall, like lemure, the, the, you know, the wall against which you're executed, uh, the wall that kind of represents your mortality, your inability to kind of, um, but it's something else, isn't it?
It's so good.
Like, I just, I think it's such a good line of dialogue.
So beautifully delivered by Jackie.
Her eyes are really moist.
Do you know what I mean?
Like she really, really sells it.
She's so, so great.
Yeah, it's really properly good and I'm just not quite sure what it is.
It's like, you end up chained up in your own basement by rebels.
It's like just absolute complete failure.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I think it is. you know, the wall is, um, you, your humiliation, your defeat.
Um, and um, she says, I hope you don't die before you reach it, which is, you know, awful.
And of course, he reaches it within the next 5 minutes.
Anna walks in.
Yeah, and that's Steven's wall.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, he her wish comes true.
I hope you don't die before you, you know, everything falls away from you.
No, perhaps not true because he's got that sort of chonky bunch of friends.
Someone give you a drink when he gets back upstairs, you'll be fine.
Yeah exactly.
But that's it.
Yeah, it's a line that you, if you kind of, I think, it's a line that you instinctively understand because she gives it the emotional truth.
And then you sort of have to pick it back.
Oh, it's a really good I think it's a really good exchange.
Really good line of dialogue.
Thanks, everyone, for listening.
Join us next week for lots of comedy oboe in sarcophagus.
In the meantime, you can check out our other podcasts, Flight through Entirety, Bondfinger, Trap One, Jody Interterra, Untitled Star Trek Project, and Garrick's Trousers.
I made that one up.
Oh, I want to hear that now.
We're gonna do it.
And remember, if there's a revolution happening in your back garden, always asks security to look out the window.
Thanks for listening and good night.
Goodbye.
Bye-bye.
See you soon.
Goodbye.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximal power.