Pulling at the Tinsel
Sarcophagus
Series C, Episode 9. First broadcast on Monday 3 March 1980.
Episode 40
Sunday 24 December 2023
This week Hannah’s been possessed by the spirit of a gold-skinned alien intent on resurrecting itself, and for some reason Si is The Warrior, James is The Jester, Pete is The Harpist, and Nathan is a foreboding figure dressed in black.
That can only mean we’re talking about Sarcophagus!
Recorded on Saturday 10 June 2023 · Download · Episode Gallery
Transcript
Maximal power.
Hello and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast that consists of a group of archetypes personifying the plot functions and relationship roles of our major characters in the form of an interpretive dance.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Hannah.
I'm James.
I'm Pete.
And I'm Cy.
So we are on episode 9 of series 3 of Blake 7.
See...
I tried so hard.
And we are doing an episode written by a woman.
I think it may be the 1st Blake 7 episode written by a woman.
Am I right?
You are?
Sci-fi author Taneth Lee, who is bringing the sort of a very literary take to the show, and Fiona Cumming, who debuted last week in Rumours of Death. that true?
That's true.
Yeah.
Yeah, she is the 1st female director of Blake 7 as well.
So, yeah, we're on a bit of a role here.
And it seems it does seem like a little bit of a kind of stereotype, but what we have here is we stop for a minute, there is some great action and stuff, but for the 1st time properly, I think, we get to see, we get a real handle on what these characters, what our series 3 characters are like.
And which Power Ranger they'd be, because I love that intro, that intro sends you off.
It's, it's such a, um, unusual, totally oddly, way of starting, starting an episode of Blade 7 and leaves you pondering through to the end.
But yeah, it gives them all, it really takes that approach of who are these jigsaw puzzle pieces.
And now are they going to interact?
And there's a little bit of shoe horning involved at some point for pot reasons, but that's okay.
You've only got 45 minutes and you've got to tell your story.
But yeah, it really treats the connectedness of the people as being the because that's all it's got when it's a... is it right to call it a bottle episode where the only actors are the main cast or am I getting my tropes mixed up?
Yeah, so I don't know.
Does the woman who is running the show at the beginning, the sort of 5 minute dance number?
I mean, she doesn't get any lines, but she certainly acts.
That's true.
That's true.
Yes.
But yeah, so it's not quite, it's not quite an edge of destruction situation, but it's, but it's a, it's a real, here are your pieces.
What can they do?
and are they behaving strangely or not?
She's hard to tell sometimes because like I always kind of hate Tarrant when he's being arrogant.
And when he's just being, like, Taron's being really arrogant.
Is that an alien influence?
I could have just said I always really hate Tarrant and stop there.
Throughout this and throughout the entire of series C.
It's paragon.
Yeah.
Oh, it's just such a...
Well, let's start at the beginning because we'd start with a 5 minute, longer than 5 minute sequence. with no dialogue.
Yeah.
And it set 1000s or 1000000s of years in the past, possibly.
And it, these people are aliens, although they just look like English people sort of lightly painted silver.
And it is one of the things that I think Blake 7 does every so often, which I'm absolutely here for, which is just bringing the weird.
It's really weird.
It's such an odd style.
I mean, this, bizarrely, because I watched Blake 7 in such a random order.
This was the 1st episode of series C that I ever saw.
So, and it was just so utterly different to any Blake 7 I'd seen at this point.
I mean, it's so utterly different to any Blake 7 ever anyway.
Anything ever.
Yeah.
And just that start, I was just, I remember I was 15 and just absolutely just blown away by the strangeness of it, but also sort of, but gripped by it as well because it gives Dudley Simpson a great chance to show off all his musical chops.
It's strange.
It's got weird some weird sound effects of music that I can't quite tell if that's Dudley Simpson or if that's Liz Parker sort of filling in with sort of atmospheres and things like that.
And you just can't get help but be intrigued by this.
And why is this?
Why is this in Blake 7?
Blake 7 doesn't do fantasy, really?
and doesn't really do aliens.
So this is this is really unexpected start.
I think maybe the closest that we've come to this is the beginning of duel. don't you think?
I think it's really brave to do such a long sequence without dialogue.
Well, there's no clue really what is going on.
And so I says, it's all about the sound and the visuals for me as well.
Um, there's some really sort of um, great like camera angles, like the sort of aerial ones looking down, they cut too as well.
Um, I like, um, and I'm presuming it's shot on Charlotte Ealing, um, and it's a really interesting, um, set.
We get all the sort of nice weirdness there and then it's quite nice when they go back to it later that you've just got it more or less in silence and it makes it a bit more eerie having seen it with the soundscapes before.
And even that sort of very opening scene.
So even before we get on board that thing, we see a group of people who are on videotape kind of CSO'd onto, onto film footage of the miniatures, and the miniatures are sort of strange and weird, and again, it's that sort of strange expanse of statues or whatever it is in dual, and, and, you know, Blake 7 occasionally does this.
It hints at this, even in killer, which is a very straightforward, you know, Blake versus the Federation.
There's the aliens who are giving us all the terran ague and trying to confine us to our home planet and all of that sort of thing.
You know, that the universe of Blake 7 is empty.
It only has people in it, but there's this sort of strange echos of weirder things happening.
And I think that's great.
That's brilliant.
It's something that is unique.
Maybe it's unique to Blake 7, but it is, it is particular to Blake 7.
I think it's one of the best things about it.
It sort of makes the, uh, the alien and the unknown... kind of dangerous and unknowable.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's, you know, this universe, that these characters inhabit it is, you know, like you know how it works.
Well, sometimes, depending on who's writing the script and which version of the Federation we're talking about.
But when you get aliens coming to it, they are truly alien to the concept of the show in a way that they just don't fit.
Yeah, because it's not a sort of meet the alien race of the week who will epitomise a particular human attribute, which is a sort of standard type, I think.
Only foreheads.
Yeah, yeah, these ones are like samurai.
These ones are, you know, it's more, there's much more, uh, I don't know, it's much more left field than that and they aren't just there to be a particular type of thing.
They're there to be confusing.
That's nice.
Or to confront the reality, the sort of standard-lived reality of the characters.
Yeah, like they introduce some sort of, you know, threat most of the time, either, you know, like a virus or an alien invasion or, you know, this sort of weird body snatcher, possession kind of concept.
I'm thinking about Dawn of the Gods as well, where that's one that it just starts off.
I really like for the opening where it's just so mysterious and you're drawn into that.
It does seem to sort of play on stuff a bit more psychological with their aliens rather than anything sort of physical.
I think it's why, like, something like um, the spider and harvest of Kyra, sort of jars so much because it will be, we don't do physical aid liens here.
Yeah.
Mm.
Yeah, I think, like, and what it seems to be doing, because Tanethley's a writer and because she's interested in the characters and how they function both as people and as plot devices.
So we see her associating our 5 leads with 5 kind of archetypes.
So there's a sort of mystic woman and there's a trickster and there's a...
Joey and a Phoebe.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
The trickster was the moment where it clicked.
I remember the 1st time I watched it, the trickstory one appears doing magic trick and I immediately got, oh, that's villa.
They're doing something here with that.
And it's pretty clear, isn't it?
Then you get, you know, in red, you get Tarrant, who's like the hero, finds a guy, and then you get Ivan, who just kind of fucks you up. at the end.
Well, he's the cowboy in black, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, and so he sort of appears unexpectedly as well.
It seems like something goes wrong in the ritual or something.
So this is a ritual.
It's a burial.
We later discover, but I think we know that already.
Well, we see we see the body of the whoever it is and the ring.
So I think we know this is a funeral or something like that.
But he appears to kind of disrupt it and she banishes him, but he's not expected, I think.
Yeah, and it's like, it's like from, from her point of view, the, the, the internee.
Is it is this her just, is this a premonition?
Is this a reflection of what's going to happen or is this an actual ceremony that actually took place where people on that planet put those costumes on in order to perform the ritual that would then...
Yeah, it's, it teases you, but, yeah.
She does, like, she does say, and we're getting ahead of ourselves later in the episode. the alien possessing Cali does say, you know, your coming was foretold, like that that ceremony is actually a premonition of the future.
Like it's, they are seeing future events and interpreting them in, you know, modern dance.
And then, of course, we get back to the Liberator, and everyone is wearing outfits that they only wear for this episode, and they do that because they're colour coded, so they wear the same outfits as the archetypes do in the ritual.
And I think probably the costumes are terrible, but they're cheap and design only for this episode.
To me, we meet them. sitting around playing games.
Like, I just thought like, oh, they're in their, like, joggers in their comfyers, like, lading around the liberator.
There's only really Avon, who's dressed up a bit, and I thought, this is how they should be.
You know, it's like you're not going anyway. not seeing anyone.
I'll just put some bottoms on.
No, no, no, no, no.
I want them looking glamorous.
I want...
No, no terrytelling.
The gray rom pursuits are a low.
Avon's setting the standards that they should all be aspiring to.
And so Fiona Cumming, of course, is like doing weird things with the direction as well.
So this gives her the chance to do things like you said before, Anna, where, you know, we're in a film studio, presumably Ealing, and we can shoot down from above.
And then we get this sort of, we get, we fade between the liberator, we, no, the, this ship thing that they launch and then the ring and then Callie's eye.
Yeah, so it's like they're stylish for Blake 7.
We don't get things like this.
No, and it's telling the story, isn't it?
You know, that ship will go, you know, like heads off, the ring is on board it.
The ring is what will take Calli over.
And then we get that scene, which I think is one of the best scenes in Blake 7 as far as 2 characters interacting goes.
I think it's magnificent.
Yeah, I mean, I'm Chan if Lee will come back to sort of dealing with grief again in sand.
So there's obviously something that's in her wheelhouse, but for a series that doesn't often acknowledge what's happened sort of 2 episodes ago, this is this is really good stuff that Callie is mourning the death of her race and the planet that she grew up on, and she's there sketching it, and she's detached herself from the rest of the crew to do this, and it's Avon, of all people who comes to see her, which is just amazing.
But then, of course, Avon is damaged after what's happened in rumours of death as well.
So we've got all this layer of grief on these characters that they've, they've been through really, really bad experiences.
Even then, Boucher can't help himself.
I mean, you have to assume it's Boucher making a joke out of that scene.
What's this?
It's a it's a door, Kelly.
It appears to be closed.
But I think that's, I mean, like, I just don't know how much Tanneth Lee knows about what's going to happen in series C before she writes it.
And I did think that the stuff that she says about our on is generic enough that you could imagine her saying that in series 2 and Tanneth Lee is the 1st person to even care about the fact that she can't go back to our on because that's how it seems to be framed, doesn't it?
Like she can't go back to Aaron and she's been hiding her room and maybe that's something that she's been doing all along because, you know, we were too busy shooting people and fleeing pursuit ships and stuff to care about that and she wants to kind of bring that in.
But like the dialogue is really great.
Like, there's that, you know, like, I wish I could say that the, what is it, the witty banter on the flight.
The sparkling champagne on the flight deck was going to take you out of yourself.
Like all of that stuff is really good and it has that thing, you know, are you all right?
No, I'm not all right, you know, you will be and and like that's even, you know, showing concern.
I really like Paul Darrow's performance here because although you've got still the kind of normal, like slightly sarky Avon lines, He delivers them so much more gently.
It's not the sort of biting snark he normally has.
And it is my favourite line delivery, I think, at all in the series is him saying demonstrably.
That is really funny, isn't it?
Because it's a joke at his own expense.
Yeah, it does deprecating.
He does not do that on the bridge.
There's also genuine... genuine emotion from that character that he's imbuing that scene. his genuine care for that character, where he's, yeah, like he's smiling encouragingly, like, you know, you will get through this. like you can actually read that these 2 care about each other in a way that you don't often get in the show.
Which is all such a great setup for the denimon, between the same 2 actors.
Yeah.
I think it's interesting you get everyone actually acknowledging a bit of a weakness, even if only slightly.
And I think this all could really only it, it works so much better after rumours because it's, it's, it's a moment when he's had to sort of be confronted with the, the, in fact that, you know, he's, he's not always right.
Yeah.
And then there's this thing where as she walks past him to go out of her room, she touches him on the chest and then just walks off and again, you know, it's all bitchy Boucher dialogue, which is the reason that we watch the show, but we so rarely get just any kind of human moment between the characters, that that's really properly striking.
And I think that this is, is this Jan Chappel's best episode?
Oh, for sure.
She just seems to be responding to it.
You know, it's like, oh, crap, you know, I'm not having another week sitting at the desk flicking switches.
But yeah, I'm not having to look at the, the, the, um, Chiros monster and thinking about my life choices.
No, she is absolutely spectacular here and particularly when she gets to play the dual role as well and she will come into her own.
I'm sure we'll be covering that later, but she does so many great and interesting things with Cali in this episode and the way that she's not quite the normal Cali, she's a bit detached from everything.
She's at one step removed from the rest of the crew and she's not joining in with the banter the way that she normally would and putting villa down or whatever.
She's just, she's there, but she's not quite there.
And it's just a remarkable performance.
I think she is, we don't often give her a lot of credit because she doesn't get a lot of material to work with, but she's always really solid and a great, great presence, but this is definitely her finest moment in the show.
And I think it's just she's responding to the quality of the material.
Like, that's just, yeah. clearly what's happening.
Because just all the way through.
Like the, the, so, so we get the ship thing, the, the Christmas bauble that sort of turns up and parks itself next to them and they want to sort of go and do it and there's some discussion about whether we should go and um, and go on board and possibly lead to peril like it has done every other time that we've done.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We still have to wake up.
There's a fabulous entramp, my favourite Indian restaurant that looks just like that.
Complete with the little cone, the top and everything.
I do like how Taryn refers to it as the ship as she.
She's coming alongside or something the line, something like that. sort of reminding us he's supposed to be this down there, old timer, spaceman person rather than just weird. podcast because he had the same hair as Gareth Jones.
Yeah, but we get that sort of weird thing where Callie reacts to something on the ship and we spot it and she denies it.
And you kind of think it's going to be one of those sort of stupid Blake 7 things where everyone that fails to notice, even though it's been sort of hugely obvious to the audience.
But both Tarant and then Avon kind of call her on it.
And so when they when they get to the ship, like Callie is able to analyse Avon's motivation and saying, you know, you cut Tarant out, you told us a lie about why you left Tarant here, you left Tarant here because he'd had the same thought as you, but he'd made no secret of it.
And just having a character analyse the motivations of another character, like even having characters with sort of kind of complicated enough motivations on this show where you could have a discussion about them, it's so refreshing.
She gets her Deanna Troy on.
Yeah, yeah.
Discussions.
We should just glare at each other. uniqueness.
I like how the line, um, the phrase something else to chase crops up, again, like from from, from there, from Avon on Kelly's initial private conversation, and then he says it on the bridge. a nice bit of awareness. don't think he quite lands it.
I don't think he quite lands that line.
Like, you know, like, uh, as if the actor hadn't quite kind of, he's too subtle.
God, God.
You're accusing him?
Yeah, maybe.
Possibly.
It does he not?
show you're watching.
So we bored the thing.
So we board the space thing.
The space urchin.
The space urchin, the space cophagus.
So psychophagus, by the way, does mean obviously, as we all know, a coffin, but it does also, it's from ancient Greek words that mean the eater of flesh.
And I think it's deliberately chosen.
So it is clearly a sarcophagus and they discover it very quickly.
I think Cali suspiciously decides it's a sarcophagus quite early and as if she's in sort of tune with it.
Um, how do we feel that goes?
Because that's just about our only kind of spacy action sequence that we get this episode.
I think it's fine.
I think this, I love the way the set has degraded since we saw it, sort of 6 minutes in, and that sort of decay that's happened, and it's like turning up to a party 10 years too late, and something is full of dust, but everything is still a bit shiny, and just, um, it's, things that are a bit unsettling, like Cali arriving, teleporting in before the upper 2 arrive, and things like that, but everything is not quite right here.
And so it sort of is setting up a bit of a mystery.
What's going wrong?
Why is this happening?
This doesn't happen. everyone always arrives together.
So everything's just a bit strange and slightly off, which is a great feeling.
Why does even say Villa landed on his head when he clearly landed on his arse?
Because they couldn't say, oh, probably.
I like how as this scene goes on, it garbage feels like Avon and Cali are mob and dad. to Villa being the child there who is just excitedly peering at Steph and like, nope, I'll back away.
That, that fantastic moment where um, Taron asks whether they have tripped any wires and, and even, and Villa's just in the background of the shot with tinsel kind of going, even, look, I've been pulling at the tinsel for like the last 5 minutes.
We may we may have touched one.
That's right.
Then he covers for him.
I do like we get a little like insight into sort of villas level of morals here in that he won't take the ring off the corpse.
But don't you think it's more him being spooked by being a corpse?
Like he, he, he doesn't want to see the corpse initially, and then when he hears there's jewellery, he's straight over there.
And then he kind of goes, actually, maybe not.
This is like super creepy.
That was kind of I read it.
Yeah.
But it's that whole thing, isn't it, of Cali being like 2 steps ahead of everyone.
And again, you don't quite know why.
She's obviously got some kind of attachment going on that she's felt since the ship arrived next to the liberator and you get that little sound every so often that that little sound effect where it's like she's receiving something telepathically maybe.
Yeah, like a burst of static or something.
You've got to wonder why these people kept this woman on the ship.
She's always getting taken over putting their lives into like in jeopardy.
They got to meet the Than a few weeks ago.
He was great.
I think I can understand.
But, and so what happens then we start to get static electricity and we quickly sort of heading, you know, bringing them out of there.
And again, we get that sort of weird thing where she appears and they don't and that interference with the teleport, as you said, size, like super kind of weird and unsettling.
I love the bit where Villa just turns around and said, oh, that was smooth Dana.
We have a movie.
That's just great.
And yeah, and that's a good example of Fiona coming playing with the the established grammar of the of the shooting, you know, keep it we'll keep a close-up on him and then we'll play a trick on the audience by by reviewing that.
Yeah, that's nice.
Avon gets her, what the hell in this scene, which still, I've watched so much Doctor Who that I do not think that people are allowed to say words like that in the 70s, early 80s TV.
Oh, I thought that was interesting in that we had, it was in Pressure Point last year where they don't seem to really have much knowledge about religion.
And so that made me kind of wonder how that phrase has sort of carried on down.
And I've noticed it.
We don't really get stuff like, 0 my God, and what the hell, like even in, they always kind of sort of changed sort of something slightly different.
So I thought sort of that was sort of a curious little in universe thing to have on.
Does hell mean something different by that endpoint that it's still just a phrase and they don't actually know the connotations of it originally anymore.
What the frack?
Well, I think, I think last week, last week there's some reference to even looking like hell, and there, there has been dialogue where he suggests that that's where he'll probably be, like, I, I do think that they, they do use it sometimes, and what's shocking is that it was just allowed to be used at all, I think.
But it's very adult.
A lady had no clothes on in last week's episode, James.
Yeah, lying on some silver pillows.
I know what was more shocking than the naked lady with silver pillows. was the silver pillows.
So once we get back, we do have that big conflict between Tarrant and Avery.
How did you find that, Hannah?
I love it.
Oh, I love it.
I just, it all sees in hating Darren.
But it's one where I'm really kind of struck how he seems so harsh and hostile to like Cali, where contrasting to sort of Avon, who is being sort of a bit more quiet and watching, it is that sort of experience thing come in.
But even their dialogue between them is great.
But they like their sort of delivery.
Tarrant is quite tight pitched, um, and Paul Darrow seems to go extra deep, which makes him sound older, therefore, um, and compared to this sort of lightness and it really emphasises that sort of young, enthusiastic, we keep saying arrogant, but he is really arrogant, is, oh, he comes across like that, know it all teenager who thinks like they're set for the world and he's clearly not.
Um, he, I, I, it's there's some things he touches on that feel like they are a bit kind of close to the truth.
Yes, we all know that everyone wanted to have the ship with Blake Gondley thought he'd have it fine.
But the bit where he's going, oh, I win it live.
Well, in what measure?
You both ended up here on the Liberator.
You were both in the same shitty situation now.
How is this a win?
Don't be managed anymore than anyone.
It just feels like he's just trying to turn the screw there and oh, I'm just egging the munch.
Oh, punch, just have a pipe.
Just get it out the way and like, oh, punch his goody lights out.
It's nearly that, isn't it?
It's the, well, you know, you're saying you can do something else, you know, other than talk.
I love how you're reading him is high pitched, but he was putting on a deep voice.
Like, because, because, you know, he's 21.
Yeah, he's very young.
And he had to pitch his voice down because he sounded too young and squeaky.
It's just, but it's just brilliant how Paul Darrow brings his voice right, as you said, right down and his performance is very calm at this and it's just the way he turns around at the end and says, you also talk too much.
It's just so great that he just undercuts that whole conversation and he's not having, he's not going to play along.
He's almost not listening.
I didn't, I didn't hear anything worth listening to or something along those...
Oh, yeah, that's at the end. yeah Tarant says, forget it. and I even said it wasn't memorable.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
But yeah, it comes just like Andrew Tate crossed with Andrick or someone who's just been on an alpha male course and probably tried some supplements that aren't doing him. doing his bone.
I mean, it does seem like a bit of a rightly speech.
Do you know what I mean?
And she's writing it without much sense of who Tarrant is.
Like she seems to kind of know the one, you know, the one paragraph kind of summary of who the character is and where he's come from.
And so she is sort of reaching a little bit.
And so I think perhaps that's why the speech ends so limply with that absurd, that absurd claim that he's doing better at life than Avon is.
But still, it is an attempt with very, very little evidence to try and make sort of bit of bricks out of straw, to try and make a character moment for a character who is sort of fairly underwritten and basically relies for its existence on Stephen Pacey's performance.
But it's sort of interesting, isn't it, that if things are different in the morning, then you can see you're on the wrong ship.
And then in the morning, the ship is completely different.
That's a great, great moment.
I really like that.
And I'm, and I'm not sure.
So we, sorry, so this is the point where I'm not sure whether we're supposed to be seeing them becoming exaggerations of themselves and it is deliberately being really over-egged by the script as they all start to become these archetypes.
But it's kind of hard when your characters, when you kind of is an archetype anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
I think I think we do find the characters doing sort of odd things.
So, for instance, the knight is narrated to us by having the exterior shot of the ship and Dana singing, and I'm not quite sure why Dana sings because she hasn't done it before, and I think it is Taneth Lee trying to shoehorn her into a particular archetype based on very little knowledge of who she is.
So she knows that she's young, you know, like, uh, there's dialogue about it, you know, um, Joe said herself is like 19 years old.
I have this sort of sneaking suspicion.
I think that she sings because Ahura sings on Star Trek.
Um, and Tanniff doesn't have anything else to to kind of hang on to.
So, yeah, so Tennethley wrote the music and the lyrics, and they're pretty good, and obviously Joe Set sang it, which makes me wonder why we were going to get Stephen Pacey to sing the closing credits of Blake 7 in series D, and not Josette.
Maybe just that, I don't know, contract modified, so they said no more bloody thing for me. not singing again.
I have to, it's one of the moments that I'm not, I, is slightly weak and otherwise I, I quite like that we, we, we, we praise the directing in this.
We've had stills of the liberator before, but I think because we spend so long cutting and lingering on them.
It's very obvious that like they're stills.
You run through the photocopy of Fudgeball.
Yeah.
The song.
So because we don't actually ever see like Dana in person singing, she is just sort of, it feels like something the alien is forcing, putting through her.
And as we start cutting back and forth between Cali, It felt like another like element of drawing them in and drawing them towards the alien, yeah.
Yeah, you see, I've never read it like that, and I think it is a plausible reading.
The idea that these characters are becoming more and more like the archetypes as the creature gains in strength seems like a possible thing and does explain, I think, in universe, like in story, gives an in-story explanation for these things, which I'm just basically attributing to Taneth Lee not knowing that much about a couple of the characters and, you know, struggling a little bit, to kind of shoehorn the characters into these archetypes.
And And I think next year when she comes back, she writes another magnificent episode, I think, and manages to get the characters, you know, get a better handle on what the characters are doing.
Yeah, well, putting it that way, it is actually, it's a really clever thing for a new to the show, right, to do, to create these archetypes at the start, because then the, the, the, the, the characters who are there already in the show can be bled into them.
So without her having had to do a, come up with a reason why each of those people would be doing that thing.
It's because they're being consumed by these archetypes.
But, uh, it's almost as if she had this this high concept sci-fi fantasy idea that maybe had been stewing in her brain for a while.
May, you know, maybe, you know, could have been a novel.
Um, and and, and she, and she went, oh, I've got this idea, doesn't quite fit, but I could do something really sort of strange and bizarre and, you know, unsettling with these established characters by forcing them into this narrative.
Yeah.
So I think that she is keen to investigate these characters and to try and flesh them out and to try and give them the opportunity to do things that they haven't maybe had time to do because there was a lot of spacing and stuff to be getting on with.
So can we talk props?
I have this sort of terrible feeling that Blake 7 is essentially people sort of standing around in studios talking to one another.
This has a very, very impressive central prop though, and it's that egg, the blue egg.
Yeah, it's really impressive, isn't it?
I love the way that it glows and then it stops glowing and it crumples and I don't know how they did it, whether it's the same prop or it's the, it's a different one.
It's really quite nicely done.
So I think they have a bunch of props, and I think the last one is built around a balloon, and they sort of...
And then it all sort of goes to pieces and stuff, but it is sort of ingenious, and it's the thing that kind of releases not Cali into the world, I guess.
It would have been a much shorter episode if Gareth Thomas was still on board with his Welsh rugby playing skills because he could have just tested that thing straight into the teleporter and it would have been no problem.
A little, just a rugby golf, but, um, yeah, Taren, Taren's not going to be able to do that.
No, for God's sake.
He's a lacrosse player, it was one.
Badminton, squash.
I can't thank you.
Polo, probably.
Squash.
Oh my god, squash is absolutely the right period too.
Yes.
And he's got the tracksuit ready in this episode ready to go off to playoffs. straight off to the episode's not.
And he has the physique for it as well.
Gareth Thomas did not.
He's definitely a back, isn't he?
And during this whole sequence, Zen's voice starts to go wonky, and that's always unsettling, because Zen is the height of, well, Zen like, in some ways.
And so to have him getting all his voice going intruder.
Although, no, he doesn't say intruder, does he?
Does he?
Well, they think there's an intruder anyway.
It's very unnerving.
I think sends voice in this.
It's very kind of this slow wind down and like, despite Zen being quite untrustful, like in series A. It's kind of just been okay throughout series B and series C and we've sort of kind of got to rely on setting a bit more.
And I think it's also the fact that the sound effect goes wobbly as well, which is always the most calm part of, I mean, if ever you wanted to be on a spaceship and be on the liberator.
You'd want Zen because that's just a beautiful little is the wobbly bit under his voice and the bong.
Yeah, exactly.
It's reassuring.
So when that goes wrong, something instantly feels like, yeah, off, exactly.
And then and then all the lights go down.
And we never see the lights go down on the liberator.
That looks great in low lighting.
I love the lighting on this episode.
Yeah.
Is this a Fiona coming trademark?
Because she does the same thing on Enlightenment when she gets with Doctor Who?
She makes the tart.
She even makes the Davies and TARDIS look spooky and creepy, which it's fabulous in many ways, but it's not normally spooky and creepy, but she manages it.
So, ironically, she turned the lighting down on enlightenment.
But I mean, this is, apart from the film sequences, I guess.
This is like a bottle show.
We are just here.
And as so often everything is being done with sound and lighting and just the very, very simple things that you can do in a TV studio.
And so it's not sort of massively flashy.
I, I, the lighting in particular at the very, very end where, you know, Avon is confronting not Cali.
I think is tremendous.
It's super memorable.
I think all the sort of greens and yellows and things.
It's very very good.
You get it when there's the wind machine on her.
And just in the background, they're changing the lighting behind her as well, like along with the wind machine.
It's almost like waving along with the wind, I notice.
Definitely.
And I, the greens and the reds are not colours that you get on the liberator.
So it immediately makes it feel alien and different.
And there's so many great use of shadows around the ship as well, because we don't get the lights turned down on this ship very often.
So it just makes it feel really eerie and alien again, which it hasn't done since Spaceful, really.
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it?
It is extraordinary because you think about a studio set and what we aren't getting is just the studio set.
We getting the standard lighting, the standard background, all of that sort of stuff.
And so changing it up really, really does substantially, you know, it makes things different and changes the atmosphere.
And so this is happening as suddenly the sort of personalities or something of not Kelly's, I don't know, what are we calling her?
What do we call it?
I just called it either it.
It's just it in my notes.
The sarcophagus.
The flesh eater.
You know, that not Callie's minions from her previous life are kind of brought back with her.
And, you know, we were talking about Dana singing before and how she's never done that, but now she's doing it.
And then we get this extraordinary sequence with Villa, I think.
Yeah.
And it's really hard to know whether he's, is he hearing the cheering and the clapping or is it in his head and we're hearing what he's, or is this sort of part of the management station?
It's a really interesting and uncomfortable scene by the end, and Dudley Simpson starts by making it sort of funny with a bit of music, and then the music turns eerie and strange.
And yeah, the whole sequence is really, really odd.
It's an interesting choice on the editing there because they cut from that when you've got this dramatic music and it's quite an abrupt silence.
You cut to then sort of Dana going into Cali's room and then we cut back like and it picks up immediately again.
And I'm not totally sure how I feel about it.
It is, it is unnerving, but I, I, part of his wonders about that decision whether it would have been better to just maintain the sort of full scene altogether because it's a sort of buildup. to then villa crashing like to the floor.
There is something very television-y, though, about it and very period television.
You know, like if you think of this as us seeing what's happening on the flight deck of a spaceship.
It doesn't quite work.
But as a piece of television, like as a way of telling the story, you know, using BBC sound effects records, doing what you might do in a studio for another type of program entirely.
Like it shifts it away from reality and into the realm of television, it's a kind of special effect and a kind of direction that you could only ever do on television.
And that's one of Blake 7's great strengths, I think.
A lot of its weirdness comes from the weirdness of television in the period, you know, and the fact that it's shot on videotape and the fact that it's so heavily shot in the studio means that its special effects are very, very televisionual.
And that, I think, is very sort of televisionual storytelling.
And I think, you know, the question arises, is Villa like this normally, or is this him being kind of shifted into the minion role?
This is what I've always tried to work out with this episode, whether all of their behaviour is being coded by the alien wanting to recreate all the people or whether it's exacerbating natural parts of their personalities.
And I've never quite worked out the answer because there isn't an answer sort of on screen.
So if you're going on the way.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd always interpreted it as that, they, that it had picked the characters that most represented its archetypes and imbued them with that and accentuated them.
Like, I mean, you know, Tarrant as the warrior kind of does make sense as the full makes sense.
And we've seen Villa do magic tricks before.
So that's nothing new.
How do we square that with Dana?
Because it's the one that, because you touched on it earlier.
It's not entirely matched up in the same way.
No, she could have been the warrior.
She should have been the Warrior, actually.
Yeah, made Stephen Pacy sing.
It's interesting that, yeah, the entity has that that line says a villain, you know, he has a very high IQ, yet he acts like an imbecile.
When a lot of episodes in this season actually just really make him out to be an imbecile.
But I'm just...
He's one of the, in a way, it's inconsistent writing, I suppose, but or it's a character that can just be happily deployed either way.
But, um, that's that's the thing throughout this episode.
Some weeks he is an idiot.
Other weeks, he's actually too canny. particularly in the final episode of the season.
But, um, yeah, there's that, she, it's like she's seeing something in him that the other people aren't.
Perhaps the argument that being the fool is often the safest role to play.
And he, you know, will do that later, won't he?
pretending to be drunk and things so that he doesn't get asked to do stuff.
And, um, I guess, I guess too, what's happening here is that, um, is that Taneth Lee has come upon a group of characters who are a little bit undercharacterized and she wants to do something with them.
And so she's kind of forced to shoehorn some of this stuff in.
And when she comes back the following year, I think she is less inclined to do that because she knows the characters well.
She's seen them on screen and has written for them before because presumably she's coming in not having seen Dana or Tarrant in action at all.
Or no, be writing from the character briefs and they're probably very slight.
Yeah, so she is finding herself at having to do not quite a rescue job, but something like that.
And so and I guess that ambiguity about whether they're being possessed or controlled or whether they're showing their real characters allows us enough kind of wiggle room for her to kind of do whatever she wants with them.
But certainly that thing with Villa, because it's Michael Keating and because he's fantastic, he's still very villa-y, isn't it?
And the uh, the applause thing seems to be something that he, uh, he responds to well and would enjoy hearing a lot more than he generally does on a sort of day-to-day basis, I think.
And then we get that home.
We get that amazing sort of almost jump cut where the alien Callie appears behind Villa where he turns around and she's not there and then suddenly she is and it's a really shocking moment because it doesn't follow the grammar of TV like we're we're supposed to because we're in a strange mystical kind of story.
Yeah, she doesn't disappear or reappear.
She's just in shot and not in shot.
You know, they've just chosen shots with her in it and stuff again.
It's a sort of telly style thing, I think.
She doesn't pop into shot or anything.
What do you think of her look?
The way that styling.
I think she looks a lot different from, um, Callie.
Don't you?
And certainly, I remember, I remember when Callie reappears at the end and there's a shot of her in sort of close-up and stuff with her makeup and her hair and things that she was strikingly different from what we'd just seen Jan Chappell doing.
I think the hair is, you know, a bit overteased.
A bit nylon, isn't it?
Her hair is beautiful.
It's possibly even atomic, as Blondie was saying at number one in the charts that very week.
Oh, Pete.
I was wondering.
I was wondering when there was an issue on here.
But I mean, but for, I think is this, yeah, this is Operation Try and Persuade her to do another season because, because, because Johan clearly she gets her full face.
You know, she's not in a mask.
She's not having to do a silly voice.
I mean, she's doing a bit of a thought, she's doing a voice, but you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's it's not her, she's not in a monster costume or anything.
So it is it's a good double role for her to get her teeth into.
Um, which she's had not, the 1st time, um, just had that, but it's a much clearer role than being a own clone in terms of getting a bit of range.
And she gets a beautiful dress and who, as an actress, doesn't want a beautiful dress.
She looked.
I think she looks really cool, and it's quite spectacular, that 1st shot of her, and then later the shots of her sort of standing at the top of the stairs in the flight deck and confronting Avon.
She is just magnificent and she holds herself differently to the way that Callie does and things like that.
So Jan Chappell has fought this through and it's no wonder, really, that this was her favourite episode of the show.
Yeah, and we get that and that long final showdown, denouement scene with her and Avon, uh, is, it's very Blake 7 and very, just very, well, is it very Blake 7?
Would somebody who doesn't follow Blake 7 closely, I expect it to be, say that, why aren't they running up and down corridors shooting each other?
But it, but it is, it's very talking out the plot and real psychological character. fighting with words rather than just spaceships.
It's my highlight of the episode, that bit.
I think it's quite tense as well.
There's, it's quite, you've just sort of got like the, like humming of the ship and that's kind of it.
It's good sort of 10 minutes, this ramping up in between them.
That's a long time really to have what is essentially a 2 hander where it edges the others in the background.
Yeah, I wonder if it was even a, I wonder if it was a single take, you know, through that whole thing.
It was a really long scene.
I would just, I would say no in some ways because you've got that shot where everyone's taken the ring and you sort of, it's merging between him and the sort of robed figure and they do the merge and they've got it perfectly lined up.
I love what they've got the eyes lined up, which makes such a difference.
And then it sort of goes in and sort of pans around and into there, it feels like that sort of a moment where they probably had to stop and set up a shot.
It's just so fascinating, the bits where, um, the alien Callie says, um, oh, since um, when Tarant tries to say all of the crew were there and she says, no, don't try to trick me.
She said, I'd know, particularly if it's Avon.
And just the, yeah, and then a, and then um, then when she says, I like you.
Callie liked you. and it's just all those little, oh, it gives you sort of prickles up the arms because you have to sort of think, oh, it's that, it's that actually a little bit of a relationship here?
And there's an extra connection between them, isn't there?
Which has always, which has been there since Mission to Destiny, really, sort of the 1st time they're sort of paired off and they're always a really fascinating pairing.
And certainly this episode sets them up as the 2 grown-ups.
I mean, Villa's useless, and the other 2 are new and, you know, ridiculously young.
And so they are the 2 grown-ups on board the ship.
They're space mum and dad, aren't they, really?
And so they do have this sort of incredible connection.
But just, it's like, you've just blunted it now like Shirley Valentine or something.
Callie's done an night class and she's come back completely changed and had a holiday.
I don't like us on a holiday in Spain and she's not the woman she used to be.
But all of that stuff, you know, like Dana comes in and and not Callie realises that um, Avon must be in the corridor and and she says, you know, um, he tried to stop you coming and he just strolls in.
Did I dream this?
No.
And he just strolls in and says... and stop them. didn't get in the way.
I just didn't get in the way.
It's terrific.
It's even giving much less of a shit than we even expect him to.
It's wonderful.
He does say something to, uh, Tarrant, just before he sort of runs off, is he, saying something like, it would be foolish to just barge in there, and Taryn's got his determined look in his face.
Well, that's exactly what I'm going to do then.
Can't please swans off down the corridor.
You could have really done with with Blake's flappy leather number from series B. You get the billowing red robes behind him.
Yeah.
Pew leather.
There's also his wonderful line about something about pets, you know, that she was talking about having servants.
And he just says, I didn't hear anything.
Perhaps you said something about pets or something, which is just absolutely superb.
It is magnificent. isn't he?
He is so cool in the standoff.
He is not giving a 2nd and this is, I think this is one of Paul Darrow's very best moments.
I love the bit where he just turns to her and says, make me die.
There's nothing else you can make me do.
It's really good.
I mean, it's such a sort of, you know, it's a very Blake 70 and very Paul Darrow line, but it's also just really properly good.
And like she, he's standing as close as possible to...
And it is this thing.
I'm not going to obey you.
I am literally not going to be involved in any of your shit.
You can't make this happen because if I die, none of this works.
This isn't what you want.
This isn't what you're after.
And that's the only degree to which I'm willing to participate.
So it's not just sort of the usual kind of macho bullshit that he sort of comes up with.
It's a proper line that works really well in context.
It just tremendous.
I love that we throughout that scene go from her flattering him.
I wouldn't make a slave of you, Avon.
Well, not that sort of slave at least.
Well, at the end, he just then got her this almost becoming this quite pitiful figure, really, when she says that like, oh, don't send me back into the dark.
And it's such a vivid image.
She paints as well of this idea of being a sentient being, but and, you know, just unable to like do anything about it, just waiting.
It's actually a bit enlightenment, isn't it?
Apparently, yeah, the parallels are there, yeah. not just stylistic parallels, yeah.
And when she's when she's doing that thing, it's not just like, like, you know, there's the thing where sort of a vampire or a zombie will be saying, don't kill me, I remind you of your family member.
With that, it's actually not that. everyone has actually connected with this this entity.
It's not, she's not just saying, don't kill me.
I'm a bit like Callie.
She's saying, don't send me back there.
It's quite a bit sapphire and steel as well, then.
Do establish because I, I kind of take it that she is eternal, but like she doesn't die.
It is just this ongoing darkness.
So she says that that's how her race or species experiences death.
But that's the death that we're afraid of.
We can't imagine death because we always imagine ourselves there.
You know, like death is something happening to us rather than, you know, the end of our existence.
And so what's death, if it happens to you, It's that, isn't it?
It's like the inability to act, no sensory input, nothing, no other people, no things, nothing to see, nothing to do, just nothing.
And that's what's terrifying about death.
And death isn't really like that, but that's how that's the sort of death that we're terrified of.
It's just that line, isn't it?
I want to breathe and feel and see and know.
It's that don't send me back into the dark, Avon.
It's it's that primal fear of the dark that we all have, that that's it.
You can't, you can't function.
It's, it's tapping into all of those things and that's why it works so well.
And and the appeal is not to um, someone, as you said, Pete, it's not because she's like Callie that um, she's trying to get him to do it.
It's because it's so terrible, that she's just saying, please, you know, don't let me experience this.
Like it's nothing more than, you know, don't let me experience this horror.
It doesn't matter who I am.
I'm completely no one as far as you're concerned, but this is, this is terrifying and and, you know, just pity or something will, you know, prevent him from allowing it to happen.
Yeah, it's even though.
He does give a shit.
Yeah, but he...
But he gets a kiss before he gets to do all of that.
It's such a good smooch.
It is.
I always remember sort of watching Noel Edmond's teleaddicts back in the in the late 80s.
And he said, there was every week he said someone would write in and say, um, I want to see a clip from Blake 7.
And the clip they chose was the, you look so beautiful when your angry scene from this episode.
And it's just, yeah, and you just heard all the audience laughing at it at the end because it's taken out of context.
And actually, it's a really great moment that this whole episode has been building up to.
It's Avon being cool and taking down the alien in the most fabulous way he can he can do it.
So after that, of course, we have, for some reason, and I don't know who's responsible for this, but let's blame Chris Boucher, because we tell him how great he is all the time, but it's that scene at the end, which is just the, but, um, Dana, there's just one thing I don't understand seen.
And it just seemed to me like to have been written for people who aren't used to watching television or something.
I don't quite know exactly what's going on.
It's like the scene at the end of shadow where obviously something weird has happened.
And so just to make sure that everyone's got it, we're getting another plain man's guide to alien invasion.
So just in case you haven't paid attention or haven't quite worked this all out, just, yeah, we're just, just, um, knot it up and it's all fine.
But it's a bit clunky.
It's a shame.
It's really, really astoundingly bad, particularly given that the dialogue has been so good all episode and, you know, it's got to be Chris Boucher, if it's the script editor, and his dialogue is really great.
Maybe he was told he had to do it and just thought, oh, well, fuck it, I'm going to do this.
But the shame is that I think Blake 7 is, and it's absolute best when it's weird, like shadow, like this, like duel.
Like culture world?
Well, maybe not.
But maybe the web, though.
Maybe the web is the 1st episode that does this.
And, you know, these things don't always succeed visually or whatever, but that's because they're trying to do something weird and unusual.
And like in shadow, you know, the special effects are very television, we've got cameras looking at TV screens and stuff.
Like it's absolutely that.
That's Blake Seven at its best. and the fact that they feel like they have to apologise to it, apologise for it, or kind of explain it to the dim people at the back of the room.
I think he's a bit of a shame because that's awesome when they do that.
I think they're sometimes struggling to decide how to end episodes.
How do you like feed into that.
And you mentioned those episodes where we've got weird stuff going on and we end up having to end on a laugh.
And I'm really glad they didn't do that for this one, but it's cleared like, well, we want to see you into this nice little exchange of glances between Abra and Cali.
We need something before it and very briefly and we don't really know what it's going to be.
And it's such a shame because those glances across the flight deck are so subtle and the subtle way of telling the, the, the relationship between Avon and Cali, and they know something has happened here that's that's big and has impacted both of them, and they don't have to say it.
They just do it in that look.
Yeah, it's funny because Callie is just as involved, you know, in defeating not Callie as Avon is, but of course we don't see that what we see is the incredible confrontation between the 2 actors and sort of we're told Callie's doing it in the background.
Um, I guess we get that shot that I mentioned before where Jan turns up at the end looking tired because she's battling the...
Yeah, it's really good, isn't it?
She's so good.
It's like a real close-up.
Yeah, much closer than we had of the, of not Carling.
Imagine if they'd ended it on that moment, her kind of just coming out with a tear in her eye. crashing turn tight.
Yeah, but they just don't do that.
Do they?
They do the, they do the beginning in media arrays.
Like they do throwing throwing us in at the beginning, particularly boucher, you know, but we haven't yet worked out that we can end before everyone's sat down and had a drink of adrenaline and soma and played a few rounds of space monopoly. and then explain the plot of the script to one another.
Like you can just leave.
Another lives, I hate in this.
We have Villa going even Aurax back on his feet in 10 years.
What a revolting foot.
You should be used to those.
Where's that come from?
What?
Well, I think that he knew that about her and Justin already, you see.
Those are the revolting thoughts that he's thinking of.
All right, so now, let's have a scene where we all sit around and explain to one another what happened on the podcast. over the last 50 minutes.
Can I explain the plot to you?
If only the alien had just asked nicely and offered them all some jewellery or something.
They might have all...
No, they've got all the jewellery.
They've spent that... 3 or something.
When'd you pick A4's getting his new leather clothes from?
In the same way, the villa works through all the wine in series D, he works through all the jewellery in the ship over these in 3 series.
Every time they drop off somewhere, he's exchanging it for something.
Alcohol and dry.
I just remember those carafes and the and the like the carafe and the glasses that he's drinking wine from in series D. I want them.
I really want them I would drink wine from them every night, I reckon.
I just love it because it's so different from everything else that they're trying to do, particularly this season where they're trying all sorts of different stories.
And yeah, this comes out of the blue and is just magnificent.
It's a, I mean, we've been on such a strong run of episodes.
And this sort of finishes that that little mini run where there's a story going through sort of 3 or 4 episodes for the 1st time.
Well, not the 1st time we did that in series B, but it really feels like there are consequences to all of the actions that have happened in children of our on and then rumours of death.
And then, um, yeah, it's, it's really great work from Teniff Lee.
And I hope she comes back.
When she comes back next time she doesn't get to be quite so weird and I think it's because she's more confident with the show.
And I like that she does something different next time.
And I think it's equally good, if not in that, you know, entirely inhabiting that strange mode that Blake 7 sometimes has.
It is there a little bit, the sand, you know, sand is a vampire, that's kind of weird, but, but, you know, this is properly weird in a way that that isn't.
And those are my favourites, I think, those episodes, even when they don't work, just the oddness of them and the TVness of them and stuff.
I think that just trophy.
So it's all the time we have for this week, and we'll be back next time to learn about the human concept of boning in Ultraworld.
Until then, good night.
Goodbye.
Ta-ta.
Bye.
Bye.
Oh my god, it's hard to imagine what we recorded last time was worse.
Let's do it again, then.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximal power.
I was gonna say, and you should, you're gonna have to cut this even with the explicit tag.
He leans in for a snog whilst her .
Yeah.
Wash your mouth out and leave now.
Don't leave it in.
Tag.
