Maximum power.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast.
Now, today it's time to raise the curtain, it's time to light the lights.
It's time to meet the Muppets on the Moloch show tonight.
Hello, I'm Cy.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Pete.
I'm sorry.
Well, here we are at the tail end of series C and someone has decided it's a really good idea to bring Ben Steed back to write a 2nd script for this series after the absolute...
Well, I don't think there are words to describe Harbest of Kyros.
So, obviously, Chris Boucher is scrabbling around for some scripts at this point.
So here we are with Moloch.
Now, I'm going to throw this over straight away to Zoe because I think there are some issues in this episode that we might have to deal with and you might be the best placed to deal with those.
Uh, yes, uh, scantily clad glamorous swimming and violence and rate uses a plot point.
Is it a Ben Steed?
It is a Ben Steed.
Join the dots, yes.
It's deeply uncomfortable in many ways, and I don't think any of the women, except possibly Servoland, have anything to do.
It's the whole sexy lamp trope.
Absolutely, dressed in very tight denim that doesn't quite fit, that shows off far too much, and then they are treated abominably.
Even our main characters, and I think will come onto it later, are not served well by the script.
Callie and Dana.
It's not good for them either.
It's a, yeah, it's a bit of a, um, the listeners don't get bored of us saying this so often, but why don't they give the women more things to do?
They're really good at their jobs.
They could do it really good.
And like, yeah, Dana.
I mean, I mean, Kelly, literally nothing.
She presses 2 buttons.
Dana, as Avon's sidekick, has worked out interestingly and sometimes, and I get that she's sort of meant to be his apprentice, but that does mean she ends up being written like a Doctor Who companion on a bad day.
What's that, Avon?
What should we do, Avon?
You know, there's the bit where he says, have you, have you scanned for monitoring devices?
And she's good, no.
He goes, well, do it then.
Yeah.
And even when they when they go down to the planet and they come across a locked door and Avon's like, basically, oh, maybe we'll have to blow it up.
I just sat there going, okay, cool, Dana's going to know.
Okay, it's just going to open.
And then Dana's like, ooh, a dead mouse.
And it's like when we met you, you had a bow and arrow.
Like, you hunt for all your own food.
That is, you know, and you can sort of see Gisette is just like, really?
reacting to this mouse.
But wouldn't it be brilliant if Callie and Dana had gone down and they're taken down this civilisation that's misogynistic and awful.
That would have been a really great piece of plotting, but of course, because it's Ben Steed.
This doesn't fit with his sexual politics whatsoever.
No, no, not at all.
And I think Dana was really badly served in a scene that maybe we'll talk about a bit more later, where she actually does something really stupid, purely to give Avon the chance to do some exposition.
And it's so out of character and makes it look ridiculous that I struggle to understand it.
It's like, what was that about?
It's just reductive, and it's kind of weird in that, we've had series B where Jenna and Callie were often left behind on the ship, but sort of still written in character, and now here we get, as you say, Zoe and Pete, Dana just sort of written generically and without, without sort of personality and intelligence, which she, she's had in spades up until now, you know, it's, it's, bizarre And it's such a shame because Josette is so brilliant.
She's such a great actress, even at this very, very early young stage in her career.
She is absolutely brilliant and she's just not getting the material that she deserves that she could work with.
Yeah, it's an episode with a lot of problems.
I mean, we haven't even got onto the absolute worst one.
We'll come to him later.
On the plus, well, what have we got on its plus its columns before all of our listeners...
The Serverland and Villa Show, which is a pairing that has never happened before and never happens again, but just for this episode is absolutely its saving grace.
Yeah, it's like I was watching that thinking, I want a show of these two.
I would happily, he could happily be, he's much, he's funnier than Travis, for so long.
I've forgotten his name.
It's funny.
He's even funnier than Travis.
He's like her perfect comedy sidekick.
And this episode does give us the greatest Servolan eye roll of them all, I think, which has existed as a gift on the internet for a very long time, and I promise our dear listeners, it will be in high quality by the time we put this episode out.
Because it is just the greatest eye roll committed to cellulord.
Yeah, it was celluloid.
They on vacation.
I do also think that David Harry's hardened criminal character.
Give me him over the crimos of hostage any day.
And, you know, we do get it's Ben Steed, so we get Villa saying, oh, do you like women?
He's like, no.
But then, you know, he meets Sabina Franklin.
And they're quite fun together, you know?
Is there a hint of a redemption arc going on with them?
I mean, the minimalist hint of, um, maybe not.
No.
I'm touching at straws.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe there was a harsher scene written that Chris Boucher went.
Actually, no, Ben, that's enough, mate.
Can we, you know, Yeah, I think given it's a Ben Steed episode, then a man treating a woman as a person probably counts as as much redemption as we're going to get.
Yeah, that's the that's the benchmark that, unfortunately, we've got here.
Because he and he's in this strange sort of, almost at moments, he's like Terry Scott from Terry and June.
But violently misogynistic, but it's presented as a comedic character tweak, which is just weird.
Yeah.
It's weird because he's opposite, because he's not long done.
His Doctor Who story, the Armageddon factor at this and he's taken his comedy performance to another level for Blake 7.
So I wonder if this is how he just decides that, oh, it's just science fiction.
That's how we do it. or whether it's a conscious decision to try and brighten this poorly written episode up.
I think he's just doing his Peter O'Toole, you know, he's just drunk throughout.
That might be the only way to have got through.
Yeah, yeah.
And 5 years before Supergirl.
I mean, I think I'll try it if I watch this episode again and just see if it's any better at that point.
But yeah, when it all sets out.
So when we kick off, they're in hot pursuit of Serverland, which feels it's quite exciting, it's quite pacy. 27 days.
They've been chasing this.
Okay, well, not that hot.
Yeah. pursuit is the wrong phrase, isn't it?
Because we've not seen her for a week or so.
We get that lovely, that effect of her ship disappearing, but noticeably disappearing behind a black thing that was matting out the other stars as well. which I think is a clue to the audience rather than them just accidentally matting out the stars as well.
And you get the hint that it's going to be a villa centric episode with him being so kind of whiny and doing his usual, but he's doing his usual stuff that entertains everyone and it's not entertaining them.
And that's, that's, that's, that's the, the core of a really interesting episode.
But of it potentially.
And he gets to do that amazing comedy somersault when the, uh, when the, which I missed the 1st time I watched, it's barely half a second.
Yeah.
So it's like, okay, yeah, we're getting a villa episode this week.
Even Callie's had enough in moaning at this point.
I think that's the real point.
She's always been the nicest to everybody and even she's sick of him.
You know, I guess if you've been, if you've been in pursuit of a ship for nothing else for 27 days, everyone, everything anyone does is going to stop getting on your nerves, isn't it?
So, let alone someone trying to be comedic and funny at that point.
You're going to be tired and grumpy and just you're not going to be at your best by that point.
You can only play so much space chess before you start.
It's not even 3D space chess.
It's triangular space chess, isn't it?
Or is it more like Ludo?
I'm not sure So we've got an interesting dynamic, as we saw earlier in the season in City at the Edge of the World, between Tarrant and Villa, and Tarrant is in his full on arsehole mode this week.
Yeah, which we've done before and been forgiven and then just switches it on again.
It works as a conflict between those two.
We kind of, we saw that conflict, that type of conflict plenty of times in the past between Blake and Avon.
And it doesn't work between, I don't think it works between Avon and Tarrant because Avon is just in a league of his own and there's no equality.
He just heads head and shoulders above above him as a character.
Whereas these 2 are both kind of shown as, you know, flawed.
Neither of them are perfect heroes. neither of them are perfect. antiheroes either.
So when there's conflict between these two.
It is a bit, there's such opposites as well, that it does give a good bit of dramatic mileage to it, I think.
But I think that I think Tarant and Villa have some similarities that in some ways set them against Avon because neither of them are very good at thinking before they act.
They can be quite impulsive and make silly mistakes.
Whereas Avon is a lot less like that.
And he really values thinking his moves out a long way ahead.
So in some ways there's this kind of triangle effect of Villa and Tarrant being against each other, but also both against Avon.
Yeah, hey, maybe that's what the triangular chessboard represents.
Or maybe it was just a plot they had knocking around or prop their head looking around.
I think another reason the Tarrant Villa thing works so well in this early setup is we've had the tension built by, you know, Aurek explaining, you know, here's how we do the whole heist, and it's like, well, when do we have to do this?
And it's like, you've got 70 seconds to do it.
That's a really interesting presentation of space travel and how the teleport system works.
And it at least gives a reason for Travis to be a bit of a prick because, you know, there isn't time to have a 5 minute discussion about this.
Addie Dragsvilla along.
And then we get the really interesting teleport where they are put down because it's, you know, it's a complex thing to do.
They are put down either side of the wall.
We don't particularly do anything with that, but it is at least an interesting concept.
It's a bit of extra jeopardy, isn't it?
Yeah, it's an eventful script.
You've got to give it that.
Plenty of stuff keeps happening.
And it is all driving in one direction.
You can sort of see how, because is it right that this was a pretty much last minute commission because another script fell through, Robert Holmes script.
I read somewhere that I think so, yeah.
Yeah, I don't know how far it had got, but yeah, he was at least pencilled in to be doing this episode.
I think that Zen's in a bit of a funny mood in some ways anyway, you know, going back to that, where you've only got a minute to do this, because they find this screen that doesn't let radiation through.
So Zen just shows them a black screen and they're like, we can't see anything.
And Zen's reaction is basically, LOL, I know.
I love it when he's a bit mischievous like that.
So it doesn't surprise me.
He's also like, by the way, you know, you got less than a minute and a half to do this thing I've told you about.
Good luck with that.
Liberator is employing malicious compliance this week.
You have not been keeping clean bedrooms.
They're thinking back to Harvest of Chiros, because I had skipped over that one previously, but I decided to watch it for this one to just, you know, enhance the steedness of it all.
It's kind of like at least in that, you know, as much of a pig as Jarvik is.
There is an attempt to do something with sort of class structure with the fact that he was an officer and decided to give that life up, et cetera.
And also that he gets killed at the end.
But yeah, there's there's no subtlety to gross hello and and Lecter.
Oh, Lector looks like evil John Craven.
Yeah, yeah.
Sardos, the plant of sadisticness, yeah.
Yeah, the only one who picked up on Gross and Lecter.
Yeah, yeah.
Even Sardos.
Like, what, is there a giant head floating around spewing out guns?
Sean Connery is going to turn up in like a red leather...
It turns out, it's a tiny little head that it's dishing out of garden.
Oh my god, Ben Steed, you faturist.
Well, actually, come to think of it, Zardoz is a play on Wizard of Oz, and we're not meant to look at the man behind the curtain, and when we finally do, we wish we hadn't.
Oh, yeah, hang on.
This features Avon saying the line.
Tarrant is always precipitous, which would just remind me that when I was a kid, I'd heard that somewhere, possibly even in this, possibly in something else.
And I assumed precipitation, rain.
Is it a way of saying that someone's wet?
And I was some something years old.
You know, when you've figured out what you think a word means, and then at some point, you know, a few years older, someone else uses it and you think, oh, that doesn't mean what I thought it means.
So educational.
I like the way Servolan is the way that she has to pivot multiple times in this story, at least.
She goes storming into what we find out later is a trap and it all looks like she is, as usual, completely just going to wrap rings around these people.
And when that starts to drip away from her.
It is a, it is a nice plot twist to have, to have a, on the back foot.
And I think Jack and Piss enjoys those scenes because, you know, she likes having a bit of variety to play.
I think you can see her getting her teeth into it and then she gets comedy moments later, of course.
So for her, she gets to do more than just be on the bridge of her ship issuing orders and vaporising her crew, which I guess is why she's now quite short of staffed, to be honest.
It's not many, has she?
She's down to mutoids now.
She's got a couple of mutoids and then she's got her pilots who we can't afford to actually hire this week.
So the scene the scene at the end towards the end where I say, oh, yes. literally Stephen Pacey has to say, Servoland has gone back to her own planet.
Because he can't afford a model.
Yeah.
I mean, she became...
The fit at the end when she says, it's me, Servolan.
I'm just calling you up.
Surfland really doesn't need to do it with that lot.
I mean, she does get one of my favourite lines when she marches in to see Gross and she says, I've come a long way section leader, and it wasn't out of concern for your peccadillos. she delivers it beautifully.
Yes.
Yeah, I just particularly lost even paste. like, yeah, it was great.
She came in, she did bullet time.
She did a backflip, you know, she was really, really, really cool.
And then she took off in her spaceship over there.
Just off the street.
We can't turn the camera.
It's over there.
I've been watching a lot of French and Saunders.
This wasn't the high budget episode, was it?
No.
And even we didn't even get a proper door in a rock face, which is, you know, I would think is 101.
But is this the 1st time, certainly the 1st time I've really noticed that when we see the establishing shot, a painting of the colony?
And as the camera zooms in, you can see the brush strokes of the painting, even on Powell video.
Yeah, and the model work, a lot of the model work is done on videotape, which doesn't happen very often in the show at this point.
Usually the model work is all film.
So it feels cheaper than normal.
But we do get a nice a couple of nice sets with lots of drapes and a bit of wind machine going on so that they move so that you get the possibility that this is actually a bigger place than you're actually seeing.
So that's that's not bad.
It's not great, but it's not bad.
Look, I'm hanging on to any positives here.
Is that the best you can say about it?
We've got gently moving drapes.
Yes, absolutely.
The lighting is good.
Yeah.
And it's, we've come down to this planet and it's the planet, there's magical device, otherwise known as a 3D printer, which they've basically printed.
Which is kind of like, oh, the most my favourite film, which I've forgotten the name of, 1950s science fiction, impossible planet, planet.
Oh, this islander?
Forbidden Planet.
Thank you.
It's like the Impossible Planet.
That's Doctor Who.
I'm editing.
I'll edit this episode.
So it's not exactly...
It's got Leslie Nielsen in a straight rock.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like one of my favourite things ever has got me into science fiction, I think, when I was little seeing that a couple of times.
So this isn't quite Forbidden Planet, but yeah, whereas on Forbidden Planet. an ancient civilisation who've developed a machine that can unleash the power of the ear to spoiler.
Here, it's basically a 3D printer that can make dead mice.
And, but also it can make teleport. it can make teleporter bracelets.
Oh, yes.
And thank God, they've now got a good stock of them, they'll last them for years.
It can also produce golden delicious apples.
So there we go.
Yeah, and at least at least the script resisted the opportunity of doing something with something Garden of Edeni with the apple and Dana eating the apple or something, which would have been a bit obvious.
You know, even as I'm saying it, I'm wondering if the original script did and they improvised that out of it.
But, um, looks like he enjoys that apple.
He does, doesn't he?
Paul Darrow is not going to undereat an apple. drinks an asshole. threw a paling fence.
Yeah, he gets some quite nice dramatic moments, though.
I mean, we have another nice shot of Avon dramatically appearing at the end of a corridor, like, da.
Just zooms in, stands there, closes for a minute and then runs up the corridor, which is it's a very Avon thing, I think.
And it gets tortured as well, doesn't it?
So we get a lot of violence, just, again, slightly offscreen, but you get to see Darrow sweating and in pain acting, which is always great.
Yeah, it's not a Daryocentric episode, but any scene with him in is a Daryocentric scene, and he is actually doing important stuff.
Yeah, stuff that it hinges on.
But I think he, in interviews, didn't he often cite this as being the worst episode or his least favourite, mainly because of the VFX.
And yeah, we haven't yet talked about our Colonel.
What's his name?
Colonel Astrid. in his flotation tank.
Why didn't they just put an extra, well, maybe health and safety?
Why didn't they just put an extra in there?
Also, it seems like Via Lorimer's like, we don't actually need to see anyone teleport, do we?
We can, we can just, we can just do the sound effects and then they walk on from off camera.
Because I don't, I don't, I don't think we see any wibbly. don't see any outlines.
It's just kind of the sound effect and like, particularly when Avon and Data, um, are put down.
We get a shot of a corridor with the sound effect.
And then they walk on a few seconds later.
It's the power of suggestion.
And he's probably kicking himself thinking, do you know what?
I've directed more episodes of this show than anyone else.
And this is my last time I'm directing an episode, and I've only just thought that we could do it like this, and it would have saved a whole lot of time and energy.
Yeah, but it's like the springboard for George Reeves Superman.
Like they would just put a springboard underneath the camera and it would just run onto it and jump.
Like, we don't need wires.
In some of the later Wonder Woman episodes, they stopped bothering to show her doing the spin round and changing clothes because it took too long to set up and they were, and it's like, that's the show. rest is padding.
Maybe my commitment to liberated beaming down effect isn't quite that passionate, but still, it's a shame to not have it.
I mean, the horrible thought occurs that the whole of the budget for this show did actually go on Moloch himself.
It's entirely possible.
Yeah We should probably come on to Moloch, really, and Paul Darrow always cited that line, as the moment that no one could get through in the whole of the show, the one time that they all cracked up and had to do it again and again and again is that is how I reasoned you would look.
But I mean, yeah, to be fair, he has travelled around in this place, heaven universe quite a lot.
You could argue within that reality.
That is exactly the kind of crappy effect that Avon might have learned to expect.
It's one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life.
It truly is.
I cannot. sit here and go, oh, well, it's dreadful.
And somehow it gets worse when it moves.
It's more of a finger puppet.
It's like, has it even got somebody's hand in it?
They haven't even made up Deep Roy to sit in that thing, just or just his head or something, you know?
Yep.
And it's this whole thing of like the Sardoans. they realised what this life form would be.
So decided to stop evolving is sort of the reasoning that's given early on.
But it's also like, why would a binocular creature evolve into a cyclops, a mono, a mono optical, and I'm not sure if that's the right scientific term, creature.
You know, it no longer has stereoscopic vision.
So it has giant ears instead.
Oh, and by the way, it can't live outside a life support machine.
It's like evolution's meant to go forward.
Generally, generally speaking.
But yeah.
And Avon's like, yeah, I reasoned you'd be completely useless.
The only thing I can think of is that they've got quite a small population.
They don't let insiders in.
This is the result actually of 2000000 years of inbreeding.
And actually they neglected to allow for that.
They were like, this is the pinnacle of evolution.
No, this is the computer projection of what happens if you just inbreed a small population for this long.
You've given you've already given that far more thought.
And it's creators did, yeah, because that works.
I like it.
That's my huge head, tiny body, big ears, head cannon now.
But it's also the fact that he is really stupid and doesn't realise that he needs the, despite being ultra intelligent, he forgets that he needs a life support system to survive.
So the moment he leaves, of course he's going to die.
And just that forlorn shot of the puppet sat on the liberator floor with the telephone bracelet around it.
It's just...
If I could edit one, if I could edit one swear into every episode of Blake Session.
It would definitely Callie, looking at that, just going, fuck this.
I'll be...
The look on her face, I think, mirrored my own at that point. horrified, disgusted.
Is this what we've come to?
This is Jan Chapel just breaking the 4th wall of Baking No.
I've made my decision in harvest of Chiros, but now I'm really, really, definitely going.
I've had enough of this Sorry, I've been sat there looking after everybody's coats again while you've got out to have the adventure and this is how they repay me.
I always think of Nathan, observing that Doctor Who fans often save a really bad story.
If only it had been longer.
It could have been better.
And he was like, why do you want more of that crap?
But with this, is there a problem, you know, that whole, that whole final sequence of it, of it being meeting, dying because of that, needed a setup needed, I don't know.
Yeah.
But if it does, but they said you had time to do it.
That still doesn't mean they would have done it well.
But to have it just suddenly plonked over and then everybody just chuckling on the bridge.
So that's an episode in the can.
It's just kind of weird that we kind of have 4 plots here.
So we have this section leader who wants to take over the federation, so he's importing criminals to crew his ships.
We've got the duplicating machine.
We've got Serverland, who wants the duplicating machine to rebuild the forces of the Federation, and we've got what Moloch wants as well.
And of course, David Harry's character too has his own, has his own plot and presumably Pula and Sabina Franklin's character, Sardowens, who, you know, are slaves, basically.
So they've got a little bit of a story as well.
But none of the stories really come to a satisfactory end.
Like they end.
But it, yeah, it's kind of like, is Sabina Franklin's character killed by that flash of light?
I certainly hope not, but it looks like it.
I mean, and this is...
Yeah, I mean, this is a story, as we said, that writes Servlan out, but I said, she's gone.
So, yeah, it looks like, yeah, Doran and Chisel end up fried together by that light.
But it, yeah, it's just so perfunctory.
So when Eric Saywood does that sort of thing later with killing characters off.
Yeah, he sort of says later in interviews.
No, the, you know, the idea of that is you got to know them and you care about them and it has, therefore it has an effect on you and it sort of shows how evil the villains are.
And it's just kind of like they're, if they are, if Dora and Chesam Arkill, they're killed in the background just after they've discovered they might possibly be free of all this.
No one comments on it.
And that's the thing.
I know Blake 7 can be dark, but it feels sort of uncharacteristically unfocused.
Like usually when Blake 7 is going to kill a character, you are left in no doubt as to what's happened. absolutely.
He was just like, well, we've shot the bits on the liberator already and they're not there.
So...
Yeah, you're not in the next filming block, you're dead.
But it feels like there's the scene missing where the 2 of them are there saying, oh, let's restructure this whole civilisation.
We can make things better and they walk off into the sunset together to make things right, which we've seen in other episodes like Weapon and things like that where the 2 characters who are left that we have seen all the way through get their their moment at the end.
But here we're just sort of denied that.
Yeah, of course, Brendan just cited Eric Haywood would have done this better, which is something that I have not heard on a podcast.
And the fight back on that front is going to come one day, but I'm keeping my powder dry until the right era comes along to start doing that more often.
It's not here.
I can see.
Coming round to this idea of bits being cut out of the episode.
I thought there were several bits in this episode where it felt like bits were cut out where we didn't see stuff that was then later just explained to us or we were supposed to just kind of guess, like, how did Tarrant escape his capture?
How did he know there was a computer that knew about him?
How did Moloch get the transport bracelet on himself?
He's suddenly wearing it.
Well, how did you do that?
I'm picturing that now.
With his tiny hands.
It's like, it feels like there are a good 15 minutes that got cut out and were needed and we're left to go so did, did this happen or was it something else?
It just feels in some ways like they had some odds and ends, like Brendan said, 4 plots.
They kind of had a few odds and ends that they just smushed together.
And it's a that'll do episode rather that we've made 50 minutes of television.
Go us.
That's it.
That's all.
It's the old Terrence Dix and Barry Letts of, it's better than the test card being on.
Although we haven't mentioned a fun little drinking song.
Oh, no, which was written, I found out, by Via Lorimer himself, who wrote the music and wrote the lyrics for that, because it said in the script, they're singing a song, and he said, oh, I'll write something, and he put that all together and played the harmonica.
And 10.400000 people watched it.
And I think this possibly became the definitive like 7 episode for a lot of them.
I mean, you know, the studios could end the rider strike right now by just playing that endlessly and going, do you think they deserve royalties?
Yes they do.
That was hyperfect.
God, aren't we glad that we don't get the lyrics that he writes for the theme tune?
Oh yes.
Oh, yes.
I'm expecting someone to come along and sing that for us next season.
I'll have to sort something out.
Maybe AI can do it for it.
See, the style of Stephen Pacing.
There might finally be a decent use for AI.
Zen might have other ideas.
That theme tune remix is not available.
I got to the credits with watching it with Rod, and he's like, what have you taken down in your notes?
And at the time, I didn't.
I didn't take down anything during the episode?
I just turned to him that I said, everything cancels each other out.
It's just...
Anytime something good happens.
Villas, um, little moments are the saving, the saving grace of this episode for me, I think. to the point where I was, as soon as it was on, I was looking forward to those bits because I remembered them.
It had been a while since I'd seen it.
Her mouth go on to Villa when she's about to hit someone with a rock and it's just that, oh, I'll do it.
And then she goes, doing heavy rock acting, smash on the...
You could almost say, together they are beautiful. because just like the number one single of the UK that week by Vern Kinney.
Together we are beautiful. is not very well remembered.
I know that one popular at his time.
I do know that one.
That's my hardest shoehorn yet, I'm going to say.
Oh God, it's dreadful.
Is that it?
We've run out of words.
Joe, I actually, I had to go on Wikipedia to look something else up, which I thought was interesting about this. episode.
We've got this computer system that can scan something and then replicate it as a replicator and ignoring Lecture's very dramatic reveal of the mouse with the little cloth.
He almost does a ta-da, you know.
You'd think he conjured it the way you introduce it, ignoring that.
These little computer punch card type things they're using, which are another badly made prop, that you can see that they've been glued together by the work experience kid, you know?
But I did think it was interesting that they were used because at the time this episode were made.
Computer punch cards were in standard use for programming and data entry.
This is a little bit before my time, but they were a thing.
It wasn't until a few years after this was broadcast, that they were made obsolete by magnetic storage disc and that kind of thing.
So this idea of the computer punch cards, would have looked very recognisable to viewers at the time, and I just thought that was really interesting.
Yeah, it's like we've moved on from the days of big spinning reels, I suppose, that the 60s idea of computers was reels that spun backwards and forwards. which nobody would actually have seen in real life.
And yeah, I wonder how many, probably even if you hadn't ever actually used a computer punch card, you'd sort of would have seen it on the news or on, yeah.
Yeah, you would know what it was.
Yeah.
And it sort of makes a difference from like late 60s, early 70s representations of those kind of punch cards.
And I'm thinking there were a couple of later episodes of The Avengers, and I think the new Avengers as well, which had them.
You know, the villain would stop to explain to the henchman that this card contains all the data of our target, and the computer reads the holes, da da da, whereas here, they just sort of hold it up and say, this is the data, and it goes in here and is reassembled, and it's kind of that, that explanation has become streamlined, because as you say, Zoe, they are in, they're in the public consciousness.
And because we get that verbal explanation, when Avon goes to use it and he finds Terrence card and he goes to put it in the in like the output in the assembler and sees the dead mouse, there's no dialogue there where he goes, ah, of course, it can't sustain life, blah, blah, blah.
But he just kind of goes, oh, okay.
And it's, it's all, it's all physical.
And possibly because it's Darrow.
It a highlight of the episode. that we don't get that explanation twice.
And of course, Avon, there's supposed to be a computer genius.
So he would know this kind of thing, and although this technology is slightly ahead of him, he would know the basic principles at least.
So I did make a note to say that I thought actually the exposition scenes of him working that out were actually quite entertaining for exposition scenes because it's Paul Darrow talking basically to himself with little interjections from Josette Simon.
So you could see Avon putting it all together, which is really nice character work, surprisingly, for an episode that doesn't have a lot in it.
That's not bad.
As I said, cling to the few positives there are.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I don't know if it's me noticing it, but I'm sure our thugs get progressively more South African sounding as the episode progresses.
It's just that because that's a bit of 80s shorthand.
Just do the accent a little bit.
I think that Avon does get a fair amount of exposition in this episode.
It seems like in this episode, he is the explainer.
It's like, oh, there's a computer involved in the major plot point.
So Avon's going to have to explain everything to us.
But he's also explaining the business with the shielding around the planet when Zen's like, well, no, you can't see through it and apparently Avon already knows and understands this and how it all works and how they're tracking systems of work because he says, oh, they'll have seen us go in.
They'll have seen us leave again.
So he's explaining all this as well.
But the bit that really did get to me is when Dana is looking at the image and going, I can't see the ship and Avon basically says you stupid, you know, and it's like, why?
She's not. she's not stupid.
Dana is an intelligent character, but for some reason in this script, she's been made to be and make this mistake because everyone says, well, of course not.
That's a photograph from before when we were in the screen.
Now we're out the screen, can't see it.
Have you forgotten this?
And I don't understand the purpose of that except to give Avon the exposition to say, but I know well that they'll landed.
That feels more like it should have been a villa line.
Because although Villa's not stupid, but that is the kind of thing he says, he's there for the audience.
He's the audience person who's asking the questions a lot of the time because he's quite often written as if he's a bit bit thick, but he's not.
But that felt more like that's the kind of thing he would normally...
Why is there, why can we still see it?
It's not whether it was just a reallocate the line because Josette hasn't had anything to say for 10 minutes or whatever.
Who knows?
I think Villa's already off the ship by that time as well.
Oh, yes, or that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
And even then there was no need for it.
No, no, you're absolutely right.
Like thinking thinking about it as you were describing it, you could still have that discussion and it could just be they've found a way to look through and Dana's like, but where's the transport gone?
And Avon says, well, it won't have landed there because X, Y, Z. And that way she's not lacking an understanding of how VCRs work, you know what I mean?
I mean, it also struck me as weird because Avon's not particularly nasty about it, but it just makes her look foolish.
Yeah, yeah, like a child.
She's written as a child. isn't she?
Yeah, yeah.
And a child who's never been on a spaceship before.
Yeah.
But she's consistently shown, you know, in episodes beforehand that she is intelligent and strategic and tactical and all this, and I, she just seems so jarring.
Yeah.
And like, I do that to her.
Yeah, why would Ben Steed make a woman look stupid?
Yeah.
But, you know, the weird thing is a few weeks ago in Harvest of Chiros, Bensteed is like, I'm going to have Dana kick Jarvik's arse.
Yeah.
As maybe as you say, Zoe, like his gut instinct is to write women like women like that, and then later on someone says, well, actually, and maybe there was no well actually this time. unfortunately.
No, well, maybe Chris Boucher is off writing next week's episode, so his eye is not quite on this script as much as usual.
Who knows?
Speaking of a future episode, one titbit, I did find out about this one with all the laughing at the hand puppet, rather annoyed Deep Roy, who was behind the thing and nursing a broken collarbone from stunt work on terminal.
Oh yes.
He's like, guys, can we just finish so I can go live now, huh?
Oh, poor deep.
Wasn't he just in a chair offset?
Was he just doing a voice?
Was he actually operating it?
I don't I don't know if he was operating it, but I think, yeah, he was probably in a chair obviously.
He just wanted to get home.
I want to go home.
Yeah.
And he's still very cross with Stephen Pacey.
To this day, I think he's still very cross with Stephen Pacey for what happened on Terminal.
Because he throws him, doesn't he?
Yeah, and he, yeah, really gets hurt.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, let's not do that.
No.
Yeah, I mean, I think I think one of the saving graces, there are a few good lines in this, which are like, um, Duran recognising filler because he dropped his gun is hilarious.
Silverlands, Silverlands.
I am not grovelling, you fool. is a great one as well.
You are grovelling.
They're just bickering like brother and sister.
Yeah, yeah.
And I also liked, oh, the Liberator, that's Blake's ship.
Well, he likes to think so.
It was nice.
Yeah, and I wonder if that was deliberate, was that deliberate or at the point where this was written?
Had they not yet?
Oh, yeah.
Just remind people.
Just remind them about Blake.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, people that was added, whether it was added for that purpose, or whether it was always there because it was written at a point where you'd only...
Yeah, no, no.
Sorry, I'll mend myself out.
I'll leave it.
Okay.
I do. one question actually about one of the lines that I did note down was right at the beginning, they're trying to work out why Servlan is heading where she's heading.
And Avon says, perhaps she wants to compare notes with other genocidal maniacs or take a refresher course in basic brutality.
Okay, basic brutality, yeah.
I don't think that Servolan is guilty of genocide at any point she's guilty of a lot, but I just wanted to check in with where did that come from?
Going through the episodes one by one in our heads now.
Is it just, yeah, is it just a cool, a cool thing to say?
Could we argue our on?
Oh yeah, we could do.
Yes.
Yes, that must be it.
Now, of course, they do get their gene bank away, but yeah.
Yes, she was still genocidal, even if she didn't succeed entirely.
Yeah, that must be it.
Yeah.
Okay, just way to check.
But yeah, I think that's the only sort of instance because, you know, she's she's not the aggressor in the Galactic War, for instance, so she's not trying to wipe out the Andromedans or whatever.
It's funny that this, on the way there, right, at the beginning, they're saying, this is a terrible place ruled by terrible people, and then they get there and they discover that the terrible people have been overthrown, and then they put them back in charge again and leave at the end and say, oh, well, it'll probably turn out all right now.
Now he's out of his tank.
He'll probably, we've got rid of the baddies.
He's like, hang on, you said he was the baddie when you were on the way there.
Yeah, it's just like even by the end of the episode, the leads are like, we just don't.
Let's just go.
Go now.
Yeah.
Villa Villa at the end is saying that...
Oh, well, you know, the people down there, I can't remember how he describes them, but up themselves or whatever it is, he says at this point.
It's like, They've been enslaved and systematically brutalised and raped.
So I think it's fair enough that they're actually not all that happy. and fighting back.
It seems like, you know, apart from creating bizarre puppets.
They're okay until Gross and his little band of merry misogynists turned up.
It's, yeah, better the devil, you know?
Yeah, where are we?
Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that Servoland is disgusted by gross as we are.
I mean, that really helps.
Even she's got standards.
Yes And, you know, one of the things she is disgusted by is how he treats the woman who's waiting on them, who I don't think is Pula or Chessam.
But I think I think she's only in that scene.
Yeah.
And it's just strange how we've kind of had this relationship of an indigenous people shown on the show before in episodes like Horizon and City on the Edge of the World, each of which take care to say, no, things are going to change here now and kind of demonstrate that and we just get...
Yeah, I think I think we've all said it a few times before.
Something that just fills the 50 minute slot that gets us from Ultraworld to Death Watch.
Yeah, that's all it is.
It's a little bridge episode.
I think that if you rewatch the whole series and didn't watch this one.
You wouldn't actually miss any important overarching plot points at all, would you?
No.
No, yeah.
You know, the equivalent last season would be, I suppose, the keeper, and even the keeper has a lot of fun stuff in there and it's got a strong role for Jenna.
Um, you know, we get Jenna versus Serverland, which doesn't happen anywhere else.
But yeah.
And that seems like it's silly.
And then at the end it is about something.
Whereas this is not about anything.
Yeah, it is like they're just brainstormed.
What's the kind of stuff that happens in a good Blake Sapp episode.
Well, there'll be a bit of brutality.
There'll be a bit of blah, blah, blah.
And then off you go.
It's never dull or boring.
It does keep trundle.
I won't say charging forward, but it keeps up its momentum, which is what stops it from just being completely grown to a hole, but it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't actually contribute much apart from the most hilarious puppet on screen, which let's face it.
I mean, this is this is Blake Seven's murka moment, isn't it, basically?
basically, yeah.
Yeah.
I have to say for me, it's not boring because you're constantly going, oh God, what now?
Is that enough to get you through?
Yeah, I think it is.
But you know what, I'm with you, Zoe, because I actually hadn't watched this episode before.
Oh, wow.
And I think I won't again.
Good life will be better for that.
It begins with them pursuing Serviland and it ends with Serviland pursuing them.
So the whole thing could just be deliberated, goes past and then turns around and comes back again.
About 49 minutes and 30 seconds and that's all you need, really.
Although I'm a bit confused about why she reintroduces herself at the end.
It was a little bit like Harriet Jones MP moment.
Yes, we know.
And it's a great little exchange of them.
You know, Dana, do we fight?
certainly not.
We run.
But then he says, get us out of here.
Standard by six.
Which is like 3rd gear. much faster than that.
See, they just can't even be asked to go in full speed.
Well, petrol price, it's the 1970s. having a petrol crisis.
No, nobody's allowed to go fast.
The Mark Gatas radio comedy nebulous has an episode where they infiltrate infiltrate a rival scientific institution and someone says, what do we do if we're caught?
Run?
No, that will attract far too much attention, and then you hear a guard, hey, you.
Right, saunter.
That is one of the, that is the, one of the funniest things Mark Gutters has ever done.
I love that.
Oh my god.
Kent versus Loughborough.
They went extinct like pigeons and the gays.
Yeah.
They built a statue of me of gold.
It rotated.
But then you destroy the Isle of White ones.
Anyway, let's just go listen to nebulous.
I've got to know my own...
No, we're doing it now.
My beautiful corporeal form.
Sorry.
Said Mullock.
It's a puppet.
Oh, it was...
It was so bad.
I wonder, I wonder if thinking about Deep Roy's injury, I wonder if they hired him, intending to make him up.
You spent all the budget on him.
He was injured, couldn't do it.
So they had 5 minutes in like Blue Peter style or like the crystal mace.
You've got 2 minutes to make an alien puppet.
Okay, give me a couple of eyes.
Oh, we've only got one.
We've got lots of hair.
Lots of hair.
Your challenge on this week's episode of Drag Race UK is to make an adversary for Blake 7.
Series C at the end of the inflationary year.
It could be the ultimate mashup of Drag Race, sewing bee, and task force.
At last.
This is what the universe has been waiting for.
And maybe that is the ultimate evolution.
This time next year will be millionaires.
So that was Moloch, another episode of Blake 7.
And that's all we've got Join us next week when we will be travelling to see what's happening at the convention of Teel and Vandor, which is obviously the greatest convention name that Blake 7 fandom has never used, unless they have, which they probably have.
I would if it was me.
There we go.
But anyway, if you've enjoyed this episode, remember, please give it to your men.
Thank you and goodbye.
All those Teal and Vandor film posters.
Goodbye.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximum power.