Maximum Discharge
Terminal
Series C, Episode 13. First broadcast on Monday 31 March 1980.
Episode 44
Sunday 21 January 2024
This week, Si’s acting secretive and is taking the Liberator who knows where, Col told him not to fly through that ominous looking fluid cloud, but would he listen? No! He has to get to Terminal.
Pete’s getting worried, the ship’s systems have started playing up, James has noticed an upsetting green substance oozing out of the walls and consoles.
Mark’s happy though, he finally has possession of the Liberator… it’s time for Maximum Power!
Recorded on Sunday 30 July 2023 · Download · Episode Gallery
Transcript
Well, there's not much to say about this one, so we should be done very quickly.
Hello, and welcome back to Maximum Power, the Blake 7 podcast, where this week we're discussing my personal favourite episode of Blake 7, but I'm not going to get sentimental about it because sentiment breeds weakness.
Let it get ahold of you, you're dead.
Hello, I'm Cy.
I'm Cole.
I'm James.
I'm Mark.
And I'm Pete.
Oh my God, we did it.
We did.
We did rehearsing either.
I suddenly clouded.
Oh my god, I'm last.
Two weeks at the Acton Hilton to rehearse our intro.
So, here we are at the end of series C and the end of the show.
This is the last episode that is planned.
We are done.
Terry Nation is back to finish off his show and 0 my god.
He finishes off his show in a spectacular way.
I have so much to say about this episode and I think we will all have lots to say about this episode.
But I'm going to throw it over to Mark 1st because Mark is our watching Blake 7 guinea pig who has never seen Blake 7 before.
So did this episode take you by surprise, Mark?
It did.
I absolutely loved it. and obviously 33 things, or else you really took me by surprise.
Obviously, the appearance of Blake, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
The appearance of Servilan.
I completely blindsided me as well.
Wasn't expecting that because obviously there's none of the Federation insignia or troops or anything, you know, obviously very carefully not ceded that and then the destruction of the Liberator, I was not expecting.
I think because the series opened with the near destruction of the Liberator, and then all having to evacuate, I was convinced up until the very last minute that it was not going to be destroyed.
So yeah, when it finally was, I was, yeah, really taken aback.
I'm sure, absolutely, the audience back in 1980 must have had exactly the same feelings that this doesn't happen in a show, this you don't destroy your big spaceship.
You don't you don't do anything like this.
So there's lots to talk about in this episode, but let's talk about the destruction of the liberator because although that's the finale, That's the thing that makes this episode feel so wrong right from the start, that every time I have a moment, every time they go to the cloud particle, and I'm just saying, no, don't do it.
Go through that.
It'll all be all right if you don't do that.
And for me, this is one of the 1st memories I've got of seeing a TV show repeated and knowing what was coming.
And so, because I was like, uh, 6 or 7 when it 1st went out and then it was repeated a few months later.
And so I saw the repeat and was like, oh, don't go into it this time.
They still did.
Choose your adventure.
I like to think of that sort of weird snot that starts carving everything is space figure.
Villa does peer at it and say maximum discharge at one point.
Sounds like a great name for a podcast.
I don't know how we missed that one.
That's the even more explicitly tagged version of this podcast.
It's because Tarent has said that it looks like some kind of shaft cover as well.
Very sharp for a shaft cover.
I wouldn't want that as a sharp, a shaft cover.
It was amusing how unobservant they are to begin with.
Dana and Villa are wandering around the ship and there's these huge patches of like globules of goo and stuff and they it takes a quite a while to notice, doesn't it?
That's sort of unintentionally amusing, I think.
Yeah, the script, there's been a, yeah, the effects people have been like, okay, you want Gunk?
going to put gunk.
It's like, script.
It is a bit... getting ahead of ourselves.
Bloody serverland.
Oh, maybe there's something wrong. after she's on the other ship for 5 minutes.
Why is the lighting a bit low?
Why did someone sneeze on that console?
But much as we joke about it, it's an incredible way to finish off the ship.
And I love that it's just by accident.
Well, actually, it's not by accident because the whole of the episode is about Avon being the most selfish bastard.
And if he just talked to someone all the way through, then they could have done this and they could have could have avoided all of this.
But because of his selfishness, this is his ultimate punishment, is the ship being destroyed.
Yes, Colin.
Is it?
Yes.
Listeners, we've decided to put up our hands to get avoided edgeways.
No, I think that's a good point.
I think it's a story about overconfidence and mistakes.
And it starts with the board game, that stupid fucking space monopoly, right?
Belopoly.
Do you know, and I think that it, I think it's sort of overdesigned such that to maintain the mystery.
So Avon isn't going to tell any of them anything, and therefore the audience isn't going to know, and we save this awesome couple of reveals at the end.
But I like the way it's about kind of overconfidence, which Blake was very good at, and Avon refers to it.
And then you're right at the end, when they're sort of, they turn around from the viewscreen, they all give him a really shitty look.
He just turns around and smirks at the camera.
Imagine if that had been the last shot of the entire series.
Brilliant.
The fact that it's ultra cynical Avon, who is suddenly possessed by this by this conviction that he's got to do this thing, but that he's not taking them with him this time.
Maybe it's different next year, but he's spoilers.
But he's...
Don't tell Mark.
He's our space ingenure.
Yeah.
The, um, and I love, he gets to say my favourite, my favourite thing in Blake 7 is the way they all pronounce the word visual, and you know, with more relish than ever at one point.
When Zen is about to spoiler what's happening.
He says, does that number?
Give me a visual readout.
And he struts over to a column so he can read some squiggles instead of having Zen revealing to us what's actually happening.
But yeah, it's just a slime cloud.
What's the worst that could happen?
Avon, Avon admitting that his starcasm is not up to its usual standard this week.
It's quite a nice touch as well.
Uh, you know, he, because he's lost his focus.
He's all about this or rather he's become overfocused on whatever his mysterious mission that's definitely not a trap.
Uh, it is.
When you talk about the space monopoly, because when it opened, I thought he was playing hide and seek.
And then I was like, oh, no, of course he isn't.
But then, yeah, the next thing they, I just, oh, boy, I guess.
Exactly, because the episode starts almost like business as usual in Blake 7 with the liberator flying somewhere, but just that short of Avon on the flight deck looking tired, unsettles you right from the start.
Like, this is not normal.
This isn't how we normally open a Blake 7 episode, even though they're having drinks and games, they're all out in the teleport bay, which is not where they usually do this stuff.
So something is going on and it's right from the start, you get a feeling that things are not quite right.
Well, maybe they'd already destroyed the bridge set when they filmed that scene.
Their head cannon.
Yeah, they also...
But also we know Avon has been on the flight deck on his own for hours and hours and hours doing all of this stuff.
He chops them off the flight deck.
Yes.
Pussy bastard.
And it shows, there's this little conflict moment between him and Taryn, which again shows that Taryn just can't stand up to him.
He's just a complete, but the wet lettuce compared to compared to Avon's force of personality, I mean, whereas if Blake had still been there, ironically, Blake would have been the one who could have said to Avon, this is a trap, don't do it.
But then, but then it's, it's, uh, uh, Taryn does have the, uh, the impetuousness to follow him anyway, despite being instructed not to.
And what a fantastic speech it is from Avon before he beams down that.
If you follow me, I'll kill you speech.
What if he sees this?
Oh, duck.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's the kind of line that Villa might have in a way.
Villa could have got that line, but it's nice to have Tarrant getting some good comedy material.
I think Terence's pretty good in this.
Yeah.
No, the way you sort of go, oh, we, we can't get what you, always what we want, Villa, you know?
He's trying to counterpoint the whole thing, but he's not effective enough to...
I mean, Terrence should have just got a gun and said, Avon, I'm going to shoot you if you don't tell me what you're up to, because this is going to fuck us all over.
And instead, Tara, um, Tara gets the gun in his stomach.
And that amazing hog...
He says he was going to, he meant it.
He was going to kill you.
And I wonder if this is a pivotal character moment because we'll see in the next series that Tarrant doesn't argue with Avon to the same extent again.
So whether this is an unconscious change in the character that he doesn't do that after this because he knows Avon is dangerous, whether that's just me think over people.
No you're right.
Yeah, sort of spoilery, but not really.
Well, just, yeah, he settles down to being Chekhov, doesn't he?
in series four.
He's not fighting to be the captain anymore, yeah.
I think we've done things important because up to that point, you know, I think Avon has earned their trust by that by now, hasn't he?
There's no reason for them to be distrustful in him because he's even done stuff before, hasn't he, where he hasn't really told them what's going on when he found, didn't he find that mineral that sort of mimic things, but made it bigger or something?
And he wouldn't tell me what was going then.
And that ended up saving the day on that episode.
So I think up until a point when he pulls the gun and Callie sells it by saying, yeah, he was fully intending to kill you.
Their distrust wasn't really warranted until that point.
I think it was, yeah, it was a really impactful scene for that reason.
And I think you know then that something big is going on, but we still have no idea what it is, which is really great, and we don't find out for a long time.
Yeah, what are they up to?
Well, what is he up to?
I think it's teased out really well.
Just doing orienteering on a space planet.
I love that.
That planet is just drizzly woods, little cops.
I love it.
Very, very windy.
Where is it?
We have to go there.
Pissing it down and safe and it's just left side.
It's exactly where I'd be out playing with my friends, imagining we were on an alien planet.
So I'm really invested in that.
It's like space Essex.
Oh no.
It was never filmed in Essex.
It was all filmed home counties.
I want to say like Durham or something.
Yeah, they just they went up north sometimes, didn't they, for this?
Because there was always bloody cybermen and Daleks in the quarries down south.
You actually see them glinting over the horizon.
What is brilliant about all the scenes on terminal is the heartbeat.
Yes, the sound design.
It is really unsettling, having that heartbeat that's just steady all the time, just pulsing away.
Again, I think, adds to the tension.
There's something about a heartbeat as a sound effect that just unnerves you, I think. and no music.
Slightly, it's slightly a rhythmic as well.
So it's really, it's really disconcerting.
The sort of... thing is really...
Yeah, yeah.
Do we think that's Dudley Simpson or Elizabeth Parker?
I think it's...
I think that was Liz Parker.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I think it's a, it's a, I mean, because Mary Ridge does the final episode as well, and I think that really knowing when not to use music is a real skill.
And I think I may have mentioned this before, but it's like at the end of Planet of the Apes, where spoiler alert, you know, Charles and Hester sort of looks up and something happens.
Like Jerry Goldspit.
Exactly.
Jerry Goldsmith said I could not have scored that scene because it would have done nothing to add to Charlton Heston's overacting.
So there's sometimes you don't need to add music and it just works.
It's one of it's one of the main things I love about this episode is, A, the sound design, as you say, Si, and B, all the direction, which I'm sure we'll get onto.
I think the way it isn't explained as well, adds to the sort of mysteriousness of the planet.
I guess the idea is it's because it's a manmade planet.
It's sort of machinery deep in the planet or something like that.
It's oval.
It's oval.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
It's like the logo of the day-to-day.
Happy now.
The revelation that the Deep Roy in an ape suit is the final...
Yeah.
It's one final terrogation.
He leaves the show with one final, this is what man will become moment.
He leaves the UK with one final...
Yeah, sure, okay.
I mean, those costumes are the weakest point of the episode is that?
Yeah, the idea is the great people know.
Are they just saying the word?
They might as well be dinosaur puppets.
Yeah, bless them.
Like, and that's, you know, one of the, one of the great sci-fi tropes, you know, I mean, it's bloody, it's the time machine, for God's sake.
But it's just let down by those costumes.
It would have been funny, though, for the end, where, so, jumping around, but at the end, my servant says, those creatures aren't what you're descended from.
If it just cut to one of them rolling their eyes and going, oh, God, they're what we're going to evolve into, aren't they?
Not actually a surprise.
But we're getting ahead ourselves.
We've read science fiction, sir.
It's true, Star Trek, dystopian future.
Come on.
We do have a feet blonde space people, though, don't we?
We certainly do. with dodgy wigs.
Well, Colin said that he'll edit it out if I said who they look like.
So I'll quote the war machines and say they look like that disc jockey.
Something with a hint of Boris Johnson as well, Twinkie.
Instead of saying raw, they're going, wow.
And having a legal party.
Another team.
That's how they devolved.
They're actually conservatives.
We're keeping that in.
Yeah.
Do we have any Tory listeners?
I hope not I haven't learned the lesson of Blake 7 is the...
Socialism's good.
You are the vampire.
That planet is very, it reminded me a lot of Star Trek 3, actually.
You know, they build an artificial planet with Genesis. and everything accelerates really fast and again, it's this really great concepts through this.
I mean, it's it's very unexplored and as you say, site, it's a like a throwaway kind of primitive quick, put primitives in there.
And because if this was supposed to be the last episode, you're kind of showing the way we all behave, the way we are, you know, fighting each other, creating empires, killing people, you may as well just be animals.
So, but more on animals next year.
Speaking of this being the last episode, you know the cast found out that was being renewed, when they were watching the episode on television and heard the voiceover on the end titles.
No.
Tell us.
Yeah.
Yeah, the managing director of BBC TV rung the help rang the switchboard and said, tell them they're having another series. was so good.
And literally, they got they got the announcement over the end credits that Blake 7 will return next year and no one knew.
Oh wow.
So the anecdotally, the reason for that was because that would bring it to 52 episodes, which is the perfect length for stripping a show weekly on American syndicated television.
So let's make another season.
So we can sell it to the US.
It makes it much more profitable and saleable if you can say you've got 52 episodes.
You can either do it, like half a year or a whole year.
Like, I mean, that's a business decision.
Avon gets the space boppet, uh, thing that's gonna direct him to the door in a rock wall.
That was at least not a door in a rock wall.
It would improve it.
It's a door in a field, but it's still close enough.
I went, I recently went a holiday to Svalbard, the Norwegian island up in the Arctic Circle, and they've got where the world seed vault is.
And I've seen pictures of it and it looks like this huge James Bond infrastructure.
Did you see an armoured bear?
No, I didn't see an almond bear, sadly, although I did buy a little fluffy one, so that's the next best thing.
But the global seed vault, which looks like this huge James Bond towering structure, wherever you see it.
It's a 7 foot high door, concrete door in a rock wall.
It's your favourite thing in the world.
Send me a photo.
I would if I think the actual seed vault itself is all in a studio in Southeast London.
They've only stuck the door up there on the rock face.
Excellent.
But that little structure is really, really interesting.
And I don't know whether it's something that's actually just there or something they've built.
But I love the little mirrors on it.
And the way that it flips open in an unexpectedly over dramatic way, that half of it just flips flips over rather than a little little door opening.
It's just another thing that is really just quite cool in this episode, I think.
We need a series of polls, don't we?
The best door.
Yeah, go do it.
Okay.
And the little satnav boys, because it's got a serious episode and even villa doesn't get much comedy, but the little bit when he when Avon gets the ball, and it's really snippy and it says, you know, I told you to put both hands.
Yeah, it's just a nice light little moment in a darker than average episode, I thought.
Unusually, as an Irish accent, I think, for computers and things like that, it's, you don't normally, they normally have more sort of cut glass accents, don't they?
I think it was a bit.
I thought it was a bit more American actually.
I'd be wrong.
Maybe wrong.
Oh right.
It sounded very familiar, that voice.
It sounded really familiar.
How about Boston Irish?
Okay.
We'll settle for that.
It was David Healy, who is apparently a jovial New Yorker, according to his IMDb profile.
I was miles out there.
But yeah, I mean, considering we don't actually get Aurak in this episode, we only have 22 computer voices.
And so let's talk about Zen because You're going to cry.
I have to cry because this is the most moving death in the whole of the series.
It's incredibly done.
We were talking in the episode we recorded about sarcophagus about when Zen goes wrong, things feel bad, and that 1st moment where Zen breaks down and starts talking in a strange language suddenly is really discomforting because we start off with Zen at the start of this episode being very like series one, sorry, series A, Zen.
Uh, this is a dangerous area of space.
Computers suggest don't go through it.
We don't know. not going to tell you why.
But I'm not going. yeah exactly.
And then sort of that slow decay that goes with the liberator is really incredible right to that very final scene.
Yeah, yeah. and the linking of Zen and the Liberator.
Um, you know, as being sort of one and the same.
And I like, I mean, it's a bit bleak, but the idea that a spaceship, not knowing what's wrong with it and what's, what the problem is, just because it hasn't got the right type of sensors to, to just immediate, to quite detect what's going on.
It's the kind of thing that's led to space shuttles exploding and things like that because people just didn't have the information or the ability to know what was what the problem was.
And it's really, and it's a great example of Villa suddenly being revealing himself to be very astute when he tells Zen, you know, shut down everything other than locating.
There's no point trying to um, trying to fix it if you don't really know what the cause is.
Uh, and then that that final scene, it's really, it's really close because they've been in every episode, I suppose, between, between Villa and Zen.
Um, that um, the, Michael Keating is is acting his socks off as well as um, as well as uh, Peter Tottenham.
Yeah, it's just really emotional without being over the top, though, you know.
It's just that I have failed you.
I am sorry and Villa's really sad.
He never once referred to himself, he never once called himself I. And that's just, wow, that's really great writing from Terry Nation there.
And it shouldn't be that poignant.
And on some level that sells in his moments of death that sells the idea that this ship was always sentient on some level.
And that he, you know, he, you know, he, you know, he's failed.
Like, he has actually, like, that gives it so much more weight than just, you know, like any other sort of talking ship dying.
Yeah, yeah.
Or any another, what was his name?
Gan.
I'm joking.
It's the most affecting death in Great Kevin.
It was sad when Gand died.
It was more like it just made everyone grumpy rather than it being quite so touching.
Yeah.
Yeah, completely agree.
And the way that Peter Tottenham, yeah, just puts emotion, like you say, it's always been very consistent, the voice.
And then, yeah, the emotion in the last few lines.
And it says Blake's name as well, which sort of suggests that, yeah, he's not quite sure what's going on or hiking back to a previous time and that kind of thing.
So it's yeah, really well done.
But yeah, you wouldn't think that a bank of flashing lights and the way the lights just fade away at the end is just really nicely done.
And that the fact the next time we see that that bank, the whole of Zen's fascia has disappeared, and it's just the ducting and tubing behind it, that's sort of there to explode, is quite, I think that's quite something because I think seeing that that fascia of Zen exploding at the end would have been really, would have been far too much.
I couldn't take that.
So Avon finds his way into this space.
He's in a bit of a jam, but he's going underground, which is fitting because number one single in the UK that week, was going underground by the jam, only enough.
Oh my god.
That's a point.
This is the point where we finally find out it's actually about Blake.
It's so easy to forget that watching it for the 1st time.
It could be anything.
It could be a plague, a cure for a plague, a supercom- a new supercomputer.
But actually, can't imagine what disappointing that would be if it was just a 3rd supercomputer. that we now have.
Yeah, well, something along those lines next year.
But, um, yeah, that whole, that, and the scene with Blake is on location, isn't it?
is in a big room somewhere else.
I don't imagine that...
I believe.
Yeah, because I think Gareth was filming at, well, record, was on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I think they weren't filming very far away, so they managed to get him down to the Church Hall and sort of rig up that scene.
Dress it up, yeah.
He's still there.
What's that?
gives it. yeah.
But that gives it the real feeling of a series finale that you're bringing Blake back after all this time.
And again, that must have been such a surprise for the audience the 1st time round.
I guess Mark, you weren't expecting that at all.
No, and I did think slightly afterwards, slightly did they throw it away by having the his face on the screen and the medical report?
But then after I actually saw him, I kind of wondered if it was because of the beard, they worried that people wouldn't immediately recognise him.
So they needed to tee it up.
I mean, I don't know if that's the if that's the reason, but it might have been more impactful just to for even to walk in the room and see Blake and that would have been a big surprise.
Quite possibly that's what, I mean, isn't that why they permed Stephen Pacey's hair?
Because they want, because he was replacing Blake and they...
Just give me the vibe.
Got to fill that gap somehow.
You've got to fill the curly, curly head space.
I got very excited by the readout of the case history that he's compares on that screen because it says the patient's condition and there's no apostrophe.
I know. commenting too, yeah.
No apostrophe.
So that means the absence of an apostrophe from the logo is absolutely canonical.
Just stay in the court.
They were used intermittently in the 1500s.
They only caught on a couple 100 years after that and they'll have their day and be familiar.
By the time we get to space year 25,000.
Lots of other legs already done away with them.
Federation of bands.
Was this the 4th calendar or some bullshit?
Yes. 3rd century of the 2nd calendar, wasn't it, I think?
Or apostrophe free.
Yes.
Apostrophe.
I'm just really enjoying these compound words.
But isn't it a great scene with Blake and Avon and they finally get a bit snippy with each other again straight away.
Also, what I really love is that there's the little callback to Avon and Sentiment, and Blake says, careful Avon, you're letting your sentiment show, whereas Avon has said earlier that Sentiment breeds weakness, that it get a hold of you, and you're dead, and actually, there's something about the relationship between him and Blake, that does bring out that sentiment in him, and it's always, always there.
Yeah, and it's also adds to the whole heightened reality that this is a simulation, and it's such a good simulation, that they spent months preparing it, and they, you know, whole Serverland's plan, you know, it's the Roadrunner thing, or the Pink Panther thing of the week where capture the Liberator capture the Liberator.
This actually works because it's so clever and so well done in terms of luring in there and creating that recreation of him.
And it has something, you know, it talks, it's a little bit about AI.
It's effectively an AI version of Blake.
And having that bit about all careful, you're getting sentimental, is part of the AI personality.
I thought was very clever and make it believable.
And I love the way when Servolan and Avon meet up.
Um, Avon's still, you know, Servoland's going, oh, uh, you know, you'll get to see Blake later or something like that.
And Avon goes, ha, ha, ha.
I already have.
And so everyone says, oh, really?
You know?
And she plays along beautifully.
Brilliant.
Yeah, there's no clues, is there?
There's no hints until she drops that.
There's no wonky camera effect or anything in the...
No, there's just that disconcerting thing where you see Avon shot and then the next thing he's doing is getting up and meeting Blake and then you get him being shot again and them saying, oh, we must get the continuity right in a very meta moment.
That's true.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And then that's the 1st time you get an inkling that something here is not quite right.
Again, it's that feeling that you get all through this episode that things aren't happening quite as they normally do.
So that's that 1st moment of, oh, and I remember watching it the 1st time at Vicable.
What's app?
What's happened there?
Because we get that moment where we see Avon with the microphone next to him and things like that, where we see that, and it's just that, Oh, hang on, what's happening?
But it's not explicitly said till later on.
And that's right back to beginning of Blake 7.
We sort of mind control and brainwashing, isn't it, where Blake had had his personality overwritten and his memories are raised.
So that was a nice of, if this had been the last story, it sort of took back to the original Federation stuff that they were doing to the characters as well.
It's quite, it's kind of signposted because when Callie and Tarrant are searching the, the room that, where, where, Avon had been taken.
Take, um, Calicus goes up to a piece of instrumentation and says, this looks like a visual image structurizer.
Oh, oh, I wonder what that does.
I didn't quite know the conversation between Blake and Avon.
They were talking about lightning rain and I didn't...
It's no, it's the lightning raid, but he slightly under sort of mumbles it.
So it doesn't come across.
It's like a lightning rage to rescue me and get me out via the teleport.
It took me years until I got a subtitled version to actually see what that was.
I thought that was the thing that Blake had discovered that was going to make them sort of rich and invincible. something called lightning rain and some kind of weapon or I was kind of, is that a reference to something earlier on that I couldn't remember?
I rewound that.
I rewound that scene. because I was like, I heard the same thing and then...
Oh, rave.
Right.
Enunciate.
Which for Gareth Thomas is very unusual.
He is usually absolutely spot on, but maybe it's maybe it's one of those things.
And there is a fantastic blooper from that scene between Avon and Blake as well, where Avon is just about to leave and he says, carefully, Avon, your sentiment's showing, and he pops up with a little teddy bear, and Paul Darrow absolutely roars with laughter in the most Paul Darrow way.
And yeah, it's really, it's on the, it's on the DVD. the back the backstory to that, though.
No, I know, well, I think if I have, I've forgotten it, so go on, James.
There was a running joke on the set that the reason Avon was such a grumpy bitch, just because somebody stole his teddy bear as a child.
That's great.
That makes perfect sense now, and of course, that would be why he, yeah.
We need to probably discuss the last 10 minutes of this episode because someone arrives and absolutely steals the show from everyone else who has been, who, I mean, all the costs have been really spectacularly good this week, apart from maybe Callie, who doesn't get, even though she gets to go down to the planet. doesn't get a great deal to do. and she even when, when, um, uh, when Taryn's leaving, she sort of goes, I'll come too.
And he's like, okay.
And then we left behind this time.
And when they get there, he's wearing bright red.
She's wearing gray and he turns to her and goes, get down.
They'll see you.
And he just...
He's like, Darren.
They've already seen me.
It's typical Taron.
Shockingly and amazingly, Serverland turns up just for the last 10 or 11 minutes of this episode and Jacqueline Pierce is at her very best here.
I think this is likes in Star one.
It's the episode finale, she just raises her game for, and this week she is absolutely superb because she is completely in charge of this situation and it's worked.
Her plan to capture Avon has finally worked.
Yeah, she gets to play triumph, which isn't something she actually inevitably isn't something she can often do because, yeah, I did want, I thought they could have tied it into Moloch for having that duplicating technology.
That occurred to me that they could, she could have duplicated, that could have been a way of having Blake, but they were, but Mono Moloch was a bit of a late, a late edition.
But she's, but her finally being able to, and Avon, um, having to, giving that a call to liberate, just saying, go.
Well, I can't remember exactly what he says, but it's a great moment.
And it's like, oh, is that, is that him being the hero and rescuing them or is it just because he doesn't want her to get the ship?
But either way, that is him attempting to sacrifice himself one way or another.
And she gets a marvellous, you fool.
And she says it twice because she's so cross.
And it works because Villa gets cut off before he can say, no, no, no, don't come back to the ship because it's got a bit of a cold.
Uh, you know, so that, that, It's got COVID.
All of these things are really well set up, yeah, so that the person who knows the thing that might have given the thing away is prevented from saying it.
And it's all it's all quite done naturally.
Like, even, there's even the bit about, I forgot to mention it at the start, you know, that he's not got, fill has not got the key to activate Aurak, because...
They've all took it with him, yeah. because otherwise they could have just said to Aurak, what was wrong with the what's wrong with the liberation?
How do we fix it?
All those little things.
I think that is ter just terrination on a good day.
He does do that sort of thing pretty well.
Of course, that gives you that wonderful line at the end.
You should always be careful about getting a secondhand spacecraft that can be very unreliable.
Yes.
Well, I mean, the...
Sorry, but to say, Servalance henchwoman, who's operating the teleporter.
It really doesn't deserve any prizes for initial.
He's just saying something cryptic and fine.
Yeah, and also picking up Horac and she's like, what does that?
Oh, it's a souvenir.
It has sentimental value.
Cupid woman.
But my pay grade. don't care It wasn't one of my objective development objectives this year. can have it.
But what I love as well, even in her moment of triumph, Serverland can't help but flirt with Avon add, it's just recalling those scenes in aftermath and there's just the 2 actors are sizzling.
They're so good together.
And that's what makes it, I think.
Her and her silver nails as well.
She's got a kind of, um, like a, a fastened clip.
I don't know anything about dresses, obviously. like on her dress that looks like the entrance to the underground base.
Just realise that.
Like that, yeah, that sort of structured crisscross sort of like giant brooch thing.
Yes, welcome to maximum power where lots of men described.
To be fair, throw those men are gay.
Exactly.
Good old man, guys.
Get on it.
Put inside down, sorry.
Not that sort of game.
I think, as you say, Colin, though, it really sells it when she acts shocked that Avon's already seen Blake, and it isn't that sort of TV fake lying where you sort of winking to the audience, but the other actors in the room completely by it, it really has the audience convinced still that Blake is just like in the next room or whatever and that the deal, if the deal goes ahead, everyone's going to get what they want.
No, I was going to say, it's like it's Schrodinger's Blake. since the end of series B, and it may continue to that way for a while, which is, it's just, I'm just really pleased that they, look, if this was going to be the final episode, what a way to end it.
You know, you get it's, uh, you know, spectacularly well directed, I think.
I think marriage is brilliant.
I really do. gets the tone for Blake 7 completely right.
There's some really great, like, well, on the underground base thing, directional flourishes that I think are really nice, like the, where Taryn and Callie are in that room and the door very slowly opens behind them.
Just great, stuff like that, or where Avon's just, uh, he's, he's going to another room and he presses the keypad and the door opens and there's nothing there.
And then just this gun comes around the corner.
It's just, that's what I, uh, I think that makes it all work.
It is remarkable that, you know, it onto direct terminus.
I think the material wasn't quite as good. the same way.
Don't mention the truth.
But yeah, there's loads of great moments sort of all the way through that she does that.
And considering she's coming in to direct what is ostensibly, for the 1st time, direct Blake 7, and it's the final episode, is I'm pretty amazing that she gets this show so right.
I mean, you'd think it would have been handed to someone like Via Lorimer who had been there all the way through the show and had sort of directed from series A all the way through that almost like as a reward you get to direct the last episode or David Maloney coming in to do the last episode like he did at the end of series B for Star one, but he took his episode at the start of the year.
So it's a really interesting choice that bringing in someone completely new to the show just to round it off, and it could have gone so wrong, but she gets it so right.
And they have her back quite a few times next year, don't they?
Including for the finale next year as well.
And the opening episode so that you get the continuity rights.
Yes.
I'm just looking at what else she's done.
Zed cars?
Hasn't everyone.
Yeah, it's Dixon or Dot Green, yeah.
People who were born after it finished.
No, later on, they just do the bill.
Yeah, that was my difference.
I like, so once, so let's get the climax.
The ultimate line, the ultimate serverland phrase, the maximum power of it all.
She's got everything she wants and it's all...
I know they've heard it before.
I know, I could catch on, yeah.
And it all just explodes to pieces.
And that's that's one of the best blow up the ship things.
And because we've kind of, we've done our sadness for Zen, but then we see, like you said earlier, like we see him actually sort of explode in his own way.
Yeah, it's sort of like, yeah, his remains are exploding.
You just can't, you know, I remember the 1st time they blew up the Enterprise in Star Trek, I felt real emotion for it, but then subsequently it does start to just become an effect sequence with people shouting percentages at each other because you haven't, it's not a shit.
They've only sometimes they've only been on it for a couple of years and then they just blow it up and it's kind of like having a flat tire.
It's like, um, but this, this character, this is the death of a character as well as the blowing up of the vehicle, I suppose is what I'm saying.
And we even get a little, we get a little stab of the theme music in the incidental music from Dudley, because he knows it's the grand finale of the show.
It's a phenomenal, if, I mean, the way they destroy the set is really fantastic.
And you get suddenly a sense of scale once the floor sort of comes up and the woman slides down with the most amazing scream.
It's like, I shouldn't have let him take that box of art.
She's gonna come up on this.
And it's interesting that they've written it, but they've written trapdoors in for a man, you know, she, Silverland flinging herself into the telephone.
Yeah, when the teleport can't operate without somebody operating it, but they still...
But everything is going wrong.
So there's always a chance.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, just seeing, I mean, we've seen the flight deck blown up lots of times throughout this show before, but we've never seen it blown up like they blow it up here.
It's like everyone is so pleased to see the back of this set that they just go to town.
And when they're when their control panels start to topple, you know things are really bad at that point.
I thought they were supposed to wait until the actors had left to strike the set.
Yeah, at that point, I was accepting that the ship actually was going to be destroyed at that point.
I was convinced all the way through, even even the apparent death of Zen, I thought, yeah, but, you know, we saw this at the beginning of the series, they'll find a way.
And then, yeah, when it blew up, it was, yeah, really, really striking moment, and the way it blew up, which is, I think it's different from memory to way it blew up when they had that when Aurak made that premonition or prophecy sort of thing.
But I think it made sense of it all being quoted in this kind of gunk and slime that it blew up differently.
I imagined like just the whole hull and everything was now rotted and yeah, kind of perforated and everything like that.
That bit where one of the tower struts breaks off and starts spinning away and just went, wow, okay, the BBC special effects are going for this.
And the actual explosion of the model is really fantastic.
It does feel wet.
It feels wet, like as it explodes, like it's sodden.
Yeah.
It's kind.
Yeah, it's this kind of really organic kind of explosion.
It's full of clay or something.
It looked like bits of clay flying around or something or... better articulated than what I was trying to say, but yeah, that's better.
It's true.
And I think just a word for the model shots sort of throughout this episode, they'd be really good and particularly showing the slow decline of the liberator and that last model shot you see before the ship flies off where it's really rusty and misshapen and it just feels it's so wrong.
It's really, really well done.
I really like that.
It's particularly gleaming white in the beginning as well.
Yes, exactly.
So, yeah, for your business as usual.
It is absolutely perfect right at the start.
And so our final shot is magnificent where Tarrant is there going, it's going to be business as usual, we're going to get off this planet.
Yes, good.
And that's the last line because they're watching it on TV.
They're watching the episode on TV.
Yeah, like the rest of us.
They're like, oh, that's a good effect.
Backtracked before that, with that excellent scene.
The whole interplay with Serveland, which is like, oh, yeah, I've left a ship for you.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yes.
Did you, yeah, like, so you've got a way off the planet.
When I say landed, I mean crash.
It might get you where you want to go eventually.
And for her, and, you know, again, I mean, she could have just shot them all.
Why not?
Why doesn't she just shoot them?
Because just that would just not be as, I don't know.
It just...
It'd be hard to bring them back next year after that.
But it's the final humiliation from Serverland, isn't it?
But she's she's really finally defeated them and she's stranded them on an awful, awful planet in the middle of nowhere with no hope of redemption except maybe they could get.
Yeah, maybe they could get this ship working.
She doesn't know that they're going to have Aurak at that point or anything else like that.
So it's just, um, she's she's won. basically.
She's defeated them, left them stranded somewhere.
They'll never escape, and she's got the best ship in space, so even if they do, what are they going to do?
Yeah, yeah.
She finds.
Yeah, that's more satisfying to her than having them.
Yeah, leaving them alive to suffer.
But it's just that moment where Terrence says, because Avon does his big speech of she's one.
I gave her the liberator and just the way Tarrant turns around, almost sadly, and just says, no, we all came out losers because he knows that bit of information that Avon hasn't got at that point that she's not going to get away.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, and so, yeah, the final final line, it goes to Tarrant, doesn't it?
There's a lot to do.
But Darrow completely upstages it.
All of the way I love the way they all file past Avon.
And the only person who can look at him is Villa, who looks him right in the eye and then walks away as if to say, I know what you've done, you bastard.
You got rid of my vault full of jewels.
I used to buy my booze and drugs.
All our lovely board games.
My callbacks with all the my lock breaking machinery.
Our colour-coded anorax.
Yeah, we're going to be stuck in these costumes forever.
Jenna's old weaves.
But the series ends with Avon walking away, looking miserable, and then the perfect Avon Smirk.
I am really fascinated to see where it goes from here, given that all of their advantages, like the, presumably, I'm guessing there's no more teleport because there was, that was the only ship with that technology, so that was a huge edge that they had in terms of being able to infiltrate places and escape from places.
The fastest. fair enough to assume that.
Yeah.
The best, fastest ship that, you know, allowed them to sort of, you know, fight the way or just get away quickly from situations that it's just Aurak, which obviously is the most powerful computer or whatever that they've that they've got left and their own cunning and ruthlessness and all the rest of it.
So yeah, I'm fascinating to see.
And I suppose if Servoland did manage to teleport, Terminus is the only place you could have gone.
So, and there's only one ship on that planet, so, you know, there's maybe kind of battling for ownership of that as well.
So, yeah, I can't wait to get stuck into the next series.
Yeah, get you, Marmaduke Cussey. who it was?
It was the director, the BBC one.
Bill Cotton, I think.
Bill Cotton.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was 18 months before the next series came on because, yeah, they had to start everything from scratch, build new sets, start open contract negotiations with the actors. because all the contracts.
Maloney had moved on to another show, so he wasn't there to be producer, and so the hump was on for a new production team.
So it sounds like something to do good to do a podcast about.
Oh, and a new logo.
Oh yeah, James, you're going to be busy.
He said presumptively.
I did it.
I did it before I did the one.
You did, you did.
You've already done it, haven't you?
Four years ago, yeah.
So, I guess the question is, if the series had ended here, would this have been a satisfying ending to Blake 7?
Without spoilering the actual ending of Blake 7.
Yes, we won't go there If you hadn't seen the actual ending.
Like, Saichon's thing.
I don't think so, but I think it's very in keeping with the show.
Like the sort of, you know, like the show doesn't do sort of satisfaction or tying things up in a nice bowie, just kind of likes to leave things hanging and and for them not to be a perfect solution and the world to be pretty fucked up.
Like, that's actually, this is a really Blake 7 ending in a way.
It should have had them all playing that board game, uh, and then the camera sort of spinning around and then heading off into the ceiling.
And then the enterprise, I mean, the, you know, they all laughed.
Servalant has finally got her comeuppance.
I bet Villa's disappointed she didn't grab the space chess. before leaving the flight deck.
Well, he gets space rosé next year, so he'll be happy.
But there's that thing where people watching it at the time, it would have just been builders the last in the series and because the BBC usually didn't bother to tell you whether there was going to be another series in the works.
Anyway, like I remember some, it was, there's a perennial thing with Kangy and Lacey, which is one of my favourite shows when I was little.
And they always just said on that.
What's the last episode of Cagney and Lacy?
And then maybe it would come back next year and maybe it wouldn't.
And then there was contractual things about that going on because she's a whole other podcast.
But, um, yeah, but yeah, I don't, I don't know if everyone sat down to watch it thinking this is definitely the last episode of Blake 7 or if they just watched, I knew it was the end of the series and it might or might not come back.
But yeah, it definitely, it's a dot, dot, dot ending, isn't it?
It has the potential to come back.
Yeah.
Yes, the best way to end it.
But if it ended if it ended there, you'd be okay.
You know?
Yeah, they had a chance to do what they were going to do.
Yeah, I was going to say if they were able to come back, say, 40 years later with a series of audio adventures.
You would pick up from the moment they were on terminal and get them away and start new adventures from there, wouldn't you?
Because there's enough potential to continue the series from there if you wanted to.
Yeah, you got specific unanswered questions that you need to pick up from.
Yeah. the end of Return of the Jedi or something and then coming back later.
I think so.
And the Federation is pretty much defeated then, isn't it?
Because from the beginning of the series, it's much more, it's much weakened and more, and scattered and Servoland's been holding it all together.
So if you take that as Servoland's death, then I suppose what they ultimately set out to do, which was to destroy the Federation, then that has been achieved, because we know from, I can never remember episode titles, but the ones, the one where they went back to earth, that there was, there was a lot of rebellion on earth by this stage as well already when I went to a big country house and so everyone was having a dinner party.
So, yeah.
So I think certainly I kind of cut the head off the snake at that point, then you could you could read it as well.
Ultimately, they have achieved what the series set out to do.
We should replace...
Sorry, we should replace all the episode titles with Mark's recollection of what they might be called, such as Serverland's dinner party.
The one with...
Yeah, one with...
But this is absolutely a good point because this is very much Serverland out on her own.
There are no federation guards.
There are no federation trappings in this place at all.
And is this serverland having been maybe deposed and out finally to get the liberator so that she can get back to being in power again?
We don't know.
There's not a lot of the backstory here.
This might be months and months and months after Death Watch.
We just don't know.
Doesn't she say they've got federation scientists waiting to replicate the liberator, though?
I assume they were just in different uniforms here so as not to tip off Avon or anybody that it was a Federation operation kind of thing.
Maybe the weeks were part of that.
Oh, if we're gonna dress up, I'm having a wig.
That's the last line of the podcast.
So, thank you very much for listening to us throughout series C.
We'll be back next time for our season retrospective, looking back over the last year of Blake 7.
Oh, come on, what's this?
A phone call.
Oh.
Well, turns out, we've been renewed for another year unexpectedly.
Hooray!
Goodbye.
Ta-ta.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
I am sorry.
I have failed you.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Maximal power.
