Hello, dear listener, and welcome back at last to Maximum Power, the only Blake 7 podcast surprisingly free of all the corruptions of time and appetite.
Well, some of them anyway.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Pete.
I'm Pisa.
I'm sorry.
And I'm Simon Well, it's been about 18 months since the alarming announcement that the show would be back for another year, and so here we are well into the 1980s, starting a new 4th season of Blake 7 with the opening episode Rescue, directed by Mary Ridge, and written by Chris Boucher with just a little help from Oscar Wilde.
This is the 1st time I was ever aware that I was watching a new series of Blake 7 and was this your 1st new episode ever, Si?
It was.
Yeah, this is where I started.
So I'm the BBC after much correspondence from viewers.
I'm complaining that there was no more Blake 7 decided that they would repeat series D in the summer of 1983 on Saturday evenings.
And my mum, being clever and wonderful, decided, oh, this is a bit like Doctor Who.
So you will, you'll probably enjoy this, Simon.
And so she sat me down to watch it and I loved it from the off.
So this is my 1st episode of Blake 7.
Wow, okay.
But you watch it as a repeat, not the 1st time it went out.
Yeah, I was a bit too young to see it 1st time round, so I was about, I would have been 6 at the end of 1981 and I don't think I was quite ready for, for animals at that age.
I know.
Yeah, who is?
at any age.
Yeah.
This was actually an episode that I knew was coming from a new season as well because I'd seen the advertisements on the ABC when they were running them for series D. So we'd had series A through C on the ABC and Australia. 1st run in 1979 and 1980, and then a big repeat run on Saturday nights, which was like the golden period of my childhood at midnight on a Saturday night in 1982.
And then they showed this in 1982 as well, series D, and it was shown on a Friday night at 7.30 p.m.
So that was absolutely the right time for how old was I, 10 years old, come home from school, end of the school week.
If you were lucky, you had a dock 2 episode on Friday night, and then you had a 1st run new episode of Blake 7 at 730, which was adult time.
It was amazing.
So I think I came in during the sort of repeats of series three.
I'm going to call it given that's what the eventual Blu-ray release, we'll call it.
Call them now.
So I had watched Terminal and been shocked by it.
I had watched Terminal.
It was a repeat, but it was new to me.
I didn't know what was going to happen and I thought it was astonishing.
And so I came into this, you know, expecting the pickup from the previous season.
And so I was super excited to see what they were going to do, particularly since Terminal destroys so much of the actual premise of the show.
I mean, for me, it was, I mean, I never saw anything broadcast.
It was all acquired VHS copies at 1st thanks to Peter, you know, which began with that famous or perhaps infamous screening of Harvest of Chiros.
And I couldn't tell you when I 1st saw Rescue.
It's all jumbled up.
Like, I saw Blake 7 in what is effectively a totally random order and well, I just have to live with that, I guess.
So do we all.
Nathan, it's interesting what you said about the fact that terminal had jettisoned. so much of the series because what was really interesting to me, and I think this episode is really very impressive in what it achieves, is that Chris Boucher kind of picks up the remnants of where we were at with terminal.
All we're left with is basically a bunch of characters with no recognisable show around them.
And just with like precision ease.
He sort of um, he reintroduces them.
And with that 1st scene with Avon and Dana looking at the link going into the ship, within a few lines of dialogue, you're left with absolutely, you're in no doubt that this is the same series, it feels like Blake 7, even though all you've got left is the characters.
Yeah, I mean, this was this would have been the 1st episode that I was watching properly that I watch every week now.
Is it Monday nights it went out on here and I'd seen the repeats of caught bits of the 3rd series and it repeats over that long period that the hiatus.
Do we call it the wilderness months?
We can call it the wilderness months between the penultimate and final seasons.
Uh, and it was exciting.
It's getting a relaunch.
It's going to be slightly all new Blake 7 show kind of vibe to having a show change so completely apparently.
But then you sit down to watch it, and of course, yeah, it's got exactly the same heart and possibly the strongest elements of that.
I mean, it is the same and yet it's different.
I mean, this is set days or even possibly hours after where we leave them in terminal and yet, I mean, I mean, I know psychologically...
There has been a snow, it's 18 or so much.
That just happened while, you know, Servolane was speaking, obviously. in that sequence. special planet.
Yeah, but exactly.
But it's like suddenly arriving in the leisure hive for me in that it's suddenly leapt forward more time than the gap in production suggests we should have.
There is a very, very clear difference in the entire look of the show, and that's kind of what I'd like to talk about first, but let's start with the very 1st thing that we see, which is the titles.
So series 3, Jettison's Blake and, you know, basically the original premise of the show that we never actually followed up anyway.
Thank heavens for that. a more generic sort of chasing people through space, the liberator chased by pursuit ships through space.
And now we have something that has even less visible Blake Sevenness in it, kind of at all, really.
It's an interesting choice, isn't it?
It feels like a very generic sci-fi show set of titles.
It's almost like they don't quite know what this series is going to be.
So they can't quite set anything sort of up.
I wonder if that sort of played into it, whether it's just we just need a set of space titles that will do the job.
I really like the new logo.
I think that's really stylish and cool, but again, it takes away the Federation logo with the title over the top.
So it's really stripping out everything that we know from the show and sort of retooling it.
The titles themselves look great, but after the 1st time, you're not getting very much out of them because there isn't very much in them to get anything out of.
I mean, I have to say so, that I did go to school the next school day and look up what pitch and your were.
Aside from bitching you, though, no, you're right.
They're not very exciting and I can't help but wonder whether the people in the BBC doing those titles had no actual idea, had no real proper brief, as you said, suggesting side that they just are like, can you just come up with these titles?
There's nothing wrong with them, but they are comparatively dull, even if they're really well done.
I actually also wonder whether, including the person who redesigned the Black 7 logo, whether they even knew that the previous logo was over a Federation logo.
I suspect they didn't.
Oh, you see, I've credited it with more than that, because I've always seen it as the Scorpios taking off. is it going to go this week?
is now the premise of the show. rather than they're on the run from the Federation anymore.
So I took it as a deliberate, we've moved on from that kind of statement, really.
Yeah, but it, um, it reminds me a bit of those very early arcade games that actually had some kind of physical component in them, that was like a spinning planet with things projected onto it.
Do you remember Pete, the Star Wars game, which was along those lines where you actually did the attack on the Death Star trench, and it felt very much like those opening credits.
Oh, yes.
I could last for half an hour on 10 pence in one of those on the pier at Western people.
Exactly.
It was so much money.
I'm sure that's what they were tapping into If you've ever seen an early 80s, late 70s movie where there's an annoying little kid who puts 10 P in a machine and is hogging it for hours and all the teenagers stand around him and one of them's going, hey, this kid's really good.
That literally happened to me. 1979 at Western Superman.
It's interesting what you said there, Pete, because I think you might be onto something where now that I think about it.
The opening credits do look like a computer generated version of the early model work we get with the Scorpio flying down into the trench, and that's all orange as well.
And so it's almost like they've done that model work and then thought, hey, actually, that's a pretty good idea for an opening sequence.
Yeah, I wonder if there was a, if there was a version of it that actually had Scorpio lifting off at the start and they like had to ring it in because of budget or something, I think.
Or because it looked rubbish when they tried to do that.
I think the bit, though, where we move from being over, you know, just going over the landscape and then into sort of deep space mode or deep mode or whatever it says on there.
I think that looks really impressive.
Like that's well directed and and like really good animation.
And it's very, very 80s, I think.
And so this is Blake 7 doing the thing that Doctor Who has done before, which is like saying, here we are.
It's the 1980s and all of the 70sness and all of the sort of weirdness of the design of the original show, we gradually kind of throw out during the course of the episode, even after, you know, we've destroyed the Liberator last time.
I mean, reassuringly, Dudley Simpson is still there, but he's much more synthy this season.
Imagine what it would have been like though with like Peter Howell or Patty Kingsland doing the music.
Some of this also is Via Lorimer coming in as producer, and obviously he sees the show in a slightly different way and very much a space adventure, and this would have fed into, thankfully, what we didn't get for the end credits with Stephen Pacey singing over Bugley Simpson's new arrangement of the theme.
So maybe the titles are sort of part of his vision for the show, which is different to what David Maloney was doing.
I'm forever disappointed that we didn't get Stephen Pacy singing over the end credits that would have made my day.
I'm disappointed as well. awesome.
I think maybe Via Lorimar must have seen that little interstitial from sarcophagus with Dana singing over the void and said, I know what, let's have that everywhere.
I've been frantically Googling while we've been talking, just because I couldn't remember his name, and it's Doug Bird is the name of the guy who did the credits, who also did Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Day of the Tiffin around the time.
That all looks similar, isn't it?
He died really young in an accident, a boat boating or something accident.
But so...
Some praise terminal fan.
He was the man of the moment at the time for doing credits.
Yeah, he was he was in demand.
So other things start to happen as well.
We do have the sequence on Terminal, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but we're very quickly on Scorpio, about 10 minutes in.
And so we get to see what the new sets are going to look like. 1st Scorpio and then Xenon base.
And whereas we'd gone with one big, very weird sort of, I don't know, it always looked like a sort of cocktail lounge, you know, the flight deck of the liberator, we've gone to something much, much more standard and much smaller.
And I think, much crapper than what we had before.
Am I being unfair?
Not necessarily, but isn't that because you've got the Xenon base as well as the ship.
And so you've got to kind of halve the space of both of them, maybe?
Yes, maybe.
But increasingly what ends up happening as the season goes on is that we decide that we can't afford to erect the Zen on base sets anyway.
And so we do, like vastly more on board the flight deck of the Scorpio that we would have.
So much so that when we arrive at sand, episode 9 and they have that one scene where they're sitting around the crew room talking, you think, 0 my god, we're at Xenon base again.
It all looks, it sort of looks like the waiting room at New Street Station.
It just the Zen on base.
And then, but yeah, with the, on the Scorpio, it's like, is the crapness diagetic?
That's not quite the right use of the word, but like it's supposed to be, it's just an old freighter, but then you look at something like the freighter in Doctor Who Earth shock, and it looks much better than this, and they're only using it for 3 weeks.
So like you can see the studio floor. you can, there's just big empty, the walls.
They just flats.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's it's just not very good, I think.
And later on when they erect those sort of banana lounges next to the...
The ones that eat rock slides on.
Teleport.
Like, Jesus.
But I think, like, there's a kind of millennium falcon feel to it.
I think Peter and I were talking about that.
Yeah, particularly the model.
It's like the model is like the Millennium Falcon only with everything interesting about that model removed.
And brown and brown.
I think Terence says something about move, you scruffy bag of bolts move at some point when he's trying to get it to move.
And that's a line is actually lift, you Scotty bag of bolts.
Lift.
Much around that every time I've taken a smod.
What would we do without you anywhere?
That's supposed to be Tara's Han Solo moment, isn't it?
It doesn't quite.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but remember that set, you know, has a low ceiling has detail in the walls and stuff and obviously it's on a movie budget and it's not something that we could have achieved, but the blank walls, you know, in the blank space and stuff.
And like again, it's very 80s and so it felt refreshing at the time.
All of the, the, like all the yellow outlines on everything and the gray and all of that.
Like, it does look cool.
It does look kind of modern, but it is a bit sparse, I think, and a bit visually dull.
Yeah, it's all a bit static, isn't it?
There's nothing really to sort of take your eye on the liberator.
There's always something weird or we've got those strange lights sort of flickering.
The Scorpio always feels very static, like it is set.
I mean, was are we being unfair?
Was the budget simply much lower this year?
I picked up that impression, but I don't know if it's that's true.
Yeah, I don't know this, but I think that maybe when you had a series being set up.
You got setup costs for it, whereas I don't think they had setup costs for the season, but they still had to because they'd thrown out all the sets and everything.
They still had to erect new sets and design them.
They can't do a verity Lambert and average out the cost of the TARDIS console over 26 years.
That was a coming little match.
But maybe also it's just, it's just, I mean, maybe, yes, it's not as interesting as it might be, but it's smaller than it might be, but isn't that just because they realise that we don't want to have this great big liberated style set that takes up all this studio floor space.
We want to be able to have more sets on the planet we're going to or whatever happens to be.
I think they're definitely going for the Millennium Falcon for the exterior, and I think they're probably going for the Nostromo inside, but on a BBC budget.
I'm quite fond of the Scorpio set.
It's, of course, nowhere near as good as the Liberator Flight Deck and teleport Bay.
But I don't think it looks terrible.
It's just a bit IKEA.
I don't mind spending time there.
There's lots to look at, I think.
I think it is actually a visually active set because you've got Slave, who is.
Yeah, slave is good. which is kind of a good approximation of Zen lighting up.
You've got the different screens.
You've got like lots of business on the controls.
I quite like it.
What it suffers from, and it's the key thing in Doctor of this time as well, is that they've turned the lights up to maximum.
Only they turned the lights down and given it some pools of shadow in that.
It would look much better.
Yeah, because when they do that in something like star drive, it looks, it does look better, doesn't it?
Yeah, and in Headhunter as well, when they get put into cryogenesis and it's lit with blue, it instantly looks more impressive.
What about Xenon base?
Lots of...
Why do the ferns, why do the ferns have a wind machine?
Because the ferns are actually kind of waffling.
Is that to try and make it suggest that the air conditionings on maximum or something?
It's air conditioned on Zen. stuffy at all.
Yeah.
It operates the fan in the basement, which spreads dust across the floor.
It's very well ventilated based.
That is clearly a plot point that they don't.
I do think Xenon base looks a bit bland.
It's just flat.
It's very 80s as well.
You know, it is us saying this is the 1980s.
And of course, sort of around about halfway into the episode or a little bit after that, actually, we get 3 of the remaining regulars changing their outfits as well. which they're invited to do so by Dorian.
Yeah, who's obviously got all their measurements and everything's ready.
Yeah, not creepy at all.
It's really interesting to me how much the costume design speaks of Blake 7 because those early scenes when they're on terminal and then when they're on the Scorpio flight deck for the 1st time.
That almost feels like a hangover from series C for me, and it's because they're in their colourful outfits, which is, in my mind's eye, those series BNC costumes, are Blake 7.
And so when you've got Taranton Crimson and Dana in red and black, Villa in Tan, Avon in black, it makes it look completely different to when they then get all changed into variations on dark blue and gray.
Yes, but aren't the costumes so much nicer that they get into when they get to Zenon base?
like, no, yeah.
They are, but that is also an 80 statement.
It is like the fashion.
The fashion got stuck in 1978. and it is that bringing it back to Leisure Hive again.
It is that thing where suddenly the fashion has, you know, I mean, fashion does kind of leap forward in chunks.
It's not gradual and I feel like we have like leapt forward.
And the great thing about that I like about the costumes is that there are kind of senses of jackets and layers and they don't all look like they've been kind of sprayed on and sewed into their costumes in quite the same way.
I mean, these costumes had to be hardy because they lasted half a season.
I have to say that I was so excited when I 1st saw this because this was the exciting new look, and it was the same experience watching season 18 of Doctor Who, where it had been visually a little bit tired and those things looked a little bit kind of old, and it was just such a thrilling refresh. culturally as well.
I mean, maybe it's just the ages I, we more or less were, that the 80s beginning was such a turning its back on the 70s moment in terms of for mainstream culture.
It's like, it's the 80s now.
We've got neon.
There was this idea that there had been this great leap forward that we'd moved into the 80s and, you know, but that mean, it had to start wearing 80s clothes and being aware that ridicule is nothing to be scared of, no matter what you're wearing.
And adamant with telling us all at number one in the hip parade for the 3rd of 4 weeks as we sat down to watch Rescue from Blake 7.
These things chime.
They do.
Obviously, we've got the Dana and Sulin in jumpsuits, which were very 1981. absolutely. expecting to do an aerobics routine.
And obviously, what we also have to sort of take into consideration is they're filming a lot in winter at the moment.
So these 1st set of costumes are big and padded and warm so that they can stay warm.
You know, and you, you look at poor old Josette Simon in, in the scenes on terminal at the start of this, in her point.
And there's bare back at times when she falls over in the snow and just think, yeah, hang on.
Actually, they've got a bit of duty of care to the actors for the rest of these these winter sort of and early spring sort of filming shoes.
No they don't. just the early 80s when are you talking about?
warmest car.
It's really interesting, that kind of that move into the 80s, because it was pronounced in Doctor Who, the last story of the 1970s, which was technically shown in January 1980s, the Horns of Nimon.
And when it comes back 9 months later, with the leisure hive, it looks so markedly different.
And it's even more so with Blake 7 because the last show of the 70s is essentially terminal, which was shot in January of 1980.
Then they've got an even bigger break.
They've got 12 months before they start shooting rescue and the 80s have hit in full force between terminal and rescue.
You can see it everywhere through this season.
The highlights in Dorian's hair everywhere, yes.
In fact, well, everybody I do want to talk about Dorian in that connection too later on when we talk about him because he, I think, is the 1st kind of 80s guest star that the show's ever had.
I do want to just quickly before we move on and kind of talk about how the episode begins.
Let's talk about one other element of the design, which I think is the guns.
So the guns on Blake 7 were absolutely unique.
Nothing like them had ever been seen and it always seemed to me that drawing a Blake 7 gun was like drawing a sword.
And so it did look like a sword with a sort of hilt and a sort of middle bit, and that was kind of the design.
It was very Robin Hood.
And now we've very much gone to just space guns.
It's Han Solo's gun, isn't it?
from Star Wars.
Absolutely. is the design.
I mean, they look chunky and shiny, and they're pretty cool, and the idea of them having the different clips to use is a really great one that no one ever uses after it's mentioned.
So it's such a shame.
I would love to have seen them use micro grenade.
Or drug.
That's probably for relaxing in the evenings more than anything else.
I have to say, chunky and shiny and pretty cool.
You could have been talking about Paul Darrow, then.
But Nathan, it's interesting that just to sort of just sort of count to what you were saying there about the guns.
We went from space guns to guns in space. if I can put it that way.
Yeah.
Has anyone seen one of those props?
Has anyone handled them?
Are they made of metal?
They look like they're machined out of metal?
They are made of metal, and in fact, that thud you hear when Dorian throws his gun onto the ground on terminal and Tara picks it up.
That's an actual thud.
They are heavy guns.
That was one of the things I disliked was that just how generic they were based on something that I thought was a cool idea. at the time.
But now I just think they're solid and they're really great.
They make excitingly chunky noises when you put the magazines in.
You know, Sulin looks like a boss drawing one.
Like I'm a big fan.
And that scene, that scene of the gun cupboard.
Compare how kind of boring and low rent the gun cupboard is compared to the reveal of the big gun cupboard in what, what are we talking about?
Cygnus Alpha, is it?
I mean, I have to say that Dana's line where she's talking about the guns and says, these are the best I've ever seen.
You sit there going, no, they're not loved.
They're not as cool as the ones you had last episode in Turbo.
They're not even as cool as that shampoo bottle one that you kept in your bathroom cabinet.
Just less likely to hold up production by breaking.
That's a main thing, isn't it?
That's arrowproof.
So let's go back to the beginning of the episode, and of course, the 1st order of business, I think, is writing out Jan Chappel.
I was shocked to learn much later that she was actually persuaded to record those 2 lines, specially for the episode, but that was all she was willing to come back and do.
How do we think that was handled?
They make the best of a bad situation.
I mean, the story is they asked her to come and do the whole series that she said, no, come and do 6 episodes.
She said, no, come and do 2 episodes.
No, come and do a line.
I'll do 2 words.
It's, yeah, it's a really strange situation because Canny's been such a big part of the show.
And it's, it's nice that they haven't just sort of said, oh, Callie died while, while we were doing this.
So they made some effort and we get to hear her.
But it's, yeah, it feels, I don't know.
It's a difficult one to put into words.
It's a lot better than having Glennis Barber in a wig is all I can say.
So, you know...
At least her absence does end up being a bit of a plot point, the lack of a telepath and the extra glass of wine being the thing about it.
So it isn't just, oh, there we go.
That's that sorted out after 5 minutes. we'll never mention her again.
So at least, yeah, I think they made the best of the situation, really.
They do what they have to do.
I mean, that is a very nice scene when Sulin brings the glasses and Dana's the one on it.
She sharps Hawks.
She's looking at Surreal and like, she doesn't know what to make of her.
And as soon as she sets down the glasses.
Dana's instantly there with, if Kelly had escaped with us, there wouldn't be an extra glass.
And you think, I wish we could see more of this, Dana.
I wish, you know, she's sharp as attack and I wish we could just get that more often.
Unfortunately, I think, I mean, it's all due to Jan Chappel, you know, she could, she could, um, it was all up to her what she wanted to do.
But I do think fans feel slightly, um, like it would have been great just to have had a scene, you know, even if it was shot in one day at, you know, just something because Kelly was such an important and integral part of the series, it seems such a shame just to write her out in the 1st scene without seeing her.
And it does, unfortunately, muck this episode up a little bit because obviously the original point was that Dorian came looking for them, not because they were bound together by their adventures.
That could have been any crew.
It would have been because Cali was the one who was binding them together.
And so with her absence, it kind of loses all of that and it gets a bit muddy at the end.
I think there is one other moment too, that properly sells the loss, which is when they're all kind of sitting around.
Do you know what I mean?
explaining to Tarant, what's happened while he's been unconscious, they're around the fire.
And they're just kind of firing Chris Boucher, Blake 7 lines at one another, which is always great.
That's kind of why we're here.
But I even says Callie is dead in his sort of swaggering way.
And Terence says, are you sure?
And it looks like he's about to do another line and he just goes, no, I'm sure.
Like, he just drops it.
There's no sarcasm.
It's like it's underplayed but heartfelt. and you kind of want that.
I mean, it was never going to be anything other than Callie wouldn't have wanted us to mourn.
We better go on to the next adventure. you know, like that was always going to happen.
But there is just that little moment from Avon, you know, the ostensibly the, the least caring member of the crew, where he does actually show a bit of emotion.
And I do like the way later on in the episode, he repeats the line from Mission to Destiny, and he does the last of Callie's people had a saying, and just that Callie was murdered, just like most of her people, and that little callback is, for Avon is actually really touching and really lovely.
And it points to the whole darkness.
Calli is a saying about trusting people and that and she ended up dead.
Yeah, Chris Belcher definitely making the best of a bad situation as he always could.
I think it's nice that Avon and Kelly's relationship was always one of the most interesting in the show.
And following on with that scene that you were talking about, Nathan, um, when Terence says, are you sure?
And Avon says, I'm sure Dana says, he went back in.
So Avon was the one who went down to find Callie's body.
No one else, just him.
And I think that's, yeah, quite touching.
Yeah.
There's some really nice moments between or just little touches between Dana and Avon in this one.
Literally, with when there's the big explosion.
He just has his hand over her protectively on the ground, sheltering her for, they're still something I never didn't notice at the time when I was watching it in the past, the extent to which he's just thought that sort of she's his apprentice kind of vibe to them and a bit of father-daughter conflict where, although it is a bit overdone where he doesn't know.
Don go running off, getting into trouble, so she immediately runs off and gets into trouble.
And then 8 minutes later, she does it again.
But both times, both instances of Dana being the kid who gets into trouble, which does happen like in the 1st 10 minutes twice.
But on both of those occasions, it's because she's headstrong and ferocious.
It not because she's silly or stupid.
She's just seen as being headstrong. and needing to cool it and be more calculating like Avon.
So But also it's coming from a good place.
You know, Avon is calculating, whereas Dana's like, what, the base might blow up.
We've got to go back and warn them.
She's not just impetuous, but she's got other people's interest at heart and maybe the way that Avon doesn't.
Yeah, and Avon's definitely colder, isn't he?
post-terminal.
He's, we will see this throughout the series, but it's definitely sort of being set up here right from the start that he's just being practical and his survival instinct is kicking in more than anything else.
Yeah.
I have to mention at this point, if we've talked about Dana running off, the giant snake puppet, which I think is absolutely surprising.
I love it.
So... awesome.
Yeah.
This is the same series that gave us the climopan insect.
And yet we've got this magnificent snake with its head that opens to reveal another head inside.
It's wonderful.
It's so good.
And Mary Ridge uses the same background noise for terminal that she used last episode.
And in fact, the background must get the continuity rights.
Well, yeah, except for the shape of the planet, obviously, but I think that that was super effective, that noise.
Like, remember, we were going down into it.
Ivan was behaving weirdly.
You know, that whole episode is so tense and that noise is so much a part of it.
And so bringing that noise back.
And then, of course, that's bookended by the sound in the room, as Dorian calls it.
Which, again, is just really quite incredible.
Like, both of those sounds are really great.
She does an awesome job, I think.
So, soon, we're on board the Scorpio and taking off, how do we think that Dorian lands when we 1st see him?
And in particular, are we expecting him to be our new regular?
I think he lands in a scruffy bag of bolts.
I think he's dreamy. gorgeous.
It seems very clear to me that if Jan Chapel had come back and they'd lost Villa or Tarrant, absolutely, Dorian would have been a new member of the crew.
Maybe not played by that actor though.
There's chemistry with everyone is brilliant.
He is absolutely superb.
Jeffrey Burrage is got looks and he's got the diction and he's just, yeah, clearly lined up for, for, um, for being able, the episode wants us to think that, doesn't it?
I think.
Yeah.
And also, it's that thing that happened with Hinchcliffe Dog 2.
They kept talking about having to cast big, strong, capable actors to be opposite Tom Baker.
Paul Darrow needs that as well.
And Dorian is a really good enemy for Avon.
He outshines him in that scene at the end, doesn't he?
With Aurak, he's just fixed Aurak, and he's winning that scene.
Yeah, it's funny because maybe it's just the way I kind of read the drama.
I don't know whether it's because I already knew who was going to join and who wasn't going to join, but because of the style of actor it is and because of the style of performance it is and character, you don't, I didn't never felt that, oh, yes, he could be a new regular.
It's that kind of thing that his performance is too great to be a mere regular character.
No, you can tell his...
That's what you're saying.
It's what you're saying.
He's willing to slum it for 50 minutes, but he's not doing a whole scene.
He's not on a season at Stratford.
You couldn't give that up.
Exactly.
So you're saying for the sun sign that they had auditions and he came in and they went, hmm, guest star, and then Glynis Barber came in and they went, uh, regular.
You know, you know very well what all the pay scales were like for BBC time. simply would not have been able to afford him for 13 episodes.
He really sells as well, the change in Dorian, because Dorian's kind of cheerful and obviously there's more going on with him, but he's kind of chipper in those early scenes and then as he becomes more corrupted, as we go into the episode, he gets...
The corruption becomes more visible, yes.
Correct.
He gets slower and a bit more standoffish.
And then when you've got that scene with Aurak, he really shows such brittle anger in it as well.
The way he says to Aurak, don't be insolent.
And you think, ooh.
But the thing about that sequence, of course, is he's gone down to the sea devil for his recharge, whatever the hell it is.
And so those...
And so, and so I think also that performance is saying that as well.
Like, like, we see the change.
He's very aware of where he is in the story in the script.
And that's a that's a sign of a great actor.
I mean, he's playing dumb in the in the initial scene.
And it's only once we're in real proper danger that he takes over the ship and then hits his head on the thing and it, you know, doesn't end up happening.
And there's that moment, isn't there, where his performance changes, where he turns around and he says, what?
You mean you're here by choice?
You know, and then you get those wonderful reaction shots of all of the crew.
I love water. fantastic.
I had to actually rewind this morning to wake up.
Wait, did I miss something?
What did he say?
And then Paul Darrow goes, I'm going to turn and go, hmm.
Into shot.
Do your reaction gifts are available for download for maximum power.
It's also the scene when they're leaving Scorpio when Avon's got the gun on him and he suddenly regains the upper hand when the door closes and they can't get back into the ship and they have that whole thing about, you know, you'd be surprised how little it matters to me, the difference between life and death and he's like, oh, shall we go and just turns around and walks off.
You're being so bloating, you know, he's got a heart of pure stone and stuff and they're doing all these Blake 7 dialogue and he just rolls his eyes.
Can we get on with it?
It's really great.
I want to highlight the hilarious scene, which is some really fabulous, like, acting evil for the audience's benefit, which is when he kneels down and start stroking more and sort of looking evil and then he sort of pulls himself against.
Great evil acting.
Yes, you're right.
Yes, yes.
When we're doing Adorian Gray, which is not a spoiler.
Yeah, he doesn't get that bit to, like, you know, Cindorian Gray, he's introduced to this amazing guy who everybody finds irresistible, and then we discover he has a seedy underside, which is all part of his irresistibility, and then we discover the dark consequence stroke cause of it.
They can't really have him going out nightclubbing or whatever.
So it's just he's got a lot of wine and he keeps it.
That's the villa's line.
I've never met a man who keeps his wine under lock and key or something like that or I'll be suspicious of a man who keeps his wine under lock and key is what's again the seeding of that.
See, I think I think it's actually telling that this is the 1st time we hear the word wine in the show, and it's always been adrenaline and soma and various drugs and stuff, but we've never actually mentioned wine as such.
And I think giving him a real world vice because I think, I do think that he, that he's clearly coded as gay.
The actor is gay.
You know, he's thin, he's got blonde highlights.
He's got a very, very 80s look.
There's makeup once he cleans himself. got excellent forearms.
Excellent forearms.
He kisses some solin like she's definitely his beard.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
And she's, exactly.
And he's going to feed her to the monster at the 1st opportunity to get rid of her.
But, but also...
She's his companion.
But it's his partner that he loses to the room.
And there's a series of men, like he says, a series of men and they last, and, you know, it might just be, you know, Blake 7 doing sort of old-fashioned sexist language or just not thinking of women or whatever.
But the fact is it's a series of men, each of which gets overwhelmed by his corruption quicker and quicker and quicker.
And then at the end, the sea devil turns into that shirtless twink, you know, this pretty boy is taken and corrupted and turned into a monster.
And so he's very gay.
Like the source is, is, you know, the source, like there's, yeah, he literally had the host of strictly come down and thing tied up in his basement.
I mean, how...
He was truly coded as gay.
It would have been Shirley Barris.
It is actually, Nathan, that is actually a very interesting reading.
I'm wondering how deliberate that was, or at least how many people knew that that was what they were going for at the time.
I suspect not.
I think it's just the fact that, oh, of course, they're men because they're the ones that he's luring into the thing.
But it is fascinating how it works.
But then again, the original story, of course, is such a gay story.
It's such about like it's Oscar Wilde.
It's about beauty.
It's retaining.
It's not even the fact that like, you know, Dorian, the original Dorian Gray is handsome.
He is beautiful.
There are all these kind of feminine qualities that are bestowed on Dorian Gray.
And so it is quite interesting that you're sort of, it's very easy to read it that way from a modern, as a modern audience.
I'm fascinating to know what they thought at the time.
Well, because we don't see what corruption do we see?
Do you know what I mean?
corruption and appetite and vice that he can try.
And we get wine.
He drinks a lot of wine, you know, like he gets the wine out at the end, like he gets that out twice.
What's the corruption?
He sort of spends 20 years trying to invent a teleport 30 years, for God's sake.
We don't see him nightclubbing.
Maybe he's out clubbing with the homics.
I think that there is a lot of crossover between that aesthetic and gay aesthetic.
And so you have bands like Duran Duran, which were overly made up with massive hair, which we code as gay now, but I think there is a lot of crossover there.
I also think that because the actor is gay that helps us to read it in that way.
I think he probably knew full well.
I mean, how could you miss it, that it was a play on Dorian Gray.
And I also think that our Dorian rescues Dorian, his name is Dorian Gray, because the show's new aesthetic, takes its cue from his name.
Great costumes, Gray Scorpio, Flightdeck, Gray in Paldaro's hair, everything great.
It is actually probably worth mentioning it at this point about the fact that for the time Jeffrey Burridge is comparatively out, and certainly his partner's comparatively out because Jeffrey Burridge, sadly, dies later that decade through complications relate to AIDS.
And during a, this is your life that is done for his partner, his long-term partner, whose name escapes me, sorry, but that partner originally.
Thank you.
Did not want it. was there was a big kerfuffle about it going to he. didn't want it to go to air because basically throughout this is your life.
There was absolutely no mention of Jeffrey Burrage in it, which, of course, oddly enough, he found very offensive, and they sorted out with Michael Aspel doing a voiceover during the end credits, which is a bit pathetic, very much of the era, of course, but it's just fascinating that how much being kind of even a bit out with your sexuality at the time would have grossly impacted your career, and yet the boat, the 2 of them were relatively fearless at the time.
And I think that's quite extraordinary.
If you want to see Alec McGowan, he plays Q in, never say never again in the off-brand Bond film from 1983.
Let's talk a little bit about our new regular.
It seems like we've forgotten what Dana's job is on the ship and have decided to get a new girl in to do Dana's job on the ship.
Is that a thing?
In fact, when Dana came, we'd kind of forgotten what Callie's job was on the ship.
Do you know what I mean?
Like every new girl that we introduced?
And we'd forgotten what Gan's job was on this show.
If only if only they'd thought it through that well, Nathan.
I think it's just because I think they just want another action girl and, you know, that's what they decided is successful because all of the space telepathy thing with Kelly is has gotten a bit old and they've kind of done everything they could possibly do with that sort of type of thing.
I'm jumping ahead a little bit, and I don't want to have spoilers, but it has always struck me that Zulian, while she's a good character, and I really enjoy the performance and the character.
They should have waited and they should have introduced Dr. Paxton in 4 episodes time because she would have been a really interesting addition to the crew.
She would have held her own with Avon.
It would have been a different dynamic.
If they wanted to go in a different direction.
That's absolutely a direction you could have gone in.
Whereas Sulin, again, feels like it's taking away from Dana a little bit.
It's interesting.
They're still sticking with a formula in that you have the regular cast.
And so one of the regular cast doesn't want to keep going, so we need to replace that regular castle with another new regular cast.
They couldn't just have Sulenor, Doreen, or anyone, really, for a few episodes, and then have Dr. Plexen or whoever, and then have somebody else, like just have a series of, you know, people who do a few episodes before they get killed or something.
They just, they haven't yet gotten into that that possibility that the mindset hasn't yet allowed for that.
I mean, I suppose that, you know, the name of the show is a factor.
They've got they've got the seven.
And there's that, right?
It really jumped out to me this watching this time.
There's, I think it qualifies as a 4th war break where Dana says to Villa, something about, you've got amazing friends too.
And he, he sort of turns, not, not to camera, but he turns aside and says, huh, name 6 because it's the show is called Blake 7 and he hasn't got 6 friends at the moment.
Well, it's my soul inputs out 7 glasses.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I just think that number 7 gets mentioned there for that reason, sure, add, add up.
You know, the 5 plus Sulin and Dorian, but I think, you know, 7 is a telling number there.
And maybe it's meant to suggest that both of them are going to join at the end.
They've got her measurements from all of her previous appearances as mutos and things like, actually, you know, gets on with everyone.
I imagine that was pretty much, yeah.
It's a shame that she doesn't seem to have much more of a character to get her teeth into.
No, it takes a little while, I think, for them to work out what to do with her because we're in a bit of script crisis, aren't we?
Because we've got scripts that are written for Jan Chappell and Cali, and so it's basically cross her out, put her in.
And so she doesn't really get a character until really sort of headhunter assassin time when there's a bit more time to have fought through.
Blintz Barber has a lovely archway of delivering everything again.
Again, like she can't quite believe she's in this show and she's a bit bit out of this and I think we've had some characters like this before where they just feel like they're slightly above all of this, but I'm going to do it with my eyebrow arched and it's brilliant.
Actually, her relationship later on with Paul Darrow is really excellent.
The 2 of them fire off each other really well and there's there's great chemistry there.
But there's not a great deal in this story to get your teeth into.
We're established that she's quite fast with a gun.
She's quite good at pouring wine.
She's quite good at sneaking off up spiral staircases in the last scene and disappearing.
She looks hotter than gray jumpsuit, which is quite, quite, quite an accomplishment.
She thinks poor old slave, he's creepy.
I do like when she says, I really could be quite annoyed.
I'm sure we'll find out lots more about her in her 2nd episode next week.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because I do think she gets character halfway through the season and when she does, it's really good, but she clearly walked into rehearsals, maybe not sure how to perform in the show, watched 2 minutes of Paul Durrow and went, okay, got it.
Because she's just, she's just doing that kind of delivery.
Yes, her acting.
Her performance is at exactly the right kind of heightened level for the show.
Him but slightly more match show.
Also, it seems crazy to me.
Again, we're getting I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
It's crazy to me that when they did lose Jan Chappel, who was the focus of animals, they didn't make Sulin, the focus of animals just to flesh out her characters.
That seems like a real miss for me.
Yeah, that would have worked.
And being a bit less icky.
She was probably grateful though.
Sue Lynn, I'm trying to learn to pronounce it correctly again.
They really emphasised the Lin, which I had not been doing for in the 20 odd years since I 1st saw this.
Oh, God, it's more than an idea.
So, Lynn.
But so she's in the dark about she's not his conspirator.
She is his beard in the sense that she doesn't know what's in the basement.
She's never, don't go into the basement yet.
Don't go down the extremely well used whiny spiral staircase.
That's Dorian's man cave.
No women allowed.
Let's talk about that cave.
So, uh, we have the room.
And for me, everyone is so posh.
Like everyone is so absurdly posh.
And like this whole episode, I'm there just absolutely thinking, Simon must love this.
What was this absurd business?
It's absurd that you find it absurd, Nathan.
But, I mean, you know, because Joe said is fantastic.
Like, you know, she has the fabulous posh accent.
Zulin is there doing the sort of absurdly posh accent.
And so is Dorian in his room.
And like the cave is, I think, in an episode that actually is trying to sort of jettison quite a whole lot of the weirdness, the unique weirdness of Blake 7.
What we get is the weirdness of Blake 7 is this cave and it has a weird soundscape.
It looks very strange and just like, uh, you know, the way that the liberator comes from nowhere.
You know, the liberator is weird Blake 7 when it 1st arrives.
We go from the London to the Liberator.
We go from gray sets to a large, strange, you know, unknowable place. the room itself that's responsible for the premise of the new series.
It's because it's enabled Dorian to create slave and the teleport and, you know, Zenon Bass and all of that in the 200 years that he's lived.
So it's weird Blake 7 coming in at the end of the episode, I think, and kind of taking back control of the program and I love that.
I absolutely love that.
It's sort of a room that's a room that provided everything that they'd lost.
So it's like, okay, do you need a hot rod ship that can outrun federation pursuit ships, new guns, Do you need a charming flight computer?
Do you need to teleport that works?
The room will give it all to you.
Yeah, yeah.
Can I just say, Nathan, it's interesting because I had the precise opposite view of the room in that, for me, it's not weird, like seven.
To me, this is this is an episode or story of Doctor Who that Chris Boucher didn't write for Doctor Who he wrote for Black 7 instead.
For me, when they go down the spiral staircase and they find this mysterious place where there is a sea devil, et cetera.
And there's a, you know, all you need is that sort of strange, jagged, sort of slow motion thing where everyone's kind of like, there's that button you press on the vision mixer, Peter, where, you know, every, there's 3 seconds where there's a shadow previously.
Simon, it's the cliffhanger to nightmare of Eden part three.
Exactly.
Yes.
So it's that button that hasn't been pressed on.
But this is a story that I think Chris Boucher could have written for Doctor Who had he and, you know, the rest of them not gone off and decided to make Black 7 instead.
For me, it doesn't actually feel very Blake 70 to have this concept of a kind of a Dorian gray kind of painting in the attic or sea devil in the basement sort of thing going on.
That's more of that's that more of that kind of fantastical thing that Doctor Who would do unless like 7 would do.
I know there's things like ultra world and crap like that.
But you know what I mean?
Like, like, it just reads so much to me.
I'm glad to hear you say that, Simon.
It is crap.
I said that was a I said that I'm loving him.
But you know what I mean?
but no, I love ultraworld, actually.
But, you know, do you know what I'm saying?
Like, in the main, Brakes Lake 7 is trying to be grittier, and whilst there are sort of gritty aspects of this episode, this whole Dorian Gray type story, for me, wreaks a Doctor Who story that should have happened rather than a Black 7 episode.
Don't you think?
There's Duel and the Than and sarcophagus and like there's always weird.
Okay, there's that kind of weird.
Yeah, that's what that's...
But this is not that kind of weird.
They're all different, right?
Yeah, different kinds of weird, but this kind of weird for me is Doctor Who kind of weird. anyway, sorry, Peter.
Doctor Who in the in the Graham Williams and Philip Hinchcliffe, the 70s, is always taking classical inspiration.
It's always Doctor Who's spin on Frankenstein or Doctor Who's...
Exactly King Kong.
And that's what this is, fake 7 doesn't often do that.
Yeah exactly.
Maybe that's what I'm thinking.
But what I'm interested to know too, is that so they've got this room in like several spiral staircases down, which obviously somehow has the ability to make you live forever by taking your friends and turning them into a monster.
Don't give Ava ideas.
Yes, exactly.
They just happily use the Xenon base for the rest of the season and never think that, well, there's this place down there.
Maybe we should, how can we utilise that?
You know, live forever or something.
Soverland getting her hands honest and having more of her babies.
Exactly.
Imagine, yes, JC Jacqueline Pierce could have gone down there.
Imagine the Jacqueline Pierce version.
It's interesting, Simon.
I think Chris Belcher, you're right with that.
And remember, Chris Boucher has touched on the idea of Gestalt identities before, an image of the Fendal.
So it's clearly something which is, you know, lurking at the back of his mind properly from all of those sci-fi fantasy novels that he read.
Well, it's funny, Gestalt is used in Pirate Planet as well.
So it's very much of the of this era. quite hard to visualise in a BBC's TV studio.
Yeah, I have to get a metaphysical and just talk about it. it's a crystal or something.
Would they have all literally splodged together, absorb a loft style?
Would they, you know, we don't, the, the, you know, resolving it by a drunk man throwing a gun downstairs to them all?
They'd have used that faulty vision mixer, which makes everything blur out for wise, and then they'd have been just put on the period of a blog.
Gestalt density with Glenis Barber's bum, Avons, have a C-double face.
Dana going weirdly screaming and flinging herself into Terence's protective arms is one bit that did not land for me at all.
Clearly, clearly meant to have been Cali.
Yeah, it's completely different from how she's behaved the rest of this episode.
Never mind.
I mean, all right, she's been locked in the dark with a monster through a few hours.
She's supposed to have gone slightly mad, which...
Slightly bit balmy.
But the bit that doesn't land for me is her throwing the gun towards the...
It's a very...
It's like something Perry would do.
Odd.
Exactly.
How dare you?
These spiral staircases all at the same to me.
I think they're great.
I love the spiral staircases. and where are we?
Are we in Ealing for just a few minutes so that we can go up and down the actual spiral staircase at some point.
It's pretty great.
What do we think of the resolution?
like how how the episode ends.
The ageing effects are done quite nicely.
I think the BBC always do a good, good ageing effect, and um, they like a body turning to dust affects the visual effects team know exactly how to do this.
We saw it in State of Decay the year before in Doctor Who, obviously, so they know what they're doing.
Yes, I very much prefer the cutaway to a reaction shot, then cuts to them being a bit older, faster way to reaction to them.
Rather than trying to, rather than trying to sort of do a rollback and mix on the different stages of ageing makeup.
It's very slow, isn't it?
Like, it's very stately.
And like we'll come back to him looking completely different.
And now he's, you know, old.
Now he's got a sort of gooey head.
Now he's just a sort of puppet.
Like, and everyone just looks and everyone just sort of stands and looks and what does it happen?
awesome.
Nathan, there was an established BBC handbook for how this would be done.
At 1st you would have the actor sort of squawking a little bit with her into the floor.
Then they'd have the old age makeup.
Then it would be some kind of creature mask.
Then it would just be goo on the floor, then it'd be the wind.
That was always the 5 stages. actor, I think.
There is another actor, like an older guy at some point as well.
Like Jeffrey kind of, yeah, he goes off camera and someone else replaces him.
He's saying, I'm not being made up to my household.
They're just great pandering from rehearsals for all that chickens to victorous love.
He goes hell for leather when he realises.
There isn't an effect, really, that's just going to cover this.
So he has to go in the full, the full Monty of screaming his head off and shrieking and...
He goes the full Caroline Holdaway on that.
He goes to about 50% of gallon all day.
I mean, we can't sing his praises enough, Jeffrey Boach.
I think he is clearly one of the top 5 league 7 guest stars.
Absolutely.
And also on the Blake 7 scale of hotness from Nova to Agrarian, or if you're that way inclined, Agrarian to Nova, he rates very highly.
Very, very.
I think I think he is barely subnova.
Well, maybe that was one of his vices.
You've reminded me, there is that line.
Sorry, we've already covered it, but there's that line in his scene with Avon where he really looks Avon Square, nose to nose, and says, I can have any vice I want.
And maybe I don't know now.
I'm thinking maybe that was deliberately he is flirting with Avon because who wouldn't?
I mean, I can imagine Darrow Stroke, Avon, what's the difference, being the kind of guy who would not want any funny business, but at the same time, would be deeply offended if someone came out as gay and didn't fancy him.
I just think he would be...
Yes, absolutely.
Can I just take a moment for Paul Darrow's startling?
I'm possessed and I can't move, but I'm fighting against this axing down in the bait in the cave because that is a masterpass of everything Darrow does.
That is brilliant.
Isn't he throwing himself backwards against the spiral staircase?
So that when Michael comes down there, he can handly hand him the gun.
He's Reading.
I love the scene where Villa has the gun in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other hand and is kind of deciding what to do, which I just think is terrific.
The way he saves the day just by deciding actually, no, I'm not going to crawl into the bottle of wine.
I'll go and shoot the people with the gun that still works.
But talking about the gun.
Did anyone else have even this morning when I watched it again?
Um, I, you know, when he's, he's reaching for the wine in that earlier sequence and that that other gun drops to the floor. my mind just goes straight to, oh, that's just a rush scenario.
Oh, they didn't take that.
Well, actually, Kel Supreme.
And then something it's actually relevant.
The gun was on the floor. like do you know what I mean?
It's, it's, it's actually quite weird that you, you get so used to just assuming things.
Yeah, it's Matt Smith's cuffs again.
Yeah, because there needed to be a cutaway.
If you didn't want it to think it was a flaw, a flaw, you needed to have a cutaway of the gun on the floor, basically, so that we were clear, yes, the gun was meant to drop on the floor.
The whole episode is a villa moment and it really brings it home to me that as sad as I am, that we've lost Chan Chapel because she's just amazing and I love Kelly.
I don't think the program could have survived losing either Avon or Villa.
Villa is so important to the dynamic and give so many good moments in this episode.
And Nathan, adding to what you said, the scene where Villa is on the spiral staircase listening to Dorian and Avon, and he's creeping down the stairs to do his heroic bit, which, you know, Villa doesn't often do, but, you know, twice in 2 episodes saves the day.
And Dorian says, if you're expecting your friends to rescue you, all of their guns have been tampered with as well.
And he just looks at the gun in his head, rolls his eyes and tiptoes back upstairs.
It's amazing.
My favourite moments in the episode is where they're all getting things to do on the flight deck of Scorpio at the start.
And Avon just throws around and says, Villa.
And Villa looks like he's ready for something and he says, just make sure our guest is behaving or whatever he says.
And it's just that look of deflation on Michael Keating's face at that moment.
But of course, following that, Chris Boucher knows what he's doing because immediately following that, Dana calls him over because she needs his help to open the gun locker.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I know there's all this love for Jan Chappell, but frankly, I don't care.
Out with the olden...
Yeah, no, no, I...
Yeah, no, no.
Well, yes, but that was then.
And and it's like that thing, I like, I like casts to be refreshed.
And she was in it from the beginning and you're right, you can't get rid of, you know, you're not going to get rid of Avon, otherwise it's a different series.
You can't get rid of Villa for a similar reason.
And I would have almost, if I was running the show, I would have almost asked her to leave because of the fact that she's kind of done everything that you need that you can have that character do.
And um, it's, it's, it's actually refreshing to have another, another new character coming for the, for the new season.
So I think it's actually, we're very fortunate that she said, no, no, no, I'm really not coming back and we have, you know, Sue Lynn to enjoy for the for one small year.
It's one of the things that I like about long firm, about long form television as a medium, which is that the creatives, the writers and showrunners and staff don't have complete control because cars come in and out, things happen, you know, strange, real world twins.
All of that stuff makes it so interesting.
It's one of the reasons that I love Doctor Who.
And, you know, one of the things I love about this.
I agree.
I think the changes in the cast are kind of devastating at the time when you watch it and that's part of the fun too.
It gives them a chance to do something new.
Yeah, and just the fact that they didn't necessarily know they were going to get a 4th series and would they have destroyed the liberator and done what they did at the end of terminal if they didn't think it was the end of the series.
And so we get this completely different feel just because of circumstances and someone coming back and enjoying the show and then said, well, we'll give it another year.
Why not?
I love that in the 1st minutes when they, um, uh, the get out that was presented at the end of last year, the, the, uh, the, I'm telling them there's a decrepit old ship that they could use and they just, we blow that up.
We're not picking up that thread.
We're going with a we're going with a different thread instead.
So she left them there with the ship, which was then, but we trapped to kill them.
Why didn't you just shoot them?
She could have just shot them all.
All the humiliation.
The humiliation.
I think it's amazing how bleak that opening is because it was already bleak and things get worse for them during the course of the 1st 10 minutes of the episode to the point where they're on an exploding planet.
I mean, you thought they were in trouble at the end of terminal.
But things rapidly get much worse.
But just on that, isn't it interesting though, that we have actually decided, despite the fact that there's quite a relatively speaking long gap between the series, that we decide we are going to pick it up from precisely where we left off, they're not just going, okay, here we are 12 months away.
Oh, oh, and by the way, we got away from terminal and, oh, by the way, Kelly died.
Oh, by the way, but or she didn't die.
She's gone off to some pleasure world or whatever the heck it is.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just interesting that they decided to take this route after the severance effectively, the weird circumstances of the renewal.
And terminal did get a repeat.
I'm just consulting the Almighty BBC Genome.
It did.
It was repeated in summer.
Yeah. 1981 just before.
Just national.
Yeah.
Yeah, several episodes.
Yeah, running up to terminal.
So, yeah, and BBC One, primetime, 8 o'clock in the evening repeat as well.
Yeah. getting grave.
I think the fact that this picks up from where we left off is probably down to Chris Boucher, he just like picks up the remnants of the show that we're left with.
As I said earlier, just a bunch of characters who are Blake 70 and with just precision ease.
He kind of crafts this new show around them.
He takes some shortcuts with the teleport and the guns and everything, but it is remarkable in the way like aftermath did last season that it formats the show almost incidentally and tells a really good story of escape and peril at the same time.
I mean, you don't come away believing this is a different show.
It's absolutely the same show.
It's just had some cosmetic changes.
And I will have to say, laying my cards on the table.
I think they made one huge error at the start of production.
It's probably down to Via Lorima.
I going to blame him anyway, but when they showed up at the production office for day one of series D. Blake 7 is the Liberator.
That ship is celebrated and integral to the show and to the public and fan consciousness of it.
This needed to be one of 2 stories, a time travel story that winds back the liberator's destruction, or DSV 3, coming looking for the destruction of DSV2.
You could have even 80sed up the sets and sort of, you know, they would have still been probably the same.
They needed the liberator, and it's the one thing that this season doesn't really recover from, is that Blake 7 is the liberator.
Maybe.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week for another argument about whose turn it is to unpack the dishwasher in power.
Until next time, maybe you should consider laying off the Botox for a bit.
Sure, you look right now, but it's not going to do you any good in the long term.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Bye.
Bye for now.
Let's the power, go, go!
30 seconds thrust, Maxi...
Switching command.
Maximum power on all drives.
Seven, now.
I think, do we wind that on?
Oh, we'd have to put...
We would have to put...
We would have to put Simon's maybe, though, in there.
I don't know.
I think for me, I mean, this can go the tag.
This is going to check.
I don't need to be hurt.
I don't need to be heard on this.
Oh, you do?
It's interesting because I met you.
I don't need don't need it.
Sorry, I need to be heard now, but I don't need to be broadcast.
The, the, um, the thing.
I mean, again, going back to that thing that, you know, I come into Blake 7 with series C and, you know, then I kind of, it's all, I can't even remember what I see next, it's all kind of random, but, but, for me, aftermath and this, as you're saying, PG, it does kind of reboot the show, it's still obviously the same show, but it's a different version of the same show.
For me, it's almost like in both cases they're saying, well, we've gotten rid of all of that Blake rubbish and now we can actually do the show that we actually wanted to do along or we realised we wanted to do when we were about 4 or 5 episodes into the 1st series.
Oh, this is actually what we did crap.
This is so much going to be so much better now.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I really felt the original 2 series of the show feel tired when they're happening, whereas these 2 series don't.
What it really, what it highlights for me, and you said obviously earlier that it all looks a little bit generic, it's just how lucky we were to have such talented designer as Roger Murray Leach setting up the show in 1977.
He made the liberator and it set design so fascinating and something that stood out and characterised the series.
And if you got bottle shows such as sarcophagus or breakdown, which were mainly said aboard liberator.
You were happy to spend time there.
And so the key problem is that the Liberator is unique and Scorpio is generic.
Yes.
Yeah, although I...
I mean, I totally get where you come from, but I think that's the series 4 vibe that we don't even, you know, we can survive without Blake.
We can survive without.
Star Trek wouldn't dare make a series without the enterprise, but we're like seven.
We're gonna really shake things up.
So I, yeah, I can't imagine series 4 with the Liberator.
Um, because so much of the stuff is about them being more, uh, struggling.
As, as, as I'm under, under adults now.
And when you're flying around in the greatest ship in the universe.
It definitely would have been a different series. yeah.
I'll tell you what, server, I would have had server line just successfully naked.
Serverland's got it now.
We going to run into her later this series, flying around and deliberator.
I believe later.
There's a bit of news coming out.
Yeah.
What kind of use?
40 inch now it takes from harvest of chiros.
If you can compare it to Doctor Who from.
I mean, Dr. Blake 7 was never about the liberator for me. was worries about Paul Darrow and Avon.
And in the same way the Doctor Who is kind of about the Tartars, but it's also kind of not when you consider how often it's successfully happened without the Tartars.
I mean, most of the per year or a lot of the per year, at least.
The TARDIS is a footnote, if at all.
And that's actually fundamentally the not the most interesting thing about the program.
And even though it's a hook, absolutely.
But yeah, I think that not having to liberate, I think trying to retrofit the liberator back into series D, I think, would have been an error and would have just made it look tired.
I mean, maybe, but Doctor Who is a unique program about time travel.
Blake 7 is a space opera.
There's plenty of other space operas around.
Obviously, there are other things that make Blake 7 unique, and we tap into those in this series, but Liberator was a big part of what made Blake 7, what gave it its character, whereas I don't think the TARDIS is that in Doc 2, Doc 2 has other equal strengths.
I think we wind up.
What do you?
Yeah.
Yeah, do you think that's conscious?
No, no, no.
I was just sort of saying, I just sort of think that maybe Blake's 7 only becomes completely about Paul Darrow in retrospect and what it's becoming about is being negotiated now.
Do you know what I mean?
as they decide what they're going to do for season four.
What is it about?
Is it about the liberator?
Well, we're deciding it's not.
It's going to be about Ivan.
Do you know what I mean?
And I think, and the show just ends up being about Avon by accident, really, again, he's the Urkel.
He's the breakout character, you know, who everyone kind of remembers.
Mostly Urkel.
All right.
I'll do the outro and then we'll see how we go.
I don't know whether this works, you know, maximum power context, but we'll give it a go.
Well, it's all the time.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.