Maximum Power.
Hello, and welcome to Maximum Power.
Oh, what a tangle web he weaved when 1st terry nation practised to conceive Blake 7.
And so I'm I'm Peter, and who am I here with?
Hello, I'm Brendan.
I'm Colin.
And I'm Pete.
So, we're looking at the Blake 7 episode, the web, and Pete, what did you think of television's 1st ever episode, maybe?
It's a, it's a sticky situation, all right, that's to be sure.
I don't remember this one it originally went out and it's quite a quirky little thing, isn't it?
I don't know what the received fan wisdom on it is, but it's really a story of 2 halves, isn't it?
One half quite a lot longer than the other.
With the um, the spaceship bit and Callie being spooky.
But mainly, I'm going to remember it for the streaking.
In terms of, in terms of the, I came to Blake 7 because I wanted shrieking. and there's a lot of freaking.
Wait for SiriC. will get some shrinking as well.
I think the fan wisdom on this episode might be that it's not very good.
And I'm not sure that I agree with that.
I mean, I agree with it in some ways.
I think it's probably the most fantastical thing that Terry Nation ever wrote with the possible exception of Planets of the Daleks in Doctor Who.
But I think it succeeds in a lot of ways, and I think it's important for the series.
I, uh, I think it was one of the earliest episodes that I saw watching as a little 6 year old in 1978.
I know I saw time squad and then this one and it left an indelible impression on me.
So, yeah, I forgive it quite a lot, I think.
What do other people think?
Well, for me, I think this may have been the 1st episode proper that I saw, because the very 1st Blake 7 I saw was the truncated BBC video of the beginning.
But I think this is the 1st proper episode, and I remember watching this at about 10 years old.
At about 10 at night.
And just being properly terrified.
By, by, you know, Saman's voice coming through Jenna and and does, Sally does an amazing lip sync for her life in that moment.
And how does she do that with her voice?
Yeah, that's the Rada, isn't it?
Space rather.
And in terms in terms of the wailing, we watched this today and Rod turned to me and said, are they are they just carrying around a box of kittens that they're not letting out?
Is that what's happening here?
Oh, poor kittens.
But of course, there is a theory in the real world that cats miaows have developed to emulate human children and babies in order to elicit sympathy and thus get food.
So not only are the decimas of smaller stature, but they sound like children in distress, which we're sort of genetically hardwired to be distressed by.
I think it's I think it's very clever.
Perhaps the execution leaves a bit to be desired, but basically any sci-fi in the BBC in the 1970s you're going to be saying that.
So maybe they are evil after all.
They were just doing it to try and take over that planet and they completely, I hadn't, I'm having a moment of, of, of realisation here.
Maybe if the dome had been beset by kittens.
It might have been slightly more entertaining.
Colin, what did you think of the episode?
I really like this.
You know, I'm not a fan of received wisdom.
I kind of, I kind of liked just, it's like people that go, oh, the ending of Game of Thrones was bad. like, No, it just wasn't quite as good, right?
So I kind of try and put all that aside.
And I just think it's largely it largely succeeds, I think, in setting up a concept, but I don't think it properly explores it.
There's so much exposition.
There's so much kind of, and then we built them, and then we did this, and then we land on this planet, and then I'm 6 people in one.
It's like, okay, okay, okay, cool.
And then there's 10 minutes of, you know, shrimps with axes, mashing shit up.
It does such a great job of atmosphere.
You know, you have Black Park all sort of covered in, you know, webs and disco space balloons, but the music is really dark and the salmon, the head and the jar thing, again, is just terrific and creepy.
But again, it just falls short a little bit because he's on the floor.
It's like they all walk in.
It's like, oh, I'm just on the floor.
It's like, just, you know, have them in a massive sort of cabinet thing.
Don't just put like a little jar on the floor for them to come in and kick over.
It's not, you know, there's a few things that just, and the decimas like they, you know, they have bits of wood with bow ties on the end instead of, it doesn't quite work.
But I think they do a really good job of building up to a Blake and Avon standoff around, you know, Avon going, well, that's nice.
I don't really care.
Let's get out of here.
And Blake going, we've got to stop this.
Yes, there's an attempt at a kind of a message there, isn't there?
Yeah.
It's all about the morality, isn't it?
about how these, and still, we're still learning a bit.
I mean, we know them pretty well by now, but particularly the dynamic between Blake and Avon about doing Blake just being so appalled by the way these creatures are being treated, and that that in this story, it's how appalled he is, that is the point of the story, not are these, is, is alien race?
A, going to defeat alien race B, or um, that's what takes this into, you know, this is Blake 7. still defining itself as being, this is the kind of show that does this rather than just having.
Absolutely.
And these 1st 5 episodes, I think, have been the show defining itself.
I mean, obviously there's been some setup there, but it's been trying out different things.
Simon, Australian Simon, last week said that Time Squad was a potential format for the show that wasn't really pursued.
This is another format, which I think is pursued more often.
There are episodes in later seasons, usually by people who aren't named Terry Nation and Chris Boucher, which have these kind of fantastical elements to them, but it's the show deciding what it wants to be, whether it wants to be sci-fi or whether it wants to be fantasy.
And so last week we had industrial sites and cryogenesis capsules, and we've swapped them this week for heads in jars and proto-e-boks.
So, it's really interesting.
I think it's a template for later seasons.
And also, do you know of Gareth Roberts, the Doctor Who writer?
I think he might have been the person who said that the moment you know Blake 7 is going to be space nonsense rather than anything else. is when Callie clutches her head and says, I think that could have been one of the lost.
There's also, there's a, my people, Claxon that I have in my head in any science fiction series, where someone at some point refers to, my people in a way that generally everyday human beings or alians even didn't tend to talk about, you know, I'm going home to see my people.
It's wonderful how whenever they mention the hour and hour in these episodes, right up to dawn of the gods in series C, they're these mystical people.
And then when we finally meet them, it's that person from Revenge of the Cybermen hanging around in an airport control centre.
Speaking of Doctor Who overlaps.
Very scary Navara with his creepy voice.
Did everyone recognise him?
In fact, he even looks a little bit like SV7 from Robots of Death because he is?
I wonder if he's very good at doing that. scary, impassive voice, but I'm not sure if I want to see his Hamlet and see if he does that exactly the same all the way through it.
Do you know who Samon was, the head in a fish tank?
He's the minister from the Doctor Who episode, The Green Death.
He's the one who's on the phone who says wretched fellow needs a swift kick up the backside Prime Minister.
How the mice he has fallen.
Yeah, or maybe, you know, he's remained in government and empowered for all these centuries and now he's...
With all seen Futurama.
Richard Nixon's just a head in a jar.
Maybe he made Prime Minister after all.
Well, Futurama steals everything from doctor.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Peter, it's even worse than that for poor Richard Beale.
Yes, he was the minister of ecology and the Green Death.
Before that, he was one of the voices in the macraterra.
I believe he is the voice of the macra screaming at the end.
But even before that, he was the voice of a refusian, but his most famous Doctor Who appearance, I think, for many.
Is Batmasterson in the gunfighters?
Oh good on him.
What a CV.
That amazing.
Exactly.
He appeared in a host of Bad Doctor Who and the Green Death.
With the whole Kelly, my people thing.
Something I picked up on on this viewing is, you know, 1st of all, she says that the lost were sort of exiled from her society for performing experiments and then we find out that these experiments are in cloning, but also very importantly, Samon says that he is of our on, but not our on.
And with him and his other 5 intellects.
I do have to wonder if they're the original clone masters who created the hour and hour, if that's what we're going for here.
Oh, that's interesting.
I, you know, I have to think that much as I love Terry Nation.
There's not always a lot of world building that he doesn't put in the script, so that is probably just me head cannoning.
But it's also very interesting structurally that Cali kick starts the plot and gets into the planet and whatnot.
But then never goes down there.
It's interesting because they kind of, they're playing on this theme of Jenna sort of going, oh, God, an alien on the ship.
Can we trust her?
You know, and it immediately, in the 1st sort of 10 minutes, we're subjected to Cali sort of hitting someone with a silver newspaper.
Um, and uh, you know, can she be trusted or not?
But Blake is immediately...
No, no, I trust her.
We fine.
And then Avon is, you know, just chuck her out the air.
Well, I'd have definitely called it Villa for wearing that outfit.
She is really, Kelly is really creepy in those 1st few scenes, if you don't know.
You know, later, she's got such a sort of, I don't know, Kelly looks like a sort of friendly chemist or English teacher, generally, but in those opening scenes, she's really, I think she does the spooky.
And she shot well.
Like those scenes where she's going to attack Villa are handheld and done in quite extreme close-up.
And something that I noticed watching this time around is that Callie's walking around with a gun strapped tour and no one else is, and I found that quite creepy.
Yeah, because they usually don't grab their guns until they're going down to the planet of the week. exactly.
Do you think that Jenna is impressed with Callie because he is a slightly more interesting character played by a slightly better actress coming in?
I'll just open that up to debate, Colin.
I really like both of them.
I've always preferred Tali because she's a bit more interesting and has stuff to do and has a bit more of a backstory.
Whereas Jenna is like, well, I was a smuggling, I got caught and I can fly a ship and here I am in danger of the week.
Whereas you've always got the hour on my people that we sort of visit and revisit.
It's just that, well, when we get to terminal, where things will change a little bit, but Jen Jenner is falling, Jen is falling in quite quickly into the Sigourney Weaver and Galaxy Quest role, isn't she?
at one point where they fly they're looking at the web and on the screen as they're flying along and then the web starts to clear and she goes, so that's what's slowing us down.
Obviously, you're going through a big way.
There's also a graphics failing.
I think that very same scene where the image of 5 pursuit ships come centre into the screen, it cuts to Kelly going, there they are.
Yes, it's very interesting what you say about Jenna and sort of the Sigourney Weaver Roll because Jenna has similarly enormous hair in this episode.
It is like blue dried into this enormous kind of um, buffon, uh, style.
That's true.
But, um, I think, you know, I was being a little bit glib before.
I think Sally and Ivette is actually great as Jenna.
I don't think she has as much to play that as Jan Chappel does with Cali, and it's always struck me what Paul Darrow wrote for actually the Bleak 7 magazine back in the 80s, where he was talking about Avon's attraction to Cali, which is always nascent.
And said, um, that he wouldn't be attracted to Jenna, because she was, and I quote, a sugar coated wonder woman.
Yeah, and that's probably true, isn't it?
I suppose she doesn't have the rough edges of Kelly.
You know, despite the fact she's a smuggler, Jenna is quite a principled character and is vocal about those principles, especially butting up against Avon whenever he says, oh, you know, we should just leave people behind kind of thing.
It's usually Jenna who says, well, no, we're getting them out of there.
No, we're waiting for Blake.
So there is there is something to that, that she is possibly the most virtuous, honourable member of the team.
Yes, which may be why her and Gan were a good team up last week because Gan is similarly principled in his own way.
And so you get the impression that if they were running the ship, it would actually be quite a force for good.
The other thing I wonder about is with Jenna and Kelly is that Jenna had spent 4 months on the London with everyone else with Villa, with Gan, with Blake, with Avon.
And then Cali comes along and someone, and Cali is someone completely new, and all of a sudden, Blake is affording Cali, the same trust as he gives to everyone else.
And I think in Jenna's mind, it's a bit like, well, no, hold on.
We can all trust each other because we have saved each other's lives.
We do not know who this person is.
And certainly, in the scripting, there was probably an intention to sort of set woman up against woman as rivals of affection.
But at the same time, I think there is, there is a point in mistrusting Callie, if you were in that situation, which is only bolstered by this episode, and after what Callie does, Jenner and Avon are so outwardly, obviously hostile toward her, which understandable in the circumstances, but it's been bubbling since last week.
In the fiction of the series.
Do you think Blake could trust Callie a little bit more because he's had telepathic contact with her?
I certainly think that could be the case.
And also, I think in Kelly, he sees a deliberate freedom fighter like himself.
The others have all mucked in with him because it's better than being in prison.
They're not necessarily as devoted to the cause as he is, but in Kelly, he sees another freedom fighter, another revolutionary, and that is her raison d'etre.
So I think in Blake's case, not only does he trust it, he desperately wants to trust her.
Brendan, I think that's absolutely right.
And, you know, spoilers were going to come to episodes in future and maybe next series where Blake's going to attempt something and Cali is always the one who backs him up.
Kelly is the one who says, we need to do this.
It's our only chance.
And so I think they are kindred spirits.
Are you in the uh, Kelly or Jenna camp, Pete?
I'm still, I'm in both.
I will happily have a foot in both camps.
Yeah, I think I do like Jenna's stylings.
In a way, I sort of root for Jenna because I think she gets so underused and she does end up sitting, reading a magazine, working the teleport some weeks and that's an injustice because I really like her.
But yeah, there's definitely more mileage in Callie's backstory because she's got on and it is really interesting.
It struck me watching these early episodes and still with the web as well.
How proactive Jenna is in these early episodes.
She is absolutely the 2nd lead of the show, not Avon.
It's a shame we lost that after the 1st 3 episodes and certainly after series A, spoilers again.
Because I think she's actually, she serves a very good function in the plot and she's good foil, Blake, but I think as the Blake Avon relationship develops.
She loses that position a little bit.
The dynamic between those 2 just can just fill an episode.
And so everyone else is lucky if they get anything written, written around them really, and then Villa gets all the gags because he's so good at the gags.
Jenna's really funny and quite acerving in the 1st couple of episodes before everyone comes along and becomes the comedy star.
So there's all that shuffling that goes on.
I guess with any ensemble series, you're going to get that on you.
It's interesting to see how it takes shape, yeah.
So speaking of Avon and Blake, I think they're actually starting to be particularly well defined in this episode.
What do you think, Colin?
I agree.
I think the show is starting to really cement.
That relationship is the most interesting and the most developed and the most, you know, important to the story in the sense that we're transitioning Avon from, I just want to get rich and just disappear with the spaceship and relax, whereas Blake is like, we're going to take down the Federation.
I mean, they're really starting to boss each other around now because that, you know, they're operating on this kind of level of we've just got to get something done, just instruction, instruction, instruction, delivery, delivery.
Blake is ordering Avon about sometimes, and he's objecting a little bit, but he's taking it.
So it's like, I need you on the flight deck.
I'm busy.
No, get up here now.
Yeah, there's a brilliant bit where he answers the cut, he answers a ping from his little communicator with, all right.
You don't get that on stuff, right?
But there's also a bit where Blake refers to Avon as a friend.
He's not psychopath. got more emotional intelligence.
Avon is pretty much a sociopath psychopathite tendencies and he's not going to go walking around, sort of saying stuff like that for quite a while.
He does it through his actions.
But to me, it's the whole point of the series is how those 2 develop.
There is a line in later episodes.
We won't spoil which one or where it comes where Blake tells Avon that he's always considered him a friend.
So that's quite interesting. love that line.
And there's also a scene where Avon unsarcastically refers to Blake as our leader.
So even though he's clearly got designs on Blake not being there and being able to use the Liberator for his own purposes, he's specifically talking to other characters about what they could be doing if they weren't following Blake, he still does view Blake as the leader.
Yeah, and visibly when when they when he gets told to put down his gun.
He turns and looks at Blake and wakes for Blake to nod before he does it.
It's like that, I have chosen to allow you to be our leader.
It's pretty much the energy that Avon, or Avon seems to be giving or Avon, as they don't they all pronounce it Avon, like Raven.
They do except for Surfland.
When she comes in, she'll call him Avon.
Sorry.
Sorry, so for what?
Spoilers.
No, I'm joking.
Brendan, what do you think of Avon and Blake in this episode?
I very much enjoy their interplay, and especially when Avon comes down to the planet.
We get and we get a nice little loop story bit.
And sort of all around the power cells.
And Blake explains, we can't give them power cells because they'll kill all the people here.
And Avon's like, that's bad.
And then Blake says, but if we give them the power cells, we'll be able to escape.
And everyone's like, well, that's good.
And then Blake's like, but the power cells have monosodium glutamate.
And everyone's like, can we just get on with this, please?
You also get your choice to frog it.
That's good Yeah, exactly.
But it's the whole thing of in that conversation because Avon is vacillating between, oh, well, we can't do it because X. Oh, well, we have to do it because why?
He is binary in his thinking.
And Blake does remind us at the end of the episode that Avon is more comfortable with computers.
And that's the thing Avon's doing here.
He's doing a moral calculus.
He's doing the trolly problem.
And it's not just based on how many people you can save.
He's basing it on the value of the people.
And because he's on one of the tracks.
He's not gonna put the trolly cart down that track.
He's going to put it down the track of the reptile Ewoks.
Whereas for Blake.
It's a matter of all sentient life, must be free.
And I think that's why this episode is so important because we know that Blake is fighting to free humans from tyranny.
But what we didn't know until now is he wants to free anyone and everyone from tyranny.
And it's quite an interesting distinction.
Yeah, because sometimes you can have a freedom fighter narrative and it turns out the person is just fighting to be free.
Whereas he is fighting for freedom, collectively, universally.
And that just makes it clear he's not just somebody with a grudge against the people who are in charge of him.
He actually wants to throw the whole damn corrupt whatnot.
And it sort of crystallises the relationship between Avon and Blake in at the start of that kind of philosophical discussion they're having, where Blake says, you know, we've got to, we can't let the eradication of these creatures happen.
Yvonne internally rolls his eyes and says, does this concern us?
And you think that is the relationship right there.
Yeah, it's sort of foreshadowed when Blake 1st meets with Gila and Navara, and they explain their situation and Blake is kind of a bit confused.
He's like, well, why did you force us to come here?
Well, and they're like, well, you might have said, no, and like, well, my mother said, yes.
Blake is still perfectly willing to help people who have put him through quite a lot already.
You know, they've turned his friend against him.
They've endangered his ship and his crew, but when he realises it's an act of desperation.
And he has the power to help.
He's perfectly willing to do so until he discovers that a byproduct of his help will be the extermination of the decimas.
And at that point, he's like, no.
I can't do that.
And I think as much as wanting the decimals to be free.
That's also a moral decision on his part that he couldn't live with himself.
If the price for his freedom was the destruction of these creatures.
Whereas at the end, Daveon is like, these are what you wanted to save.
Okay, rubbish.
That's squeaky and rubbery.
They're not even furry, for God's sake.
I don't think that there's much controversy out there about the fact that the decimals are not the most successful realisation of what they're meant to be, but it's always confused me.
What are their 10 functions?
running, shouting, crying, throwing on windows.
They're even more annoying than Furby's.
I...
There's that bit where they're all, they're all trying to get in and you can see them against some sort of white screen.
It looks like they're trying to get in through the round window and play a score.
Yeah, and they're bagging on it so gently because it would clearly collapse if one of them actually just touched it.
But and from the moment they're named, were you there thinking, okay, this is a Terry Nation script, the decimals.
What the pun?
They've made it Christmas.
They're gonna get decimated.
Oh, right, they've got 10 functions.
I see.
We know this planet should be called the web planets, but in the script, I've no doubt it's called decimus. of course They probably have an 11th function that's only accessible with the secret code.
And that shot that they have where they're all running into the dome when the door is very carelessly left open by Navara and Keila.
And I think it's a shot which is repeated about 3 times of the same decimas running through in the same awkward fashion.
So that's not something you see every day.
The whole section there and the dome at the dome with them, which is like, is it the last, it's slightly less than half of the episode, actually, isn't it?
To me, it could so easily be an episode of The Outer Limits or Twilight Zone.
It's a really self-contained sci-fi concept.
You meet these people who are going to destroy their clones and then you discover that they're clones or mutants themselves.
That would be on its own, a really taught little 25 minute science fiction script.
I'm suddenly now wondering, I wonder if Mr. Nation had this laying around, having been submitted to anyone else and not taken up, because then, because then it's just wrapped in into a Blake 7 episode as well.
It's an unusual structure because they arrive, they solve a mystery and then they take a moral judgement and act on it.
Rather than meeting people who are plotting particularly.
I mean, there's the consequences there of the decimas being eradicated.
There's not, there's not, there's not a sort of to and fro of one upmanship over a villainous opponent, which I'm just floating it, that might be a nice thing to introduce to this series at some point in the next few episodes.
We'll have to see.
Yes, it's a concept that's not particularly well interrogated, is it?
Yeah, it's a very simple morality play, and we as the audience, I think, are invited to side with Blake.
But everyone is there, I think, to speak to the 10%, the decima of the audience.
You're going to kind of go, all right, no, actually, no, let them die.
They're very annoying.
Well, there's little sort of, there's little doubt, I think, that Blake is a more annoying character than Avon, because he is that friend who is like, no, we have to do this and we have to do this and is constantly treading on your toes and saying, no, let's do this today.
Whereas Avon's just there going, can't we just sit down for a moment?
Can't I just fiddle with these forward detectors in peace, please?
Can't I just can't I just blow up consoles to show Gan?
I'm clever.
Please.
Doesn't he treat Gan terribly in that scene?
When he says something about it's slow?
It's something you should be used to and can should have turned around and decked him.
He's got something else that's pretty prescient as well.
Straight after that.
He says, there will be a time where Blake won't be making the decisions.
Well, I don't know how well that was thought through, you know, as a thing because it kind of disappears for ages.
It's certainly something that actually does happen, right?
I think it's the kind of thing where you can write that into a script.
And whether it comes true or whether it doesn't, you can, as the writer in an interview 10 years later, say, oh yes, it was always my intention that that would be hubris on Avon's part, and then he would never gain control of the liberator, if Gareth Thomas had agreed to do a 3rd series.
Or turn around and say, oh yes, you know, well, we knew very early on that we wouldn't be able to keep Gareth forever.
Whereas Paul will do it.
Yeah, we knew we'd be able to keep Paul on and that it's foreshadowing.
It's foreshadowing.
Blake 7 was my masterpiece, you know.
I got the title from a sign encyclopedia.
Um, et cetera.
Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it?
Because they do return to that question sort of periodically within the series.
So we'll have future episodes.
I don't know how many spoilers we want to give away, but I can think off the top of my head of horizon and the keeper from next year, where Avon gets a taste of being in command or is given the opportunity to ditch Blake and seriously entertains it.
So that is something that we will keep returning to.
It's still odd, having a series of Aurak in it for me as well, because to me, he's such an essential part of the seven.
Zen on his own, is still sort of just being written as a computer voice.
Well, this time anyway. but a mysterious computer voice with a lot of personality.
I love that there's a bit of a blur over what, like sometimes Blake will turn to someone like Gan and say, activate the shields and Gan will then just pick a microphone and say, to Zen, Zen, activate the shields.
It's like, has there been a time and motion study on this workflow?
Because, really.
You've got a voice activated supercomputer.
Why do you need to tell a bloke sat at a desk?
There's also, at one point, Jenna has to run all the way from her little control desk all the way around the sofas down the front and up in order to pick up a thing and talk to Gan.
I might be mixing up my episodes.
They're still finding their way around the ship and how it works and what the words are.
They started saying down and safe when they beam down now, not beam down, sorry, teleport down.
But that's it.
They've got to get their own lingo, haven't they?
Because it's its own world.
We need to test Alexa with some of these commands to Zen to see if they work.
Because you can do it with reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
So try it, see what happens if Really?
That walked any way inclined.
And Pete, that wasn't even taking into account all the scenes where Jenna, the pilot, is told to do a maneuver by Blake, the non-pilot.
She must be about to turn around and say, yes, fine.
Backseat driver behind me.
Absolutely.
Or if it's like Blake saying, you know, turn 30 degrees starboard and Jenna's like 15, I think, but I won't tell him.
I'm just gonna, I'll just do it.
Yeah, he hasn't noticed.
I love the way Villa is given his chance to use the neutron blasters.
He just fucks it up from the get go.
Oh, yeah.
No, before you fire the neutron blasters, you've got to activate the neutron force shield.
Everyone knows that.
And I love how Zen is like several times in this.
Basically, I'm not gonna stop you messing stuff up.
I'll just clean up after you.
But at that point, Zen actually steps in and says, actually, I'm not going to let you microwave yourselves this time, switch the shield on.
It's interesting, isn't it, that Zen loses that slightly abrasive quality as he goes on.
He warms up in much the same way as Cali does, because they have to save that for Aurak when he comes in, Aurak becomes the abrasive.
I could do anything because I'm a supercomputer, but I'm not going to, and that's what, you know, fulfils the plot function.
I forget, do they have arguments later on?
Are we getting ahead of ourselves?
Or do Aurac and Zen have arguments?
Because I know it'll be quite funny.
I think they work together quite well in one episode, but we've got to wait for series D when Zen's follow-up, Slave, and Aurac, get into a proper bitch fight, worth the price of admission alone.
Still the same actor as well.
I love it.
Apparently doing it live with himself in the studio.
And Paul Darrow's autobiography, he claims that Peter Studenham was getting 22 salaries for that, but I'm not sure if that's a joke or not.
That's a very BBC joke, isn't it?
It's interesting the point you make about Villa and his enthusiasm for firing the neutron blasters because Villa famously won't be seen to actually kill anybody until halfway through series D. Oh, well, he does stab someone in Signus Alpha.
Oh no, you're absolutely right.
Maybe I should rephrase that.
Famously, Villa will not be seen to fire a gun and kill someone until halfway through series, did he?
I see.
No shooting.
Yeah, he doesn't shoot anyone.
Yeah, I hadn't no, had not clocked that at all.
That's really interesting.
So what do we think of the production of this episode?
We have Michael Bryant, who is behind the way back, the 1st episode back behind the cameras.
Also, the robots of death, which explains the presence era of Miles Fothergill.
Yes, SP 7.
But I think that is also why we get the POV handheld shots that you mentioned earlier when Callie is sort of under Siemens control.
And I think there's a very slight fish islands.
It's not it's not too exaggerated, but it highlights the alienness of the situation.
But it is a little confused in terms of cinematography, just because when Callie attacks Villa.
We also get Villas POV from those cameras.
And then when Callie is ushering Blake and Avon back to the flight deck, we get their POV as well.
So I suppose it's just for the mind control sequences, but it, it could have perhaps been better if we just got Kelly's POV, but we didn't actually see her.
Until she's on the flight deck.
Yeah, there's no mystery, is there?
You know, it's like, something weird's happening.
Oh it's obviously Cali.
And then there's just there's just 5 minutes of them rather slowly, everyone else slowly realising that this weird stuff is being done by the only person it could possibly be being done by.
But it's still tense because because of all those directorial touches.
But I read somewhere that this was a script that underran quite substantially.
There is one scene where it's quite near the beginning where Blake just walks from one room to another and you could say, well, it's an interesting world building.
We get to see the liberator as he walks down a corridor and through a door and down another corridor and then starts a conversation.
But really, it's kind of 30 seconds of a man walking across his TV studio quite slowly or delivering his next line.
It's interesting because I think there's a sense of pace and urgency to those early scenes, which may not actually be there in the script.
I think Michael Bryant helps to deliver that.
It's interesting what you were saying earlier about the fact that the story on the planet could be quite self-contained.
There's a lot of Blake 7 episodes, and particularly a lot of episodes of this series.
I'm thinking of breakdown later on, which have kind of an extended setup onboard liberator for up to half the episode before they get into the situation proper on the planet or the space station.
And part of me wonders if that was purely a logistical thing.
They knew they had very little budget and very little time.
And so they opted to have extended scenes on their set where they knew how to cover it.
And it was in the studio and they had all of their regulars.
Yeah, I'm playing with you, I see.
So yeah, and keeping the audience sort of keeping you waiting because we know they are going to go to a planet and get embroiled in something.
But having the setup 1st prior to that rather than having a lengthy end scene at the end or something.
Yes, and purely logistical as well, if you need to remount scenes in another studio block, it's easy to do it on your main set.
Very true.
I do also wonder if it is an attempt to experiment with the traditional drama format of intercutting between an A plot and a B plot.
So, say, in Time Squad, last week, Sickness Alpha before that, we have a very clear A plot on the ship and B plot on the planet or vice versa.
They're probably as important as each other in terms of Blake 7 that we keep cutting between.
Whereas here, the 1st plot is Callie's mind control and getting the ship into position and the 2nd plot is the plot on the planet.
And once we've reached the planet, Kelly's mind control plot doesn't really come up again.
It's something that, in a way, is quite modern, because if we look at modern Doctor Who, and especially when we talk about Stephen Moffatt's 2 parters, the 2nd part is often quite different to the first.
It's not just a continuation. of the same story.
It is a new plot based on the previous episode.
And it's easy to imagine that Terry Nation in his head would have been putting in like a cliffhanger halfway through, say Blake getting attacked by that spear full of jam when he arrives on the planet. looks like a smear of jam across his head.
But, you know, that would be the sort of cliffhanger that joins the 2 parts of the story together.
With this story apparently underrunning.
I do wonder if that plays the plethora of...
It's alright.
Yeah, they're on their way.
We know.
And it's a Terry Nation thing, of course, isn't it?
You're making me think of the keys of mariners, and the chase is 60s Doctor Who scripts, where it is, they have a 25 minute adventure.
Then something weird happens and then they go somewhere else and have another 25 minute adventure.
Yes, absolutely.
I think, yeah, he's very episodic in the way that he does things.
He doesn't often overlap with stories and, you know, I think there's something to be said for that.
It makes Blake 7, which could be a complex series and becomes more complex later on actually very accessible to the wider viewership.
Yeah, and having these extended liberator sequences.
It does have the benefit of fleshing out the characters with interplay and stuff.
And and that's the room for the repartee and the and the, the, the put downs that the, the, the people really love, love the series four.
Which, if you were making this episode now, I would imagine, there's a risk that everything on the Liberator would be a pre-credit, cold intro would be, would be the 1st one minute.
And then, and then it would, you'd get the title sequence and you'd be down on the planet doing doing the story.
But having it split like this gives it a really interesting different balance.
That's right.
Whereas actually secretly, or even non-secretly, those scenes on Liberator are what we love.
Well, there's like a 10 minute sequence of Blake buttoning up his green knitwear.
Well, Blake with his shirt open, that's what we've all been waiting for. doing woken from sleep acting.
I think it's the 1st time we get to see Avon in black, which has becomes his sort of signature look.
So you've kind of got slightly galifrine robe things over his shoulders, but they're starting to position him as always pretty much always dressed in black apart from the less of the beige tank top.
Dungarian thing that's the rest of them are still on.
There's a great moment.
There a moment where Blake and Avon, when the bomb goes off near the start, Blake and Avon clasp each other and flung into the teleport together and I immediately add in my eyes.
In my mind's I hashtag blavon trending on them.
Because that doesn't seem to have been a thing, strangely.
Whereas now it would be like, that would be the 1st place everyone would go.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you know, there's a part of me that thinks that was a thing following the series in the fandom of the 1980s and the Bordero found out about it and wasn't impressed.
I'm just trying to just trying to think as well, making your way down the cast, um, Jally is, um, is probably like successful, but I think maybe the worst one would be Van.
Oh, your shipping van.
And 0 my god, if we look at Ark of Infinity, we finally know where Cardinal Zorak comes from.
Can I just say ew.
Across computers.
Wasn't that the star sign that Romana and Doctor Who was born under?
Yeah, I think there's a sense in this episode that, you know, as with a lot of other series episodes, it's a little bit patched together, sort of script wise, you know, maybe it was underrunning.
Maybe Terry Nation didn't have a lot of time.
But my feeling is that it's actually papered over a little bit better than other episodes because of Michael Bryant.
I think he brings a certain flair to it and it just feels like a more confident and successful production than something like sickness alpha or time squad.
There's nothing tentative about what they're doing now.
Is they're completely rolling with it?
Yeah, and Michael Bryant, I think, just...
Aside from it, any other director this season, except maybe Douglas Canfield, who does dual.
He seems to have an idea of what he wants to do with the series.
He sort of pushes it visually in a certain direction, whereas some of the other episodes, and I'm thinking, we talked last week about Pennant Roberts Itis, which is the ability to make any action scene look like it's coronation strips.
He doesn't seem to have a real handle on what the series needs.
Well, Mike Lee Bryant has always been a tremendous action director for science fiction while also being spoken of very fondly by actors.
And it's interesting because very often when actors talk about an actor's director.
You kind of go, okay, yeah, your Peter Moffatts, your Pennant Roberts's, your Ron Jones's, like people who are very easy to work with, very easy to get on with, but don't necessarily deliver great results.
Whereas Michael E. Bryant is someone who seems to do both.
He's respected by actors.
And I think someone who worked on Robots of Death was basically saying, like, Michael does all these amazing things and you see him lying on the floor to look at angles and whatnot.
But when it comes time to do the actual take, it never intrudes on the acting.
And that's possibly why he maybe in the studio somehow, he makes it seamless to the actors.
So the handheld work doesn't interrupt what they're doing and make them feel comfortable and give a good performance.
Like even that moment where Avon says to Gan that he's slow.
You do just get a little tiny look from David Jackson, which is probably the result of David Jackson saying, I think Gan would say something here, but it's not in the script.
And Michael Lee Bryant saying, well, give him a filthy look.
Give him a give him a look that makes it clear that you don't appreciate that and you know you're not stupid and I will make sure that that is seen on camera.
That's a really good point.
And because Gan is so underwritten, JV Jackson's performance and whoever's directing between them can put things in to sort of give him something.
Like, you know, when he's at the start of this one where he sneaks up, you have to sneak up across a wooden elevated set on Cali.
Like you just know that they've turned down the studio sound in that sequence.
And what and what happened?
And Blake steps forward in sync so that his footsteps, the sound of his footsteps are helping to mask the sound of Gan's footsteps coming up behind Gali, because otherwise it would not be at all believable, really. that he had tiptoed down a staircase to sneak up on it.
That's right.
And that's actually an exceptionally well blocked scene because you know exactly where everybody is.
And at the very end of the scene, just when Gan is about to grab the gun off Cali.
Avon then takes a cue from Blake and steps forward to take her attention.
It's very well done.
Yeah, and that's using an ensemble cast really effectively around a three-dimensional set, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's also little touches, isn't it?
You just get the impression that Michael Bryant gets a whole lot more out of his studios than some directors do.
So it's little things like when Blake teleports down.
Kelly is in the same shot. as him and so it's a split screen so that Blake can teleport away and she can react to it.
Whereas if we look at a doc 2 example, I don't think there's a single occasion in the 1980s where Peter Moffat directed an episode where you don't cut away to the TARDIS materialising or dematerialising because having characters in shot is just too much work.
Yeah, absolutely.
And of a far less important note, but that scene in the teleport area.
We get the introduction of the colour coded anorak.
So believe is forest green.
Cali is apple green.
Avon is black slash gray, and we'll see the other colours later. in the season.
Jenna's fetching pink, isn't she?
Colour coded anorax is the name of the title of this episode.
Colin, what do you think of Michael Bryant?
I don't really follow necessarily the all the directors.
So so far, Michael did the opening episode only, and this is his 2nd episode.
Well, in that case I think he's excellent.
No, I think he does a really, really competent job.
What you've got to work with is 50 P and some cardboard.
He does, like, as we were saying earlier, there's sort of handheld shots, a bit of fish eye and making it scenes tense.
You know, there's not really a thing, any part of the episode that's wasted.
Maybe the decimal smashing stuff up takes a little bit too long, but you get the pace, you get the buildup, you get Cali very well directed when or enacted Jenna when she's taken over.
But yeah, no, I think it's a very, very competent job.
And as you say, it's confident now. 1st 2 were terrific openers, 3 and 4 kind of a little bit wobbly in places, but this is very strong.
And the ratings reflect it, don't they?
Just checking up.
And so by now, this is a show that has put on 2000000 viewers, since it's part since its 1st episode.
We've gone up from 7 just 7.5 to over 9.50000 people tuning in for this now.
That's right.
And next week we're going to add another million.
It's onwards and numbers, isn't it?
It's really quite interesting that Blake's haven't found an audience because it was up against Coronation Street, which is already, maybe not as huge as it is now, because it's a behemoth of television now, but was still a very popular program.
And the fact that Blake 7 was able to build an audience against it. really says something for the series, I think.
So one nights was like 7 on Tuesdays or Thursdays, maybe?
For series A, it was on Mondays, and then on series B, it changed to Tuesdays and went up against Charlie's Angels and lost 2000000 off its regular ratings, which was still sound, but not as great.
And then for Siri C, they moved it back to Monday nights against Coronation Street, and it did even better in the 1st series.
Wow.
Yeah, and then what a choice in those days where you just had to decide whether you were watching it, watching it once or never seeing it was your only option for any TV program.
That's right.
I think they might have had maybe an omnibus repeat of the last 2 episodes of this series going into the next one, but you'd be very lucky if you got anything.
Doctor Who, I think, was unusual in that they repeated 2 stories from the previous series over the summer.
I mean, thank goodness we've got all of our VHS tapes, because otherwise we'd have no way of watching it.
Yeah, I always remember to rewind mine after each episode.
Do you know, I remember in Australia, they showed the 1st 3 series through 78, 79, and I think early 81 maybe, and then they repeated series A to C late on Saturday nights, like around about 1130 or midnight, over 39 weeks in 1981 or 82.
And I was only 9 or 10 years old and my parents allowed me to stay up because it was a Saturday night to midnight and watch the series.
So I'd obviously seen them all 4.
And they went to bed and the house was quiet and it was midnight, which is, you know, unheard of for a 10 year old to be allowed to stay up to midnight.
And it's just, it's so indelible in my memory watching these episodes in that kind of situation.
Very fond memories of childhood.
The thing I've just remembered about this is, speaking of sort of broadcast time and suitability for children.
Right at the end, the decimals are kicking around a skull.
It's really funny.
It's pretty grizzly.
Yeah, in the book of Liberation.
It brings it brings up the point that this is the 1st time we see a revolution in the show and it's not pretty.
These little creatures aren't noble.
They don't say, thank you, we shall now reign in peace and dignity.
You know, it's yeah, it's carnage.
Yeah, but, you know, also, it's it's kind of like, you know, your sympathy has been with them because the 1st word any of them speaks is help me, help me, help us.
And yeah, the last thing they're doing is screaming.
They are not only smashing people because if they are people, then so are the 2 servitors, basically.
But they are smashing science.
They're smashing the science that created them.
It's interesting, isn't it, how Blake 7 plays with a lot of horror tropes early on, and so Signus Alpha is filled with horror imagery of kind of, you know, desolate landscapes and sort of weird figures in robes turning up Time Squad last week plays with the horror tropes of kind of things in the dark coming back to life like Frankenstein and stalking you.
And this week, I think, also has those horotropes, like you're saying, with the skeletons and the nature of life and genocide.
It's really, it's quite hard hitting.
It may not be produced in a hard hitting way, but there are ideas at work here.
Yeah, and that thing of it being, the 1st episode having gone out an hour earlier than all the others.
I do still wonder whether that was that was always the intention to try and lure yours the wrong word, you know, but attract the audience and then actually make it a bit more adult or whether they originally put it down for tea time.
And then when the episodes actually were being previewed, they would start thinking, hang on, maybe we need to just shunt this back a little bit.
So what do we think of this episode overall?
How would we how would we rate it?
If they just weren't so squeaky?
This would be one of the best episodes.
If they did little growls or they had slightly different voices.
I think I think people would really love this episode.
But I guess it's one that fans think non-fans are going to look at and just point and laugh, and so it might be in that slightly shame zone that we all have as fans of old TV series.
But yeah, I thought it was great.
I do think there is a certain amount of pathos in the hell pass hell pass, but it is carried along by the fact that everyone in this is taking it seriously in the world of itself.
And, you know, even poor Richard Beal stuck there in a fish tank.
You know, when he's delivering his dialogue and talking about how, you know, the decimals will be wiped out.
No, that's fine, really.
They're just experiments.
You do get, or at least I do get the impression that this is a being so advanced or different in his thought processes that the value of a single life means nothing to him.
It's the value of scientific quote unquote progress that means something to him.
So I think this is one where for concept alone, I love it and the execution is about as good as it can be for this mid-season story.
It's the 1st time we've kind of gone off story arc because this story will not impact anything going forward.
It is not impacted by anything previously except the distrust of Cali onboard the Liberator.
So, yes, Brendan, you can really see this being labelled as one off space.
Oh, different in the pitch, can't you?
It's the long game.
Even although even that's not a one-off. you know what I mean.
It is a solid 7 out of 10 because even if you go, oh, you can skip this one and you can skip this one and you won't miss any of the overarching plot.
If you do watch it, you get so much character stuff.
And I think that is its strength.
That's right.
The season would feel poorer without it, wouldn't it?
I think it's really, it's really quite strong, if a bit silly, in places, and I think the crew dynamic is really well established, and they're all gelling as part of a crew, and it feels like the 1st regular episode of the series.
What do you think, Colin?
I agree with Brendan.
I think it's a solid 7 out of 10 and I agree with Pete that you can take the decimas to be creepy and weird and it's like, ooh, that's a bit odd and slightly uncomfortable, but it's not quite there enough to make it solid. you know, that you feel really sorry for them. find it just a bit, you know, a bit silly.
It's got good concepts in there about sort of genetic engineering, but it spends a little bit too much on animal rights actually, and it spends a little bit of time sort of explaining all these.
Okay, we've explained everything.
We're 45 minutes in.
Let's just smash stuff up and go.
It's good.
I love it.
I love it because of the atmosphere.
And it's different.
It isn't just gonna be a cops and robbers or show.
It's going to have some some sort of darker elements of science fiction in it.
So I enjoy it.
It's interesting.
I watched the 1st episode of Intergalactic, which is sort of a modern day, very much rip off of Lake 7's 1st episode, and I couldn't have been less interested in the characters, whereas in the web, in particular, even the characters that are lesser used, I'm invested in them.
Let's stick with intergalactic, if you, you know, the, the 2nd one isn't too great, but it does pick up a little bit later.
Okay, I'll do that.
And some of the characters don't soften.
They get more psychotic.
It's still a bit of fun.
I'm just not on board unless there's an RP accent, I'm afraid.
The crucial line is, do they pronounce the word schedule correctly in a BBC approved manner, because even Zen does that in this, as do the Dalek, from various other aliens, because they get letters if anyone says schedule.
Is it quixotic or quixotic?
I don't know.
Or virus, that's next level.
Is there anything that we haven't touched on?
Is there anything that people want to talk about or any points?
When Miles Fothergill sits down, he appears to have quite well-defined pecs, but I don't know if that's just the suit. wearing.
Do you want to know something scurrilous, Brendan?
I think that Miles Fothergill may have been dating someone who played the Naimon.
Is it the wonderfully named Clifford Norgate by any chance?
That's all I know, and I may be speaking of nothing, but there we go.
That the whispers I heard.
Well, thank you very much for listening to our Ravings and Musings on television's 1st ever website, the web.
That's goodbye from me, pizza.
Goodbye from Brendan.
Bye from Colin.
And goodbye from Pete.
Switching to Manny.
Maximum power on all drives.