Welcome back to the Maximum Power podcast.
This week we're talking about the episode Assassin, just a regular assassin, not a deadly one, so set your expectations accordingly.
You all quite comfortable?
Then, ladies and gentlemen, for your edification and delight, the voices you all know and love.
I'm Mark.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Nathan.
And I'm Peter.
Oh no.
I don't really like clever people.
I like more, rather.
I'll try and quell my fear long enough to go round a table and get an overview of what we all thought of this one.
Should we do reverse alphabetical, so Peter?
Do you know, I remember quite liking this when I 1st saw it and I still quite like it.
It sort of fits into the 1st half of series D a little bit more than the second.
The 2nd kind of gets its act together, whereas I don't really think this episode does get its act together very much.
Um, I think it's a lot of fun and I think the 1st half is probably a little bit better than the 2nd half, but um, yeah, there is a lot of fun to be had here, I think.
I thought it was incredibly tense and scary when I was a child when I 1st saw it at like the age of 12 or something when it was 1st broadcast here in Australia.
I thought it was amazing and Dudley's music and the lighting and the whole atmosphere of it.
Now I think it's absolutely laughable.
Like it's, but in a good way.
Like, it's properly enjoying.
It's properly enjoyable.
It's, it's as if we had mission to destiny, only it was fun and enjoyable.
That's how I'm going.
You're saying it's still amazing, but just in a different way.
Yeah, exactly.
I actually quite enjoyed it.
Like, before watching it for the podcast, I don't think I'd seen it for many, many years, and I do think that it has its flaws, but, um, going back to something you said, Peter, about it, you know, fitting more into the side of the season before, they've really bedded in.
I think there's a lot more bedded in here than there was in, say, Stardrive, and we've even got kind of, we're on a planet. space pirates.
But when someone asked me what I was doing this weekend, I messaged them and said, I'm coming home to record a podcast.
Um, It's about an episode of Blake 7, where an assassin tries to assassinate the crew with their assassinating robo spiders.
The episode is called Assassin.
The thing is this episode, it starts off so well.
Like those early scenes on the Scorpio flight deck are a lot of fun.
There's some good interaction.
There's just an abundance of riches in that 1st part of the story set on Domo, the ninth.
Son of Domenith.
I love that Domo is a planet near the edge of the 6th quadrant, only in Blake 7.
Quadrant.
There's so much to enjoy in that early part, even from Villa and Avon teleporting down and sort of Avon doing his whole Fey space crash victim bit, Villa covering his eyes when he gets kind of wrestled to the ground.
It starts off really well.
Yeah, I think the setup's really good as well.
I really enjoy the buildup of cancer, this amazing, infallible assassin and everything, but then...
Blake 7ed it up by the end, haven't they?
And given this incredible assassin, a ridiculous theatrical streak and just nobody's kind of acting within their own interests and it's, yeah, it just kind of falls apart.
Why does she have a spider instead of a crab?
It's simply because they had a spider from full circle until they pressed it into use.
Just, well, it's in my head, actually, because I don't know if it's in my nose.
Is it Omega's is it part of Omega's costume, one of the brokers?
Yes.
Yes it is.
Yeah, it's omega's sort of, um, I'm not sure what the right word is jerkin, perhaps, and I think... gauntlet sort of thing, yeah.
God, I don't want to see how Miggs is jerkin.
And also in those scenes, we have Betty Marsden who would later find notoriety as the dance mistress of the 1st season of French and Saunders.
Mr. Saunders, my girls will not stand for this.
Oh wow.
She?
I mean, she did a few carry on films, I think.
She's in carry on camping, possibly.
Um, uh, so she's a sort of minor get, I think.
And she's great.
Yeah, she's delivering everything in that carry on kind of way.
I am a public servant.
Those scenes between her and Servilan are amazing.
And I think that the episode would be poor without her.
And she even gets to do the thing where they teleport away, so they disappear in front of her eyes and she does the shocked face.
I always love that.
Does she drop her glass?
I think she dropped her plastic glass.
It's like when you get a wino in a James Bond film, isn't it?
Yes.
That guy, yeah.
Do you think she'd been picking out on the mangan?
In those early scenes on Scorpio.
I do like they've brought in like some Eames loungers, so it's not just people hunched over their consoles all the time, but it does mean when we have this scene of, you know, Avon's meant to be almost scared of cancer.
He's just sort of lying back like he's on a beach somewhere.
You know, it's not, it's not the octagonal sofa from the liberator.
And basically because Avan and Sulin are just there to kind of swagger and give muscular quips to each other and don't actually have a role in running the ship. those end up being their chairs.
So they look like, I think I've said this before.
They look like, you know, their pool side on the fucking Lido deck of the Pacific Princess the whole time.
It really lends the whole thing no air of urgency whatsoever.
It's fantastic.
I think it's a great choice.
And it is, you know, a testament to how incredibly cheap, that said is, you know, like there was no room for anything.
They didn't really think through what the characters were all going to be doing.
Uh, you know, the liberator flight deck had all of these spaces and all of these interesting blazes to shoot.
But this is all one level, all tiny.
And so it's just like, let's buy a couple of kind of banana chairs and fling them next to the teleporter.
It's like everything in series D. It's a little bit lower rent than everything that came for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That sort of holiday pool side impression is reinforced a little bit as well because people are drinking all the time, aren't they?
Servolan is drinking with the 12-year-old captain of her shit.
Who's definitely not old enough to be drinking wine, then with Verlis on the planet as well.
They're sitting quaffing drinks.
The deliberator crew are always drinking.
It kind of makes me think like, I think there was a bit more of a culture in the 80s of drinking like that.
When I joined a bank in 2005, some of the older members of staff were regretting that you could no longer go for a couple of pints at lunchtime and then come back to work and that kind of thing.
So well, they just thought that that culture would just continue well off into the future or maybe become more kind of liberal and people would just, you know, kind of drink when they're actually at work all the time.
Yeah, it seems like an odd thing, doesn't it?
Well, he's just trying to make it more adult.
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
As we said before, the wine isn't mentioning Blake 7 in the other 3 series at all.
It's always space drinks of...
Adrenaline, Soma.
Yeah, yeah, but we make it wine, I think, from here on.
And that's the Xenon bases kind of carafe and wine glasses, isn't it, that Sulin brings in at the end?
I have 2 observations to make about the wine in this episode.
One is that Villa had drunken oil in animals.
So they've clearly discovered a new source of the wine.
And the other is that when you were talking about a culture of drinking, it puts me in mind of when Gareth Thomas and Jacqueline Pierce were on a chat show.
I think it might have been Saturday Superstore or something like that, and they were being asked a question by children who'd written in.
And one of the questions was, did they have to do anything?
Like, you know, they weren't allowed to drink while they were shooting or stuff like that, and they both just laughed uproariously for about 10 seconds and then didn't answer.
Yeah, it's like no one can get through voice of the past.
No one can get through voice from the past sober and that includes the cast.
A glass of wine?
The other thing, of course, that debuts in those opening scenes is the 2nd set of costumes for the season.
Um, and they're visibly lighter, aren't they?
Like there's no jumper for Tarrant or anything like that.
And are they terrible?
I think they're worse than the previous.
I think Sue Linds is better, but hers is the only one that is.
Yeah.
I especially don't like Gisette's.
Yeah, she's dressed as slave.
It so weird.
That that that cannot be the title. very problematic.
Glamorous purple version of slave.
Go ahead, look.
Sounds racist to me, really.
Do you know, the slave doesn't actually get a line in this, so maybe it was a bit peeved.
But yes, those costumes, they're, I mean, it's part of the reason that the aesthetic of series D isn't as good as the others because they got it just right in sort of the latter half of series B and then series C.
It had a real, what I think of as the defining bleak 7 look.
Whereas giving them costumes, which they just wear for half the season and then half the season.
The summer in winter costumes, doesn't really work and they're, they're all these boring kind of 80s space colours.
They're coveralls.
They're gray and they're white and they're black.
There's no colour in them at all.
I recently listened to the big finish, 40th anniversary special the way ahead, which has some very good interviews on there, but Stephen Pacey and Glynis Barber talk about those costumes, and the costume designer for this season is Nicolas Rocker, and the cast actually called their costumes, their Nikki Rockers.
Hang on.
Brendan, I think they call them their rocky knickers.
Yeah, well...
But Glynis Barber is on record as saying, I was given 2 costumes and they were both terrible, which is why I have a different hairstyle every week because it was the only thing I could control to make myself look decent.
But I actually, I quite like the cut of um, this new costume she has.
It's, yeah, it's just the fact that everyone is wearing gray except for Paul, who's wearing black, and yes, Gisette is wearing purple, but it's kind of a gray aubergini kind of purple.
Like it's not striking and I get they're going for a a darker, greyer tone over the whole season.
But at the same time, you, when you massively reinvent something, you want it to be as good if not better.
Not just okay in a different way.
I mean, I think the problem is that they rein it in and try and make it less Blake 70.
I might have said this before, but you now have a boring spaceship.
You have normal space guns.
You know, everything is very, very generic, and we're trying to be very gun and very serious in a show that has verless in it.
You know, like it's just ridiculous.
And a script like Assassin.
The whole thing face plants terribly and ends up being much camper and much sillier than any of the previous 3 seasons.
And I say that as a, as a, you know, uh, sort of, uh, reverent compliment to the season.
Like, it's great, but, you know, like, you can tell that it's not really in poor old V Lorimer's control.
It doesn't actually work out the way that he intended, I think.
Do you think Verlas, as well as being an anagram of silver?
She was one of the space pirate people.
So she's Long John Silver.
That's what she said.
Do you think it was also a contraction of Violorimer?
I can fully believe it.
There is a glorious bit in one of the one of the Blake 7 audios where they decide to name a planet Via, just as a tribute to Via Lorimer, but Darrow clearly hasn't twigged until he says it.
And so there's a blooper saying, Jetta's going down to V.
Oh my god.
Oh, he'd love that.
Have you seen this line?
I don't think I'm going to be on the episode where we talk about games.
So I'll drop in this little nugget here.
I interviewed Stratford Johns for Doctor Who magazine, and so I couldn't resist asking about his appearance in games in a couple of weeks, in fact, in next week.
And he said that he hated the costume that they put him in.
He said, I can't wear this.
You know, he was fresh out of, um, fresh out of Zed cars or whatever he came from.
And so he marched down the corridor to Via Lorimer's office, because he knew Vera, and he walked in.
Ver, darling, look what they've put me in.
And Vera looked him up and down and said, darling, it's wonderful.
And so, John, she's went.
All right, darling, just for you.
It really was terribly butch and gritty there, wasn't it, even in the production office.
Oh dear.
I think the scenes with Servolan and Verles are quite nice.
So I'm being that relaxed and like seems to be genuinely enjoying herself.
Like, she's she's got what she wants from Furley. doesn't need to sort of threaten intimidate her or kind of manipulator or anything.
So it's quite nice to see that side of server line, I think, in those scenes.
I have a slight problem in that I think that there's something racist about the way this is portrayed.
And what it is, right, is that this, I think, is the only Blake 7 episode that has actual slavery in it.
Am I right?
It's certainly the only one that has, it is a major plot point.
Is there slavery in the Blake 7 universe?
Slave?
Hmm, there's slave.
Yeah, it's true.
There is slave.
And so this is the 1st time we have slavery.
And, you know, it looked like, the previous century England and America had slavery, but we have to portray it as a sort of Middle Eastern thing.
And so we get all of these shitty stock costumes together and we have, you know, the music and all of that because it's a, it's actually a kind of, it's, it's Arabs doing slavery.
That's who does it.
And I think that's a little bit kind of a bit of a problem.
It does mean that everyone's wearing just the most hilariously preposterous outfits, and we do get the boys, you know, with their stomachs exposed, holding fans behind serverland and furlers, which is kind of hilarious.
And we get the wonderful Adam Blackwood.
Um, who is Balazar in the mysterious planet, playing agent talk, the one who goes on about Valeria, of Pryn, and Nadratov, of Gurun best.
Oh, I wish we could have seen Valeria of Prim, and Nadratov of Grim Pest.
I'd like to imagine that they would have been played by Via Lorimer and Peter Miles.
I'd assume Valeria was a woman, but I think Nadritov was actually looking forward to participating in some of the extra duties that Avon would have been capable of doing after a hard day's work in the evening. with knee bronx.
And the other thing is, fuck.
There are a lot of BBC press on beards on the planet domo, aren't there?
All the fashion on Domo the ninth, but they're clean shaven on Domo.
I will say, I will say Benos has a particularly egregious press on beard, but those are not press on abs.
Oh my god.
So these are the only abs in the history of Blake 7. believe me, I've checked.
And it is incredible, isn't it?
Like now it's the 80s you're allowed to have men who are kind of eye candy.
And, you know, Ben, obviously you'd need a sack over his head, I think, probably even without the beard.
But he does look very, you know, very fit in those scenes, doesn't he?
Like visible abs.
I do wonder when he captures Avon, where he makes a bigger big thing of the fact that Paul Darrow is a bit skinny.
I mean, maybe on paper.
That's like Villa weighs 73 kilos.
No, no one's playing that.
Yeah, I don't weigh 73 kilos.
I weigh 69 kilos.
Oh, hurang.
Nice.
Um, on the topic of, um, on the topic of verless.
I was just thinking, you know, it's always nice when they set up Servolan to have witty dialogue with another woman.
And, you know, I'm thinking back to major Thania.
I'm thinking even LeGron, you know, even though her performance is...
A plot.
I'm thinking I'm thinking I'm thinking Costos.
You know, it's a different energy.
And sort of last season, Serverland was just constantly surrounded by men, you know, and this season, she's been constantly surrounded by men again.
It just brings an immediately different energy and there's especially an energy between them of sort of, um, I think it's B. Arthur and Angela Lansbury in that scene in Mame in the cafe.
Yeah, there's this energy that is like, oh, darling, oh, darling.
Oh, you're looking wonderful.
I see the scars have healed, that sort of thing.
Yes, and in a way, it's kind of a pity that Betty Marsden disappears from the plot when she does.
But at the same time, it makes sense.
You know, she's not going to go chasing after, um, uh, Robert Holmes's robot, Doctor Who, abortive attempt.
You know, she's not going to go chasing after kneebrocks to get her money back.
No.
It always works really well when they give Servolan a comedy sidekick.
Do you remember the guy from Gambit of Jarier?
And Villa last year is the only good thing about Villa.
Also, to your point from earlier, Mark, the fact that her spaceship captain looks so young.
Servan's always had a bit of a thing for a twink.
Remember that guy who was like her little confidant in her 1st episode?
Right, right.
Yeah.
I thought we were old friends.
So also, I think we should talk about how that scene ends because of course it ends with the, you know, some kind of action sequence, which is astoundingly badly directed, like absolutely appalling.
And like suddenly Avon's been captured and it's not clear who is where or what the hell is going on.
And there's one shot, one magnificent shot, which is the best shot in the whole episode, which is Dana comes down with a gun.
And then some person turns, she goes, you and see Servilant.
Then she's distracted by someone whom she attacks.
And then Silverland just walks out of your house. really slowly.
It's so absurd.
It's so gorgeous.
It's wonderful.
It's just 2 seconds, but it's the best part of the episode.
So we know the background of this is the David Sullivan Proudfoot, who directs the rest of the episode and did a miserable job on Traitor and Star Drive earlier in the year.
He wasn't available for the location work.
And so Veramar himself took over.
And it is astonishingly badly covered for Ver. used to be a really good director on this show.
I can only imagine that they ran out of time or something because you're right, Nathan.
There are key shots which are missing from the action.
So things just seem to jump around.
It's not covered very well.
I will say I do think the location work is better than the studio work, but more on that.
Interesting.
Yeah, I think the fights aren't well directed because the angle you can see that the kicks and the punches aren't connecting.
Then, yeah, like you say, um, so you don't see where Servoland goes, so it's not clear why she isn't just shot, uh, because there doesn't seem too much cover there.
And then I had to rewind the bit where they actually capture Avon because they grab him in the background and there's something in the foreground which takes your attention.
So it seems like it's just a quick cut and suddenly he's serverland standing over him.
Uh, and he's been has been captured, but it's happening in the distance.
You can see his arms being grabbed, but you'd never spot that on a kind of a 1st view and it's very strange.
Yeah.
And even down to like when kneebrox gets the bracelet and sort of very, and sort of very secretly pulls it out of his shirt and holds it in the air for 10 seconds and then very secretly puts it back and it's like, no one noticed that?
Yeah, it also looks...
No one could be shot on a completely different day.
There was something very odd going on.
In who's to say it wasn't?
I mean, even though it's not very well shot, it does have the bit of Serveland saying that she wants Avon to address her as Ms. Trev.
That was good.
What are they doing with Serve Land's makeup this year?
I mean, we talked about the costuming, but the makeup?
I know it's astoundingly 80s, but the blush on her cheeks in this episode is so heavy, it looks like bruising.
Which may be a Bensteed fantasy come to watch.
You know, I do have to wonder if it's, If it's just an accident or if it's an effort to sort of show how delusional she's gotten, because it's either by the end of series C or early on in series D, she's apparently named herself Supreme Empress.
She's not just president anymore.
She's supreme empress of the federation.
And I wonder if this season there's an effort to make her even more outrageous to just to go full, you know, mad Nero Caligula kind of thing.
Um, it's it's quite funny because uh, the other of the day, I just rewatched the series A Blu-ray trailer.
And of course, you know, Serverland's makeup is far more muted, her hair is longer, it's still short, and she hasn't quite adopted the maximum power of it all at that point.
And then to come straight into this, where, you know, she's, she's bidding 700 Tal Mars or whatever it is.
Them.
700.
Yeah, 700 bottles of Vimto for Avil.
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's the same character and that's fine, but it just made me think, okay, yeah, she's gone from like, Chief of the Armed Forces to president of a federation that then crumbles and she's somehow been deposed between seasons as well.
Yeah, it's it's an old, it's an odd thing.
I think, I mean, the clear actual reason for it is that we have a new costume designer, a new makeup person, is that right?
I mean, that's what's kind of happening and I don't want to sort of leap ahead because we haven't mentioned her and we'll obviously spend some time talking about her.
Don't know who you can be talking about.
Yeah, Caroline Holdaway, at the end in her final scene, has makeup, eye makeup that looks very much like what, um, Jackie is sporting in traitor at the end of trader.
And I really like the dress in this one because, like when we had June Hudson and we had a giant fucking lizard crawling up her breasts or whatever or, you know, like just these absurd outfits, that was magnificent.
I mean, that was absolutely glorious and the sort of thing that you were never going to see anywhere else.
But I mean, I just think this simple black cocktail dress that she's wearing in this episode is fantastic.
And the thing that she's wearing on location is pretty great as well.
And just the black, with her black hair.
You know, I just think she looks astoundingly great in series D. Even if uh, the costumes aren't quite as inventive.
I mean, her best outfit, I said a few weeks ago, was traitor.
Like that's her best outfit in the entire run.
Um, but, you know, just, I think that there are, these are reliably good outfits in series D. I think she looks magnificent.
It's just a thing to do with the colour as well.
Like with the other regulars who are all in greys and whites and black.
She's just in black this year, and she has been since children are on, which people have retrofitted to be her and mourning for her, for her cloned babies, but I think they just decided she looks good in black and she does.
She looks great, but think of her from Gambit in that red outfit, which is just so striking.
I think we miss a bit of that colour.
Yeah.
Evan also meets kneebrooks on the planet Domo, who's played by Richard Herndel.
That's the only other thing I've seen him in, apart from the 5 doctors, so I was kind of interested in that.
Couldn't really sort of figure out the point of his character, but then I think it works really well once they're on cancer's ship because I kind of guessed fairly early on that the man purporting to be cancer isn't him or isn't them.
But it did keep me guessing for a while whether it was kneebrox or Piri.
So his presence was quite good in that and then I kept switching between the 2 until the scene they have together where she gives herself away.
Yeah, I thought he was really good in this.
I think they just needed someone aboard the ship for cancer to be able to kill who wasn't the regular.
Yeah.
Yeah, he had to kill someone otherwise, how is he an assassin?
you know, and so he kills, I mean, she kills cancer and she kills um, and she kills rocks.
Rada cancer.
He's amazing.
I think I mean, this is the performance that got him the role, isn't it?
In the 5 docks?
Yes.
Yeah. yeah Yeah, Ian Levine saw this and suggested him a couple of years down the line to John Nathan Turner.
Yeah.
I mean, he's kind of terrible as the 1st doctor in the 5 doctors, but he'll do, I guess.
Well, it's funny that, you know, in the scene where he's comforting Peary.
He's more doctor-ish than he is for the whole of the 5 doctors.
So you kind of go, yep, okay, I get why that that choice is made.
So I can only blame Peter Moffatt, which is always a good choice.
I saw the 5 doctors first, so he's sort of my default 1st.
Yeah I think, you know, it's a Doctor Who thing that no one could watch the episodes back then and we knew he was the grumpy one and so that's how Richard Herndle played it, you know. then we later found out that that was unfair but we kind of had no way of knowing that at the time, I think.
Yeah, I think he's kind of nice.
I mean, there's, there's an odd moment.
There's a couple of odd moments between him and Avan, isn't there?
Particularly the you promised thing because there's a thing where he says you have to promise and then I even does his special slightly camper.
I don't give a shit voice.
Okay, I promise, you know, and you kind of go, oh, right, okay.
But, you know, he does bring him up and he's clearly there as a kind of red shirt in order to get killed.
So, you know, cancer can kill someone.
But you know what?
Like, Paul has said that there were times where he said to either David Millennial, Via Lorimer, I really don't think Avon would do this, like programming Zen to accept, um, Tarrant and Dana as crew.
But I think the scenes between Avon and Nibrocks are actually, they actually give a bit of texture to Avon's character because all through the top half of the season, he's been a right bastard, you know, 1st of all, he gets the ship blown up on terminal, and, you know, then there's um, poor Dr. Paxton.
And the various other experts.
Not to mention the relish that he kills Benos.
Benos.
Yes.
Oh yeah, that's great.
Then I was as a slaver, like we wanted him to be killed.
Oh, totally.
Then, you know, Avon actually does, you know, make an honourable agreement with kneebrocks.
I think Knebrock's coming aboard with cancer's.
Ship makes absolutely no sense.
So they put in a little seed of kneebrock saying, well, you can take me home after this.
Like, yeah, on the ship that doesn't have the assassin, maybe.
What are you doing here?
Um, but you know, it's, it's kind of then shot a bit like a horror movie.
So the character's motivations aren't there to make sense.
The character's motivations are there to get them alone with the killer.
Yeah.
I think, um, Knebrox is a rarity in Blake 70s, a truly sympathetic character.
You know, he's just an old man who got caught up in this thing and he brings out different fastest crew.
Like I said, Avon has some odd reactions to him and seems a little bit sort of more sympathetic to him, but also we'll talk about this a little bit later, I think.
He really brings out a side of Suulin.
That's interesting because she seems very fond of him in a short period of time.
And so you start to see, you know, what happened in her background.
You know, she's meant to be quite a cold, you know, gun for hire, but she obviously takes a liking to him.
I think he's a useful character.
Also, he's 70 in this, which boggles my mind that he's only 17 years older than I am now.
He seems so decrepit.
I will say the other thing I know him from is a latter-day episode of the Avengers called Legacy of Death, which also features which also features Ronald Lacy and Stratford Johns.
Like it's a bleak 7 pre-union.
But Richard Herndle, he only has a couple of scenes in it because he is a dying villain who lays a trap for all his rivals.
And so he in the 1st scene, he's sort of interred in a glass coffin and you think, oh, that's the end of that.
And then in his last scene, he gets out of the glass coffin when all of his rivals have been assembled around him.
And you know, you know what?
So what?
That would have been 12 years before this.
Um, Yeah, mid-50s Richard Herndle. an attractive, distinguished older man.
Yeah, he's ready for all those evening hobbies you might have for him, Brendan.
He gets more paprikash mash or whatever it's called.
You are you are nuttle toff of groom rest.
And I'm going on my tea break.
The scene where, uh, they're trying to auction off Avon and they say that, you know, the female clients might be interested in.
Is that a nod to the fact that Paul Dowrow had become a bit of a sex symbol supposedly from playing Avon?
Is that, do you think?
Is that kind of an...
I think so.
I mean, I don't know if they're reacting to that, but, you know, he's the lead and so he kind of has to be handsome.
And uh, yeah.
I mean, I can't imagine a similar sales pitch for Thomas could...
Where did you start my bidding?
No bids?
He can puff outrageously as he carries your groceries through the Asda car park.
And he might possibly be able to tuck you in at the end of the day, but I wouldn't count on him having enough energy for that, to be frank.
He'll stand in the corner and do Richard III for you.
That's the play.
Every time you want Blake to take his top off is down a mine on the planet Horizon.
And even not then.
Yes.
Why?
So you think somebody mentioned that about sort of characters, what their motivations are and things.
Why didn't one of the things, one of the things I didn't get about this was why did Avon fight the slavers?
When he he presented himself to them and said, oh, I've just crashed and I'm all helpless and I need some food and shelter.
Why did he then fight them?
Because he was already, he'd already been taken by them as a slave.
The idea I thought was to infiltrate them, to find, gather information, if Servline was there, if council was there.
Other than to inject a bit of action.
I didn't really understand why he fought them because that's what cost him his bracelet and jeopardised the mission.
He's an idiot.
I don't know, maybe...
He wanted to go for more money.
Certainly his price goes up, doesn't it, after doing that?
Like Ben Os goes, oh, okay.
Yeah.
But by that stage, he's by the time he's auctioned, he's already got the information from kneebrox, hasn't he, that he needs?
Yeah.
Maybe he was hoping not to be taken in as a slave, but just to be taken in because I think, you know...
Yeah, well, you know, I feel like where he's kind of going with, oh, you know, my shuttle's crashed and all my friends have been killed.
I think the next line out of his mouth should be.
If you can put me up for the night and get me a hyperspace communicator.
I can make sure that you're well paid.
You know, that is the smart line to play instead of just, all my friends are dead and no one knows I'm here, Mr. Slaver.
Um.
And like Suolin has told him it's pirates.
Like, it's not like he's not expecting them.
That's exactly what he's expecting.
It's just, uh, I think it is to inject some much needed and uh, lamentably poorly uh, directed action into the, into the episode at that point.
Which actually injured Paul Darrow.
But when he's rugby tackled.
Yeah, yeah, because it's clearly not a stunt, man.
You can see that it's term, yeah.
I wonder if that's maybe why some of the other stuff was done in Longshot because maybe that's not Paul Darrow.
You can just imagine Via Lorimar, our producer, onset directing on the 1st location day of the 2nd block and down goes his leading.
Oh God, we're going to have to do this with Pacey.
What a bit less than a season I would have just beat his legs.
Fear say, I'll step in, loves.
Just imagine the DVD commentaries now.
Well, Avon, this episode's a bit lighter than the loafers.
Oh.
Um, It's interesting, Peter, what you said about Vier does the, uh, location and David Sullivan Proudfoot does the studio because when I heard that Vier had done some of the directing, I had assumed it was the other way around because I quite like the studio direction.
The camera direction.
Because, I mean, I think the studio stuff is really successful because, um, I think the set for cancer ship is actually really good.
Despite the fact that there's a lot of milk crates, and quite a lot of those things that you put in the cutlery drawer. to keep the knives and forks apart, particularly in the hold.
They're all over the hold.
But, I mean, the thing that struck me at the time.
And I think the thing that impressed me the most is, you know, once the, um, once they lose life support, everything goes dark, there's a lot of red light, there's a lot of purple, and the sets are really quite dark for TV, I think.
Um, and so I thought that that really worked.
And I think, you know, the suddenly Dudley brings out a xylophone or something. you know, and like that works really well as well.
So I, I, you know, I wonder whether it's the camera direction so much as just the incredible set and lighting and and music that help that.
Oh, I think it looks okay.
I think the set's all right, and they do turn down lights, which is good.
But in common with Traitor, which is a pretty reasonable script, badly mounted, and Stardrive, which is a terrible script, badly mounted.
The linking DNA is David Sullivan Prowford.
And what he does is he shoots things too wide.
And so that lamentable fight sequence between Tarrant and Rada Cancer, where he just catches it all in long shot with them sort of throwing themselves around the set.
You know, there's no cutaways.
There's no dividing it up. to try and make it into a proper fight sequence.
It's all looking like it was shot on the stage.
And in common with those earlier episodes.
And I'm thinking as well of the location footage in traitor.
The shots are held for far too long.
It's not cut quickly enough, and so everything sort of grinds to a halt.
The script, I think, is pretty reasonable in setting up atmosphere, and they're doing all the right things by kind of turning lights down that, it's just not well shot.
What's Avon waiting for during that fight?
Because he says I'll cover you.
I felt like you should have cut back to him and showed him trying to get a clear shot of the man who thinks he's cancer, but it, um, it just, it just waits until he's uh, he's lying in the chair, doesn't he?
And then holds the gun.
I mean, part of it, I think, is just to get the element of surprise happening in that because that's actually a pretty good moment where he, you know, pulls the gun on him where, you know, like cancer lands on his back and he pulls the gun and I can't remember something about you have to learn to live with disappointment.
Like he does a callback to Rata Cancer's earlier line.
And I think that's really good.
Like all of that stuff at that point is really good.
That setup, which is heaps, like Mission to Destiny.
Do you know what I mean?
There's been a murder.
It's the whiny blonde girl who did it.
The ship, the ship, you know, the, like our ship goes away, leaving half of us on the ship and half of us waiting. comes back in record time.
Yeah, comes back in record time.
Like that whole thing, like the whole setup is kind of the same and we're all sitting around the ship for no readily apparent reason.
There's one moment where Peary just says, I'd feel much safer on the ship and you know that she's, you know, that's just her being evil and it's her ship and that's where her weed is or whatever, like she doesn't want to leave.
But none of it makes sense in sort of context, I think.
I mean, they're waiting around for Servland, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah.
I read that, um, I read that Avon moment as actually just, uh, I'll jump. before he kills Tarrant.
That's it.
He's just really enjoying watching Tarrant be thrown around a bit because I think at that stage he knows that cancer doesn't have a gun, for instance, so he's like, it's hand-to-hand combat.
And I think I think Tarrant's already lost his gun.
So everyone's like, okay, that's a fair fight because you do cut to him, but he is just sitting back and just hold us on pointing the gun at the ceiling.
I definitely read it as, yeah, Terence got this.
But actually, I take your point, Peter, in that if that's the intent, it could be more comedically shot with some reaction shots from Stephen Pacey, of like, really?
Are you really doing this?
Like, I've been watching Archer 1999 at the moment and it's absolutely something that would happen in that.
I think it's quite a nice moment, actually.
I think Avon's just being cool and biting his time and letting Tarrant get thrown around until the last time.
So I get that Yvonne's plan is to wait for Servoland to turn up, but Cervolan and cancer's plan is that cancer will get them to trust her so they'll take her back to their base.
But when they try and take her back to their base.
Cervolan has control of cancer's ship and doesn't let them go.
So she's sabotaging her own plan there because even if even if they set off and they rumbled that Peary was cancer, she would then know where the base was, wouldn't she?
because she'd have the coordinates or whatever.
So I don't I don't get why Servoland is both stopping the ship from moving and blocking the communications and getting Scorpio back there because then all 5 targets would be there for cancer slash serve land to turn up and blow the ship up.
So I don't, it's that waiting around bit.
It seems pointless from the point of view of the actual objective.
Well, you can fully imagine serverland saying to non-rada cancer.
Go back to the base and kill off all the others, but can we just set up your ship so that I can hear you kill Avon?
I can fully imagine that.
Yeah, yeah.
Also, I think probably, you know, the thing where they turn off the life support in order to kind of provoke everyone into wandering by themselves through the corridors and exposing themselves to danger for that scene.
Like that's cancer.
That's rada cancer that does that as far as we're concerned because that's the only cancer we know.
And so later on, at the end, when it's revealed that she, uh, she had control that Servoland had control of the ship.
I think we're just not meant to go back and go, oh, wait, but that now that doesn't make any sense.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I think I think it's very local logic.
It's fridge logic.
Like it works at the moment of the plot.
Um, you know, like that reveal that she's been listening and controlling the ship, that's needed for the final scene, uh, and we're just not meant to think about it too hard, I think, probably.
I also love the fact that Servline's just been listening to an episode of Blake 7.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
I can't recall if on 1st viewing, I was taken in by the Pirie Cancer.
I can.
I completely was.
I thought that he was cancer, like, and I, you know, and it's clearly operating on that level because it really works on that level.
I think, like, I don't know what to make of Caroline Holdaway's performance.
Like on some levels.
I'm sorry for being so silly.
On some levels.
It's literally the worst performance of any guest actor in the entire run of Blake 7.
But I can't hate it.
Like, I really can't hate it because she's uniquely terrible in like 2 different ways.
Like, she's terrible as Peary, and like as Peary, you're supposed to hate her.
You know, and even though that undermines, um, Terrence character, because like, what the fuck?
Like, is he finding that attractive?
She's so like doughy and stupid.
The bit where they lock her in with knee, knee brocks, knee brocks.
Jesus Christ, knee brock space name.
They lock it in.
Oh, they lock her in the hole with knee brocks.
And then they all go out and she's going, ooh, like that, you know, it's just like, you do know he'll come and kill you, right?
So she's incredibly, incredibly annoying.
And then she's shockingly bad, like astoundingly much, much worse. once she gets into her sort of menacing hair and makeup for that scene with Avon.
Like it's amazing, isn't it?
Like, she just finds new ways of being bad.
Can I say that I agree with everything that you're saying, but I also think that she's wonderful.
It's the same reason.
I mean, IMDb says that she's known for Blake 7.
Maybe it should have read she's infamous.
Her performance as Pirie is hysterical in more ways than one.
Her roles before and after this were for play for today and in Angels, the medical drama.
I can only imagine that they were slightly more naturalistic performances, but we don't know.
I legitimately adore the performance.
It's terrible for all kinds of reasons, obviously.
But the scene where she does transform into, maybe we'll come back to that, the scene where she transforms into cancer.
But as Piri, I think, yeah, she's incredibly annoying, but there is something very alluring about that performance.
And having said that, I really like the change antenna with her scene with knee brooks, where she's visibly annoyed with this old fool, but also trying to keep up the pretence of being pure.
Yeah, it's, it's kind of like I was watching it knowing about the twist.
And I think, I think I didn't know when I watched it when I was younger, but it's been a long time.
Um, Knowing watching it, knowing about the twist, and the only conclusion I've come to, is that the actress went, okay, this Piri is a fake character.
She's a cover.
So I'm gonna overplay that so the audience know it's fake.
And it's like, no, no, no, that's not, that's not how this works.
The, the audience is not meant to know the, the, the, you're meant to be fooling the audience and it's kind of like, I can understand, sort of, Stephen Pacey is apparently like, Terrence, a complete idiot in this one.
I hate it.
It's like, yeah.
And if she had given a more sort of naturalistic, afraid but not cowering performance, I think it would have worked so much better and it would have been, you know, Tarrant is sympathetic and fooled, not a simpering fool.
I can only imagine on the 1st day of rehearsals at the Acton Hilton.
She was there giving that performance, and there's David Sullivan Proudfoot going, wonderful love, fabulous.
Yeah, imagine if you had sympathy with her.
And then you discover that she's the uh, she's the assassin.
It would have been incredible.
As it is, you know, she's so annoying in what is just a delightfully funny way.
Um, but yes, I mean, she wrecks the end of it, doesn't she?
Um, and and like that villain performance.
Holy shit, it's bad.
Like it's seen where Perry transforms into cancer is a camp classic.
The hair, the evening gloves, the grating.
And that's even before we get to her remarkable death throws.
But and then what was going to happen?
She was going to go and take all of that off.
And then go back to Tara.
Is that it?
So she did all of that.
I'm going to put on my menacing frock, you know, like, and, and, like, it's so strange.
It's so strange.
And that hair, like that doesn't come eat, like maybe they have space hair in the future and it's all much easier to do.
But there's a lot of work went into that and uh, and then she, what, just sort of musses it all up and then goes back to Tarrant.
It's very odd.
If her blot had gone the way that she'd wanted it to, then Su Lin would have died by Space Spider.
Avon would have died by Space Spider.
She then would have run into Tarrant in a corridor and said, oh, I'm being very silly, but I found time to change.
Yeah.
It's really something.
I mean, the death throws are astounding.
I think that just the director has just gone, I don't know.
I really, there's nothing that I can say to this woman, like we're just, we're stuck with that.
I actually think the 1st of the death row is okay.
It's the last scream that really does it.
It's when she stops screaming and then goes, oh.
I'm dead.
He's dead for about 2 seconds and then it cuts to the spider falling off and her hand is still going...
It's amazing.
If she'd been any good as cancer, you could have said that it's cancer, that there was the bad actress playing period.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but it's clearly just a bad actress claim, yeah.
Can I say I actually think she is pretty good as cancer?
I mean, obviously she's wildly over the top in that scene, but it's a it's a performance that we've seen before and it's quite enjoyable, I think.
Yeah, I really like it.
I'm I'm I'm convinced that Joel Schumacher watched it when he was preparing for Poison Ivy and Batman and Robin because it's it's very similar to what Uma Thurman does.
Um, there's, let's not go nuts.
That is a really, really sort of high school drama production kind of vibe to it.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just not in any way competent.
And it's like it's glorious.
Like, I love how kind of dismissive she is and stuff.
You know, um, I'm afraid it's very much the reverse.
You know, like, which is so, so, certainly hot.
So ridiculous.
Like, it's wonderful, but it could have been properly menacing. like she could have been going for many things.
I mean, you know, Jackie is right there.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, absolutely nailing how to do that.
And she's not even a kind of pound store, Jacqueline Pierce.
Yeah.
There's one particular line where she just takes this.
You can't even call it a Shatnerian pause.
It's inexplicable.
Fortunately, it has an inexhaustible supply.
Oh, venom.
Venom.
You haven't even mentioned the word supply.
This isn't a pun.
Well, I think this is the only Blake 7 episode to feature the word bitch, and it comes up twice. and it's both versions of cancer say it.
And it's, you know, as we said probably last week because I wasn't on it.
Headhunter is the episode where Su Lynn gets a character.
This very much continues that.
She's got a proper character and she's really great.
And, you know, she's characterised as that blonde bitch and she's amazing.
Yeah, she's really good.
But, and you mentioned before how knee Brock brings out that sort of softer side of her.
And it is, I think, like, she's good in headhunter, but she's still just doing sort of banter with the box of flashing lights.
You know, this is...
Like, this is a step up, I think. and I think she's really good.
This is the 1st time she gets to play a person rather than just that person we got in because Jan didn't want to do the final year.
And tellingly, this is the 1st script of the 2nd block, so they've been able to, yeah.
So I think that that is really good.
There is one moment though.
And it is absolutely...
Where, again, like complete defiance of all of our hard won knowledge about how human beings behave.
She decides that she's got to stop and think this through.
This is an important thing.
She can't think about it while she's walking around.
And so she stands there for a while and thinks, and instead of, you know, like, having a bit of a thing, and then she goes, I know, I think I could think better, if I sat down on the floor, underneath these milk crates, and then spread my hands out some way, um, in case any kind of animated spider comes along so that it can have like easy access to my hands.
And I think it's such a sort of strikingly inept thing, like absolutely inexplicable, that Russell T. Davis never forgot it.
And so he plays with it in the end of the world.
Because there's that moment in the end of the world where the little spider goes up to Rose and Rose lifts of, you know, puts her hands up to her face and goes, oh, I've just worked it out and narrowly avoids being bitten by the spider that the adherents of the repeated meme bought on board platform one.
So it's definitely a reference.
I won't be told otherwise.
All you needed was Cassandra to say I should imagine that blonde bitch is probably...
Well, I had to check with Psy, because I thought maybe this one was written by Ben Steed because I felt like this is quite sexist bits where Sulin says there's only 2 ways to deal with a hysterical woman and he kissed them while he slapped them.
I thought Sulin, like not being able to walk and think at the same time.
Wow.
And then the way that Piri was written as well is very kind of derogatory to women.
So yeah, I kind of felt the whole thing felt quite sexist.
So I was quite surprised when I said, yeah, no, it wasn't him.
I actually do like one line that she gets, which is in that scene where she says, oh, yes, you know, 2 men don't like each other and it's a completely rational judgement.
But for 2 women, it has to be jealousy.
And to have a character in the program makes even a sort of vaguely feminist statement is so rare and unusual, it's pretty great.
Yeah, and also the fact that period is like that and so over the top puts into sharp relief, the fact that any of our regular female characters in Blake 7, no matter how poorly they were served in the scripts, have never been like that, they've always been strong characters with agency.
And so I think having her as a contrast to Sulin helps Sulin.
And also, you know, later on when they're debating whether to leave period or take her on the search to find cancer.
Well, no, please don't leave me.
That's the one.
Well, while Sulin is not sympathetic towards her.
At one point period runs up to her and says, I know I know you don't like me, but don't leave me here.
Sulin actually says pretty much, no, we're leaving you here if they're your safety.
This door will lock automatically.
I am the only one with the key.
She does seek to reassure her, even though she has stated, I don't like this person, but that doesn't mean I wish harm upon them.
Which is a, again, it's a bit more depth of the character.
Like, I'm pretty sure I'm right in when I say Sulin doesn't get a focus episode this season.
No.
I don't think.
But...
Um, that...
You could have animals, that would have worked. would have worked much better.
It couldn't have worked much worse.
Maybe he could have been Villa's old boyfriend.
I don't know But, you know, I do think that there is an effort to balance that with giving her character moments, especially in this back half of the season, which work to Glynis Barber's strengths.
Because I think there's a bit of a what we would now see as a bit of a Jerry Ryan thing.
She may have just been hired. for the glamour.
But she is actually a subtle and talented actress.
And they do start giving her sort of funnier lines and funny equips and what have you.
And well, yeah, that line about, you know, 2 ways to deal with a hysterical woman does sound like a Ben Steed thing.
It's funny coming from Glynis Barber.
She makes it funny.
And then, of course, you know, she spins on a dime to deliver that.
Oh yeah, I'm irrational, am I?
Yeah. she's talking about Avon and Tarrant.
She gives as good as she gets. absolutely.
That's always been a thing about the female characters in this show.
They give us good right back to Jenna.
And, you know, she's got very good chemistry with Paul Darrow in particular, I think.
And, and, well, we'll see if how that's explored later in the season.
Oh, don't make it sound like they have an affair.
This is off topic.
But way back in the Misty Dawn of the 1990s.
There was a Doctor Who role-playing book called Time Lord.
And at that point, I hadn't seen season 26 of Doctor Who.
Um, and in the character write up for the doctor and Ace, it mentions their wonderful on-screen chemistry.
And for 10 year old me, I'm like, hold on, does that mean they get romantic?
And it's like, no, of course not.
But, yeah, it, it, it, yeah, that just reminded, um, and I'm glad they didn't. just reminded me of that.
I mean, it takes a lot to say that when Tarrant falls for Ziona from Zondal in Warlord.
With her nylon hair.
Poor old Carolyn Holdaway.
She did, as they say, leave the industry soon after this.
And she became an interior designer.
And in fact, I can't say if all of her projects use wooden flats and black metal plating and other lighting.
No, they don't.
I checked them out online and they're actually gorgeous and colourful.
So you should check them out online as well.
Oh, brilliant.
Fantastic.
The thing that just occurs to me is, last year, when Doctor Who got the Doomsday spinoff, kind of multimedia thing, and Sues Kempnel's cast as doom, the universe's greatest assassin, and Doctor Who fans poured absolute scorn on that, and says, what she doesn't look like, the world's greatest assassin.
And this shit's been out here for 40 years.
They knew that the role of the universe's greatest assassin had already been taken.
Doom has more than one method of killing a targets as well, not just a very slow spider.
Yeah. very close proximity.
It's baffling that script thing, isn't it?
Because there's no way they were ever, ever going to be able to realise it, and of course they couldn't.
They just did a rollback and mix between a badge and then like a shitty spider that looked nothing like the badge.
And you, like I was thinking about the little spiders that come out of the spheres in the end of the world, and clearly what was intended was, it was like, every time I watch it, and she goes, the side of the crab, it was visible there to you all the time.
Is that on Perry's outfit?
Because I never remembered a lot.
It is, it is.
It also doesn't look like a crab.
And it doesn't look like a spider.
Like if it had legs that came out of it and walked along that, you know, like whatever.
But I mean, it just comes a time where you just hit someone with a big fucking stick and kill them.
Like, what?
What's going on?
Just the wrench, yeah.
It's that bit from Austin Powers, where Scott Evil is like, why wait for the sharks to kill them?
I've got a gun.
Let's just quit till we fuck the sun.
Let's do it together.
She didn't even kill Ava when you had...
She could have clubbed him to death when she knocks him out.
But no, she had to knock him out, strap him to a table, get into her all frocked up look just to gloat.
And that was her downfall.
He's had it to their sex.
And how dedicated an actor is Rada cancer, because he keeps the character up.
Even when there's no one around.
And apparently it's all for the promise of like he and Peary are going to run off together.
She's like, yuck.
He thought we were going to run off together.
But they're both keeping up the performance because when they're waiting in the flight deck for Avon and Tarrant to bumble in and do their thing.
Yes, why is she crying?
It's got lip quivering in it. like, okay, get into character love.
Get it.
She's had a bit of a run on run with rada cancer and how to do it.
Cancer, darling, let me tell you about the method.
Okay.
I hope you have a leather gimp suit in my size with your emblem. with your emblem, darling.
And the cape, the cape.
Thank you, darling.
I have to say, even though those spiders look terrible, and why are they spiders, then you need to be crabs.
When Tarrant shoots it.
It does explode with this point, which is amazing.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Which is presumably the venom, which kills on contact, which is now all over the flight deck.
Thank you, Taren.
I think you'll find that with fatty bends.
They could have put a clue in where Perry always walked sideways, couldn't they?
Asking dear Caroline to do...
You think Serlin can't think and walk at the same time.
Can you imagine?
Caroline trying to deliver dialogue while walking sideways.
I can just imagine selling an event happening across this episode on a Monday night and going, right decision.
Jan. Can you actually chat right now?
She's still pretty excited about animals.
What if she put animals on transmission?
I thought, holy fuck, that could have been me.
It turned out worse than I thought.
I'm just imagining jam with a glass of red at home watching this, just going, Yeah, I would have punched up.
I really think Su Lin starts to succeed because they move her towards Jenna's character.
They just move her towards being this kind of She's a bit kind of above everything and kind of rolling her eyes internally at things.
And so they just make her Jenna really, and as was proved in series A and B, it works.
Yeah.
It is a great shame that they care so little about.
You know, like the amount of effort that goes into, uh, setting up the 2 characters that they introduce at the beginning of series C and just the absolute failure to do anything at all to set her up, to give her anything interesting.
And it's just like, I don't know, do we have a woman who does guns on the crew because we could have one of those and you kind of think, well, we do, but we do have one of those.
You know, like, it's just a bafflingly kind of half-assed thing and it really is just we need another woman, you know.
So, uh, prompts to Glinnis for making it into something, I think.
I always think it's kind of weird that we never have like a dedicated medic.
But, you know, I do wonder if they, if they just kind of go, oh, medics, no, you can't have an action series with a medic.
And it's like, you can absolutely give a medic a gun, but also that means you can actually hurt your characters more.
They also they turn characters into medics.
So they turned Gan into a medic and then when he was killed, they turned Calli into a medic.
Yeah, former terrorist Cali. dramatic.
Let me out of here, please, Callie.
Okay.
It was Aurac last week.
It was the moment. absolutely.
I thought it was the 1st time that happened.
These 2 Aurak now.
God, I love series D. It's not as good as any other series of Blake 7, but it's still rippingly good.
It's great.
And you know what?
I do think it has a consistency.
Consistently bad, yes.
No, I'm joking.
Yeah, yeah.
The thing is, I would say probably animals is the worst episode.
Yeah.
And even then, Animals has a really good central concept.
They just haven't thought enough about the execution.
And I'm sure this was said a couple of weeks ago, but it's like, yeah, either give the plot to Su Lin or cast a younger actor as Justin, and it solves most of the problems.
Yeah.
There's probably a shredder in the office somewhere.
Yeah. could have considered.
Yeah.
Just get a 3rd script from Bob Holmes and nothing from Ellen Prior.
That would have worked too.
So that's our episode on Assassin.
Thank you very much for listening.
Find out more about the podcast at our website, maximumpowerpodcast.com, including all our other podcasts.
Flight through entirety, the BJBJ Game Show, 500 Year Diary, Jody Into Terra, the 2nd great and bountiful Human Empire, the Library of Impossible Things, Bondfinger, Untitled Star Trek Project, the 3-handed Game, Startling Barbara Bain, and Trap One.
We have an endless supply.
Of podcasts.
Good night.
That was great.
That was good.
Bachelor Power.
Go, go. 30 seconds rust to the maximum power.
Switching to manual.
Maximum power on all drives.
Massive power.
I've had such a laugh since you did voice from the podcast.
Did you read down that street, that whole website, like that webpage with all of the podcasts?
Yeah.
Oh, all right, that was awesome.
You should look up Carolyn Holdway.
She looks amazing now.
She's in the 70s and she just like looks, you know, she's an interior designer.
She's got like blonde hair and she's smiling into the camera.
You go, ah, you're amazing.
That's awesome Because her IMDb thing was so short and I felt kind of a bit sad for her.
And it'd be like, now she's in Holby City for 3 episodes and they said, please don't.
Don't do that again.
She was also apparently a bridesmaid in a couple of episodes of Corey and in 1991 or whatever.
And if you see a photo of that online, she looks incredible.
It's the most early 90s thing I've ever seen.
She's so mumsy.
Well, that's she is sort of weirdly mumsy in this, isn't she?
Like she's a, you know, anyway.
You must think she's awfully silly.
John Wyman is probably most famous for being that evil blonde skier in for your eyes only.
Oh yes.
Is John Wyman rad a cancer?
Yes, he's rada cancer.
Oh, okay.
That was only the next year.