The Series D Retrospective

[00:08]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Maximum Power, the only Blake 7 podcast that's about to drop into a hole in the ground, but we may pop back out again for the inevitable Baban versus Alan box set coming soon from Big Finish Productions.

I'm Brendan.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Pete.

I'm Peter.

I'm Cy.

And I'm Simon.

Well, after a surprise renewal, Blake 7 is back, but not as we know it.

Callie is dead, but I'm sure her replacement Sue Lynn will find a way to become the cruise moral centre by force or something.

In place of the liberator.

We now have Scorpio, which can only go as fast as the liberator with a human sacrifice, and whose teleport requires a certain level of smugness to get it working.

Servoland isn't coming back, so we have Sleer, but then Servoland does come back, so we have both, sort of.

We also have a planetary base on Xenon whenever the writer of the week remembers it, and a new computer slave, who Avon and Dana like so much, they start cosplaying as him.

From the quarry like world of Xenon, we visit the swampy heler tricks, the quarry like Casper, the bucolic bucol 2, the studio bound Pharos, the quarry like domo, a literal quarry on Mecron 2, the sentient sands of Vern, the golden planet Xeroc, the inhospitable Melodar, and the quarry like beta file, before finally settling down in a misty forest on Gouda Prime.

[01:30]

Well, 6 feet under it anyway.

It's a bold vision of the future, grim gray, and with only enough luggage space for 3 outfits each.

Welcome, one and all, to our series D retrospective.

You make that sound so good.

I wanna watch it all again.

More quarries than I remember, I must confess.

There's a lot of quarries this season.

Oh, we missed a quarry at the end of gold.

Oh, yes, God.

Of course.

Yeah, gold. fine.

There's more than one planet.

Now, I would like to start by thanking our dear listeners.

I privately set the target of wanting to have more responses than our previous series C retrospective survey, which had a very impressive 113.

We actually got 10 more this time.

So we got 123 responses.

And I'd like to apologise to Fraser, who, I assume, did the survey, but just left out the last 4 episodes or gave them a 3 or something because that's what he did last time.

[02:38]

With that out of the way, we're gonna go straight into what our listeners and we ourselves thought of the episodes this season, and you may recall that last series, we had a very clear bottom 5 and then a middle and then a top 5 which were all very close.

In something that's a bit of a trend this season, there's a lot of very clear top 2s and then everything else.

So, I'm going to start at the bottom.

What do we think?

Was the lowest rated episode this season according to our survey?

I hear a star drive.

Do I hear any, do I hear any advances on Star Drive?

Yeah, it's definitely animals.

I did beg your pardon.

I hear animals.

I hear a correction to animals.

It's animals.

Average with an average score of one.

65.

How many?

Out of five.

Okay.

Out of 20, Simon.

[03:39]

I have been, that's just as plausible.

Much more plausible, actually.

I can see exactly how Og is reacting to that.

I think despite it being terrible, that is a little bit unfair, given that there was also star driving this scene.

I would like to point out that while animals did get the highest amount of ones with 75 of our 123 respondents giving it a one.

It did get 35 out of 5 ratings.

Okay.

Find these people, find these people and expel them.

Who are the 2 who aren't making Blake seven?

Well, I think another one's OG.

Let's be honest.

We sure that they are we sure that they aren't 3 people who sleer strapped into a chair and said, you love it.

You love it.

Now, moving up.

[04:40]

So Animals is the only episode that gets under a 2 and also that includes series C.

So it's rated worse than Moloch Volcano, Dawn of the Gods, which all got over it too.

So we get, we're going to move up to under 2.5 now.

We have already mentioned Stardrive.

I'm going to throw out the uncontroversial notion that power would also probably fit into the bottom three.

Do we think it's star drive or power lower?

It had better not be power.

It's almost certainly power.

From that introduction.

So with an average of 2.39.

And indeed, the most amount of 2s in the survey, it's power.

May I may I say something about power at this stage?

Yes, yes, please do.

Power is far, far better than its reputation suggests.

It is a solid, well told, well characterised episode with great dialogue.

[05:43]

Like, it's a great villa show, for instance.

I'm not blind to the issues that people have with it, but frankly, I don't share them.

I think it's not a campfest like Harvest of Chiros.

It's not offensive, like Moloch.

I think it's just a victim of Ben Steed's reputation and fairly bizarre preoccupations.

But otherwise, it's pretty good stuff and I don't understand why people don't like it.

I think, and I think we decided on the actual episode that we did that power is more sexist than Moloch.

Uh, and cosmoloch features corrective rape as a hilarious tea time Saturday night theme.

You know, it gets good solid kicking and it deserves it.

But we have exposing, you know, female babies and stuff and a basic message from the very, very divorced Ben Steed, that these women don't just shut up. and take what they're given.

They will be responsible for the destruction of the human race.

[06:45]

So, I, you know, like we, we thought that it was a fun episode, and I think it has a lot going for it.

It might be his best episode, except that I have a real massive soft spot for Harvest of Chiros.

But I think that the sexism of it is really, really bad and people aren't wrong to take that into account, I think.

But I think the script goes a long way towards mitigating those concerns by championing Dana and the Cesca and making characters like Gunsar, a big old dummy, and commenting on that in the text, and, you know, Dickon Ashworth's performance.

And let's not forget it's helmed by Mary Ridge.

And so while I do understand the problems and I certainly understand the problems that people might have with it, I don't share them.

I think it's a really strong episode.

There's a, yes, minister, I think it's a yes, ministry episode, where there's a female local counsellor who is giving them all a great deal of trouble.

And I sort of put it into a very same similar category to that one in that she's represented as being a troublemaker and all the men, all these sort of old white grey-haired men, are all saying how dreadful this woman is, dreadful woman and all that sort of stuff.

[07:58]

And we're not thanks partly to like the role that Jim Hacker's wife plays in that, for instance.

You're left with the impression that these old men asked old and stupid and they need to kind of move with the times.

So, so I'm inclined to agree with Peter.

I, I, I get that, um, He doesn't do it right, doesn't do it perfectly, but I, I do agree with him that it's not, it is, it is more, much more maligned than it deserves to be.

It's also the victim of a certain thing that's going on at the time to do with like the whole battle of the sexist thing and, you know, are women the equal of men and all that sort of stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it is of that era, but I think if you understand that it's from that era.

I think you can still kind of enjoy it for what it is of that of that time.

I'd just like to throw in there.

Molok got an average of 2.3 versus Powers 2.39.

Yeah, no.

So he's quite consistently bad.

At the harvest, to Cairos for reference, got 2.92.

[08:58]

So, now, moving up the list, of course, as I implied before, we have Stardrive, which breaks the 2.5 barrier.

So everything from here on up is average to great.

Star drive is at 2.76.

Okay.

I really enjoy Stardrive.

I thoroughly enjoyed it this time round. unexpectedly, I think, and I, yeah, I really love those early scenes on Scorpio where they're trying to land on the meteorite.

There's a real tension and the lights are down and there's it's really nicely done.

So I know it, it's an episode of 2 halves and the 2nd half is all over the place, but it's always one that I enjoy coming back to watch and I enjoy it more than I expect.

That 1st half has Dana's best line reading in the history of the show, which is the if there is a next time, which seems unlikely, where she's just so wonderfully, gloriously posh for like a 20 year old, she's fabulous.

[10:04]

It's so good.

And Bobocelli is one of our great guest stars.

Well, we actually...

Had to be.

And we'll get to it later, but our listeners had a lot of praise for Barbara Shelley as well.

She's dignified in the face of everything.

That's a good thing to be.

She's like an Eleanor Braun level performance, she gives in a Madcap episode.

How about Napier?

Did they have a lot of praise for him?

Put a packet just goes off on lunch and comes back.

Yeah, they did want to praise him, but Noah could find him, obviously.

Yeah. post-title sequence and credit sequence, but like explaining Blake 7 did them.

That one character that everyone forgot about.

Oh, he wanders into the base on get out of Prime at the end.

Oh, they're way too minutes.

Right.

Okay, so, look, we have a very clear bottom three, and all 3 of them are the only stories to average under 3 out of five.

[11:09]

Our next spread of 6 episodes. are all between 3 and four, and in terms of percentage points, they cover a spread of about 15%.

Okay.

I have to say that there should be an honourable mention for bottom three, which is games, which is really quite extraordinarily bad, and that doesn't really get the hatred it deserves.

I thought I thought we decided when we did it that it's at least entertaining.

And...

Well, several times how much I was reminiscing fondly about animals while I was watching it.

James was my lowest rated episode of the year.

Animals was fun in a messy and massively problematic way, but games, even though there's like there's explosions and there's some great little moments in it.

Yeah, just Stratford Johns and Serverland scenes, it feels like they're really Jacqueline Pierce is really having to whack out the sort of punchline lines to give it a bit of a bit of something because that's all it's really got to me.

[12:15]

It is Serverland's probably weakest episode.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like she just...

It's almost like she wasn't in it and they bunged her in. they thought this is really funny.

Quick, let's bung her in as well.

I don't think my doubt.

That'll stop her being in the finale.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm not going to reveal where games is in this 6 just yet.

Because it'll traumatise Nathan.

Well, we'll just have to wait and see, but I will tell you, scraping in at 3.06, This one really surprised me.

And it got the high, it got the highest amount of threes.

It's traitor.

Oh, I knew it was going to betray us.

That's upsetting.

I'm always very disappointed by traitor.

I think it's a good Bob Holmes script that's really let down by its director, David Sullivan Hamfist or whatever his name is.

I'm disappointed by your disappointment.

I think the traitor. actually quite entertaining and quite good to watch.

Yes, the direction is not as strong as it could be, but I think fundamentally there's a raft of episodes on the list in front of me which deserve to go below it.

[13:22]

So, I mean, that's only because you would cosplay as Colonel Koot, if you could.

Can't you see I'm doing it?

I think it suffers from being in the 1st half of the season and gets tarred with where it is.

Doesn't that make it like this shining beacon of positivity amongst a sea of subparness?

But you see, that's what power is to me.

Both power and traitor. for me.

So there we go.

We've all got our It's all downhill after train to really for me.

Stardrive Animals, 800 and 3 words.

I think there's that Blake 7 sweet spot where it's borderline getting ridiculous and yet it takes you with it.

And there are episodes that do that perfectly, which I suspect headhunter hopefully does quite well in this poll. which is, you know, tweak the settings of headhunter a tiny bit and you've probably got an episode that falls to pieces, but they hit it bang on the mark.

Whereas traitor doesn't really go there and it's just a really straightforward, here we are, we're having a venture on this planet and there's some rebels and, and so it doesn't, it does everything that it does fine and has some great things in it.

[14:32]

But yeah, but it's that thing of it, who is it?

Was it you, someone who said on one of the episodes, possibly gold or sand, that it's a great episode of television, but it doesn't give you what you want necessarily from Blake 7?

That's what I get from Traitor is like the other extreme of that.

It's a perfectly good adventure about some people helping some rebels.

And I don't mark it down for that, but it doesn't give me that extra thing that Blake 7 usually does.

And is that because it's the Dana Tarrant pairing who are down there rather than the Avon Villa pairing or...

Well, why not?

It worked so well in volcano.

What exactly?

I mean, you know, I think the Dana Tarrant pairing is the best pairing that the show has, except maybe in orbit where you have Bob Holmes doing, you know, Avon and Villa.

But those 2 are really fantastic, I think.

For me, it's just some incredibly great guest performances in wonderfully written Bob Holmes roles.

Like, special marks to the general, who is another one of those characters like General Chalak, in case of Andrazani, who is a fucking idiot, or Paul Seeds character in Rebos operation.

[15:45]

You know, where they're clearly an absolute moron.

But they don't play it like they are, and they kind of do it really subtly.

Like I love that stuff.

Yeah, there's a lot to like about trader, but as the director, I truly believe, lets it down.

He also does the studio sequences of Assassin and all of Stardrive.

Like, the location scenes go on forever.

I can only imagine that the production came in 3 minutes under because there's these incredibly long tedious shots on location.

And then when he gets into the studio and the same thing happens in Assassin.

He can't choreograph fights, and so he just does it all in wide short and it looks terrible.

If I'm going to let a bit of dud studio direction and badly choreographed fight sequences get in my way of enjoying something.

I don't think I'd be enjoying Blake 7 and Doctor Who nearly as much.

There speaks a pennant Roberts fan.

Well, one story that I don't think we can accuse of lazy or unfocused direction, which I'm rather surprised isn't scored higher, is Warlord with 3.17.

[16:50]

Wow.

Oh my goodness.

Wow, okay.

Shame, shame.

I said on our warlord episode that this is another one which I think is criminally underrated.

Warlord is very close to top tier, Blake 7.

It's not quite there because of a couple of things, but there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens in it.

I think it's put together in a really interesting way.

Be ashamed if you're self listeners.

It's really the power of the owner's wig.

Like, which...

Do you know what I mean?

That would destroy Citizen Kane.

It's very, very, very bad.

I think that there are just one or 2 things like that.

Like the performance of zookan is really bad and it is really hard to get over that.

But I think it does some really, really exciting things and I watched it yesterday for the 1st time in ages and was astounded by how much I liked it.

And I have been on those escalators.

So that raises it up completely.

I think it is one of those things that, yes, I remember seeing it for the 1st time and being sort of shocked and appalled by everything you've just mentioned, but then when you recover from that.

[17:56]

I never recovered from that.

Well, when I recovered from it.

I agree with PJ.

I mean, if you're saying it's almost top tier, if you're trying to say it's upper middle tier, then that's probably where I'd rank it.

I think it doesn't deserve to be nearly as low.

There's so much good stuff.

And letting a wig get in the way with it.

Well, I go back to my previous.

It's a really bad win.

Yes, but I go back to my previous observation about directing fight sequences in studio.

Okay, if we want to talk bad wigs.

Coming up next with 3.34, it's assassin.

I absolutely can't believe that assassin was rated higher than warlord.

It is great. is great.

I think it I think maybe it's so confidently insane.

I thought you were going to say it so confidently inept.

Yes, it is.

It's confidently in it.

Yeah.

I mean, what can be said that was not already said on that episode.

[19:01]

I would just like to give a shout out to Pete because he made the all-time best Blake 7 gift.

It took a lot of editing.

I work for absolute genius.

I put more time into editing that her death scene down than I think was actually put into recording that scene.

I have to go to under 10 seconds and...

I transcribe every ugh and every ugh...

It's probably indicative of the many levels that we enjoy Blake 7 on, but Carolyn Holdaway's performance as Pirie is definitely one of my favourite Blake 7 performances.

Did she have other work?

No. an interior decorator, I think, now, or something.

Lollipop lady, something.

I remember.

Totally in the what the hell are you doing, steaks?

It's up there with Governor LeGrand.

Yes, I think it's...

Although she's in some BBC costume drama with Govel on the Grand and she was exactly the same.

[20:04]

Oh, she was, sure.

But she was playing an aristocrat.

So it was kind of maybe that's her thing.

A shrewd maxim, Pete.

Shrewdly approaching the middle of the list with 3.50.

Its headhunter.

Oh.

I always think Headhunter deserves to do better.

I really like the episode and I really enjoyed our discussion on it that didn't feel like we'd even scraped the surface of the episode because we were talking so much about the general chaos of getting Blake 7 on screen at the start.

So yeah, there was lots to love in this episode.

And I would certainly rate it higher than another episode that is coming up that we haven't had yet that Nathan doesn't like.

Yeah.

I think it is that thing of it being on that, the sweet spot of silliness to action to invest it and like, you know, when it's lumbering across the bridge.

If that's the sort of clip, the headless robot lumbering across the bridge would get put in something like teleaddicts on BBC One to howls of laughter from the audience, which is completely different to howls of loving laughter from a Blake 7 podcast.

[21:16]

People who don't get it aren't allowed to laugh.

I could see that being where people might mark it down though because it is. silly.

But I love it.

I was interested listening to our podcast on it that it was marketed at the time as a comedy horror because actually thinking about it, it is a comedy horror.

Like, that is the 2 things it is.

It also gets bonus points for giving Su Lyn, the 1st glimmerings of a character.

Absolutely.

Yeah, even if it's Cali that was originally having those lines.

Kelly had a great character.

You wouldn't know where to begin.

That's so good I think the location work at the end is really pretty great as well. really enjoy that.

It left me wondering which of the tribes on that planet was responsible for bridge maintenance, though, because that little iron that little iron bridge was very well looked after.

They're nailing and sort of things.

No, I think it's the guy who ran the computers in his basement who did that almost.

Oh, of course, yes.

Pharaoh and ball.

Yeah, of course he would.

[22:16]

So moving up just ever so slightly.

Only inching ever so slightly ahead of Headhunter with 3.54.

It's games.

So games is an episode that's about nothing at all and has no ending.

It's completely incomprehensible.

And no one's doing their best work, I find that absolutely baffling.

How is that better than a saddle?

I mean it's just terrible.

Nathan is firing up in those right now, listeners, I'm sending your surveys back to you.

You have to say...

Do it again, please.

We're doing that.

Can you please do power again and get it right?

Yes, exactly Nathan, would games have been enlivened for you with the deleted porn scene featuring Stratford upon Avon?

Oh my god.

Oh no.

Oh God, you've been saving that one up, haven't you?

That's been simmering there for a while.

It depends about 1982.

[23:19]

He just took a post-it note off the top of his laptop monitor.

I lived not far from there and I went to Trafford and I took a very nice picture of me and my sister there a while ago and I went to send it to her.

I went to my phone and typed Avon into the search bar to find this picture.

I touched Stratford on Avon.

It helpfully gave me 100s of bloody gifts for some reason.

For the next one, we do have a bit of a jump, and while this is the last story to be under an average of four, it is a fair bit ahead at 3.84 with rescue.

Rescue.

Yeah, okay.

So kind of what we're seeing there is, the series starts off very strong, goes through an average to bad period which culminates with animals, and then we get headhunter, after which it only once drops below 3.5 again for our listeners and that's warlord.

I think that's sort of the received wisdom, isn't it?

That sort of within fandom that rescue is a really great opener.

[24:21]

Chris Boucher really efficiently writes himself out of the situation they've got themselves into.

And tells a competent tale with brilliant, brilliant dialogue.

And it's a really difficult one because I really like it, but it's difficult to argue that it's top flight Chris Boucher in some ways.

So I think he's got so much to do that he can't do the things that he normally does, but the direction and the dialogue are really fantastic and you can see everyone really enjoying being back, I think.

I can just imagine him sitting at this typewriter, pounding it, going, lift, you scruffy bag of bolts, lift.

I'll use that later.

I mean, there's one or 2 episodes, which haven't been mentioned yet, which I put the rescue ahead of.

Not just to do with the writing, as you've suggested, but also to do with the guest cast, because I think it's unquestionable that Jeffrey Burrage really adds so much to the character he's given, and he's just really, really great.

[25:25]

And when when for me, when I'm watching anything, whether it's Blake 7, Doctor, whatever, and average 2 moderately good story, as long as it sort of reaches a minimum threshold, is lifted into the stratosphere when you have performances like that.

You mean you're here by choice?

For example.

Always the moment.

Yeah, he just changes and it's just art is superb.

Yeah, absolutely.

Simon, also, I think about Darian Angardi from Horizon, who lifts an already good score.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That's another excellent example of what I'm talking about.

I think it's as good a season opener as redemption all the way back, which is high praise.

Not as good as aftermath, but then very little is.

It's almost impossible to reformat the series without any of the architecture of the previous seasons around it.

But somehow Chris Boucher does it.

And it's an amazing basically giving us part 2 of a two-part, 18 months after part one as well.

And there was a repeat.

I remember I think.

But still, you know, picking those threads up and still writing something that works as a cohesive 50 minute story in its own right.

That's very clever writing, that is.

[26:27]

And it gets extra points for having a puppet alien, which I like.

That's really good alien.

A really probably good one.

Not Moloch, properly good puppet alien, I think.

You're not talking about the sea devil, are you?

I was about to say.

No, he's not even a twink.

As we approach our top four, all of which got above four.

And by the way, Headhunter got the highest amount of fours, but that didn't get it into this category.

So in broadcast order, I'm going to say these top 4 are Sand, Gold, Orbit and Blake.

So just missing out on a podium finish.

With 4.08 is gold.

Okay.

I mean, that's fair.

Yeah, with those other three.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I've got my...

Gold is quite a bit better than sand. but I think there's a lot of tenetly lovers out there.

[27:30]

I think gold is basically 2 action sequences, and it's not really about anything, whereas sand is about something, and I think it has been...

Yeah, that's right.

It has no action.

It is quite slow.

But I was more bored by Gold's action than I was by Sands in action.

It's nice just to have a proper science fiction writer come in once a year to tidy the place up a bit, I think, you know, and this is if anything better than uh, better than sarcophagus.

Gold is my favourite of the season.

So I just think it's a stunningly brilliant, entertaining, fun story with possibly the best guest star of the year.

I think Roy Kinnear is absolutely perfect.

Me and Pete were discussing this last night, actually, because he's he's not paired with Servolan.

He gets to really shine because he's paired with Avon and the crew throughout.

[28:31]

And so you've got that extra level of jeopardy about what's going to happen, sort of his reactions and his nervousness all the way through.

I think it's a really brilliant, entertaining episode and it would always be the episode of series D that I would choose to put on for someone who'd not seen series D at all because everyone gets something to do.

I like the fact that he has individual relationships with each of the crew.

He has like, he has his relationship with Villa where he's like, you know, Villa's not around.

He's always cagey around him.

The way he sort of sidles up to Su Lin and calls her pretty one and everything.

It's really well written.

And can I also say, Brian Lighthill, who directs gold and orbit brings an incredible confidence to the productions.

Yeah, considering he's not directed the show before, and it's not an easy show to direct, he makes it seem effortless and does different things with both of his episodes.

Let's see how he goes on audio 10 years later.

Well, no one's perfect.

[29:33]

Moving into the top three, the remaining episodes in order of broadcast are Sand Orbit Blake, and I'm just going to do a quick round, Robin, and I want you each to give me what you'd put first, 2nd and third.

So, Nathan.

Sand Orbit Blake.

Simon?

Orbit Blake Sand.

Pete?

Orbit Sand, Blake.

Peter?

Orbit Blake Sand.

Sorry.

Blake Orbit Sand.

Right.

I don't think I would put Blake in the top three.

I don't think I put sand in the top three I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to tell you all. that one of you got the order exactly right.

Coming in 3rd with 4.28 is sand.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

I can see that because Tanaflee's stories generally divide people.

There are people who absolutely love them and there is quite a lot of people who really don't get on with them, but I think this does so much great work for Jacqueline Pierce, who this year has been hugely underserved a lot of the time.

[30:39]

And so to give her an episode where she is the central character, is long overdue, and the fact that Taniflee based lots of stuff in this episode, on her, on Jacqueline Pierce's own life experiences, give it that extra Frisson and stuff, and she is magnificent.

That line, which says there are no women like me.

I am unique.

It's just power is my love.

Yeah, it's it's brilliant.

But it's an difficult production, and I think sometimes that puts people off.

The planet is very much like vortice on film with lots of greenstand.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

It's not.

It's not what Blake Stefan does a lot of the time.

And I think maybe that's what sort of takes it down a couple of points perhaps.

It's a dinner party. and that's that's amazing. and I love it.

[31:40]

But like it's, I'm pleasantly surprised that it, well, that it is in the top 3 because I think it does deserve that and it's good to have a left field episode scoring so highly when we've got plenty of straight down the middle, straight down the line, action episodes as well. if it's holding its own against.

There are so many good moments and it's so many good lines and so many good sequences.

But as I said during the episode, I just, for me, as a whole, it just doesn't hang together.

I'm not particularly entertained by it as a whole.

There was some great moments, but shame there wasn't sort of better stuff around it or it didn't go together. well It's just my...

Well, there you go.

See, for me, it's the last gasp of weird Blake 7 and things like dawn of the gods, web, duel, you know, the sort of thing where there is some something in the past that's alien and incomprehensible, sarcophagus is one of those as well.

And those episodes don't always succeed, but it's something that I love about Blake 7 that occasionally, it's not just pursuit ships chasing the liberator.

[32:41]

It's something weird and and Eldrich and unknowable, and that's what we get here, and it operates in such a way that it reveals character, which again is something that Blake's haven't really, really doesn't do for all the reading character stuff into it that we, we enjoy doing.

It doesn't really do it, but it does properly do it here.

And I think it's bigger than the 50 minute episode as well.

You know, there's that wonderful thing. the little tiles that Avon is moving around.

It's a probability square, and so there's something about that world and the way the elements interact, sand and water and air and electricity and stuff that's not really in there, but it's hovering around the edge of it.

It's a bigger episode than the 50 minutes and it is a proper science fiction episode, which is not something I think Blake 7 should generally attempt.

But it's nice to see it do it, you know, every so often.

I'm not surprised that Kate really likes it, for instance. as a science fiction writer.

[33:42]

And also, you know, even for all of that, Nathan, it still operates like sarcophagus does as a ghost story.

And so it's got that kind of traditional atmosphere to it, which does work.

I'm with Simon.

I think it's got lots of good stuff.

I don't think it quite all comes together, so I wouldn't put it in the top three, but it is good.

I thought Zion's wig was the last gasp of weird, like said. weird in a much worse way.

I think calling a character diva and getting David Collings to play him is the last gasp of weird.

Ah, David Coins.

I do like that Taniffle comes in and fixes lots of things that we've all been missing in series D and deals with Callie's death and deals with how Servoland got off the liberator, even if it's a cursory thing, that she's got that little attention and there's that little bit of time all this way along to mention Callie and for the way that Villa reacts and says, shut up.

[34:46]

You don't, you were there.

You don't know about this moment.

It's really brilliant. sort of little bit of grief, you know, it's, uh, yeah, it's just that attention to the characters that she brought with sarcophagus as well that I think really, really works as the character dynamics as well.

Well, I think she manages to do that and do a Blake 7 episode with the Federation chasing the sheep. which he doesn't do in sarcophagus, which kind of makes it sort of perfect for me.

Right.

So moving on to the top two.

Now, last time I do recall, there was some controversy because we only had a .01 between the 2 averages.

I'm pleased to say that we have a wider gap between the scores for Blake and Orbit, not by much, so we have one at 4.54 and one at 4.58.

Okay.

And last time, it was 4.54 and 4.55.

[35:46]

I remember Simon New in particular.

I think your words were statistically similar enough to count as a tie.

Sounds like it.

That sounds like I might have said something like that.

Which is totally fair.

Okay.

So I'm just gonna blurt it out.

At number two, we have orbit.

At number one, we have Blake.

Yeah, as explained, that's the wrong end.

Not surprised at all in the slide.

Blake also gets the highest amount of fives of our 123 respondents 90, which is almost 75% gave Blake a five.

I think I gave it a three.

Orbit was not far off. with 86 hikes.

I don't think it's surprised that those are the top 2 for this season.

They're both doing very different things, obviously, but one's being good.

One has a brilliant ending.

[36:47]

I think Orbit's the best episode of the season.

It's not in my top 5 episodes of Blake 7 because there are so many good episodes in series B and C.

But I just I struggle to think of another sci-fi TV show that could pull off something because majestically camp and entertaining us orbit and not even have to stretch the format very far to do it.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the point.

The remarkable. yeah, you're right.

Because the remarkable thing about it is that it doesn't feel like it's broken the show.

It doesn't feel like it's doing something different.

Oh, you know, we've only got 3 episodes to go.

Let's just have a laugh.

I can see an episode in a parallel universe which would have been exactly that and it would have been appalling and everybody would absolutely hate it.

But you're right, orbit just works so perfectly, even though there's no other Blake 7 episode like it.

Yeah, and it's because it's Robert Holmes, isn't it?

Yeah.

Give a comedy drama episode to someone, give it to Robert Holmes because he can absolutely do it while keeping the characters absolutely true to form.

[37:47]

And again, lifted into the stratosphere by performances, John Severdon being absolutely spectacular.

Absolutely amazing.

I think if I and Simon, the problem was they couldn't lift into the stratosphere.

It's an example of taking, even though it's, it's a very heightened performance and very camp performance, it's still, it, every single line is thought about how he's going to deliver it and every single line is delivered consistently with the one before.

There's never a, my god, where did that performance, something come from inner sequence. all beautifully constructed by him.

And that sells it.

I mean, for me, yeah, in amongst us all at all.

It can almost overlook the revelation of what happened to Pinder and what Agrarian had done to him and his fate there is so moving and like Robert Holmes doesn't just write satirical action, this is a really moving episode and then that sets up.

Is Avon going to do you absolutely believe that Avon Wood?

[38:49]

Oh, I have to believe that he would, but also, but also that he is a bit conflicted about it.

And he'd rather not at the end.

That and Jacqueline Fierce just hit having a final real blast of perfectly written campness.

This is my favourite episode of Blaze Haven by a mile. yeah Ah, that's a good one.

I think that's an absolutely understandable position today.

You know, we've been putting Servoland alongside the kind of secondary villain all season.

We haven't had her interacting with people and she's been with Stratford Johnson.

She's been with various people with spherical heads in that hotel room that she...

And paradise around the galaxy.

And Karen...

Like her and those 2 are just absolutely superb, unbelievably great.

And they've stopped doing the thing they were trying to do in series C of trying to find her a replacement, Travis.

I mean, she does that, there are, she has some, you know, officers around her, but that's not the focus of her relationship anymore.

[39:51]

It is, yeah, it's her being camp and evil to someone from Rada.

And it just, this is what science fiction was invented for.

Absolutely.

And, you know, it's so beautifully written because it's got the smallest guest cast of any Blake 7 episode.

There are so few characters in this episode.

And so you get so much time to get to know those characters, and it's so economical, and it's probably, Chris Boucher say, we haven't got much money.

You can have 2 extra speaking parts and the regulars.

Go for it and see what happens and look what happens.

This is amazing.

The Jeremy Bentham school of Doctor Who critique was fond of talking about Robert Holmes' double X. Holmesey and double X, they used to call them.

There has never been a better one than Agrarian and Pinder.

And I think something that's not often commented upon is the way the users are growing and Pinder, as a reflection of Avon and Villa, and the fact that Avon, not so much this season, but previously could be quite casually cruel to Villa.

[41:00]

And it's just interesting that that is what Robert Holmes has picked up on because he clearly likes Avon and Villarous characters.

And so he's put some thought into what makes their dynamic work.

So that's orbit.

Now, we all had a shot at Blake, but does anyone have anything to ask?

Avon was the only man who actually hit him.

It's very interesting because as we record this, the 2 sides haven't heard each other's episodes, so I don't know what what you Australians think of this and you don't know what me and Pete think of the episode.

I mean, Nathan's already said, what he thinks.

Yes exactly.

Actually, yes, my opinion wasn't widely shared, but I do think I do think that we did manage to get some sort of agreement that some things in Blake are done much better in terminal, you know, the sort of final things in terminal.

And maybe everyone agreed that everyone was being a massive fucking idiot on that day for some reason.

[42:04]

And we couldn't quite work out why.

But for me, like I think the ending is astounding and there's a reason why people, we went out to dinner a couple of weeks ago and someone had just arrived 50 minutes after seeing Blake for the 1st time because of the podcast.

It's absolutely incredible.

It's an amazing choice, but I think it's in an episode that is really not very interesting and isn't about anything.

There's just sort of lots of people wandering around a forest until we make some dumb decisions and then all die.

I mean, that does sound like Blake 7 to me.

I was going to say that.

Except for the all die.

That's harvest of Cairos.

I mean, you can distil any episode down to its parts like that and make it sound dreadful.

But I think for some reason, I think it works despite that there are other comparable episodes which are equally uneventful, which I don't like, for instance, dual cyclicate destroy and so on like that, that are very popular out there.

[43:05]

But Blake is the one which I really do actually like and I do think is actually properly good, especially as a way to wrap up the show.

I mean, I think the parts of it are also very good, but it is the ultimate example of the whole being better than the parts.

What it delivers and the way it ends the series is, I think, unmatched in virtually any other television show.

Absolutely.

And one of the parallels we drew was the fact that the way back features an underground massacre with faceless federation guards coming in and the series ends with a faceless bunch of guards coming in and massacring people underground.

And it's just like, I don't know if that was intentional and it was like something that hits as we were recording it.

It's not something that, because we'd been thinking about it, but that unintentional mirroring of where we began absolutely works.

It's like terminal. is an episode that wrongfoots you from the start where the tone is is wrong.

[44:09]

Everything from the Xenon base exploding behind them as the Scorpio takes off.

Everything is. is unsettlingly just weird and strange and not like a normal Blake 7 episode.

And I think that's what gets you through to the end.

Yeah, there's that shock of how have they just blown up the base.

That would have been, surely, that's an entire episode's worth of drama about the episode where the bass gets blown up. and the fact that they just do it in scene one. immediately leaves you a bit, you know, where is this taking me?

Of course, Star Trek, the Next Generation, completely ripped off of Blake's, a previous Blake 7 cliffhanger, right down to the fire as they go into battle on their cliffhanger.

I mean, it was, it was 4 years until Dynasty got around to completely ripping off the end of this episode with the Moldovan wedding massacre.

Which I suspect, had there been a series E, would have got a pretty similar, anyone whose agent accepted to a slight reduction in their contract, would probably have miraculously had a copy of the safe... that saved them from the laser blasts or something.

[45:11]

God, I would have loved to have seen Dana trying to get off Galta Prime dressed up as a nun.

That would be Villa.

That would be Villa.

I have an observation to make, though, about all these episodes.

Si, did you say that you'd show someone who'd never seen Black 7 before?

You'd show them gold?

I think someone who'd never seen series D. Right.

Because yes, well, because an extension of that is the observation I would make is if I had to show a Blake 7 episode to someone who'd never seen one before, I would choose none of these.

I would choose none from series D. And now that's what I'm saying.

I don't like a lot of them.

There are some that I don't like, but there are many that I do and quite like.

Yet you cannot give a Blake 7 newbie any of these episodes to start them off, I feel.

No.

The one that I chose when my new partner wanted to see what Blake 7 was like was aftermath.

Yeah, excellent choice.

Excellent choice.

F choice.

Fair choice.

[46:11]

Yeah.

I mean, you've also had to choose the kind of episode that appeals to somebody.

So when I showed Jack Shanahan his 1st plate 7 episode, I showed him rumours of death, and I knew he would like that style of episode.

Good pick.

Right, we have...

Our first North Marrier void.

And I'm giving this one to Si.

Okay.

Snog, marry, big hair, don't care.

Your options are Zookan.

Atlan and Chulcer, who is Rick James in Warlord.

Well, I mean, what a what a choice of riches I've got.

I think in some ways you've probably got to avoid Atlan because he probably smells awful.

You know, and his hair is unwashed.

Yeah, I think that's probably fair.

So, That puts me an invidious choice.

[47:12]

So I think I'll probably just snog, Chelsea, because words are just, Words.

And so I'm going to marry Zukan because I might at least stand a chance of getting out of this alive.

Yeah, he does have a lot of new territories.

You might inherit them, perhaps. absolutely.

He's got a lovely man, man.

You'd also inheritance, yeah.

Your name was a stepdaughter.

She is dead, to be fair.

Yeah, yeah.

She took a glove off. took her glove off.

So we're gonna move into what our listeners thought of our regulars.

I asked our listeners to choose their top 3 regulars, one, two, and three.

And as with last time, if someone got a one, that was worth 3 points, if someone got a two, that was worth 2 points, and if someone got a three, that was worth one point.

I'm pleased to say that much like the episodes, every character out of Avon, Villa, Dana, Tarrant, Sulin, or Ak, Servolin, and Slave got at least one top vote.

[48:23]

Even slain?

People actually thought Slave was the best character in the season.

Exactly, one person thought Slave was the best character of the season.

Okay.

I'm going to start at the bottom of the list.

And so with 5 points, it's slave.

I'm ever so humble.

He's very endearing.

Yeah.

I'm not I'm not shocked.

I'm not shocked.

I mean, it's a nice, it's a really nice conceit.

Going from a computer, a computer that is Zen, that is God, and you don't understand that it's material to a computer that is completely obsequious and looks up to you and all of that.

They wanted to do something different.

Yeah, it restored my faith in the human race.

I quite like the prop, I have to say. looks good.

And he gets some nice moments of humour.

I do always love the, I can find no flight controls.

Sorry, that was the backup?

[49:24]

Was that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a great moment.

There's also that amazing moment where Terrence is trying to get out of trouble and you just go like, come on, to slave and slaves like, oh, oh, um, try these coordinates.

It's just fantastic.

Yeah.

I also really like one of the idiot ball moments of Blake, which is Slave tries to tell them something and they tell him to shut up and Aurak tells him to shut up and then Slave finally reports, we are approaching Gau to Prime and the Scorpio is under attack.

Boom.

Right.

So moving, moving ever so slightly up, look.

Look, thank you, slave, for 13 episodes where you probably did more than Gan, who knows?

Probably.

Or in a cape.

Moving up with an equal score of 26, we have 2 characters, but one did get 3 top slots and one did get 2 top slots.

It's Taranton Aurak on 26 apiece.

Wow.

Okay.

Tarant gets one more top score than or actors.

[50:28]

Why do people hate Tarant?

I don't understand it at all.

It's Blake 7.

They're all twats, you know, I love Harry, but I wouldn't actually vote in number one.

I vote everybody else apart from the computers, number one.

I've got to say I warmed to him a bit. in this season.

Because he isn't trying to be acting like he ought to be thinks he should be the captain anymore.

He knows his he knows his place.

He goes off, he has his missions.

He sometimes disobeys his orders out of a sense of right and wrong.

That's still a thing for him.

So, yeah, I warned him this year.

He's a bit more chill and he's kind of funny.

You know, I'm a growing landfilla.

Rats are not the answer.

He's like much more relaxed, and you pair him with Josette Simon, who is just the best actor in the show.

And the 2 of them are really great together.

Like, I don't know, I don't get the hatred at all.

Nathan, I think the answer is he's young.

Brave, handsome.

There are 3 good reasons for anyone not to like him.

[51:29]

He be it.

That may be it.

Us basement probably nerds.

However, you can't say that about Aurak, who's also on 26.

Or actually, I'm David Hansen.

Or is fascinating this year because he's written Prissier than ever and is very much the lead computer now.

Of course, yeah.

It's really great.

And he gets his hero moment of just being a box of flashing lights, which is part of the plot in orbit.

So, you know, yeah, I think Peter Tottenham is really great.

And my favourite ever Aurak moment is the moment where he sort of almost stifles a laugh before he says, It's worse than that.

Yeah, yeah, so good.

It's so brilliant.

He gets the punchline of the episode, which is so good.

And the same in Headhunter with the, yes, master.

Yes.

That moment where the girder comes crashing down on Aurak in Warlord, left a mark on 10-year-old me.

[52:33]

I was quite shocked.

Yeah, and when his sound effects goes all wobbly after that, it's, yeah.

So we do have a very clear bottom 3 with Tarrant Aurak and slave because we immediately jump to 42 and 45 points in the middle of the list.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

The character who gets 42 gets more 1st places, then the character who gets 45.

However, the character who gets 45 was a lot of people's 3rd favourite choice.

So at 42 points, we have Dana and at 45 points, we have Su Lin, but Dana was more people's favourite than Su Lin was.

That surprises me.

I thought it would be at least the other way round.

I was expecting them to be around the middle.

What surprised me watching this season back was how well served even if it is animals, but how well served Dana is in the 1st half of the season.

She is really driving a lot of the story.

[53:33]

She's, she's there. really, really strong, much stronger than I remembered.

Because I always thought this was the season where they let Dana down and they didn't do enough for her, but actually she gets a lot to do throughout, at least that 1st half.

And she's always, always brilliant.

Yeah.

There does seem to be a thing that they can only cope with writing for 2 really good female characters at once, and Jacqueline Pierce parks her van on one of those, and then the rest of the season.

You have phases where through this series.

Yeah, like the 1st half, lots of good stuff for Dana, the 2nd half, lots of really good stuff for Sulin.

I think Sulin, finding her groove, or no, the writers, collectively, finding a really good groove for Sulin towards the end of the series, as, you know, the Colin Davis, the writer of gold, said that Boucher told him always gives Sulin the nastiest thing to say in any of her scenes.

She the one who has something nasty to say something.

And he really went with that.

And I think Dana suffers in the 2nd half of being a bit eclipsed by that because she's the nice one.

[54:35]

I want to say nice.

I mean, I mean, she's she's very reliable and she doesn't have any of the sort of foibles that all the other characters have, particularly through that last half.

But then in the 1st half she's having to be Calli in animals in particular, which doesn't work at all where she's trying to use her telepathy to appease the animal.

That's not going to work.

You just shot his friend.

I guess that was originally written for the 2 different characters to do, and then when they weren't sure whether they'd have saloon or not, both of those acts got given to her, which puts her front and centre, but also makes her character just a bit disconnected from itself in some ways.

In a way, Sulin, if she's being given the role of person who says the nastiest thing, we already have one of those, I think, and that's Avon.

And her and Avon aren't too similar, I think.

And I just don't think they ever land with anything for her to do as a character.

Um, and I do think the Glynis is pretty great.

Do you know what I mean?

[55:35]

And has some quippy lines which she handles really well.

She's really good in warlord in particular, I think.

But, you know, Josette, Simon is so, so far better than her, just generally as an actor, and she really, really only ever fails in, in animals.

I just think it's, it's, um, that's a bafflingly strange kind of set of choices that lead to that outcome.

I think she's easily.

I think she's the best actor on the show.

Like, you know.

And not the best character, obviously, but she's pretty great.

I think Glynis is a match for any of the other regulars.

Once they start writing for Su Lin, I would argue, like you said, Nathan, she's one of the best things about Warlord and maybe Assassin as well.

But it is a shame like you were saying, Pete, that Dana loses her kind of pleasant, sarcastic edge that she has in SiriC, where she will just sit there castigating the other characters for inaction and whatever.

She kind of loses that a little bit and becomes a bit more generic.

[56:38]

You know, I've just been watching Josette in the latest Bridget Jones film.

She's reliably wonderful and she's looking radiant.

And there's a moment where Bridget says to her, says to her character.

I love your early work and I sat there thinking, what, animals?

Me, surely.

That brings us to our top 3 and surprising. absolutely no one.

It's the same top 3 we had last season.

Also surprising, absolutely no one.

There's a huge jump in points.

So the top character gets 299 points with the most amount of 1st being 82.

The 2nd character gets 165 points.

With the most amount of seconds at 49 and the 3rd character gets 130 points with the most amount of 3s at 30.

And look, I'm not going to make people guess.

We all know, Servolan is third.

Villa is 2nd and Avon is first.

[57:40]

I'm not surprised by that.

No, she's underused in it.

I mean, she's clearly...

Yeah, her best work is not...

The best stuff is mostly seasoned.

Yeah, yeah.

But yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And you know what?

I think even if she hadn't been underused.

I don't think she would have beaten Villa and Avon.

No, I don't think Avon is so front and centre throughout most of this series that, obviously, he's he's going to win because he's got more to do than anyone else and Darrow is going full Darrow this year and it's a startling performance in a lot of cases, but you can't take your eyes off him the whole time.

It's startling, but but often not actually very good, I think, is a problem.

Whereas Michael Keating, I think, gives his best performances most of this year. and he's really consistently brilliant even when he's not got a lot to do.

So in something like gold, that subtle change where he takes charge after they think Avon and Sulin have been have been killed is really great, and he's really competent at it unexpectedly, and he's got a real edge a lot of the time, and he's not always the victim like he is in orbit.

[59:00]

He's really really good.

I think we've noticed on previous seasons that Michael Keating is able to save anything.

And I think that stands him in good stead this season, especially in the 1st half where things are a bit choppy and rushed and characters are miscaracterized a little bit.

He is just thoroughly consistent all the way through.

And I think of power.

I think that's one of his best performances because Villa is very well served.

And Villa is kind of this binding agent in scenes.

You can reliably turn to him for a bit of comedy or a quick quip or to undermine what's happening in the scene and poke at it or whatever.

Not only the other characters fulfil that function.

Yeah, I always remember that bit in rescue where they're talking about the guns failing, and the way he looks down at the gun that he's got, and then sporting have a gun, you know?

It's just that quiet, silent moment that he's so good at.

I just think that this series benefits now, really, from no, where a series C is very much a series about the absence of Blake and how are we going to factor that in?

[1:00:06]

Now that they've got that kind of over and done with, ironically, considering where this series does end, we know we're not hunting for Blake anymore.

We're not, what are we going to do now?

We not got Blake.

We're going to have heists and missions and most of them will go wrong.

Do it even go right?

Do they want?

They get the teleport and they get the star drive, don't they?

Are the only episodes that they win?

I think there's a bigger problem with Siri C, which is that they're not doing anything.

Do you know what I mean?

Blake gets one or 2 mentions, but basically we're just wandering around the ruins doing things.

There's nothing.

And I think that one of the things that Lorimer brings is a actual shape to the season and a mission statement, which is made clear at the beginning and is there all the way through to the end.

I think that's good.

Wrap it fire round.

What planet would you like to live on?

So just to give the listener a recap of the planets this season, we, of course, have Xenon seen in several episodes, we have Helotrix in Traitor, Casper in Stardrive, Buccol 2 in Animals, Faros in Headhunter, Domo in Assassin, Micron 2 in Games, Vern in Sand, Xeroc in Gold, Maladar in Orbit, Betafal in Warlord, and Gouda Prime in Blake.

[1:01:21]

So, Si, where do you want to live?

What an embarrassment of quarries.

I'm going to go for the one from games because at least it's by the sea and it's really sunny and warm. you have been there, haven't you?

And I have been there several time.

Cole went just before we started recording these episodes and it's a spectacular location is really cool.

Despite the oldest used mining equipment.

Yep.

So, Psy is living on Mecron 2 and hopefully he doesn't get a triangular game cartridge in his back.

That would be about.

Nathan.

I'm gonna live on Xenon, I think, on Xenon base, actually, before the wine runs out.

When I was a kid.

I really, really love the idea of them having a bass and I loved how absurdly 80s it was.

You know, like it's just one Ple 80s with the, you know, waiting room, isn't it?

[1:02:22]

Yeah, yeah, the maidenhair ferns and stuff and like those little sort of computer things with buttons to press.

I was watching Dana Press buttons today.

I thought I could press the hell out of some of those.

I love Tracy Island.

And like it's nice outside, you know, like there's a quarry at one end, but there's quite a nice forest at the other end, you know, so I think I'm definitely there.

They have a big tally, you know, it's good.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Peter.

I'm going to live somewhere that you didn't mention.

I'd like to live on Zondor in Warlords because spending all day going up down the escalator at a shopping mall in a pile in 50 stupor sounds very attractive to me and probably not that divorced from my daily life.

I think Tarrant has the best drugs of the season, though, like better than the pylene 50 that those guys have. in gold has the best drugs of the season.

What a good idea.

Brilliant.

[1:03:23]

And yes, you're right, Peter.

I did miss the planet of the escalators and the jelly numbers on the head.

So thank you, Brendan, how could you?

Pete, where would you live?

I feel being glittery and shiny, so I'm going to live on Xeroc. the planet of gold, where they mysteriously mind gold, despite the fact that the planet has gold all over its surface as well, because it's gold, when you look at it hanging in space, because the people doing the FX shot didn't get the memo that the gold is actually meant to be underground, but actually they're pretending it's vegetables.

I could nip onto the space princess every time I wanted to get stoned and pretend that I was going on a cruise and actually it's just a freight run.

Marvellous.

And finally, Simon.

Well, I have to live on Xenon base as well.

I mean, how could you not?

It's luxurious.

I mean, it's great.

And I love the spiral staircase.

And I wouldn't even mind being Dorian's sea devil twink in the basement.

Simon, I think you would go very well on Gauder Prime amongst all the other thieves, killers, mercenaries.

[1:04:26]

Psych.

And they're the nice people.

I think I'm going to go for Xenon bass as well. add myself in there because yet, you both make a very good argument, particularly, you know, it's it's the one place that doesn't just seem to be one environment.

Yeah, Zenon, here where I come.

Doesn't Xenon sound like a gay nightclub?

Probably.

There's a twink in the basement.

Okay.

Pete, Snog, Mary, dear God, I hope that's a gun in your pocket.

Agrarian.

Keila Belkov.

I mean, he's hoping that you like the bigger gentleman, Pete.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[1:05:28]

Okay, I'm going to marry Keila because he's funny.

He would keep me entertained.

Fair enough.

Yep.

I, I, I'm gonna have to slog Agrarian, um, and, uh, because he, I, maybe he'll take away my youth and I, no, I don't want to do that.

Don't go around.

Okay.

He butter the tack it on funnel for a connubial relationship with you.

Vitachion funnel's got me into enough trouble over the years.

Actually, I'm going to switch.

I'm going to go.

I will I will stog Stratford Jones because at least, I don't know, the Rada is maybe could be a turnoff for some people.

And I hope it's a gun for a glory.

Because of what he did to his lovely Pinder.

Actually, the maltreatment of young Twinks is a theme in this series.

What do you at least look what Totalad does to all of hers.

[1:06:32]

Moving on, though, we're going behind the scenes to look at writers and directors.

Oh, this had better go the way I think it does.

So for writers, I'm just going to go rapid fire and say that there were 4 writers who didn't get a single vote apiece.

And I think for some of these, it's deserved and for some of these, it's not.

So with no votes whatsoever, we have Ben Steed, who wrote Power, Jim Follett, who wrote Star Drive, Alan Pryor, who wrote Animals, and Roger Parks, who wrote Headhunter.

Oh, Roger Parks deserves more, I think.

I think Roger should have got at least a one, in my opinion.

He deserves a retroactive one for children of our on, surely.

You were only as good as your last work.

I mean, he's the most improved writer across the series, I think.

He gives he gives Linda Bellingham, the amazing how the hell are you going to read that line line of, I'm not a cyberneticist, which he says with a meaning smile.

As if she was really telling you what the star sign was. can only make gravy.

[1:07:36]

Moving up with one vote.

And Nathan, if you could keep your reaction to under 10 minutes, it's Bill Lyons for games.

We drink wine tonight?

Who voted again?

It's his 1st science fiction and not just the 1st he's written, the 1st he's ever read or seen.

Not the 1st he's been in.

That's true.

You should not run here.

This is dangerous to run.

As always, we hope there's a white crossover between our listeners and Doctor Who fans.

What are the chances of that?

He wrote the ending to games after Mary Peach gave him a swift kick to the head.

Our next 3 writers all get 2 votes apiece, and they are Rod Beecham for Assassin, Colin Davis for Gold, and Simon Masters for Warlord.

[1:08:38]

And, you know, considering that the big disparity in score between gold and Warlord, I think I think that really speaks to who the top 3 are.

But yeah, I think possibly Colin Davis deserved more, but I'm glad he at least got some votes.

Simon Masters was one of mine.

I don't think he's actually the best writer of the season.

That is clearly either Chris Boucher or Robert Holmes, but I wanted to give him some praise for coming in and doing a really 1st rate 1st time job on Warlord.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And there are so many people who are writing for the series for the 1st time this year, that's that's quite laudable in its last year.

You know, Chris Boucher has gone out and found new authors and they just haven't had maybe the experience that our top 3 have had of writing for the show before or knowing the show inside out, you know?

So I think it's sort of understandable that these people are there.

And also that we do have some who have written consistently badly for the show are write down at the bottom and they are living down to their reputations.

[1:09:51]

Can I add a caveat to that at this point because I think one of the things that series D really suffers from what the show misses terribly is Terry Nation.

Absolutely.

His steady hand would have vastly improved the season.

I think.

And can you just imagine replacing, say, Stardrive animals and games with 3 episodes of the quality of pressure point countdown and God, power play or terminal, which is really miss his clarity of storytelling, I think, and the season would have very different if we'd had some episodes from him.

I think it would have then changed the flavour of it such. because he would have been writing for a different series and I think the series is too different in series D. Maybe because he's absent. right.

I also think that he's displayed in the past an inability to come up with new ideas for something he'd successfully created and did a really good job on.

You know, so I think he basically runs out of ideas.

But, but, okay, if Chris Boucher was feeding him ideas like, okay, Terry, we need an episode about this and it was heavily sort of edited.

[1:10:59]

Maybe I'd agree with you.

I'm going to have to challenge you on that, Simon, because I agree with you in respect of series A, where he was trying to put together 13 episodes and was struggling, but I think the 3 episodes he writes for series B, and especially the 3 episodes he writes for series C, are brimming with ideas and some of the best examples of Blake 7.

There aren't any plagues in series D, either.

People mining at least.

Yes, exactly. here.

There's a radioactive airborne virus at some point.

Oh, there we go.

Yeah.

It's 2 things.

Yes, and a virus.

It's really touristy.

Now I don't think the top writer is going to be a surprise to anyone, but with 71 votes, it's Chris Boucher.

Okay.

Yeah.

And he, you know, he does write the episode that our listeners have declared the best of the season.

[1:12:01]

He writes Blake, he writes rescue, and, you know, he does invent a new format, which doesn't always work, but I think it was John Helm, who was one of our guest gave us a lot of insight into the development of the season, when he joined us.

I mean, Chris Boucher never lets you down, does he?

Ever.

No, no, no.

Chris Boucher's hand is all over the dialogue throughout the season, you know, like it always is.

And he's that steadying presence throughout this.

He's the one who knows the show best at this and without him, the show would really flounder, he keeps the characters steady, generally, he writes brilliant dialogue, and even in an episode, you can always sense where he's come in and just improved things.

You know, he's really, really consistently good throughout the whole 4 years.

And let's use the example of the 1st half of the season, which we do know was put together in a hurry and was, you know, people were chasing their tails a little bit. everyone else comes in and does a rush job.

[1:13:05]

He comes in and writes a perfectly great, awesome episode under the same restrictions.

That leaves Robert Holmes and Taneth Lee in 2nd and 3rd place.

And I can tell you there's one point between them.

Okay, what an amazing couple they would have made.

I would want to invite them to every dinner party or extra dinner party that I don't have.

So they got 22 and 23 second.

Is Robert Holmes with 23 and Tanneth Levy.

Very respectable 22, considering there's only one script.

Which basically means the top 3 this season.

Just substitutes Robert Holmes for Terry Nation compared to last season.

I just think Bob Holmes should be praised all the time by everyone about everything that he ever does because I suspect that he never realised how incredibly great he is.

You know, he's the person who wrote, he's written the 2nd biggest amount of Doctor Who, you know, and he's produced just a variety of really wildly great scripts for Blake 7 over the years.

[1:14:18]

So I'm kind of happy for that.

I think, you know, Tannethlea is a science fiction writer and a literary science fiction writer and you can see that in her script, but he's just a proper, solidly entertaining and funny television writer, and both of his scripts this year are great, I think.

He can turn his hand to anything.

Look on Doctor Who.

You can write spearhead from space, he can write cave zone designing.

He can come over to Blake 7 and right orbit.

They are all wildly. different genres within sci-fi.

And he's like Chris Boucher.

He can turn his hand to any genre within sci-fi and make it work.

I just want to say it as well about Taneth Lee.

You know, we hear stories now from where Doctor Who is at this time and in the years to come, trying to get science fiction novelists in, and them struggling to put together a television script.

And I'm including Stephen Gallagher in that as much as I love Warrior's Gate, you know, even he talks about they had to take out so much stuff.

I'm not a script writer, someone else wrote the script of my ideas.

[1:15:20]

Taneth Lee, who is a respected novelist, comes along to this camp old sci-fi show and gives us sarcophagus and sand.

Do you think part of that could be the quality of the script editor?

Absolutely.

I think it could well be the quality of the script editor they're working with. and Tannifle...

Lack thereof on Doctor Who.

Yeah.

Yeah, and Cannibley was a fan of the show before she wrote for it.

She really enjoyed the 1st year and and loved the characters, particularly Avon and Canny, who she puts into one of her novels.

So you can see this love for the show, sort of coming from her.

She wants to give them really good stuff to work with.

And I think you don't have to invent the world in Blake 7, although you often do, and you have to write something that has a sort of set shape that goes for 50 minutes.

I think Doctor Who's a harder job. than that.

[1:16:24]

Right, speaking of coming in and creating worlds, we move on to directors.

We had five directors this season, in rough order of appearance, we had Mary Ridge, David Sullivan Proudfoot.

Blake 7's 1st Hobbit director.

Yes.

Vivian Cousins, Brian Lighthill, and Victor's Rotellus.

So again, I'm going to start at the bottom and this was presaged earlier by some comments about direction.

David Sullivan Proudfoot only gets 2 votes.

That's 2 unexpected votes.

These things always remind us that, you know, we it's nice.

You know, sometimes we get consensus episodes and yeah, there's people out there who are like shaking their fists at us right now.

I love it.

What a mad reason.

I don't get a Sullivan proudfoot.

I've found a little bit out about.

He was an alcoholic.

He was very difficult to work with.

He was in a relationship with Verity Lambert at the time, if this was being made.

[1:17:29]

He was the director that JNT found cutting Genesis of the Daleks to shreds for the Doctor Who and the Monsters repeat, and JNT had to take over the edit.

So it's, yeah, he's a really difficult and interesting character.

In fact, in a lot of ways, he's very much like George Spenson Foster without the love of camp, really.

And I think it's pretty amazing we got anything decent.

I think he was, was very good at, um, early in his career as a director, but by this point, the alcohol was sort of taking taking its toll.

And I think maybe that shows.

I mean, it's such a relief when we get those location shoot for Assassin directed by Via Lorimer and the difference between the location work and the studio work on that episode's kind of shows, I think.

So, yeah.

I think David Sullivan Proudfoot has a strong claim to being the worst director on Blake 7 because he's given fairly shitty script and makes them worse mostly.

[1:18:38]

Maybe he's challenged by the guy who does Volcano and Dawn of the Gods, but no, I think he's worse.

Well, I had no idea about David Sullivan Proudfall.

Thanks for that research there.

Simon.

And yeah, Peter, I think I think you make a good case because as much as we have a dig at, say, pennant Robertsitis, you know, all the actors say pennant Roberts was lovely, you know, dear pen.

Maybe that was the problem.

Yeah.

Now that's the thing.

It's the old earth shock versus time flight thing, isn't it?

Everyone who worked on other shark had a pretty horrible time because they were whipped like dogs to produce something amazing.

Whereas Time Flight was a hoot and they all had an absolutely lovely time.

It's a lust.

Be mean to your actors.

Coming in next with 7 votes, and I think this could be because he only does one episode, but I don't think anyone could accuse it of being directed lazily, it's Victor's Reitellis.

He's stylish, isn't he?

I mean, you know it's directed by Victors.

[1:19:39]

I mean, anyone who's watched his secret army episodes as well will instantly know the style.

This is a man who is never knowingly underdirecting anything at all.

And he does some really great stuff.

I mean, that shot where Avon grabs Tarant by the neck and pushes him across the set is just an amazing moment, for instance.

There are lots of great moments in Warlord.

I think the thing is that he's got no idea of how to do special effects or what they're supposed to look like.

And so when Finn goes out the airlock.

It's just like, what the fuck is that video effect?

And also, why does dying from a radioactive virus look like that?

And why does it look so much like clinking all your glasses together at the end?

Like all of that stuff is like I think he's marvellous and I think it's visually, really stunning and super interesting.

And I absolutely kind of have a very soft spot for those absolutely bafflingly weird, special effects decisions.

[1:20:42]

Give me that over Pennant Roberts.

What colour shield this wall be?

Beige?

Beige is the future?

Spent in Foster.

What colour should this wall be?

Red, blue, or green, depending on the level?

Just saying this because he's Uncle Victor's.

In fact, he's not Uncle Victor's.

We talked about this on the Warlord episode.

He's actually a distant relative by marriage, but we call him Uncle Victor's in this house.

I think...

I think he directs in poetry rather than prose.

And so I think a lot of warlord is really interestingly put together by someone who's not necessarily au fait with television sci-fi, but he's sort of channelling the things that he's seen and around the ether like Star Wars with the wipes and Flash Gordon with the wigs and all that kind of thing.

And I just think it stands by itself a little bit, but is very interestingly directed, and in some instances very effectively directed.

[1:21:42]

I agree with that.

Up next with 12 votes.

Another newcomer to the series, Vivian Cousins.

He's good. director of games and unfortunately losing a special effect shot that would have explained things, but also the director of sand.

Again, she gets a great performance out of Jacqueline Pierce, and there's just that wonderful thing of having an episode written and directed by a woman that is long overdue for Blake 7.

Again, same as last year with Fiona Cumming.

You know, it just gives it a completely different feel.

Yeah, I'm sure we would have seen more of her if they've been in another series.

Wasn't it her 1st job as well?

Because I know they had Scrabble to get directors, which is why Mary Ridge does so much because they're able to, you know, they're able to twist her arm into doing more than just the one block.

But because it was sort of a late commission and it came back, they really struggled with where to find the directors.

And so you get a lot of young 1st time directors and it goes horribly wrong in some instances, but I think with Vivian and with Brian Lighthill, it's great.

[1:22:50]

Speaking of Brian Lighthill.

Director of Golden Orbit, 36 votes.

They both look so great, don't they?

They both look amazingly good.

And the science fiction stuff, the model stuff.

That shot in the in the shuttle, you know, which is sort of going along with the CSO sort of model work in the in the background and stuff. really good.

Probably.

And the space princess is really beautifully shot and there's that shop where they zoom pan down over the ship to see it then coming sort of front on towards you.

Really great stuff in the docking and he makes the model work tense as well.

They're both just really well paced episodes too.

And like, you know, the talky bits are as dramatic as the action bits.

And sometimes you get a director who's better at one or the other of those, but he nails it both ways, yeah.

Absolutely.

And you can see if we had had a series E, that him and Mary Ridge could have taken the series between them and done something really, really good.

[1:23:52]

Oh, wow.

Seriously with producer Mary Ridge. would have been amazing.

Well, speaking of Mary Ridge, I don't see how you could direct 5 episodes, including the opener and the closer, which, as I've said a few times, our listeners have picked as the top episode of the season and not have received 66 votes, it's Mary Ridge.

I think what the thing about someone like Mary Regent, also Brian Lighthill, is that it's about finding the actors and getting them to be on the same page in a production.

And I think both of them, broadly speaking, I mean, Mary, which has some challenges in some of the episodes which are just unsalvageable.

But even then, I think the episodes can kind of be better to watch because of the fact that everyone is kind of doing the same thing.

Whereas I think often, often the episodes that fail for me more, like something like, you know, star drive.

[1:24:55]

I think it was mentioned in like, I mean, people, I like traitor, but other people don't like traitor as much of what ruins traitor, what Peter, you said before, is the direction, is the fact that you're not, you're kind of getting different people doing different things in different scenes and there's no kind of thought through line, if I can put it that way.

It's like the rehearsal process went awry.

Like rehearsals are meant to get everyone on the same page and get everyone delivering the same vision.

They're all in the same room together, even if they're not going to be in the same room in the studio.

They all get to see what each other's doing.

And I think that's what you get in the when it works really well, it works perfectly.

And it's the thing about confident world building as well.

I think even though orbit and gold exist in very different Blake 7 universes, I believe both of them, and they are both presented in a confident and interesting way, and I would go so far as to say, I think power is the same.

I know it has its detractors, but I think Mary Ridge does a really great job of making power a world.

[1:25:59]

I agree.

Remarkable that you went on to direct terminus.

Don't quite know what.

So, we leave directors behind, and Nathan, Snog, marry.

They're a doctor, honey, Phorbus, Justin.

Dr. Paxton.

Sport for choice.

So I think I'm avoiding Phorbus.

It's always sort of tempting to marry a character who is sort of horribly killed because, you know, at least you don't have to tolerate them for very long.

Um, but I will, I will avoid him.

Um, I guess I could marry Dr. Paxton and then inherit her all her stuff on that planet.

Maybe not.

And I would wait, no, yes.

Yes, and then I could snog Justin because at least that would be age appropriate.

[1:27:01]

So now we know what happens when we stick Nathan in a chair and say Nathan.

You won't kiss him.

You want to kiss him.

You want to kiss him.

It's time to move on to a category that I didn't initially include in the survey, and that is server lackey because I didn't feel they were as well defined as in past seasons, but the group convinced me.

So we had in order of parents, lights from traitor, uh, the captain from Animals who, as Nathan revealed, is played by William Lindsay, who would very shortly afterwards go on to play Zargo in Doctor Who and the state of decay.

Verlis from Assassin, and also the captain from Assassin, and Assistant from Sand.

So.

They don't get names.

They don't last long enough.

So starting from the bottom, and this person did not have any votes until like the 90th survey response, and I was surprised because they're so terribly pretty.

[1:28:05]

It's the captain from Animals played by William Lindsay.

And it might just be because he's in animals.

He has a perfectly spherical head.

Like it's...

Mathematically.

I'm just pulling up his image now and yeah, you're not wrong.

Moving up with 6 votes.

Uh, we have the captain from Assassin who, um, who has sort of like new series Doctor Who Auton Hair.

Like, you know, it's just perfectly parted to one side.

I mean, I think maybe Serverland was taking lessons from Justin with that one because he barely looks like he's out of short pants.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jumping up to 16 votes, we have the assistant from Sand, who does actually get a bit more character.

You know, he hates this planet.

Sorry, that's Thingo from Shada, is it?

No, no, no, it's a phrase.

[1:29:06]

He did raise.

Yes, it's an encyclocate destroy as well.

Yes, that's right.

He's prel...

He's the one who says, yes, pig, no pig, that one.

Yes, yeah.

I knew he was Michael Craz's brother, but I couldn't think of his name.

And he's is he water guard Fisk or water guard Costco?

He's one of the two.

Yes, he's the one who's...

Alter gods.

Yes.

He's the one who's not the bloke from Image of the Fender.

Uh, look, I would say fair enough, him coving the top of the unnamed characters because he has the most character out of the three.

Harry's a nice light stick.

I didn't include Chesco.

Honourable mention to Chesco, but he doesn't particularly work for Servolan.

He seems to work for Reeve instead.

So, yeah.

Uh, so that leaves lights and verlis as our top two.

There is a definitive winner, but there's only 7 votes in it.

[1:30:09]

They're both incredibly gay for different reasons.

Indeed indeed.

So with 45 votes, we have Verlis, which is pretty respectable for someone who doesn't have much bearing on the plot, which means 52 votes, we have pretty pretty lights.

He's amazing, isn't he?

And he's the 1st half Romulan to appear on the show.

He's pretty brave.

But he has that incredible cut glass accent.

The incredible precision.

I mean, I just think he's wonderful.

He's obviously superb in that scene with Jackie at the end, but just showing the president around as well, he's wonderful.

He's just really great.

And his precision goes all the way to his sideburns as well.

Yeah, yeah.

And sideburns and brows are both very characterful.

It's pretty clear from that last scene that Serverland turned the lights on.

[1:31:10]

I mean, Verlis is fun and it's a big broad camp performance and she is a public servant.

You go cracking her voice when she says that.

It's amazing.

Absolutely and her and Jacqueline Pierce.

I always remember there was a quote in Blake 7 magazine where they'd got a picture of her and Jacqueline Pierce just laughing their heads off and it said, the skies above them were bright blue, as was a lot of the language they use.

Just to have been a fly on the wall to see that filming sounds like it was a blast.

I like to think that Verlis is a contraction of Via Lorimer.

You know what?

Well, from Verlis to Vere to Guest Villains.

Much like the server lucky Sleer ally, and also with what I mentioned earlier about top episodes, a lot of these polls with multiple options did quickly move into a 2 horse race and this is no exception.

[1:32:18]

So I'm going to start at the bottom of the list and I'm kind of just going to quickly run through everyone who got less than 10 votes.

With a surprising zero, but I think it could just be the competition.

With a surprising 0, it's Zookan.

Okay.

Atlant...

You don't know what's zero.

Atlan and Reeve both get one apiece.

Getting 2 apiece each are Gunsar, the Android from Headhunter, and Pella, with three, we have Colonel Koot.

And with seven, we have cancer, as in Piri.

His rather cancer eligible for this or not?

I didn't put rada cancer in there because he's not really a villain.

Yes, he is.

Yeah, but he's very a bitch.

Yes, that's true.

He says that with the tone of voice of someone who's been called it himself quite a bit.

[1:33:20]

The Lorrima.

Okay, so just some general thoughts on that bottom eight.

I think actually Pella and Guns are underrated.

I think they're both great.

I think Pella's a fantastic villain.

And I think Gunsari is really good and one of the best things about power.

You know, he's there with his moves out moaning about things.

Like he really is the least impressive alpha male and it's a really, really funny.

It's like Bruce Purchaserly entertaining, isn't it?

Bruce Purchase only not quite so much scenery.

See, Nathan, Powers very good.

Yes, exactly.

I'm going to throw my lot in with quote because I think that Christopher name is absolutely brilliant. in everything, but in this as well, he chews the scenery beautifully in just the right amount.

He's terribly posh and yeah, what's not to like.

They love casting people from Shada in this show.

Yeah, and from Star Trek Voyager.

[1:34:22]

So I just think up against the general, he's fantastic as well.

Just he's absolute kind of, I'm having to be really patient with this moron sort of acting.

I think is just wonderful.

I think Roy Boyd as Zukan is pretty good and deserves far more points than he got there.

Far more points than Atlin, really.

Yeah that's the one I'm really surprised by.

Yeah, I just think he's a bit embarrassing.

Like those scenes at the end where he's yelling about his nylon haired daughter.

Like, it's a little bit hard to watch.

It's not a great performance, I think.

I don't think he's very good.

I agree with you, Si.

I think he is pretty good.

And I think people take against him for the silly orange bun on his head.

It was interesting for me because I've seen him in Doctor Who.

He's in the hand of fear and I've seen him in the new Avengers where he's a last minute replacement for the great Frederick Yeger.

And in both of those, he's quite underwhelming.

Like it just about works in hand affair because he's hypnotised.

But in his role as a villain in the new Avengers target, he's very underwhelming.

[1:35:26]

So to see him here a few years later, and really giving it his all.

Whereas, yeah, Atlan, Zukan has levels.

Atland is not.

And they're both they're both very entertaining to watch, but yeah, I would put Zukan above Atlanta as well.

Who's Zoocan in hand of fear?

Is he the nuclear power plant?

Is the nuclear PowerPoint guy who actually takes the hand into the reactor?

Right.

You say he doesn't look like Sukan because he's got big curly hair in hand to fit.

Yeah, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's got Tarrant hair, basically, at hand.

And look, I think I think maybe Mueller's Android is maybe so low just because...

It is really funny.

Here's the thing I wonder, right?

They put the actor in platform shoes because obviously there has to be another actor or possibly the same actor inside the headless suit, right?

Why not just get a short guy?

We are in high supply.

I'm sorry.

[1:36:26]

I could have played that.

I'm just saying.

And, you know, I just have to pull my shoulders up a bit to the Blu-ray team if we want to reshoot that bit in the corridor.

I'm available.

I do wonder if that if that costume for our headless friend had been less silly, basically.

If he'd been dressed like an actual, like a vampire.

Well, I know, that would be silly also, wouldn't they, want to say?

But he's wearing those big 80s shoulder pads of bright blue and bright red.

It's just not remotely scary.

It does just look like a very tall, headless children's entertainer.

Yeah.

Of course, there's a practical reason for that because they have to fit their head inside the outfit, and so the shoulders have to come out further down below where the shoulders will be, and so they've got to have those big things draped over it.

The whole effect is very silly.

And you know, something else that could have made it work is if Linda Bellingham and the other people on Faros were dressed in something similar, but he's not dressed in anything else.

[1:37:29]

I would have made it much better.

It wouldn't have been... wearing this year.

Are you saying Nicholas Rocker is not across the costuming in a consistent way?

Well, he consistently dresses Jessette Simon as slave.

Let's let's leave it there.

Moving up.

Pun intended, the top 2 are head and shoulders above 3 and four.

So 3 and 4 are very close.

We have 11 and 10.

Alan gets a 10. and Belkov gets 11.

Okay.

I'm struggling to have an opinion about any of that.

Yes, that's...

I think Austin is a good performance, though.

Yeah, Alan, I think, is a really good performance.

She's 17.

It's incredible Wow.

17.

Yeah.

She's really young.

We saw her at the convention last year.

There was a Blake 7 convention and she said, yeah, I was 17.

[1:38:29]

This was I was plucked out of nowhere to come and do this.

Wow, still too old for Justin.

Oh, God. very young to be a Federation officer.

So yeah, she deserves some kudos for that.

Yeah, well, just tie in with the idea of these young fanatics, which was managed to think again and probably is again now.

They're both good performances and she is very good.

Yeah, that impresses me all the more.

And, you know, I think I said during games, I can't tell if Stratford Johns is giving a bad performance or if he's giving a very good dithering performance.

And obviously, at least 11 of our listeners think it's a very good performance and game to Belkov.

Yeah.

Do you know what I think, Brendan?

I think he's giving a Stratford John's performance.

I think he probably got that in everything he was in.

Fair enough. that, yeah, that's true.

That's true.

Okay, so that leaves our top two.

And not only are they very close in score, with only 4 votes between them.

[1:39:30]

They also share 5 letters of their names.

So we have Dorian and Agorian.

Brilliant.

And they're both gay as well.

So there's Roundtable, again, I want to know who you think has won Peter.

I think Dorian's won, but I actually think Agoririan should.

Pete.

I think Agorian comes on top of the Twink consumers.

I'm sure he does I'm so glad I ate a few hours ago.

Si.

Dorian for me, I think he's brilliant, right?

Simon.

I think Agrarian would have won.

And Nathan?

I think I'm with Pisa.

I think Dorian's probably one, but Agorian, should win.

Right.

Dorian received 40 votes and Agrorian received 44.

Oh, good.

Although Dorian is amazing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And look, let me tell you, because we're also talking about potential allies and potential new regulars, we have not heard the last of Dorian.

[1:40:38]

I think Segorian.

That would be amazing.

Brendan, you know the Blake 7 scale of hotness, which runs from Nova to Agorian.

Perhaps it should run from Dorian to Aglorian.

I would agree with that.

The gamut.

Lights is near the top.

You have to give John Savadan a lot of kudos because he comes in knowing exactly what to do with that part and playing it to the hilt.

What is it that generation A call a performance like that?

It's so zesty, that performance.

It's just like, you know.

Yeah, it's just brilliantly camp and gay.

And you know, and he's so different to when he appeared in Blake 7 before when he was old star killer in trial.

Yes, I keep forgetting he's there. the same person. that's brilliant acting.

It just struck me that Pinder in orbit is basically a male Jenny Thomasin from Revelation of the Daleks performance.

And there's a rule.

[1:41:40]

It's, say, what is fishing in the homes and structures for characters there between those 2 in that and this in this.

I mean, it's very cruel to say that Jenny Thomasson was affected by Hoffle's radiation, but I can see what you mean.

I just remember Graham Harper at a convention going, I can't do his accent.

He's got a great accent, but people misunderstood.

I was telling her, oh, be more wretched, be more wretched.

And then everyone thought it was just because she couldn't do anything else.

Oh, that is a fantastic performance in Revelation of the Dalek.

Oh, yes, it's brilliant.

It's operatic, isn't it?

Yeah, it's just like, yeah.

But we mustn't talk about Bill too.

So, Peter, I need to wind up to this.

Snog, marry.

Note perfect.

[1:42:42]

That's the problems that can actually be transcribed using musical notation.

Rada cancer.

Piri cancer. and knee brox.

I think I'd avoid kneebrocks because I don't like the faint whiff of mangan on his breath.

And pineapple.

You can tell he's been.

I think I would snog Rada cancer because, you know, why not?

And I would definitely marry Piri.

I mean you might think I'm awfully silly, but I would definitely do that.

Lovely.

Thank very much.

Having talked about our server lackeys, leer allies, and guest villains.

We now move on to who would be a good ally for the crew.

[1:43:43]

So the nominees were, in order of appearance, Dorian, Phorbus, Dr. Paxton, Guerin, Justin, Keeler, and I put them all together, Borva, Chaucer, Meda, and Lod from Warlord.

Good grief, lod.

Now, does anyone want to take a guess as to who of these people got 0 votes?

The last vanish, yeah.

It's Justin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yes, our listeners clearly agree, no one likes a nonce.

You should have lived on the planet Beta Files.

Moving up with one vote, clearly a fan of BBC press on beards and the classic Doctor Who story, The Caves of Andrazani.

Guerin from games.

[1:44:43]

Yeah.

Well, he does get shot twice.

Fatally shot twice in that episode, which I thought was impressive.

Impressive achievement.

And it even moves shoulder the 1st shot.

It's all right.

I believe he was 50 at the most.

So, you know.

With a pretty respectable 3 votes, we have Forbus from Traitor.

They couldn't add him to the crew.

The Scorpio's not really accessibility friendly, is it?

With a surprising 5 votes, which is more than one vote per person.

It's Borver, Chaucer, metre and lot.

So, do you know, I'm giving them votes. and I'll tell you why.

One of the best things about Warlord, I think, is that it starts in the middle of something and things have changed and they've been doing stuff and now they're working together with a group of people and they're stupid people, like whatever.

But it's playing seven, right?

But there's something about that setup, which is unique, I think, to Blake 7.

[1:45:45]

Perhaps the closest in vibe, I think, is in children of our on.

Do you know what I mean?

When you've got the people in the in the control tower.

But here they're sort of working together and they're doing things and there are things happening and people coming and going and stuff.

And I like that.

I thought that was maybe the best feature of warlord.

And so I'm I'm giving them a point, I think.

It's very interesting that Xenon base is now no longer underpopulated.

It's not just the 5 of them walking around in Trooper Aurak.

They've got people and like extras around everything.

It makes it really interesting.

It put me in mind, a voice from the past, where you have all of those people on the liberator with them, and it gives to show a different dynamic.

Yeah, fair.

I think some of those votes may also be for Chelsea's abs, which is totally acceptable, in my opinion.

Yeah he's looking good.

Yeah, looking good.

Yeah, but Brendan Abs are only Abs. Now, we really do take a jump here with 25 votes, and this is possibly unsurprising given that he was also in the villain category.

[1:46:55]

It's Dorian.

Because he is set up as a potential ally.

Absolutely.

And you can absolutely see how he could fit in with the crew with him being like Avon slightly out for himself.

Yeah, it would be a really interesting dynamic that he I think he would face off against Avon pretty well and sort of challenge the leadership.

You can absolutely see how it could play out.

I think in the episode itself, we were trying to work out whether anyone might have thought that he was the new guy.

And because you'd never know sort of what sort of publicity and stuff's been done for shows like this at this point in time.

And I think probably not just because they were always going to replace Callie with a new girl.

Do you know what I mean?

I think we just know that it's going to be Soolian in that 1st episode.

But he is great.

Like, he does a range of things.

I think, you know, is he the best guest actor in the, maybe he's the best guest actor in the season.

[1:47:55]

Although Simon, you sort of said that he was perhaps too good to be a regular, I seem to think.

Like, he's actually...

Simon did indeed say that.

It doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would say, surely.

Well, the kind of actor that would do a week on a show like this was not going to sign up for 2 years.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

At the same time, Simon.

And I said, so they must have had auditions and he came in and they went, hmm, guest actor. barber came in and they went, uh, regular.

But he is kind of does give the kind of performance, and he's the kind of person that if, you know, in a different universe where you watched it in 2 halves of a separate night, you could imagine, and you had that sort of time to kind of think about what could be about to happen.

I probably imagined a universe where he does join them.

Because, you know, I mean, it would just work so well.

But yeah, he's too good.

[1:48:56]

You can totally imagine if they couldn't get Stephen Pacey back, you know, Dorian, pilot of the ship, et cetera, et cetera. antagonistic towards Avon.

Yeah.

Right.

So again, we have a top 2 who are very close in votes. 46 to 43.

Keila has one with 46 to a very respectable 43 for Dr. Plaxton.

I just thought with her, you have an older woman and then you have a kind of interesting dynamic with her and Avon, and it's early in the season where you might expect a new character to come on board.

And certainly, I think that was some of the discussion that we had about her how well she would have fitted in.

Like, again, I think probably Roy Kinnear is someone who is also too good to do 30 episodes of the show.

So there's that.

Any other thoughts on either of those too?

Can I ask for someone who's missing?

Yes.

Diva.

David Collings.

[1:49:56]

Surely he's.

How old do you have joined the Scorpio crew?

I know I know he's leaving his run a little late to do that.

But, you know, to launch him into series E. I mean, you know, he's he's just he's just got this program written all over him.

He's always brilliant and everything we see him in.

Is there some sense in which we think maybe he is being set up in that way in that final series?

Because we blow up the premise really early on, like really quite early compared to what happens in terminal?

Maybe we imagine, you know, we have a base, we have Blake, we have, you know, maybe Blake doesn't survive, but we have new characters.

We've got Alan, we've got David Collins.

Maybe we do think that this is the series E setup.

Can you imagine them flying from planet to planet in one of those little hopper things.

I'm I'm kind of with you there in the, you know, Diva and Blake relate to each other in a slightly Blake Avon way, and Blake and Klein relate to each other in a slightly Blake Jenner way.

[1:51:02]

I think there is that effort, as you say.

Simon, you'll be happy to know that moving into our next section, which is on new regular.

There were a few people who wrote in diva.

And I'll tell you how many in a few minutes.

Except Paul Darrow turned around and said there's only one diva on this crew.

And that's Jacqueline Pierce.

Did anyone did anyone write in for Gambit to replace Aurac?

Gambit was a right in.

Did anyone write in 1st or act 2 to replace Aurac?

No one wrote it or act two.

Zorac 2, just the box of flashing lines.

Yes.

So I'm going to quickly go over just some of the single write-ins.

And quite a few of these actually come from Stardrive.

So I'm going to put all them together.

All of the space rats because it'll be something new and totally bonkers.

[1:52:06]

Got that right.

Atland.

That big fucking asteroid?

Is that one of them?

And the space rat sofa got a write in to give some...

Well, that has been a recurring guest star as it is.

Some comfier chairs for Scorpio's flight deck.

No, no, that space rat Sofra was going to come in and do one episode, but couldn't be asked to do 13.

It's too good.

Sulin, if only the writers had thought of that, someone says.

This took me a little while to understand what they meant, but someone said Sleer, as in the real Sleer whose identity has been assumed.

Ah, which was a very interesting idea.

And he votes for the sea devil.

Oh, come into it.

Reeve?

From Sand?

Dorian Sea Devil as a drinking partner for Villa.

[1:53:07]

Someone said kneebrocks.

Oh, you see, I think that is quite cute.

I can't quite see him as a regular, but the dynamic's interesting.

Yes.

Yes.

What, kneebrogs or the sea devil drinking muddy of villas?

Well, both assignment, of course.

No, knee Brocks, because he brought out different sides of different characters.

Yes.

Gambit, to give Villa a friend.

And that's an interesting idea because it's kind of like Aurak is Avon's computer.

Give Villa a computer, you know.

Like a house with 2 cats, as I said, that adapts to one of each of the inhabitants of the house as their particular human.

God, I can just imagine that bitch fighting Blake between slave orac and Gambit.

Someone suggested Kate from power?

She's very orange, isn't she?

Did anyone think that?

Like she'd kind of overdone the spray tan?

No, maybe it's just me.

Well, the listener who suggested that said, a useful power, and also, you know, we've lost our telepath, but also an ally to the Cesca, because we're on this planet.

[1:54:12]

Also, has Vaseline in her pocket for any tight stretches?

Yep.

Now, there were a couple of answers I didn't understand, which I'm going to read out in full.

Fred Elliott's Space Butchers, I say Fred Elliott's Space Butchers.

Any ideas?

John Sappendant, who played Fred Elliott in Coronation Street, who was a butcher, who tended to repeat his lines and someone would say, I do this.

I say, I assume there's a vocal pick that he had, so...

Hoffles radiation, I say, Hoffles radiation.

Okay.

Cool.

Here's another one.

I didn't quite get because I don't think this actor is in this episode, but I could be wrong.

Ken Masters in Sand because Ken Masters. instead of a massive speedboat.

He has a massive dildo shaped spaceship where he travels the galaxy, nobbing posh, Rada trained actresses and then double crossing them.

[1:55:15]

I'm basically saying space Howard's way.

Yeah, so Stephen Yardley, who plays investigator Reeve, is Ken Masters, who is the sort of sneezing man from Howard's way.

Spends lots of time shouting into mobile phones or just jousting off. draped across his shoulders.

Right.

So Reeve actually gets 2 votes.

There we are.

And the final single votes.

And I'm pretty sure this person said this last season as well.

Blake to piss off Avon.

Chaucer, for the hair, not for the abs.

And Justin, for the raw sexual tension.

You insist.

Oh, sexual tension from Ong.

Actually, Og, bring Og on board.

He's exactly Og.

Always horny.

Yeah, everyone needs a pet.

Please note, I've only reported the ones so far.

[1:56:16]

August is still in the running.

Right.

So next up, we have the twos. 2 votes for Pella, including one who says we could have added an extra 10 minutes to Blake when she got shot.

We also have Forbus, and one person has just said headgear.

Okay.

Yep.

Yep.

We have 2 votes for Aglorian, although I suppose with Fred Elliott Space Butchers, We have 3 votes for Agorian.

And we have 2 votes for lights, pretty, pretty lights.

Both people suggest that he joins the crew.

So not that he's a replacement for Travis.

One person says he joins the crew and is basically then a double agent for Sleer.

Having someone who useless secret as a member of the crew, would have opened up some interesting plot twists later.

He could have helped the crew to undermine her with what he knew.

But everyone in the crew knows her secret.

[1:57:16]

I know.

Okay.

I just learned not to mention that they know it.

Are we still doing the thing of pretending we're, yes, forgot.

She killed the dinner lady.

But the other person who voted for light said lights in a similar manner to how Tarrant was originally planned.

You don't know if he's good or not.

At the end of the season, he takes the place of Arlan in Blake.

Oh.

Ooh.

That could be a thing.

Also, in the 2 vote category is Vina.

One person has said, Linda Bellingham in it, but someone else has said, for reasons that would reflect poorly on me.

And followers on Blue Sky may recall, I alluded to someone having impure thoughts about a guest stop, and this was it.

Oh Okay, moving on to the threes.

We have Alan, a reformed veteration officer could have blurred a few lines.

[1:58:18]

And she could have stayed there, you could have got a good tension from the issue.

I mean, they do in the episode, but they could have gone further with the whole, should be tempted to betray everybody, but then it doesn't or something, you know.

There's mileage in that, isn't there?

Absolute.

And the original idea for the character that was very quickly dismissed was that she was Serverland's daughter.

So just imagine if that had been a reveal sort of down the line.

That would have been, especially if she had sided with the crew, you know, yeah, that could have been...

On the sound episode, we decided that Silverland was going to turn up with twins in series E, one of which with curly hair and one with a very severe bulb.

That would have given a reason for Serve Land to turn up at the end of Blake, where she could step in and look at Ireland, say, she was mine.

I felt her die.

Another 3 is Major Hunda, and everyone suggested, you know, a more moral foil, and also someone said another freedom fighter this time played by a good actor.

[1:59:24]

But only if he washes his fucking face, though.

I'm sure he would, you know.

He's in the Martians, Nathan.

Give him a break.

Okay, all right.

I wasn't a hairdresser anyway, not an academic.

Right.

And getting 3 votes is OG.

Oh, OG because he's OG.

It's an OG thing.

It's an old thing.

But had Dana thrown over a cliff every episode.

And I'm not quite sure what this means, but Og, he's the man on the Clapham omnibus and would have been an excellent chef.

Okay.

What everyone says about him.

It could have a role doing something unspecified on the Scorpio, come in for 30 seconds every episode, roar a bit, and then just go back to doing whatever it does.

[2:00:27]

Isn't that Terrence role?

Moving into the fours.

We have Ziona.

Same argument as Dr. Paxton, the woman, the crew could use a woman scientist. and unlocking interesting traits in Tarrant and Su Lin.

Different hairstyles every episode, please.

Ziona obvious reasons.

Not obvious.

And Simon, this is your moment.

Diva.

Oh, God.

Ah, for four.

Yes.

You thought it was going to be you, didn't you, Simon?

I thought he's going to stage.

Yes. led me up the garden path there Brennan.

Yeah, they already have a pissy computer.

Two people said, look, it's David Collings.

How can you not?

Diva might have done the whole alliance building thing without killing any of the actual allies.

[2:01:32]

Also could have made Blake more open and acted as a good conduit between Blake and Avon as a sort of more level-headed character.

Yeah, so people are like, like you, someone, looking ahead to how you could, how you could do a new series.

Right. moving up to 6 votes.

We have cancer.

Which cancer?

Right, okay.

Real cancer.

Yeah.

Does she get to kill someone every episode?

Like that one.

She would just need to turn off the lights on Scorpio flight deck and have everyone wander around.

No, she can't kill someone every episode because that bitch is probably dead already.

Ongoing jeopardy.

Merciless Cunningham camp, she'd fit right in.

She also wouldn't be the worst performance of a regular we've ever had.

She should have replaced Serverland and killed them all at the end.

[2:02:34]

She ends up dating Avon.

I wanted to kill people with a variety of clockwork toys.

She's got a little clockwork spiders.

Never a tab.

Like as a spider, it's a centipede.

Whatever.

A little mouse.

Ch crab.

It's a small off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic warden.

Adding an element of will she won't she shag or murder Tarrant?

And imagine the gravitas Carolyn Holdaway would bring to the final scene of Blake.

Oh, that would be amazing.

Everyone else is dying in slow motion.

She's there going, oh.

Now, we move into double digit territory.

And we have 2 people very close for number two.

And look, just to let you know, our top 3 are Dorian, Keeler and Dr. Paxton.

[2:03:34]

The order is not the same.

With 18 votes, it's Dr. Paxton.

So people say, you know, another woman character, a scientist, more level-headed, a mature, assured lady despairing at the rest of the crew's antics, one listener says.

I think she would have balanced Avon's character and hopefully Darrow's overacting.

The rational voice of the team after the loss of Cali.

Definitely.

Yeah, yeah.

Bring in Dr. Paxton for animals instead of Dana.

That would put a whole different complexion on Dana. if Dr. Paxton had had an affair with her.

So we can make who a recurring catchphrase?

If only so the show could have more Barbara Shelley, which is fair enough.

You know, a lot of people said to balance out Avon, and someone even pointed out, Avon should have realised Scorpio does not have self-repairing tech.

It's good to have someone who understands how to how to repair starships.

[2:04:39]

I was very upset on 1st transmission when she was incinerated.

She was deliciously firm.

I presume this respondent means attitude.

I certainly hope so. never know.

So with one vote more than Dr. Paxton, we have Keeler.

Okay.

With 19.

A lot of people have said, because it's Roy Kinnear, which is very good, in my opinion, they said he's he's a proper crook, he's properly devious.

He's fun, he's funny.

Best chemistry with the cast and clashes with Su Lin were excellent.

He's just a decent enough bloke getting by in a shitty universe.

I don't really think Keel is that decent, though.

He has that crossing a line moment, doesn't he, where he shoots the doctor just for the hell of it pretty much?

Yeah.

No, because he thinks it's cool, doesn't he?

He thinks they're going to think he's cool because they're such assholes.

And then they kind of turn on him, even though they're killing people all the time.

It's just like, seems very unfair to me.

Bunch of hypocrites.

Yeah. screw those guys That could be an ongoing thing.

[2:05:42]

Everywhere they go, they kill everyone and then he pulls out his gun and goes, I can do this too.

And they're like, he kills the wrong people.

Servolan turns up.

He just brings out a gun and shoots and they're like, what are you doing?

She's got 8 episodes this season.

Just before we get to number one.

Nine people actually said they didn't want to bring anyone else on board and one respondent even said, this is my favourite crew lineup.

Yes, I'd agree with that, right?

Certainly mine.

Just before we do which number one, Brendan, if it's not Pinder, I'm going to be quite annoyed because he would have been an amazing edition, sitting up the back of the Scorpio flight deck glowering at everybody.

That would be amazing.

Right.

Well, with 29 votes, it's Pinder.

No, it's Dora.

Wow.

Another, another, well, not a twink age before his time, a twink aged quite far after his time.

[2:06:44]

Sorry.

Sorry, didn't hear that.

Dorian.

It is Dorian.

It is Dorian, which is Dorian again.

Dorian, how can Dorian be entered into so many categories?

Shouldn't there been like a regulation against that?

See, this is the problem I had. like there are blurred lines between who's an ally who's a villain who's supporting Serverland.

Yeah, this one was difficult. together.

But also, you got to remember in this category.

This is viewers writing in.

So 29 people have written in...

Wrote in Dorian unprompted.

That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, Simon, maybe entering a number of things at the same time was one of his vices.

Maybe, maybe the sea devil in the basement can have a say in what's happened there.

Reveal all.

Well, isn't it interesting that that that one character can be can leave such an impression and people can see all sorts of different things about him.

It's a mark of what Chris Boucher did with that character, really.

[2:07:46]

It's yeah, he's really multifaceted and very, very good.

What's really great is people have sort of come up with ways he could have been utilised throughout the series.

The salvage merchant version, not the matters of box of frogs one at the end, please.

You know, you can't maintain that over a year.

Someone else said he's not dead at the end of rescue.

He's incapacitated, and he turns up throughout the series getting older and older before finally being a part of the finale as well.

Sounds great.

Yeah.

Lots of people have said good foil for Avon.

Lots of people have said he's very pretty, like also hot, partly for the eye candy.

Okay, 2 people have said that.

Some people have said like, you still had the reveal of what's going on, but you wait a few episodes.

The basic consensus seems to be untapped potential for Dorian.

[2:08:49]

Yeah.

Simon.

Snog, marry, it's science gone mad.

Muller's Android, OG, and Gambit.

Well, I'm obviously marrying Gambit.

I mean, that's just the easiest choice in the universe.

It's science gone mad.

Now that's the hard one.

I think, uh, I think, I think definitely.

Oh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Oh Oh, there's no way in hell I can snog og.

So I have to, I have to snob the Android.

Because I just couldn't.

I just really couldn't.

It handles to hold onto at least.

Which did are you snogging, exactly?

Yeah, exactly.

You couldn't just snog the lazandroid. did expect you to give him head.

I'm sure I could find.

I'm sure I could find something appropriate and I'd be more confident that it was sterile.

[2:09:50]

Oh my goodness.

We come to something which was quite controversial last season, and that is picking a character to write out.

Aren't they all written out?

Two people answered that.

Who would you shove overboard on the Titanic?

Yeah, sure.

One person just said all of them were written out and another person said, all of them, in say, a bunker all gunned down to death.

Did people mention Callie?

I think they could have written her out.

Two people did mention Kelly.

Callie, both basically said, but I'd follow the original plan of getting rid of her part way through.

Okay.

That's cheating.

That's keeping her, really.

One person says Cali, mid-season, up the anti-by losing one of the original, long underserved characters, but not a von or villa and not offscreen, which agreed.

[2:10:54]

One person suggested I'd have her in the 1st few episodes and then die activating the star drive.

Imagine how chilling.

What about Cali?

Who?

Ooh.

Yeah.

I mean, the planned death for Cali would have been pretty awful with her thrown out of Serverland ship and... in animals.

Yeah.

In the Aspro turf. you know, yeah.

Yeah, she looked at that script and script and said, I'd rather tie off screen in a bunker.

I'm sure it.

Two words.

That's it.

I like to think that they could have, instead of dying off screen in a bunker, they could have just said, I have to go now.

Aron needs me.

And then a caption on screen saying, Kelly died on her way back to her home plant.

Kelly's gone with Jenna and Blake.

Controversially, one person suggested getting rid of Avon.

Wow, okay.

[2:11:55]

Because Paul Darrow's hammery spoiled the season for me, and he'd been brilliant in past episodes.

It was such a shame.

Interesting.

Yeah, valid.

Yeah, yeah.

I think, yeah, it's about it's a valid criticism.

Interestingly enough, one vote apiece for 2 behind the scenes figures.

Ben Steed.

Oh, wait a minute, he's not a character, is he?

More of a caricature.

Yes.

And a very detailed description of Chris Boucher.

Oh, they would get rid of Chris Boucher.

Yeah.

Why?

If this is you.

I apologise for not reading out the whole thing, but you've given me a lot to work with here, which is great.

He keeps hiring Ben Steed.

What is with the idiotic serverland sleer stuff?

How did she lose the presidency?

Who were her backers?

Were they loyal?

Who really controlled the Federation?

Why not explore any of that?

Traitor.

Oh, is it server man?

Daft.

Rescue should have been a two-parter.

Another day of filming with fake Blake, Callie, and Avon.

[2:12:58]

Dorian should have rescued Serverland first.

Yeah, there's some really interesting ideas here.

Um, Sulin should have been an engineer who knew Dr. Paxton.

Why didn't they try going and hunting down another DSV from the system?

Yeah that's true.

This person says, I love series D or the Paul Darrow show, as I call it.

It's mostly fine and good.

With unfortunately, some of the worst TV ever broadcast.

I know it was a rush commission and crisp Boucher was under a lot of pressure.

He does turn it around and Blake is wow, but again, we're Serverland.

Actually, the mistakes are made up by a big part in the 2nd half.

As I say, this is with regret.

Anyway, fantastic podcast.

Please do Big Finish too.

Warship was superb.

Hopefully animated on the series C Blu-ray.

So, thank you for that wonderful description.

What do we think of those ideas for Boucher?

[2:14:00]

I can't say I completely agree with much of it, ideas. dare I say?

I think, yeah, no, I don't think that's fair comment, sorry.

Yeah, I'd have to say if you want to kill this series, Stone Dead, get rid of Chris Belcher.

I can understand that if the series were to continue into a series E, you would need to start looking at a succession plan, but I don't think he's, I don't think he's at the point in this season that you could say he's past it.

Fair enough.

I think, like, a lot of theories that we're hearing are are just not the show that we have.

Do you know what I mean?

So these things where a character comes and there's a long game arc thing and something's revealed about them.

That's not what the show is.

The show is we do an adventure every week.

And you can see, we're introducing a crucial new character for the final year.

We've lost Callie.

She's been with us all along, and we put no effort at all into establishing who she is as a person.

[2:15:03]

And we think that's bad and weird and wrong, and in a way it is, but it's not what the show is.

Like, the show just isn't that.

And so, a whole heap of kind of, of, of things that we're hearing from people are things that are just not what Blake 7 is and and I'm kind of glad that Blake 7 does what it does instead.

Yeah, it feels like those are things that would happen in a genre TV show now.

Now, exactly. all of those things and you're applying that to something that was made 40 years ago when the sensibilities of TV were very different.

You could absolutely do that with Blake 7.

The format would allow that, but it wasn't what was done here in 1981.

And, and, you know, they even considered it with the character of the captain, who they were going to introduce in series 3, who was going to have some complicated backstory and we were going to have someone who butted up against David and we weren't sure who he was and all of that sort of thing.

[2:16:05]

And they rightly said, no, we're not doing that.

We just need, uh, you know, like an attractive male lead to, you know, fight with Avon occasionally and look pretty.

And you know, that's how the show works.

The show is a different thing, there's sort of an arc.

There's sort of ongoing arcing series, B and D. But they're very light.

And that's what was always going to happen, I think.

And Nathan picking up on what both you and Cy were saying.

I think in genre television all of the time.

In fact, in television of the time, no, you can't play those kinds of long games.

And so what characters rely on is a really great 1st episode.

And so Dana and Tarrant both got that. which is why they are set up so well.

And the way that this series comes together and the rush and the fact that Jan Chappell wasn't going to do it means that Su Lin is denied that and that's the problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, even Callie's 1st episode is all about establishing who she is as a person, isn't it?

[2:17:06]

way back then.

Yeah.

Right.

So next with 6 suggestions is Villa.

And most people who've suggested getting rid of Villa are actually suggesting that orbit goes the other way.

Wow, that would have been really dumb.

Yeah.

One person suggests you do it in the 2nd last episode and Villa goes out trying to get one big score.

Which, you know, is also appropriate for the character.

Yeah, I wonder, do the others, does anyone else know that what Avon's done and does that become something that haunts Avon at the end of the?

We're always watching this with our knowledge that Blake is the last episode, which ironically, they didn't think at the time, did they, for certain?

that it was written as a cliffhanger, not a not an ending.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Interesting you should say that because 2 people who suggested getting rid of Villa in orbit.

One person says, Avon just tells everyone that Villa was pissed as a fart and ejected himself from the airlock, mistaking it for the bathroom, totally believable.

[2:18:15]

The other side of that is no one except Aurak and Avon know the truth, but the rest of the crew suspect the hell out of Avon.

Suspicion, paranoia, distrust ensue.

Now again, that's some of that arcing that we're talking about.

Also, it's a good idea.

And I should correct myself.

The person who suggests getting Villa to leave in the 2nd last episode with some big score is actually saying don't kill him off.

He gets a big score and settles down somewhere with lots of money.

So, I mean, again, I don't think it's the kind of thing that Blake 7 does, but certainly it would have been very interesting character wise for Avon to kill Villa and that being the thing that sent him over the edge.

Yeah, yeah.

Even then, though.

So, uh, 7 people have said Aurak, a lot of people think he's surplus to requirements.

Yeah, I was going to say if I was voting for someone, I'd probably vote for Aurak to be written out because I think he's done what he can do in the show.

Yeah.

People have suggested some interesting ways to get rid of him.

He just gets bricked when they push out a software update, obviously.

[2:19:19]

He becomes a doorstop.

An episode where the villain of the week takes him apart and he can't be repaired.

Destroyed by the Android in headhunter. to force the crew to go back to basics, finally captured by the Federation, and Avon reluctantly destroys the ship, he's on to stop him going into Serverland's hands.

So yeah, there's some good ideas there.

Next up, with 8 votes is slave.

On the other side of that, some people found him cringy, annoying.

He wasn't really needed.

He was more irritating than Aurak.

All part of the monochrome misery of series D. It's yellow.

There's yellow.

So, um, 12 people didn't want to get rid of anyone, and that's fair enough. 14 people.

Said Sulin.

[2:20:19]

Not distinct enough from Dana.

Their roles are interchangeable, but get rid of her in a massive Bonnie and Clyde gunfight.

Lack of development, Sulin, because Cali would have survived, Avon just wouldn't have purchased Sulin skill.

I like her.

She wasn't given enough to do.

She's just there to make up the numbers.

Keep the hair extensions.

Give them to Siona.

Festoon them around the flight deck, I think.

Like Christmas lights.

It was like nylon, we'd have had...

Next up, with 15 votes is Servolan.

Okay.

I can see this Yeah.

At the hands of Dana, who also snuffs it.

Wow, bloodthirsty.

She deserves a proper exit.

I'd have written her out before the final episode to keep the focus on the crew and Blake.

Perished with the liberator rather than be made to put up with this nonsense. cut her from most of the series, but do bring her back for Blake for a final showdown.

[2:21:20]

She's experiencing villain decay.

The change embraced for the series means we could embrace a new villain.

Wait, so someone who's not Jacqueline Pierce.

Yeah.

Yeah, lots of people, lots of people just saying the characters outstayed her, welcome.

The slayer plot doesn't do her justice.

Have the Scorpio crash into her for irony.

I'm not sure how that's ironic, but okay.

Yeah, she wouldn't want to steal Scorpio, would she?

So any thoughts on getting rid of Serverland?

Unthinkable.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, impossible.

I could kind of see it because of the very confused Sleer Servoland thing, and obviously this is part of them.

She's pretending to be Sleer.

She's really Surfland. complicated.

[2:22:25]

It's such a shame she's not Serverland, Serverland, and in power and all of that.

I can completely understand why people would suggest that.

Because of the sleer thing.

We're not getting Servoland at her finest.

I think I can absolutely see why Jacqueline Pierce was not happy about this.

And the bizarre decision to keep her separate from the crew a lot of the time, I think, really affects the show and the situation.

So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't get rid of her at all, but I can understand why people would think that would work and you could have a new villainess in.

But if Jacqueline Pierce is suddenly available, why wouldn't you have her?

Absolutely.

Okay, now with slightly more votes, it's Dana with 18.

And pretty much it all comes down to...

The writing isn't doing the character justice.

Everyone likes Gisette.

[2:23:26]

Many suggestions that she goes out in a blaze of glory taking down Serverland, and one person even says if they really wanted to do series E, you redo the ending in such a way that Dana can be the one holding the guards back while everyone else escapes.

And that's how Dana goes out is a great suggestion I see there.

But in the other room.

We just say that she's doing that.

That's right Yes.

There are 100s of guards out there and Dana's holding the rules.

Would have been great if Dana's last word was an off camera.

Blake.

Some of the other suggestions say perhaps going out in star drive to save her from the shame of doing animals.

Or flip animals and Justin kills her and Avon nukes his lab in revenge.

I mean, I suppose in a very real way she does die in animals, so, you know.

Yeah, several times.

[2:24:27]

Along with the viewer.

Just going through this.

I have found a couple I've missed.

So just before we get to number one, I'm just going to say 2 people want Justin to have been killed even earlier.

Before animals.

Sometime during voice from the past, I think.

One person says, kill off Travis in season four.

So we have 2 more seasons of him.

I know that's not what you meant, but that's my answer.

But a different person each year.

Exactly, each season has a different. his legs.

One person says, does the flight deck of Scorpio count because my, oh, my eyes.

If not, write them all out, but spin the show off to Avon ousted present Serverland, an Aurac flying around the galaxy trying to steal tech, credits valuable minerals, and not caring about the little people.

[2:25:28]

It is the 1980s after all.

That is a show I'd watch.

So that brings us to number one.

A very convincing number one with 27 votes.

If you say Avon, I'm going to kill you.

It's not Brendan's fault.

He's in charge of a survey.

It's his fault.

It's Tarrant.

Oh, that's nice.

Some comment includes Kill Tarrant in the terminal explosion.

A few people think that Servolam would have killed him in sand.

Not interesting, never liked his smugness.

He's nicer and less abrasive, but it isn't obvious why.

Serves no purpose.

Tarrant, because he's Tarrant, replace him with his surprise triplet who has different hair after a terrible accident.

[2:26:29]

Would that be Diva Taran, then?

Yes, David Tara David.

Diva Tarrant is alive.

Yeah.

In a dramatic moment, he develops insight into the brown blanc mange that is his hairdo and is too embarrassed to stay.

Tarrant, it's all his fault.

Villa snaps and fights him to the death.

But some people want him to have died heroically, but even someone who says, Tarrant, in a suitably heroic death, he's just a bit of a dick.

But one person suggests he develops a drug addiction.

They've all got flaws, but I think Tarrant has the potential to be written out and come back as a guest before being killed off in Blake.

So it's not all written out of hatred, but a lot of it is written out of hatred.

No, sorry.

Drug addicted Tarantin Gold is pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, hatred is perhaps a strong word, but I think, you know, people are kind of saying with Dana, it's because the part isn't being done justice.

[2:27:32]

People are saying with Tarant, the part kind of doesn't work.

Like, someone's pointed out, having a great pilot on the liberator, well, the liberator flies itself, having a great pilot on Scorpio, removes some of the drama of Scorpio being a crap ship.

It does take talent to fly a dead ship, though.

That's true.

Yeah, that's true.

I've heard that That discussion of Terence's hair brings us to campus episode.

And I'm just going to race through the bottom 11 because there's a bit of a gap in votes after that.

The bottom 11, the bottom 11.

So with no votes, and therefore the butchers episodes of the season, we have traitor and Blake.

Traitors, one of the Butchy Steppers.

Crater is not one of the Bush's episodes of the season.

Those fairy lights in the Federation headquarters are pretty Butch, I think.

[2:28:36]

How about Servoland's feathers?

But it's called men swimming up sewage pipes to do something.

It also has lights and Christopher name, but anyway.

With one vote apiece.

It's Headhunter, which has possibly the campus title for an episode and rescue.

Rescue only got one vote.

That's also, that's also nonsense.

Never mind.

Yep.

Power gets to, and I can understand that.

I think there's an argument to be made for power to be camp, but it would be a very divisive argument.

With 3 votes apiece, we have games and sand, 4 votes for animals, 6 for gold, 11 for warlord, which I think is entirely for the wigs. 13 for Stardrive, which again is probably for the weeks.

So that leaves orbit and assassin.

[2:29:39]

I bet it's assassin.

It's a real toss up.

No, it's not.

Well, the leader is ahead by 15 points.

Wow, okay, that's a convincing win.

It has to be orbit.

It's 47 to 32.

Okay, so we have, I've heard votes for orbit.

I heard votes for assassin.

We're 32. is assassin.

Yeah.

Meaning.

I don't know anything.

Orbit has, you know, a very loud gay man in it, but but Assassin kind of fails in all sorts of spectacular ways. by being too over the top.

Do you know what I mean?

But yeah, but no, but can you, okay, but okay, well, I suppose there's 2 different definitions.

If there's there's successful camp and there's unsuccessful camp.

I think it's successful. highly successful camp.

Unless convincing.

I think orbit's a better episode, but I think, I think assassins definitely can.

[2:30:44]

And you've got Verlas and you've got Ben Os and his fucking abs and you've got, you know, just all of that stuff.

Rada cancer.

The, the, the, the, the, the, the, Not at all.

That's off of Goran best.

I stand corrected, evidently.

I think it's just that that slave auction and here's something for the lady.

That's right.

The lady's friend Nandritov.

It would be amazing if they'd actually auctioned slave.

Here's something for the ladies.

Oh, sorry sir.

And he'll still have energy afterwards.

For any other little jobs you might want.

He can just about manage a blister force wall.

Right.

Cause I did come up with extras.

[2:31:45]

Does anyone else want to have a 2nd go at Snog Mario Void later in the episode?

I've got 2 more.

So if anyone wants to, just have a think.

How about you, Brendan?

Yeah, I could do one.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Snog, marry, twink death.

Oh, I so should have gotten that one.

Dorian.

Dorian Sea Devil, Dorian's Twink.

I really should have gotten that one.

We all should have got that one.

I'm going to avoid the sea devil because it's just decaying.

Like, it's just decaying latex and that's not good for anyone.

I'm going to...

Snogdorian.

And I'm going to marry the twink to get him out of there.

Oh, aren't you a gentleman?

[2:32:48]

You can end up co-hosting Strictly Come Dancing with him.

That brings an end to the topics of the survey that we're covering here.

Do not worry.

The character showdowns that were on page 2 of the survey will form part of a fuller series retrospective later down the line, so those will not be wasted.

However, Normally, in a retrospective, we would ask, what would we look forward to?

But we know there's nothing beyond here for televised Blake 7.

So I'd like to more have a quick discussion.

About what we overall think of series D, what worked, what didn't, and how we might carry forward to series E. And I'll start with you, Peter.

I like series D on its own terms.

It's another season of my favourite ever show and it has some top tier episodes in it.

[2:33:48]

So there's no reason not to like it.

I always be grateful for that.

But when I think we could have had a series D that looked and felt like series B and C, I feel slightly cheated.

Aesthetically, it's just a different show, a more generic show.

Everything's been replaced from the ships, to the guns, to the costumes, and the teleport, which actually really liked the new teleport effect.

And it is less than what came before.

So it's like kind of 80% as good as Siri C.

But considering that series C is the best season of sci-fi TV ever aired.

I think it's a pretty decent hit rate.

Great.

Nathan.

Yeah, I kind of get the impression, and I think I've said this before, that they were trying to make it more sensible and trying to make it more generic and trying to finally make it post Star Wars with the design.

And so everything was much more sensible, and they were kind of jettisoning weird Blake 7, and they were trying to sort of play it a bit straight.

And obviously that just failed spectacularly, like face planted.

[2:34:50]

We've just talked about assassin.

Like, it's preposterous and, you know, like unbelievably camp.

And I'm glad that that happened.

I understand what Peter's saying about the aesthetic being wrong and it feeling a bit unlike Blake 7 for that reason.

But I remember at the time, just thinking, wow, you know, this was like the leisure hive, you know, like suddenly, suddenly Blake 7 looks thrilling in sort of 1980s, in retrospect, it looks a bit crap, but it's, like that's just a fun fact about Blake 7 now, you know, 45 years later or whatever, that the final season kind of looks a bit pants, but he's still really enjoyable in everyone's, you know, all of the things that we're here for are still here.

And still intact.

So we still have serverland, even though she's not quite how we might want to debate.

We still have the crew.

You know, the whole thing is still just tremendously fun.

[2:35:52]

And as Peter says, there are some really, really excellent episodes in it too.

If only we still had the liberator and it was still intact.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Sorry This was, for me, this is where I came into Blake 7.

So this feels like Blake 7 to me more than anything else, which is weird and absolutely and entirely wrong, but I cannot help but still love this.

I can remember as an 8 year old being terrified by animals and the bit where Serverland was torturing Dana in the chair.

I found that really scary and that was an image that stayed with me of all the things from Blake 7.

That was one of the things that Servoland was terrifying.

So, you know, there's part of me that cannot possibly be objective about any of this.

And I think if push came to shove, I would always say this is my favourite season and it's not because it's...

[2:36:53]

It's better than any of the others, and I can objectively see that B and C had so much in them that I love.

But this is, this feels like the Blake 7 that I loved as a child, and that's always going to be my, my into most things, really.

That's my my raise on dentro root.

So, you know, um, I, I think the, the run from headhunter to to the end is probably the most consistent run of Blake 7 there's ever been.

I mean, there are bits where it pitches a bit lower, but I think sort of the way it's made is consistently good from there on in.

And I think a lot of the scripts are incredibly good.

So, you know, I think there's loads to love.

We've spent 13 weeks before this, analysing this series in huge detail, and we all know what they got wrong, what they could have done better, but you know what?

[2:37:54]

Like Peter said, we got an extra year of this show that no one was expecting and they pull it together for that last, that last sort of production block.

And yeah, can't ask for more than that.

Great.

Brilliant.

Thank you.

Pete.

I think the fascinating thing about this series, particularly is, it's a, it's a thing created in the 70s, trying to reformat itself for the 80s, and a lot of the decisions that are taken around that come out of that.

And it's like we don't want to be, oh, we can't just be a 70s relic.

There was such a clean sweep vibe to things going into the 80s.

It's the 80s now.

Everything's different.

Um, and so I'm fascinated by another, what another year of doing that would have led to, um, how, how much more 80s ish, they, they would have wanted to make it.

And that's the sort of thing that tantalises me.

I don't think we would have got more of the same or gone back to 70s by 7.

And it is the leisure hive of Doctor Who doing the same thing.

[2:38:56]

Quite abruptly saying that we've got some of the same characters, but there's a different vibe to it now.

So I think another series would have been even would have been even more cynical and more camp at the same time.

And I would have been...

I definitely would have been there for that.

Brilliant.

Thank you.

And Simon.

Look, I watched Blake 7 in a sort of what it was essentially a random order and I watched it as an adult.

I was 18 when I saw my 1st episode in 1990, Harvest of Carus.

Thank you.

And um, look, so, so, it sort of, it's sort of one of those things when you, when you're looking at a series like this as something which has already happened and has already finished.

You do look at it through a slightly different lens, I think.

Regardless of whether series D was was sort of a bit of an accident or whether it was always intended, was going to happen.

I think by the time you get to a 4th season, you would have needed to have started to retool the show.

[2:39:57]

And I think having a fresh look with fresh sets and so on, and a bit of a cast shakeup is something that I think would have needed to have happened anyway, because I think if you'd have had a 4th series, especially with the 18 month hiatus.

With Liberator again, I think it would have actually kind of looked tired from the get go.

So either you kind of redesign, you just do one of those things where, oh, the interior, the liberator has decided to redesign itself.

I suppose you could have done that and had this sort of the roughly the same concept, but maybe a bit of a jazzed up style.

I think, though, that what I see in series D is, to sort of pick up what Cy was saying, definitely the back half of it's better than the front half of it as a rule as a whole.

Uh, and you can really see in the 2nd half how they're transitioning to what I think a series E would have been.

It would have very much, I think, looked like what the back end of series D is, you know, whether you still got the Zen on base or whether you've got, you know, them all based on the planet on Diva Local.

[2:41:03]

Where is the planet of Counter Prime?

Out of Prime?

Yeah.

I just know what to do.

You know, and have that kind of bass and then kind of move the series forward again.

But there is almost like a sense that they are trying to kind of evolve the series rather than just kind of keep doing the same thing.

And I think that's, that's what is really great to see about series D. Series C is my favourite season, maybe, because they're the 1st episodes I saw.

Probably that's the reason.

But I think series D is my 2nd favourite season and a lot of that's to do with the fact that I just love the cast in the 2nd half of the show much better than the cast in the 1st half of the show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, Simon, what I think series D-Lax might be series E. If they'd been a series E, which had sort of consolidated the changes to the format, it would feel like a less unbalanced series.

And it wouldn't feel like this kind of lonely as sort of add-on appendage. to the program.

Yes.

[2:42:05]

What I love about series D is I never feel there's a lack of confidence.

I sometimes feel there's a lack of execution, but I feel like everyone believes in what they're doing, and especially when you look at, say, Gisette, Simon and Glynis Barber, who are not being given material that's worthy of them, but they're still giving a 100%, I think, is super commendable.

The Lorimer has a pretty clear vision of what he wants.

And as you said, Nathan, maybe he doesn't quite clear it off, but they are, they are going for it.

And as you say, Peter, if they'd had another year.

Maybe they could have consolidated a bit in terms of what I might like to see for series E, I would like to see them on Gouda Prime, because, you know, having David Collings as a regular would be great.

Having Paul Darrow act opposite. his wife would be fantastic.

Can you just imagine the side eye when he's going a bit too a bit just a bit too much, Paul?

[2:43:09]

Um, the concept was to finish the series with them finally being victorious over the Federation, and I agree doing that in one episode is a bad idea.

Doing it over another season.

Could have worked.

It could have worked.

I think Chris Boucher handles it really well with going, this could be a definitive end or any of these people could have just been stunned.

I think that's actually a quite masterful writing stroke as well.

I think whatever happened with Siri Z. I think we can all agree that the official continuation of Blake 7 afterlife was not what was going to happen in any way whatsoever.

No, no.

Yes, they comment earlier about removing Chris Boucher from things.

That's probably what you get.

Yeah.

Right, well, we have done a bumper retrospective, thank all of you at home once again for sending us in your answers.

[2:44:14]

We have laughed.

We have cried, we have wondered.

What the hell you're on?

That was just watching Assassin.

Yeah.

But we do, we do deeply appreciate, um, those of you who listen, those of you who've replied to this.

We do have a few episodes left covering a few other things, but, you know, with only 52 episodes.

This was always going to be a finite show.

And so I don't think we could have done it as well without feedback from our wonderful listeners.

So thank you all for getting involved and giving us your thoughts and giving us new things to talk about about this 40 plus year old, wonderful, wonderful series.

I'd like to thank the members of the panel who are here.

Nathan, Peter, Pete, Simon, Cy, and also our 3 regulars who are not with us on this episode, Mark, Colin, and James, James, Scheduler, Extraordinaire, of course, and also a big thank you to everyone who's joined us, not only for this season, but also our special episodes between series C and D. Zoe Baker, Chris Chapman, Hannah Cooper, Mark Doddick, David Gillespie Pratt, Toby Haydoke, John Helm, Dan Hollingsworth, Ben Jolly, Una McCormack, Tom Newsom, Kate Orman, Adam Richard, Chris Thompson, and Conrad Westmass.

[2:45:39]

You can find us wherever you get your podcast by searching for maximum power podcasts and also by searching on various social medias.

We're terribly active on Blue Sky, Facebook and X. Until next time.

If you're asked by a distress friend holding a gun, have you betrayed us, have you betrayed me?

Maybe start by answering no before giving any other information.

Just to avoid confusion.

For fuck's sake.

Thank you all so much for listening.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

Bye.

Bill.

Let's go, power.

Go, go!

Notice, I can just thrust it, Maxi.

Switching command.

Maximum power on all drives.

Seven, pound.

[2:46:45]

Shrewdly approaching the middle of the list with a, uh, with, sorry, shrewdly approaching the middle of the...

Snog, marry, big hair don't care, Zoltan, Chulsa, who is Rick James, or Atlan.

Who is Sultan?

Gotta say, yes, Zultan.

Oh, do I mean Zookan?

I mean Zukan.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I think you do mean to.

I'll read that again.

I get that all the time.

I'm sure they Right.

I wanted to get Chazgo from Sam because he was actually one of my 1st crushes when he was in sitcoms on he was in no place light home.

It's so funny, that moment where the sand realises that, uh, Terrence says, uh, you know, if you kill me, uh, the, the, um, the sand will have no use for you and she says, oh, you know, I've got my pilot back on the, uh, back on the ship.

But the thing is, the sand already knows that he's gay.

[2:47:45]

So...

I do want to put, I do want to also point out something about Tarrant, but I'm going to save it for when we get to who would we write out?

Um...

Who's a curly haired idiot?

Someone does actually give that as the reason.

Up next with 12 votes.

Another newcomer to the series, Vivian Cousins.

That's what I thought.

Yeah.

So yeah, directly.

Right.

Would anyone like to add anything?

Cool.

Okay.

Wow.

Whose clock's that?

Who do you think?

Oh, you've got the cookie. can't remember.

That's right.

You've got like, yes, it's like the opening sequence of I broke one of them, but I broke the other one next.

[2:48:47]

All right, any thoughts on writing folks out?

We are in the home stretch.

Okay, cool.

We will move on.

What was it?

Oh, someone's...

I think someone's making a noise outside my house.

All right, because it's like, all we heard was no, about writing it.

I just heard it scraping.

Oh.

That could have happened earlier.

Tlerant.