The Rest of the Time They’re Just People in Hats

[00:03]

Maximal power.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Maximum Power, Blake Seven Podcast.

I'm Cy.

I'm Colin.

I'm James.

I'm Nathan.

And I'm Pete.

This week, we're talking a good fight in Terry Nations, episode eight, Jewel.

So, Colin.

I wanted to ask you something to start this one off because this episode has a very different feel, thanks to Douglas Canfield coming in and using stock music rather than Dudley Simpson's music.

So how do you feel about that?

Uh, thank you for asking this.

I really enjoy it.

I think it's a highlight.

It's the 1st episode where they use the teleport too, where there's no Ronnie Hazelhorse, the orchestra going bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, which always gets on my nerves.

[01:04]

But I like it.

I really think I'm just imagining, I think Dudley's does a really good job.

The theme music is awesome.

But I would love it to be a bit more radiophonic, you know?

It's it's sci-fi.

It should be all sort of ethereal and analogue since sort of bleating out stuff, which it does, and it kind of matches a lot of the visuals where Blake is kind of being weirdly kind of blinded by some visual effects.

There's all these good sounds to go with it.

There's not like, you know, Blake's theme playing in the background.

So, um, I'm a fan.

Yeah, there's a great bit where the liberator is 1st introduced and it's all the synth music and it looks and feels really brilliant and beautiful and different to how Dudley Simpson does it with his great big fanfare, which is fantastic.

But something about that synth music and the shots of the liberator that they use here that makes it feel very different to normal.

[02:06]

Yeah, it's really creepy. just there's this immediate creepiness and space spookiness, which is obviously exactly where the episode is going to take us.

Sadly, it doesn't match the visual effects don't quite match, and we'll get to this, the pace of it.

It's like, you know, you've got some good music going on there, but it's like, all these ships are flying really, really fast to each other.

No, they're not.

They're not tall.

They're just sort of.

Sitting about ever so slowly moving.

It doesn't, it doesn't quite, quite match up.

But anyway, yeah, so dual.

What's going on here?

Is it Planet of the White Guardian and the Black Guardian?

There's a nip in there's a nip in the air down on that planet.

It's quite chilly.

I'll tell you that.

Planet of Island Blair's nipples.

Yeah.

Yeah, she brought them with her.

I think they're actually the stars of the show.

Once they're there, you can't take your eyes off them.

I wasn't where I was going.

Colin, you've said intelligent and sensible things for nearly a minute.

[03:08]

The rest of us are going to drag it down now. then you like one that.

As our token heterosexual.

Resident heterosexual. that what you're going to say?

Yeah.

Thanks.

Anyway, well, that's all right.

Well, let's talk about another female character.

The mutoids, also known as the proto-Gem Hadar.

What do we think about the mutoids?

Oh, explain that one.

What's a proto-Gem Hadak?

Because the mutos are awesome.

So the gem Hadar.

The Dominion in Deep Space Nine, and they also have pouches where they store a test tube of liquid to power them.

So I was just noticing that this morning.

They're a bit more of a warlike race, but they are also controlled by this chemical.

Is it also a close tick?

Uh, it's not a glow stick.

It a bit more milky.

Sentences you never expected to be saying 1st thing on a Sunday morning.

Carol Royal is brilliant, no.

The actress who plays that movie is because she could so easily slip.

[04:08]

It's a really tough call for an actor to do that.

So you're slightly zombie-ish, and that could so easy just get wooden, but she isn't at all.

She's, I think she just pictures it perfectly because she's creepy and, and there's a bit where Travis is talking to her, and I can't remember precisely what she says, but he gets into a great reaction behind her over her shoulder, whereas he's like going, ugh, when she talks about her, um, her requirement for, uh, for sustenance, uh, with the whole vampire motif that we're getting.

Yeah.

Yeah, and there's another brilliant scene where Travis is talking to her about who she was before, she was modified.

And the way that she plays it, like, there's nothing.

I don't care about this.

It's not, well, it's not even, I don't care about this.

You just look confused about it.

And it's really, really fascinating.

She plays it so well.

Yeah, and there's a nice parallel with that.

The writing is just so good with that bit with the parallel of the scene with Jenna, talking to Blake, about her life before it and how she's, you know, she's taking these decisions and is doing this thing because it's, she feels it's right to do right now and then we cut to the nasty federation equivalent of that being erasure of your previous self instead of just instead of taking it forward.

[05:21]

This is, is this Travis's one week of thinking he's the main baddie in Blake 7 or does he get longer?

I can't remember.

Because he's he's loving it, isn't he?

Is this the only episode with Travis without Serverland?

I think it is?

Yes.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think he's amazing in it.

I love his reaction to that mutoids kind of refusal to take the bass.

I mean, he's taunting her about having had her past erased and she's absolutely not interested and just he pulls a face when it doesn't go anywhere.

He's really sort of terribly good in this.

He's terribly good in leather as well.

And I think that's really, he's setting a bit of a tone for the future starlings of the series as well.

They're all going to be dressed like him in a year or so, aren't they?

Well, but enough about your sex life. merely being aesthetic.

[06:25]

So, we arrive at this, this planet, which Jenna kindly reports that there's a breathable atmosphere, which is good, considering every single planet they've been to, has seems to have beable atmosphere.

I'm not quite sure why they're there.

They're there to sort of like recharge for a while.

Okay, so we've got that.

But what do we think of?

The sort of concept behind this.

Sherok and Cinepha.

What are they up to?

The world has been ravaged by war.

They're trying to prove that war is a bad thing, guys.

And they said, there's some interesting dialogue about, begins with the destruction of the others' beliefs and things like that.

There's a few good quotes in it.

But is that concept successful?

What do we think?

Well, it's coming back to Terry Nation's kind of tropes, isn't it?

The devastation of nuclear war. you know, like, I mean, this is, this is, you know, something he comes back to again and again, maybe not in such an interesting way.

Yeah.

I hadn't realised until you explained, Delia, something.

This is, um, this is stock music, because I was thinking, this reminds me of the music to, um, Jeffrey Burgens, Doctor Who scores, Terra the Zygons and seeds of Doom.

[07:30]

Doom, yes.

Let's get that one on.

Um, have got that same when when instruments are used.

They just used in a really creepy manner.

And then underneath it, you've got a lot of special sound going on, which just makes this planet so ethereal and I keep saying creepy, but that's because it's creepy.

Uh, and let's, let's point to Douglas Canfield.

I mean, it is his only Blake 7 directing.

Yes, it is.

And you've got these 2 fantastically cast Isle of Lair and Patsy Smart, who it would make an all sick if anyone else was cast in that box.

She's so good for it.

Our favourite ghoul from talons of weighing tayan, Doctor Who clacks and take a shot, but gets a merge that gets a proper role in this rather than just a little cameo that she's had in that.

And she has to do it with her teeth in as well.

Yes.

Maybe that was extra.

Maybe she charges extra.

If you want me with my teeth.

And she's only like 60?

I think...

The 70s were tough on people.

I really were.

But they're really interesting characters.

[08:31]

I really like Zirok's naughtiness and her mischievousness, particularly when she pits Blake and Travis against each other right at the start because she just wanted to see what they might do.

And that's nicely balanced by cinophar being sort of the calm, beautiful sort of face of this argument.

It's sort of a really interesting and very, very well played relationship, I think.

I think this is an element of Blake 7 that gets kind of overlooked.

I mean, 2 weeks ago, we had what was essentially just sort of space terrorists blowing things up and so on.

But every so often, Blake 7 goes really quite weird and reveals a kind of strange.

I don't know, there's a strange aesthetic.

This is a weird corner of the universe that isn't like anything else.

And that sort of happens from time to time.

And I just think the fact that everything is so ill defined.

[09:34]

Like, we don't quite know what's going on.

They're supposed to atone in some way for the for the devastation caused by the war, but it's not clear who set that up.

Their relationship with each other is unclear.

Like one has power, Sinifer has power, but Jirok sort of has power.

And it's charming and interesting, particularly in a terri nation script for things to just go unexplained and for things to be allowed to be completely mysterious, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, I'm having a complete brain freeze over Shakespeare and the island with the magician.

Tempest, thank you.

Yeah.

I get that vibe from them, despite not having remembered the name.

There's a real aerial and oh, Prospero.

Prospero, right.

There's there's a real Ariel and and 2 Areola as well.

Sorry.

Damn, that's so funny, it has to say now.

[10:35]

This is as close to magic as I've seen Blake 7 doing, and it comes with a little bit of, actually, it's science fiction magic, but I do, I love that, and it just gives you enough to give it, to make it tenable that this is a real civilisation, but also it's an episode being made with a very small cast, and only, only the, 4 extras on top of the regulars.

And the new forest.

And the CSO forest.

Yes, we jump back, don't we?

I guess did it just get dark and they ran out of time to shoot all of the scenes that they wanted to in the real forest.

So we had to do some catch-ups when we got back.

We got back to the studio, I guess.

Yeah, I think there was very short days. filming in winter at this point, so everything looks very cold, but also they haven't got a lot of daylight.

But also, they've got night filming again.

There's a continual sort of set of night filming through this series that's quite unexpected.

I wonder if that's where the budget went because you retweeted, didn't you, that guy who'd found that estimate of the production cost of episodes of Blake 7?

at the time and it was really high.

[11:36]

It was a newspaper estimating, I think, wasn't it?

The mail, wasn't it?

Is that a newspaper?

No.

Not anymore.

Sort of.

Structurally.

Yeah, yeah.

And they were estimating a budget for Blake 7 Wayne, in excess of anything else that was on around the time, apart from Angels, the predecessor to casualty, which had an even bigger budget, but had a very big cast, I suppose.

But night filming is expensive, isn't it?

That the point. and the BBC, if BBC is going to pay for you to do night filming.

They care about your series.

Do they?

I think they do.

Yeah, yeah.

I think I think the BBC have realised they've got a hit on their hands now and they don't quite know why. made on the budget of softly, softly, isn't it?

Yeah, but maybe they're just trying to sort of push what they can do with this show and say, look, actually, we haven't got much money, but we can do this.

But if you gave us some more, we could make it even better.

Put the money on screen.

And look, this season was, the budget was blown or something on series one on series A. On the opening episode.

Yes.

Yeah, like they overran and were over budget hugely on the 1st series.

[12:46]

So I was just thinking about the Liberator crew and their relationships and how they're developing, and I feel like there's a little bit more bitching going on.

So it starts with Blake saying to Zen, Enter Orbit, but don't do this.

Do this, but don't do this, because obviously that would, you know, destroy the ship.

And Zen's like, yeah, believe it or not, mate, I know that.

And, you know, so Blake's very, very direct style of management, so to speak, or leadership, you know, don't allow others to think and just get on with it.

And it's a little bit more clashing, a little bit more with Avon, his relationship with the villa is starting to be a bit more sort of a, you're an idiot kind of relationship.

How do you guys think it's evolving?

It's definitely Captain Blake this week.

Yeah, like, don't you think he's giving orders to all of his crew in a way that, um, it's probably done a bit in the past, but it seemed that that just seems much more clearly established now, yeah.

And you get even pushing back against it.

[13:48]

There's one scene where they're kind of thrown together, like physically, you know, the camera lurches and the 2 of them end up in each other's arms.

And so they're speaking sort of quite close to one another.

And there's that, you know, he's going to ram the ship.

He's going to ram Travis's ship.

And, you know, it's madness and do we have an alternative and everyone's kind of expostulating and stuff.

And um, there's something where um, I even asks him if he has a choice.

You know, are you going to go along with this and Avon says, do I have a choice?

And Blake says, yes, and he says, all right then, I'll go along with it.

And it is sort of very definite.

He's the one who is not going to take the orders or may choose to take the orders, but is emphasising that that's something that, yeah, he may not do in future. and there is a little necessary to the plot Yeah.

There's a little bit of disdain as well, I think, to towards everyone else's sort of willingness to obey, which is, you know, obviously something that'll come up quite a lot later.

[14:53]

Well, there's also that great line, you know, when they're having the altercation, the interaction with Cinephar and Jirok, where Blake says, my crew are with me by their own choice, and you just cut to everyone, and he just goes, really?

Yeah.

I even gets the best line this week, which is obviously during the night shoot, you know, Blake's up a tree, Travis is up another tree, unless they start throwing nuts at each other.

I don't see much chance of a fight developing.

Which is so great.

And then it's got to be Boucher this where he says, you know, I don't see why I need to become irrational to prove that I care.

And I think it's so good.

You know, like he's the sort of spockish computer nerd or whatever at the beginning, but his character is really developing and I think it's Boucher doing it.

Yeah, all the dialogue feels very crisp out show, especially those scenes on the on the liberator where they're watching it.

[15:53]

I felt like they were sitting in some kind of podcast commenting on the action that was going on around them.

Who did that?

Exactly.

And Jenna says, how is it that we're actually seeing all of this?

Or does she give the answer?

I can't remember now who has the line, but they make a point of putting in that.

We better explain how come they are all sat watching Blake seven.

We ran out of budget.

We will go there again.

They take 2 of your location.

I love it when we go to panic.

You know, the Enterprise has red alert.

The liberated clearly we now discover has panic stations mode, which they all go into at 10 minutes in when the fight suddenly starts.

And everyone just runs around, runs around, runs to a different run to a different panel.

They have Christmas lights mode.

But there's such urgency and tension in those scenes.

Douglas Canfield is really sort of upping that this week.

And he's making all those scenes that could be quite flat and dull really exciting.

And I think it's, again, the combination of the weird stock music and the sound effects that they're using and the sort of really intense sounds that they make when they put up the shields and things like that.

[17:03]

It's all just, you can feel the tension all the time and you're watching it thinking, 0 my god, they're in real trouble this week.

I think it's, I think it's partially successful with the, so there's 2 kind of battle scenes.

There's the spaceship battle scene and then there's it on the planet with the phallic knives battle scene.

And so they, it is all just done through dialogue versus budget.

But which of those do we think is successful?

You know, because I kind of feel like the on the on the planet sequence, it's like, okay, cool.

It's just like scouts or something for a while.

I think it's really cool.

It's really good.

And the bit where there's a brilliant bit where Blake carves out a wooden dagger for Jenna and hands it to her and her face is like somewhat phallic suggestion of disappointment on her face.

It's better than nothing, and she says something like, not much better though.

But I think the underlying vampire theme that's set up at the start.

[18:08]

And yeah, admittedly, maybe the bats, what is it with the BBC thinking they can do realistic plastic bats on TV series because they just, but maybe they were just hoping the audience will just take it as red.

The whole vampirism thing just gives it that edge that I think makes makes it one of my favourite episodes.

It's funny, this is really the only Blake 7 episode with mutoids in it, really properly, isn't it?

The rest of the time they're just sort of people in hats.

Mutoids, um, muting around muting things.

Well, there's just, they're just set decoration apart from this, I think.

And it's so underused, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's great concept.

But it is, it's just thrown away, isn't it, after this episode?

Yeah.

Yeah, no, you're totally right.

It is a great concept.

You could have found the factories where they make the mutoids or something like that and decided to blow them up or something.

Say it 3 times, it'll be a big finish series.

Yeah.

It's already done that one.

I think I think next week we do get a bit more mutoids.

[19:10]

We do get Su Lin before she's unprogrammed down at Wookiehole.

But after that, they're kind of like, you know, pretty much out the picture.

I wonder if it's because Terry Nation doesn't write so many episodes.

And so, as other writers come in, they're fixating on different parts of Blake 7 and different characters.

And so this is one of the things that obviously Terry Nation is setting up as a big thing, but kind of gets pushed into the background when everyone else starts having a go at writing stories.

I think that's absolutely, almost certainly is.

I mean, they are such a terry nation creation and the name, you know, the low effort name that they have and and you know, like they're mutos or mutoids or whatever.

And I think they're weird.

Like, they do sit a little oddly in the sort of Blake 7 universe, and I'm totally here for that.

Like the less kind of consistent and the less gum that universe can be the better.

But, you know, I think I said when I was on the podcast previously, the episodes Wonder 4 certainly don't take place in a federation that has mutoids in them.

[20:20]

They are very strange, but I kind of love what they say about the Federation, though.

Like they they show how ethically and morally bankrupt.

It is that they take people and they rob them of their humanity. and reprogram them as these, you know, automata.

Yeah, it beefs up the whole evil empire.

Federation is an even empire thing as being something that's unambiguous, whereas maybe in the earlier episodes, it was 80% evil, but there were people who didn't realise that it was evil, you know, for example, whereas now, if you've got these zombie vampire people going around being your slaves, you're losing the plausible deniability of not realising that you're actually part of an evil empire anymore.

Well exactly.

It's the ultimate dehumanising experience, isn't it?

You've gone from drugging most of your populace so that they're not having a full human experience through to ultimately taking away what it is that makes them human and contrasting, uh, dlematic contrasting with the 7 being very human with all their flaws, uh, and therefore the good guys.

[21:33]

They're not the good guys because they're perfect.

They're the good guys because they're flawed.

Do you, do you also read that as, so the interaction where they talk about, you know, her past, do you read that as she made a choice to become this?

Or that, like, because it kind of is implied that, you know, like that this wasn't done to her without her wanting it or agreeing to it for some reason?

I don't think there's any hint of that.

She doesn't remember.

She absolutely doesn't know.

And I always just assumed that it was a penalty for treason or something.

I mean, I guess it's possible because she is described as a federation officer.

And so she's going to be court-martialled.

So she's still kind of legally human in sort of some sense.

Um, you know, maybe it's the officer program.

Maybe she was a really shit pilot and wanted to join the federation or something and fly one of those things around and she had to agree to have the needle installed and to wear a big sort of medal and he's a green hair thing.

[22:39]

Is it just that that hair repainted black?

don't know.

There's a, is in series 4, and I think it's in animals, there are people who are clearly...

I'm sorry, sorry, series... series Delta.

In series three, that four.

Damn, D. There are some, there are some people who, I'm gatekeeping you and I love it.

There are people who are clearly meant to be mutoids, but they have geometric bombs.

Like it's, you know, they've just kind of forgotten what they are, I think, by then.

So they seem to very have a very small footprint.

But they don't seem to have become a big part of the world and they do, you know, a size set kind of drop out. after series A. They just become generic bad guy stuff who we don't have to have any moral implications about killing because they're not really human, maybe as well.

[23:40]

They could be a bit more cannon foddery from the good guy's point of view as well. maybe, yeah.

Not that they ever have qualms about killing federation officers anyway.

Yeah.

I wanted to talk about how incredibly posh Zen is, like the crew are all posh, and then Zen, when Zen starts talking about plasma boats, it sounded so posh.

I thought he was saying plasma boat at first.

They're all very posh, but Zen is god-level posh.

I'm curious that no one seems to know how to pronounce the word stasis, though.

Oh, stasis.

Yeah, it's all stasis this week, isn't it?

Yeah, that's a very odd thing.

It's as if they've only sort of ever read it before.

Yeah.

You can track in British science fiction, the way the presentiation of data that started out as data in like the 50s, and then occasionally under American influences becomes data before settling on being data.

And it's, uh, it's one of those annoying things that once you notice it.

[24:42]

Oh, well, no, what's I, what I. I blame Prince, but I annoyed me.

No one else, no one.

Yeah, well, he but Brent Spinner. helped.

But now to actually NASA point, do Americans now say data?

Because of commander data being said in Patrick Stewart's British accent to avoid confusing him with any lines in the dialogue about data, this is a tangent.

Sorry.

There's definitely, there's an episode of Next Generation in season 2 where Dr. Pulaski, the best doctor has in next gen.

When are we doing the next gen podcast?

Yeah.

She says something like, can you bring me that iPad data?

And he's like, what?

So I think they sort of lampoon it a little bit.

But um, yes, we're getting ahead of ourselves. into a different universe there. different podcast altogether.

Yeah exactly.

We're not doing all of next generation.

[25:43]

Is this, this really feels like a series that Blake and Jenna are the 2 lead characters in still, and I, which it often doesn't, and obviously having an ensemble cast means that they can mix that up week to week.

But I guess this carries on throughout the time, but it's still in the credits at the end.

It's Gareth Thomas and Sally Nevette, who get the 1st 2 billings every week still.

Um, even when, even though sometimes Jenna is an underused character.

But in this, it's like they are, the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, uh, beaming down on the mission, uh, in a way that, uh, I don't know how much, how many other times we get to see that.

But I just think those 2 characters work together so well.

Yeah, there's definite pairings coming up between parts of the crew.

So last week we've had the 1st time that we've had Avon and Callie paired up together, which is a very interesting relationship and one that I really, really love.

And obviously you've got the Avon and Villa partnership beginning to work here and lots of banter between them, and Blake and Jenna feel like they belong together, and then there's Gan at the side. somewhere.

[26:49]

Complaining about his limiter.

He did get to do something this week, though, and that, yeah, seen at the very beginning where the 3 of them teleport down is actually pretty good and good for him, I think.

Yeah, and he's the one who sees the uh, the women 1st and those are sure whether he's having a vision or not.

That right, isn't it?

maybe he's got his faulty, chips gone faulty, which we'll come back to later. remember that happening.

It doesn't get much to do beyond that.

There's one episode, I think it was a couple of weeks ago where he was making drinks and just handing them out to the crew on the... bless him.

But again, Villa doesn't get a great deal to do in this episode either, and he hasn't had much to do for a couple of episodes now.

So I wonder where this is sort of coming in the writing whether Terry Nation is thinking, oh, there's some characters I like writing for and some that I'm not so keen on and I'll just put those to the background for a bit and maybe bring them for an episode sort of later on.

I mean, I think this one's particularly unusual in that it's sort of structured around the relationship between Blake and Travis more than anything else.

[27:55]

And although they met 2 weeks ago, this is really the 1st time we've seen them properly interact and seen how different they are from each other.

And I think this does a really great job in beefing up that relationship, maybe more so than the sort of long backstory expositiony things we got in seeklocate, destroy.

Yeah, just getting to see them.

I mean, Stephen Grief is so good, and just getting to see him and Gareth Thomas acting at each other in close quarters is what it really needs, because all of the being in spaceships, pressing buttons and looking at each other on scanners and screens has to be underwritten by real interactions like this.

And if I didn't know, if I was a viewer, and this was, and I didn't know what was up and coming, I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see Servolan again, she did just seem to be the, as I know, was the original intent.

She turned up to send him off on his mission.

But this feels like a story that's going to set up a real ongoing duel between these 2 guys that's going to run for the rest of the series.

[29:00]

Yeah, you've got a real restatement of the key beliefs of Blake and Travis and why they are diametrically opposite to each other, which is a really good sort of recap for the viewers who haven't been there for a couple of weeks.

And we, again, we haven't seen Travis.

We didn't see Travis last week.

So it's useful just to restate.

This is Blake's moral stance.

Travis is diametrically opposite to that.

Yeah, um, they're out to kill each other and this is what the series is nominally about.

Yeah, if this was the 1st episode of Blake 7 you'd seen.

Youd be fine.

Off you go.

You know, you'd want to come back next week, you wouldn't be thinking, oh, no, I've missed 6 weeks, 7 weeks of backstory.

I think two, uh, Si, you say that they're out to kill one another, but I think this definitely leans in the direction of them being different from one another because Blake isn't really out to kill Travis.

Um, no, and that's actually the, the whole moral key of the, the episode, isn't it?

[30:05]

Thinking about it, yeah.

Yeah, but yeah, and it is a it's a plot twist in effect, isn't it?

And that our hero nobly chooses to not, to not just smash his brain in with a hammer, which he very easily could have done if he'd had a hammer to handle, whatever, you know, metaphor.

Well, I mean, he was about to when he gets teleported away.

He would have done Well, you know, he was about to and then decided not to.

But, you know, he wasn't allowed to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but did he decide not to?

Or was he just snatched away?

Yeah, no, he decided not to and then was snatched away before he reaped the inevitable consequences of not doing that.

Yeah.

This is one story where a DeSX Macina has actually been properly set up so that it's got the gods intervening at the end is what they said they were going to do, sort of thripe from the beginning.

So it's not just the writer cop out for once for that to happen.

It is the point of the story, you know, right?

Yeah, and Blake turns around, doesn't he?

and says, um, and the other thing is, I would have enjoyed it.

Yeah.

Which is, yeah, he's had his, he's had his lesson.

[31:08]

And so, and, and so for says, perhaps there was nothing for you to learn.

So, you know, he's finished the adventure game.

It's come out unscathed.

And that, and you've just made me realise by, by quoting that line, the parallel with the line in last week's episode, Mission to Destiny, where Avon, having a good old fight with the woman in that, tells them to get her out of here, I really rather enjoyed that.

Yeah, did you guys talk about that?

Oh, yes.

Okay, good.

That has been covered, yeah.

Because what the fuck, but also, yeah, see what was going on.

And it's interesting, isn't it, that when Avon's watching this on the screen in the Liberator, he's smiling and then shaking his head as Blake doesn't kill Travis.

Yes, he knows that's going to happen. a moment.

Of course he wasn't going to do it.

Well, he's the viewer, isn't he?

It's like, literally, he's the viewer, like, he...

Yeah, like he is our point of reference.

Like, we want, we want Blake, too, to do something, and, but also we don't, because, Where would the drummer be in that?

[32:17]

I think that's why the Avon Blake relationship is always the most interesting one on the show because they...

Hashtag Blake.

Blavon, brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes it would.

You know how in Star Trek, original Star Trek, to which this episode owes like an incredible debt, you know, you think of Spock and McCoy as sort of 2 parts of Jim's personality, you know, that they, or coupling.

Let's let's take a highbrow, you know, you've got Jeff and Patrick are both different aspects of of Steve.

Um, so, you know, even the arguments between Avon and Blake are really the arguments that Blake is having with himself as well.

And we'll see right up to his sort of final episode where he finally does make a decision where there's a calculus and he has to cause an enormous amount of harm in order to kind of justify what he's been doing all along.

[33:27]

And, and so having him have someone to talk to about that is really the only way that we will ever see it.

And so I just think the fact that that's what that relationship is about is what makes it so interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

And I guess it's parallelled a little bit in the relationship as well between Cinaphire and Gyroc, Gyroc.

I've forgotten what I'm saying.

Oh, sure.

Thank you.

Growing up, I always thought her name was spilled like Sheer Rock.

Like Shearer. because of the way that um, Isla Blepp, and then she is...

Yeah, she went to a very good school, James, I think.

Yeah, she went to Rada.

And Rudin.

But Star War has got nothing on space Rider, has it?

How do you know if someone went to Space Rider?

They tell you, darling.

They're in Blake 7.

That relationship that you mentioned between Zerok and Sinifaris, again, really interesting because we don't know, we've given so little information about it.

[34:32]

And something that Zerok is doing seems to imperil what the 2 of them are meant to be doing together and stuff like that.

There's that weird line too, about somehow the existence of Travis and Travis's attitude is what keeps them trapped in this existence or something like that.

You know, they both want to stop doing it, but they can't because, because what, people are warlike or something like that.

I don't know Like they're addicted to it or something.

Or I couldn't read it whether they were saying that they're dependent and addicted to the existence of war and violence in the same way that the mutoid is addicted and dependent on the substance, the blood that she needs.

Or whether it's actually a physical thing, that they're actually trapped there because of some science fiction reason.

I lean towards the spooky parallel sort of one instead.

But you can take it either way.

See, I kind of read it as, um, they're trapped there because both sides didn't make the right decision to end the conflict.

[35:34]

And so no, you know, so because of the lack of growth and learning, they're trapped there to teach the next people that fall upon, you know, fall upon the planet, that war is not the answer.

Of course.

It's terrenation.

No, that's a really great point, James, is that.

I mean, I feel that if they had a bit more budget to be able to sort of, you know, because what they do is they sort of have a little bit of a polystyrene hill and there's a kind of a few kind of bones and stuff in the distance.

But if you're able to see a shot of a total landscape where it's obviously just been a huge massacre, it would probably just hit home a bit better about what they were, what they've been through and what they're up to, of their, as we were saying, it's, it is an interesting relationship between them.

I think, um, Cinema's much more interested in doing the whole Star Trek kind of, like, when you leave this planet, don't fucking kill anyone, all right?

Because it's very normal.

You know, so I think we would have succeeded a bit more if it just sort of went, really look at what happened to us.

[36:34]

We're the only 2 people left, and we're not even sort of sure if we're corporeal anymore, that kind of thing.

But it just kind of leaves you with a feeling of, oh, I'm kind of not sure what they were doing, why there were 2 of them.

It's very interesting that you mentioned Star Trek because this episode obviously has significant plot similarities to the episode arena from the original series of Star Trek.

I believe they call them antecedents.

Ah okay.

Don't you think this episode would have been better with a gone in it?

Inevitably.

Gone but not forgotten.

Would a sunny and hot location have worked better than the dreary, wet, cold.

No, no, no, no.

It wouldn't be more Star Trek, but I love science fiction in the woods.

Science fiction.

I mean, wood is my absolute favourite.

I want all sorts of vision to be.

In fact, when Juro and Sinner talk about the forest, you know, something will have, you know, when you come to the forest, it did give it that kind of mythical fairy tale sort of feeling, you know, because we've been told that the planet has been completely devastated and there's no life left and but, you know, we have to shoot on location in New Forest or whatever.

[37:50]

And so by hanging a lantern on it and just calling it the forest.

I think it does become a place of a strange place of trials.

I do wonder if Chris Boucher put a line through a script because this planet remains unnamed.

We can, we can imagine it might have previously been called something like, you know, Julius or Orange Julius.

Isn't Travis horrible at the end when she says she could I can save that woman for you.

And he's like, oh, don't bother.

But then she does anyway.

That just shows how nasty he is.

Because if we hadn't noticed already.

But yeah, so go back to the forest.

It's all very heightened, isn't it?

It's all the sound effects are really turned up, so you've got the old sound effect from Doctor Who of the alien planet with screeching creatures in the background.

Metabilis 3.

Yeah.

But everything echos very oddly, which it wouldn't in a forest normally.

[38:51]

All the sound is just so heightened and weird.

The battle is like that too.

Like their, their weapons kind of echo off one another, you know, really, really heightened and kind of hallucinatory kind of way.

And I think we've mentioned the sound a couple of times before, but I think it is astonishingly good.

Yeah, in the battle, there's that bit where you're not, there's this pulsing and it's the, you think, I was thinking, okay, that's the engines.

And then I started thinking, hang on, is that, is that actually the music?

And it's only when they cut away from the liberator, that it's, and it stops, that you realise.

No, that was, what's the word diuretic?

Diarrhoea.

Energetic.

Diagetic.

Your diarrhoea pushed me in the right direction, Jones.

Meaning that it's the sound that the characters can hear as well as the audience.

And but I forgot that because it pulled me in so much until you cut away, which is just director and special sound, I guess, for that bit.

Uh, working together so well.

It does create, you know, real heightened tension in both of the battles in the space battle and in the battle on the planet.

[39:57]

Yeah, and again, there's also the feeling of what are you seeing, what is, what's real?

Are they being showed edited highlights?

Are they, do they have a real time feed to watch Blake?

When are they cutting to Travis when they're watching on the Liberator?

All of those things, which just makes it sort of more heightened and unreal.

And because everything is also filtered with video effects as well, it just makes it all extra odd this week in a way that Blake 7 hasn't been up to this and probably actually isn't really again.

You know what?

You know what they are watching?

The edited VHS compilation from the late 80s.

At the end of the fight, they should get the old BBC video logo coming on with the.

Well, there we go.

That's all done.

Still the best version of the boobies.

Yeah.

Don't forget to rewind the tape, Dan.

That's your job.

Douglas Campfield was just brilliant, wasn't he?

[41:00]

He really was.

What a shame he doesn't do any more after this.

I just think he absolutely gets it and he knows how to use all the techniques to build tension without actually being able to necessarily show massive things happening.

He can make someone pressing a button.

More exciting than a lot of directors do. somehow.

Yeah, remember the choice of the, of doing the space battle from their point of view.

So having the the plasma bolts coming straight to the camera.

And think about how NAF it would have been if it had just been those kind of models with little sort of video effect lines kind of firing at each other.

He does a really, really good job of that.

I think that space battle is good and I think it's entirely down to Campfield.

Yeah, and it makes you think, okay, this episode is called Dual.

It's about, he's playing with that as well.

We're 10 minutes in and we're having a space battle.

I guess this is going to be a half hour long space battle.

But then you're off and you're in the woods and you're doing an outward bound course and trying to save yourself from vampire bats all of a sudden.

[42:06]

I like it when you take an episode takes a turn like that.

You know, he died when he was 52.

Was he the director of Inferno?

I mean, did he have a heart attack?

He had a heart attack or something like that, and his wife still had to continue acting for the rest of it, like, so he can't have been well since the 70s.

He did, yes. right No one's credited with music on this episode, are they?

And so it is all special sound that's responsible for this weird soundscape.

Uh, this is the only one that uh, Dudley Simpsons not on.

One of two.

What's the other one he's not on?

He's not on gambit.

Oddly.

So, yeah, Elizabeth Parker steps up and does weird electronic music for that episode.

Is she doing sound for this episode?

She's not at this point.

So Richard Yeoman Clarke is on sound duties until midway through series B. I think then Elizabeth Parker takes over from hostage and does the rest of the series.

[43:13]

It's stock music.

The pieces are countdown, space panorama.

Wow.

And Genesis.

Those sound like the most sort of space music. titles they could possibly have found in the library.

Space panorama sounds like a program that they all sit around watching about politics in the future.

Yeah, no, it's library music.

So like it's from an album called Terrestrial Journey.

Wow, I bet it's on Spotify.

This episode also sees the debut of what I think is Jenna's best look, her kind of, I'm going to a space fancy dress party black with, um, silver blobs on it.

I'm not selling it well, but it's, uh, it just, it, she looks a bit more piracy than usual, because her previous costumes were more sort of at the tax evasion end of the spectrum, I felt, a bit too presentable. whereas in this, come on, come on, she's a pirate.

[44:18]

Give her something that she could really swagger about in a bit.

But it's great that she's down there in a more an outfit that's got a bit more Hutzpah about it.

It's got slits down the sleeves, doesn't it?

Like that are sort of buttoned up.

You can see, you know, her arms underneath there.

It's almost indecent, really.

She does end up with pretty bad hair, I have to say, in the new forest.

It is clearly very damp there and the whole thing is not holding together. under the strain.

Oh, could this be a contributor to that thing of the stories that you've hear about the production team saying they didn't want to take the girls on location because it took too long for them to get ready and that's why they get stuck on liberation and subsequent ones as if it's their fault.

Yeah, you want me to have glamorous hair, then you have to make this happen.

If you want me to have glamorous hair, don't take me to the New Forest in winter.

I don't think that's the 1st time you've said that. had a ring of truth to it.

Yeah, that'll be coming back.

[45:19]

I mean, and it's like, this is the week that ABBA's take a chance on me, gets the number one in the UK chart.

I think the late 70s were just a fascinating time of contrast, culturally, weren't they?

We've got tinsely glamorous music in the charts, but the world itself was greater than it had ever been for a lot of people.

Yeah, and there's a lot of glamorous hair in that video.

That's true.

Yeah, I don't think those 2 things, those 2 cultural phenomena are all that far apart, this episode, and take a chance on me.

There's a balance.

Yeah.

I thought it was more like mama Mia.

Oh, here we go again.

Okay, so thank you very much for listening to us rambling about one of the great episodes of Blake 7 duel.

Join us again next week when we go to Blake 7 by Numbers for Project Avalon.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Good night.

[46:20]

Good night.

Switching to manic.

Maximum power on all drives.

Max He, you know, for, uh...

Um, uh, uh, phallic, uh, the rest of the time, they're just sort of people in hats.

You know, I mean, they are such a terry nation creation.

Getting ahead of ourselves into a different universe there. different podcast altogether.

Yeah exactly.

Not doing all of next championship.

You could sneak it in between series C and series D, I would think.

So every C and a half .

Yeah, series C2.

CB.

[47:20]

Something.

Anyway.

We've broken Nathan.

We've broken name.

I forgotten what numbers are now.

Believe me.

Number D. for saying, oh, I'm going to have to edit.

I've got my head in my hands now.

Sorry.

I just can't enter.

Or excitement.

I'm keeping all of that in.

This is finished.

Bill Schmidt and Shingles.

Is that something where union album?

Like you are mining the planet Dulcus over there, James. unbelievable.

The sort of long backstory exposition-y things we got in seeklocate, destroy.

Yeah, just getting to see them.

I mean, Stephen Green is so good.

I'm just getting to see him and Gareth Thomas acting at each other, is what it really needs.

[48:21]

Oh, good.

Oh, dear.

We've kind of lost the pot, haven't we?

Yeah, do we have an hour?

Where do we go?

I think we had an out about 10 minutes ago.

We did, and then we just didn't let that stop us.

We just kind of wish it on for a bit longer.

Well, I don't think we didn't do hellos, did we?

No, we didn't.

Oh, my God, we didn't, did we?

Let's get back into that.