Moloch!

Well, where to begin…?

I have a new game I play when I watch Blake’s 7. It’s not a drinking game, although I’m pretty sure the drunker you are, the better the show is. No, it’s very simple: just as the title card comes up (bwwwaaaaa…) I close my eyes (bwwwaaa…) and then I have to see how quickly I can guess who has written the episode.

Now, I was vaguely aware that Ben Steed had written more than one episode because of something muttered in the opening episode of fan podcast Down and Safe (if you get the chance, I urge you to download it and listen yourself). And I knew it couldn’t be Trevor Hoyle, because he’s just had a turn. I didn’t for a second think it was Terry Nation, but I might have guessed him before I guessed Chris Boucher or Robert Holmes. Their work, as I said in relation to 'Rumours of Death', is happening in two different eras of television. Terry Nation’s still essentially writing for the 60s. Chris Boucher’s story structures can be seen on BBC 1 today.

Ben Steed, on the other hand, writes for the era that time and taste and all right thinking people forgot. I pegged this one as his, as soon as the mysterious overseer (later revealed as Moloch, later revealed as a malignant computer, later revealed as a small felt glove puppet with one eye) told the Federation troopers what to do with the woman who has betrayed their whereabouts to the Liberator.

“Give her to your men.”

Now, it’s all very well for me to big up Chris Boucher as the better writer – but it should also be highlighted that he was the script editor for this season. I like to believe that Boucher saw strong female characters as an important element of the show – as character outlines, Dayna, Cally and Servalan are all stronger figures than virtually any other character but Avon. ‘Rumours of Death’ pivots on a strong, complex, dangerous female character – and even when Servalan is tied to a wall, she has maximum power.

So how could he let through a script where women are implicitly raped offscreen; where, in fact, there are only two female characters in the story so that this particular form of violence can be employed? Steed is, perhaps, trying to demonstrate the depravity of the planet’s rulers, an echo of the child abuse storyline in the series’ pilot episode: except that the tone of those stories was 1984, and this one feels more like a surreal episode of Allo Allo. Vila happens to befriend a misogynistic murderer, and when he’s told he’s going to be given a woman for serving the Federation, he trots along looking really quite cheerful about it.

Stinky old Carol on Vila-world wouldn’t be very pleased to hear about this.

I mean, you don’t need to hear it all again, I don’t need to say it all again, but Servalan gets humiliated by one of her officers, again. Cally spends the whole episode working the teleport, and manages to get that wrong, twice. Dayna does nothing in the episode but ask Avon questions (not very different from last episode). I’m expecting at least one of the female regulars to leave next season. And I bet there’ll be another bloody awful Ben Steed story then too.

The story is a mess, with a magic computer on an invisible planet and too many people making overly complicated plans with it. The design is lazy, the effects work is dreadful (is that really supposed to look like a human being floating in that tank?) and in the conclusion, the plot just self destructs: Moloch, the hyper advanced alien, can’t survive without his life support machine and Avon runs away from Servalan (who has a teleport bracelet, and didn’t manage to kill Vila or Tarrant when she was face to shoulder-pad with them).

What’s really sad is that I see we are nearing the end of this season. This time last season, everything was gearing up toward the destruction of Star One – this time around, there’s absolutely no continuity at all and no sense of direction. Where is Servalan going? Where is Avon going?

Come on, Chris. Prove me wrong. Two more stories to go. Surely this Ben Steed story was penance enough. Let’s get back to the good stuff.

Sarcophagus!

There are two kinds of Blake’s 7 story: ones tied directly into the show’s continuity, and the Liberator’s ongoing struggle with the Federation (and Servalan in particular, of course), and what you might expect to be the more prevalent: extraneous, self-contained adventures-of-the-week. Random touchdowns on alien worlds, attacks by space pirates, detours through black holes into the weird dominion of a deposed alien genius. That sort of thing.

In the first season, the two kinds of story were almost invariably fused. Blake would decide they needed to liberate a figurehead of the rebellion or steal a superweapon or blow up an important satellite. Sometimes Blake was directly pitched against his deadly nemesis, Tarrant. In series 2, there is perhaps more division between these two kinds of story. Robert Holmes does a clever thing of having the Federation alerted and on their way, but not quite visible.

I suppose the split is symbolic of the Liberator crew itself. Do they fly toward trouble, do they rescue a stranger, do they investigate the unknown, are they motivated for themselves?

In this season, where Servalan is slowly regaining her power and her interest in the Liberator sometimes seems monomaniacal, I feel the stories are less tightly linked into the Federation narrative. Although there is a sense that Tarrant and Avon are strutting about a bit, squirting testosterone around the flight deck and getting ready to tangle their antlers, a lot of the stories could really be seen in any order. This isn’t a problem: although the Star One narrative of Season 2 gives an extra satisfaction to the faithful viewer, it can also feel a bit of a drag sometimes.

Last week, I wrote in praise of Rumours of Death, a pretty overtly continuity-tastic story, and very satisfying too. It not only built upon Servalan and Avon’s characters, but seemed to depend on a sense of moral nihilism that has crept in since the loss of Blake. What are they fighting for? Do they really have nothing to look toward but violent death or that ‘old wall’ of subjugation?

We were due something fun and colourful after that, and perhaps something a little bit life-affirming. The title of Tanith Lee’s episode might not look too promising in such a context. But I would actually give it the edge over even Rumours of Death.

It doesn’t provide any insight into the world of the Federation. There is no real sense of history for any of the characters. One scene with Cally at the beginning is slightly odd, suggesting that she is still exiled from Auron. It might have made more sense to mention the death of her sister, but instead we are in a weirdly ‘reset’ and ambiguous place at the start of the story. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it does have a different emphasis. Where the continuity-ish stories describe personal experience as cumulative, these self-contained stories suggest that we never learn, we never truly change, we are always hungry for a new adventure, always subject to chance and surprise.

And yet this becomes an incredibly personal story for Cally and, quite surprisingly, for Avon too. A psychic vampire of sorts manages to take over the ship, welcomed in by Cally’s natural instinct toward the psychically developed, non-human, and towards, in a word, a friend. Cally doesn’t do that well out of the friendship, being laid comatose in a pile of glittery cushions; on the other hand, life on the Liberator day-to-day looks pretty alienating. Look at the events of last week.

To some extent, Avon redeems himself in this story. Last week, he was betrayed in almost every sense, murdered his ex-lover in cold blood, and welcomed death at the hands of his greatest enemy. In this story, he directly challenges the invading alien to take his life: chancing (with, perhaps, a hint of a death wish) that Cally really doesn’t hate him that much. Despite testing and watching her earlier in the story, he finally gives himself up and trusts her to defy the oppressive personality.

There’s a kiss, a bit of sleight of hand, a few sad words from the alien, a slow dissolve to dusty death. There’s a comedy ending from Dayna and Vila, and a shared look of understanding from Avon and Cally. In actual fact, everything that Avon and Cally do in this story is unspoken: Avon trusts Cally, Cally trusts Avon, and Tanith Lee trusts her audience.

What takes this just beyond Rumours of Death – not that it’s a competition, but I want to make this point – is that there are plenty of bits of Sarcophagus that take the risk of looking ridiculous, and that's always good. There’s an overlong sequence at the beginning which establishes a weird narrative of dream symbology (even a little bit of Jung? No?). There are mad costumes, weird poltergeist happenings, and of course there is space folk.

Space Folk.

It’s all fabulously daring and unexpected. Rumours of Death had some great play with narrative, and lots of shooting and shouting and dark looks. You could just about show it to your parents without blushing. But knowing that Blake’s 7 can go just that bit further, knowing it can push on beyond its budget, beyond verisimilitude and realism and fear, I am always extra pleased when – as here – it goes that one step beyond.

Right then, sorry for the extra-long blog post this week. Two good stories in a row. Surely that means we’re due a duffer next time…

I took the wonky pictures of the Radio Times listings in the British Library, and the image of Cally comes from the Blake's 7 Image Library.

Seek – Locate – Destroy!

It's her! Finally!

And just as excitingly, though meaning a lot less to me, it's him, too!

Terry Nation makes us wait for Travis. We hear a lot about him from Servalan and from Servalan's cute young squaddie friend. He tells her that he won't serve alongside Travis, that he's a butcher and a villain who is, basically, not merely licensed to kill but driven to it as well. We hear about his ruthless effectiveness, so ruthless that (even in the nightmare future of memory wipes and random killings that we have already seen, the world in which children are abused in the name of justice and lawyers gunned down in cold blood, not to mention wet weather) there was somebody somewhere raising an eyebrow and saying, 'Ooh, bit much, I think.'

Servalan really couldn't give less of a shit. In fact, she seems to have personally intervened to ensure Travis wasn't dismissed from the security ranks. Was that because she thought he was useful to her? Did she know about Travis's history with Blake and choose him because of it? Or is she planning on using him in various future campaigns in which she can, if she needs to, deny responsibility for the outcome? Does she know what she's got in Travis?

She joins the episode's writer in making us wait for Travis, but she does it to show him who's boss. She sends a clear message for him to wait in reception. But leafing through old back issues of Bella and The People's Friend is evidently not on his agenda. He refuses her show of power. He demonstrates his maverick tendencies direct to his boss.

So even in this opening episode, there is a game of cat and mouse going on even between the aggressor's. I like that. There's flirtation too, of course, and how could there not be? Servalan and Travis are sex kittens who have found themselves in the most sterile environment you can imagine, beasts of the savannah in a future where the wilderness has been paved over. But do they want to mate or kill one another, or something else...?

Servalan finds Travis's missing eye 'displeasing'. Travis, I suspect, is not much of a ladies man ('I'm always in the market for a rough analogy,' he purrs at a male technician) and only has eye for Roj Blake. After all, as neither of them can forget, he waited for him for two days, in a basement and, what's more, presumably in that skin-tight black PVC outfit. No wonder he was so aggressive when it came to it: nobody likes to be stood up, and that outfit must be a very snug fit. When Servalan comes across him, seated in front of some giant blow-up photos of Blake in pain, he can, we assume, barely contain his excitement.

What does she make of it all? We know everything about Travis, from his criminal record to his hot temper, not to mention the missing eye and the gun in his finger (are the Kraals the great evil behind the Federation?). Servalan is onscreen from the get-go, but giving nothing away. She asks the questions, gives the orders, even gives the episode its rather Dalek-tastic title. Yet we barely catch her job position, hardly understand her power or her plans.

What with the nifty pacing at the start of the episode, it all adds up to a rather satisfying episode. There's not enough for Avon to do – to be honest, there's barely enough for anybody to do: "Blake's Three" would have been a much tenser ensemble, but there you are – but at last we have more characters of his calibre.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.