Death Watch!

First Zelda and now Deeta. How many more siblings are there – and twin brothers and sisters at that – waiting out in space for the Liberator crew to be sort-of-but-not-quite-reunited with. Apart from the fact it’s sort of weird – almost as if they’ve actually forgotten they made 'Children of Auron' and just used the same idea again, and in almost the same way – I think the idea has plenty of potential. I’d like to meet a lot of other members of family. Avon’s Mum, for instance. Vila’s sexy cousins. Servalan’s unassuming twin sister Agnetha. To be really consistent, any of these incoming members of family really ought to be played by their corresponding members of the cast.

I suppose they should also experience the other’s death telepathically – again, a weirdly repeated motif. I thought it was actually handled really nicely here. The telepathic link managed to serve multiple purposes without being stretched. It was strangely logical for opposing forces to vicariously experience their champion’s terror or victory, and gave an interesting role for Dayna, with her unique affinity for warfare. It came as a surprise for it to be the context and medium for Deeta’s only contact with his brother, his goodbye witnessed by millions, and the scene was beautifully, unsettlingly shot by Gerald Blake.

It was a surprising and inventive episode in more than this. It recalls one of the more memorable stories from Season 1, 'Duel', but in that story the focus was on the participants. Here, much more was made of the Liberator crew as a viewers, knocking back the space booze, debating the ethics of the contest, the strategy, even the commentary (delivered by 

 Doctor Who Guest Star #1

Praxis from 'The Pirate Planet'). The story's never quite as meta and clever or even as fun as it really has the potential to be, but it does call on a different sort of energy between the lead actors, and that’s difficult in a show like this.

Typically of Chris Boucher, it was also a story where the action – in the denouement, especially – was fairly evenly divided between lead characters. Avon plotted, Dayna analysed – and caused a diversion, Orac behaved like he was originally designed to, and Cally relayed information to Tarrant like nobody else. Vila wasn’t much use, but then he so rarely is – and I did enjoy his complete inability to recognise Steven Pacey in a wig. ‘I’m sure I know that man…!’ (There’s less for 

Doctor Who Guest Star #2, 

Professor Jones, to do.)

The only problem is, this really didn’t deserve to be such an ensemble piece. Quite reasonably, every member of the crew has had their own special episode centred on them – bar Dayna, and here’s hoping the talk about her father’s death in this story is set up for the finale – and now it’s the turn of Dev Tarrant. Isn’t it? But this feels like the least we’ve ever heard from that particular member of the crew. Normally he’s bleating on about how unappreciated he is, how stupid Vila is, where to blow up next.

This episode, he watches his brother walk into almost certain death – and then to actual, certain death – and then even avenges him, with not much more emotion than if he was watching Deeta fail a driving test. It’s not the fault of Steven Pacey, really – there’s absolutely nothing in the script for him. Not even a single tear down his extremely smooth cheek, or a variety of emotions chasing one another over his choirboy features. The story even ends on a bit of a gag – just as Children of Auron did, bizarrely. At least this one’s amusing.

It’s an odd story for Servalan too. I suppose I was spoiled by the build-up to 'Star One', but here we are in the penultimate episode, here’s Servalan, here’s a promising scene with her nemesis (‘I don’t see you as an enemy, Avon, but a potential friend…’ ‘I’m ready to come up now’) and then – it turns out she just has another Evil Plan of the Week, which is foiled with no repercussions.

I’m looking forward to the finale, though. I accidentally found out that Terry’s back, and I think he’s got lots of material to work with. If he hasn’t paid much attention to the show lately, at least he’s got a reminder of the Dayna/Servalan blood feud in this very episode. The whole of this episode is almost like a man who’s been house-sitting for a friend, reminding him where all the important stuff is. Let’s hope the electricity’s on…

 

I took the wobbly pictures of the Radio Times listing, but any other pictures are from: http://www.framecaplib.com/b7lib

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.

The Web!

Being as I'm currently Googling images for this blog, reading reviews  and background (such as the aforementioned Alwyn Turner biography of Terry Nation) and of course the wonderful and hilarious Wife in Space blog,  not to mention having conversations with people who don't know what I don't know, it's hard to avoid spoilers for Blake's 7. Simply through a process of osmosis, I know what happens at the end of the series. I know that Servalan is FINALLY in the next episode. I know about Gan, but not where and when.

But somehow, I sure as hell wasn't expecting whatever this was.

Early expectations were, strange as it may seem, that this might be co-opted somehow into the history of Doctor Who's Second Doctor-bothering Great Intelligence, perhaps the even older Animus, based on their capacity for snatching down spacecraft out of the ether with an unearthly and indestructible cobweb (making The Web a partner with The Web of Fear and The Web Planet respectively) (and there is a precedent in Who fandom for weaving together the respectively gauzy tendrils of the Great Intelligence and the Animus as some sort of Lovecraftian interdimensional evil being).

Then, of course, there was a slow pan through what looked like the New Forest after a Zorbing day out gone horribly wrong. A camera explores a proper sci-fi-looking base, with people wrapped in bacofoil sleeping on very uncomfortable-looking futuristic sun-loungers. A whispering voice – like the Animus!, I thought, like the Great Intelligence! – and then: Saymon.

Cut to Roj Blake, all in his déshabillé, perhaps to arouse the viewer, perhaps to symbolically represent vulnerability. Blake's crew seem peculiarly incurious about the mysterious spaceship they've stolen, more preoccupied with its physical trappings: Jenna's blouse, Avon's jewels, and this time Villa's first words onscreen being a gawky, 'What do you think of the outfit?', to which Cally (whose shimmery green gear is presumably also 'off the peg' in the Liberator's wardrobe room) responds with a heavy object to the head.

The clunky technobabble jeopardy that takes up a great part of the first half of this story – "Standard drive plus auxiliaries can be sustained for ninety hours. Each neutronic discharge reduces that capacity by three hours." Aarrgh! – seems a long way from the sinister meta-psychological stuff we saw in the opening episode, where brainwashing was the most fundamental nightmare of the future dictatorship. But we do see a survival of those themes in Cally: the huge physical prowess of the auto-repairing ship can be invaded and overpowered through the vulnerable and mysterious mind.

There's a first note of something interesting with Cally's alienness, when Avon cites it as a reason not to trust her, and the strange description of her as a 'daughter' of the exiled Auronar scientists. Ham-fisted as the story is, and it's really another issue of wonky pacing, Nation was clearly being strategic about its placing: a new crew member on the ship, but can she be trusted? Does she share the common creed of the crew? Do they have a common creed?

Unfortunately, despite a veritable buffet of interesting characters to play with, Nation makes us starve for interpersonal drama. Instead, he reformulates some of the highlights of Genesis of the Daleks, with arch-villain Davros replaced by what looks like a cheap gimmick from a very outre cabaret act. Hard to describe what the Daleks are replaced by. 'If someone pointed out a child dressed as a woodlouse carrying a spear, and told you that that child dressed as a woodlouse carrying a spear would grow up to be utterly evil...'

 Thank goodness for not knowing: that when I put this in the DVD player last night, I would see this. I still can't quite believe that I saw it. (And I bet Terry Nation couldn't, either. Another potential 'new Dalek' idea, up in smoke.) But how sad to know. To know that Servalan is on her way. To know that Saymon is not coming back. Not the returning villain who becomes the iconic epitome of Blake's 7.

And if he is, and he does, I'm telling you now: keep it to yourself.