Stardrive!

Avon has definitely gone a bit strange.

Risking the lives of all your crew, despite their objections, just to gain a tactical advantage. Imperiously ordering them to sit and complete demeaning tasks in the dark, to satisfy your whim. Chasing after the latest missing Federation scientist and their mysterious super-charged gizmo, again just to gain a tactical advantage, even though tactically speaking you seem to have no actual long-term plan. Tricking close allies into risking their lives, just to create a distraction while you steal the gizmo. Letting other allies know about your bastardly behaviour to scare them into obedience.

You are Servalan.

Perhaps it’s because he thought she was dead, or at least, on the run? It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going with the Federation nowadays. It can’t be the same organisation that was led despotically by Jacqueline Pearce, or the one that was in shreds after the civil war, or the original one that Blake took charge of. Servalan once told Avon that the universe would be in disarray and needed someone strong – with fabulous hair – to put it back together. She had a go. Perhaps Avon thinks it’s his turn now.

He certainly seems as crackers as she was now.

Unfortunately for him, it’s not just because he’s madder, badder and more dangerous to share a spaceship with than he ever was before that he resembles our favourite villain. He also looks like her because he does all these despotic things with the desperate air of someone continually failing. The ship needs power, then it’s damaged, then (during the mystery of the exploding Federation ships) Orac refuses to give Avon the information he wants. After that, it’s all about the Space Rats and how much more dangerous and better organised they are than Avon and his crew.

It’s interesting to see James Follett tell his story this way. We’ve seen this narrative before, but normally with the magic gizmo in the hands of primitive cave dwellers or Space Vikings. The Space Rats are tribal, testosterone-tastic troglodytes, but Follett doesn’t equate that with primitive culture so much as Hell’s Angels and punks – oh, and queers too. There don’t appear to be any girl Space Rats, and the language of ‘bending’ people is rather suspect. If this is a depiction of power-play, status anxiety and (in some strange form) cold war, it is telling that this particular author seems slightly scared of a culture that is avowedly opposed to the mainstream. In short, the Space Rats are almost a parody of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ concept at the heart of the show, and they seem more dangerous, albeit more stupid. It’s like the show really doesn’t know what it’s about any more.

I was waiting throughout this story for a big confrontation between Avon and Vila. The moment when Avon’s plan went to pieces and Vila had to rescue him. To see their positions overturned, Dayna with the power to sacrifice him. Instead, Avon’s plan works out brilliantly in the nick of time and nothing is said between the crew. Follett contrives some jeopardy so that there’s no time to talk, and then the super genius Dr Plaxton is pressed into fitting her super gizmo to the Scorpio engines.

I haven’t really said anything about Plaxton so far, but I think I’ve said at least as much about her as the story does. She’s a harassed enigma with a screwdriver.

All this seems to endorse Avon as the hero of the piece. He’s not a bastard: he’s tough, he has vision, he’s a leader.

And then he allows poor old Dr Plaxton to die, seemingly without showing any remorse. He’s off at the deep end now – it’s not the way any of his crew react to the news, it’s just him in his lonely despot world, looking down from such a height that he can’t make out individual faces.

‘What about Dr Plaxton?’ they ask him.

‘Who?’ And he almost smiles.

In some ways this feels inevitable. The world of Blake’s 7 is a harsh, peculiar, decentred one. After all this time, the crew still don’t like one another, and they have no friends or family. Every gain they make against the Federation just melts away: like Servalan, Avon is a survivor who never wins, always loses. It’s no real surprise that he’s gone as crazy as she.

The question is, where does he go from here? And could he be brought back somehow?