Orbit!

FROM: dirtydozen@hotmale.co.space

TO: pres.sleer.valan@gmail.co.smic

SUBJECT: Room on top?

Dear Servalan,

Hope you are quite well. Or, to be absolutely consistent, quite mad, bad and dangerous to know as ever you were. Sorry to have missed you on down there on the planet Malodar, a world that lived up to its name by stinking to high heaven. And yes, I got your scent, right enough, amidst the stench of deceit, regret, frustrated eroticism and Deep Heat. That evil genius Egrorian had certainly pressed against somebody who wears ‘Suspiria’ perfume, and in these circumstances at least, it wasn’t his ex-boyfriend Pinder (it was him with the Deep Heat). I wouldn’t have thought Professor E. was your type, but I can hardly talk, having taken myself and my colleagues to Malodar and the brink of destruction on nothing more than the promise of his giant weapon.

So yes, I got away, and more than that, I know it was you who tried to kill me, and more than that, I know that you know that I know, in fact: you know that I know that you knew that I know that you knew that I know that you knew, and so ad infinitum. I don’t think there’s anything we don’t know about each other. Never was the chance of a mate allowed to grow so stale.

For a long time we’ve been in the same orbit, you and I, going around and around. To an observer, it might look as if you were in pursuit; to a political theorist, it might seem that I’ve been deliberately giving you the runaround. Only an astrophysicist would know the truth: we’re both swinging in circles because that’s how the universe holds together. But whose orbit is holding us, Servalan, and if he’s not around anymore – are we free to go our own way?

To be frank, I’m writing to see if you’ve got any jobs going free at the Federation, or wherever it is you work at the moment. If you can get away with an assumed name, not even growing your hair out, I’m pretty sure I could slip into some secret niche. No, it’s not a trap. What would be the point?

Once upon a time, I’d have scorned to ask such a question. You were the enemy, pure and simple – well, not at first. Servalan, you were a target. You made yourself our opposition, pursuing and antagonising us and generally looming large. You and Travis put a face on the forces that Blake and Jenna were set against. We all came to obsess over that face, one way or another.

Nowadays, I’ve no idea what you stand for or what you want. You’re hardly in power any more, and all your schemes generally come to naught since my leather-trousered arse is still sitting safe and sound on board the Scorpio as I write this. You’re no opposition and certainly no target. If you want to get anywhere, you’re going to need better allies than Pinder and Egrorian.

More to the point, and speaking off the record, I’m not entirely sure what my place in the universe is any more. I don’t need money or glory. The woman I loved, as you know, is dead. My old friends sell me out, my new friends make me sick. Somewhere in the middle is Vila. I’ve never quite been able to make up my mind about Vila, but last Monday evening in the heat of the moment, everything to play for… to my surprise, I found my mind was made up. Oh, we laughed about it afterward, but since then, it’s given me pause. I’ve caught myself staring into space with even more gravity and melodrama than usual.

I can’t keep flying around in circles, Serv. Something has to give. You know what I’m talking about: you nearly made it out, left for dead twice, and you clambered back onto the horse and where did it get you? Pressing yourself against Egrorian, hatching another pointless scheme. I know you know what I’m talking about. You know I know, and I know that you know that I know.

Sooner or later there has to be a decisive move on someone’s part. I could send along my CV but I suspect you have all the salient details.

See you next Monday,

K.A.

Traitor!

            “Blake would have been proud of you,” sneers Vila.

            “He probably would,” replies Avon coldly. “But then, he always was an idiot.”

            The story of Kerr Avon in Blake’s 7 is rather surprising. For a while you’re certain he’s going to mutiny. His main reason for getting up in the morning appears to be critiquing Blake. In fact it sometimes feels like it’s only because he’s curious how far Blake’ll go that he’s holding back: he’s like the companion figure in Doctor Who, a viewer surrogate. He even talks like a disdainful Gogglebox viewer who’s somehow got through the screen into the story.

            And one of the people he’s watching is earnest, hot (and curly) headed self-appointed leader, Roj Blake. We rarely see Avon’s moments of heroism when he’s isolated from the crew, but there are a couple of crucial episodes in the first two seasons where Avon heads off to rescue his hapless leader at risk to his own life when he could as easily take off in their psychic spaceship.

            Throughout the Star One narrative, Avon criticises Blake’s judgement pretty often (this is because the script editor’s role is somewhat lax, to the extent that we get the same storyline a few times with different looking tabards) and he does say that after the last vigilante action he’s off.

            Well, things go a bit weird then. Blake doesn’t die that this point, although he makes sense that he would, narratively – but anyway, Avon is in charge of the ship, and the adventures continue. He’s a changed man, partly because he’s been watching Blake, partly because he’s been watching another character: Servalan.

            At the start of last season, in what might therefore be read as an extreme fanboy fantasy moment, she tells him she wants him to rule the Universe with her. They’ll zoom around in the Liberator, drinking bright green drinks and laughing at the little people. Avon rejects her, but he does take twenty seconds aside for snogging her like a sixth former on the back seat of the bus. He’s certainly capable of being seduced by Servalan, just as he is by Blake. The common factor would seem to be power. Avon has presumably lived his life in the growing shadow of the Federation, and now that he’s a free man, he finds himself reproducing its operations. Organise, direct and control.

            Now we hear that Avon’s set up a base from which to manage his operations, in a story he begins by being specifically concerned that the Federation are moving in on colonies across a series of worlds. He’s starting to think tactically, perhaps. And if he happened across one of those dissident worlds that Blake was obsessed with, would Avon go that bit further than his erstwhile leader did and take charge? He’s certainly more likely to than his crew, who are all (in this story at least) soldiers, with even Vila arguing that Tarrant won’t do the right things and ask the right questions. Tarrant is enjoying himself too much for Vila’s liking, but as such he serves Avon’s purposes. And things do work out for them: Tarrant and Dayna throw themselves heroically into things, meet the rebels and the traitors and the mutant scientist in the bunker (I imagine Terry Nation phoning his agent during this story, just to check that he hadn’t written this without realising it).

            They also spot an old enemy, now seemingly more of a desperate fugitive than the Liberator crew ever were. Are the roles beginning to reverse for Avon and Servalan?

            I like the idea of Servalan on the run, living on her wits and manipulating Federation captains on a personal level. The scene where her unmistakable shadow falls across the body of her victim – as she blasts a full-length Andrew Skilleter print of herself out of recognition – is delicious.

            The rest of the story, unfortunately, is about as turgid as this show has ever got. I thought it was bad last week – and it was – but at least we had a bit of telepathy thrown into the mix. Holmes, one of the greatest TV writers there will ever be, somehow fails to make anyone say anything interesting or entertaining. Christopher Neame gets some good moments in the opening scenes, but with no thanks to the script. It’s criminal that he gets no big scene with Servalan, whom he strangely resembles.

            I hear people saying that this series still has good stories to come. One of them had better come along soon, because I’m losing the will to watch – and it would be a shame to give up when I’ve come this far. Particularly when, as I have tried to suggest, the strange relationship between Blake (dead), Servalan (back from the dead) and Avon (dead behind the eyes) has such strange, torrid and tragic potential in it.