Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Kelly Reilly and Michelle Yeoh.
It’s 1947 and esteemed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot lives in retirement in Venice, employing retired police officer Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio) as a bodyguard to keep away the desperate souls who want his help.
When old friend, and renowned mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver (Fey) visits and tells him of a medium named Joyce Reynolds (Yeoh) who she believes to be genuine, Poirot is tempted to attend a Halloween party hosted by famed opera singer Rowena Drake (Reilly) at her palazzo, a former orphanage supposedly haunted. After the party Rowena will host a séance where she hopes Joyce will allow her to communicate with her daughter, Alicia, who supposedly committed suicide after her fiancé, Maxime (Kyle Allen) broke off their engagement.
Soon Poirot will not only have a murder to solve, he’ll also have to consider the possibility that the palazzo really is haunted by the spirits of the dead.
After doing Murder on the Orient Express (Which I’ve seen) and Death on the Nile (which I still haven’t) Branagh changes tack for his third Christie adaptation eschewing the more famous stories for one that’s lesser known, taking Christie’s Hallowe’en Party and shifting its locale from England to post war Venice.
One thing that remains the same is a stellar cast, even if some, like Yeoh, feel a little shortchanged.
There’s a dark brooding feel to the film, and it’s a perfect film for the month of Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, a few minor jump scares aside it’s pretty tame as a horror film, but the spooky vibe is nicely done all the same, and the sense of claustrophobia palpable. Branagh is a very good director, and he uses all his tricks here. Some people might be annoyed by his use of things like Dutch angles, but I mostly liked how he filmed it, though there were a couple of occasions where his decisions provoked me to wince rather than gasp—in particular his thankfully limited use of Snorricam just brought to mind Mitchell and Webb’s Sir Digby Chicken Ceasor, not the comparison you really want.
I am not a big enough Poirot fan to have a real opinion on Branagh’s portrayal, though I know people who are fans and they seem to like it. For me he is superb, his accent not too broad, his ticks not too expansive and you can feel the weight of all those murders on his shoulders.
The rest of the cast are similarly good. As the grief stricken Rowena, Yellowstone’s Rielly essays a character who’s the antithesis of Beth Dutton, yet who is similarly broken, and it’s nice to see her using her own accent. Jamie Dornan is understated as the PTSD suffering doctor, and it does amuse me that Jude Hill plays his son for a second film in a row after Belfast. Hill is great in both films, and one wonders if he’ll be the kind of child actor who metamorphoses into an adult star, like Kirsten Dunst, or one who doesn’t quite make the transition. Time will tell.
I like Tina Fey a lot and I thought she was very good as Oliver. That being said, I know her portrayal hasn’t gone down well with everyone, not down to her performance so much as the depiction of the character. I’m reliably informed that the Ariadne Oliver we see here is very different to the one in the books who is very much a stand in for Christie herself, and while Branagh on the whole seems respectful of the Christie Cannon, the decision taken by he, and screenwriter Michael Green, here seems designed to provoke.
Camille Cottin is very good as the superstitious housekeeper, and Yeoh is always good value, here as the former nurse turned psychic. The rest of the cast do a great job, albeit with lesser roles.
A solid murder mystery, the calibre of the performances and the direction compensate for any slight flaws in the plot (there are some contrivances and it always irritates me when the solution relates to something the audience aren’t fully aware of). Not sure how quickly I’ll rush to rewatch it, but it has reminded me that I need to see Death on the Nile and I’ll certainly check out Branagh’s next Poirot film, if there is one.
In a fantastic cold open we find Avon in prison. We further discover that he’s been there five days, and has steadfastly refused to give the interrogators his name, in fact he’s held out so long that the Federation have sent their top inquisitor, a nasty piece of work named Shrinker, to make Avon talk. Shrinker threatens Avon with a laser probe, and when Avon rubs the back of his neck Shrinker reassures him that the homing beacon is still working. It seems no one is coming for Avon, and Shrinker asks if anyone thinks he’s worth dying for. “Not since Anna,” says Avon before revealing his name, which catches Shrinker off guard. Worse is to come for the jack booted torturer when Avon further reveals that no one will come while the homing beacon is turned on, but now he’s turned it off…
“And we’re here,” says Tarrant as he and Dayna teleport in. Dayna leaves behind a grenade (I mean of course she does) and they depart, taking Shrinker with them.
Back on Liberator Avon goes to get cleaned up while our fearless heroes (and Vila) take turns in bullying the bully. Only Cally, unsurprisingly, thinks they’ve gone too far.
Dayna wonders what happened to the rebellion and why Earth is still ruled by creatures like Shrinker.
Cut to Earth where Councillor Chesku, one of Servalan’s advisors, is taking the air with his wife, Sula (who, spoiler alert, is Anna Grant) in the grounds of Servalan’s presidential palace, an ancient manor house rebuilt from scratch at great cost. Chesku is testing out a speech he plans to give at a dinner in Servalan’s honour, where he will talk about how the rabble who threatened them have been defeated. At which point Sula pulls a gun and informs him that the rabble aren’t quite as defeated as he claims.
Avon teleports down to a cave with Shrinker and it’s time for the interrogator to be interrogated. There’s just one problem, Shrinker has no memory of torturing Anna Grant, but he does remember that Avon was being watched by the Federation’s top agent, code named Bartolomew. Bartolomew’s identity is a closely guarded secret, but if anyone would know it would of course be Servalan…
And we reach the episode I often cite as my favourite, and one I think the majority of Blakes 7 fans would list in their top five. Unsurprisingly it’s written by Chris Boucher, which means there’s a huge amount going on, and even the guest characters have detailed backstories and characterisation, and Darrow and Pearce give stellar performances.
Let’s consider a couple of those guest performances. It’s hard to imagine John Bryans is the same actor who played snobbish bureaucrat Bercol in Seek-Locate-Destroy and Trial. His Shrinker is a completely different animal (and he is an animal, Tarrant is right about that.) one of those ‘just following orders’ types, but it’s a fully three dimensional performance. Shrinker is a bully and a coward, a man who changed sides when rebels gained the upper hand and then changed back again once the Federation reasserted itself, but there’s also that curious sense of professional pride. It would have been so easy to make him ignorant of the identities of those he killed (see Bison’s ‘For me it was Tuesday’ line in Streetfighter the movie) but instead Shrinker remembers everyone he ever tortured, which is why Avon no doubt believes him when he says he never interrogated Anna Grant.
When it comes to Shrinker I’ve always been with Cally, her “yes and it’s contagious isn’t it?” line is wonderful, but even I have to admit Shrinker’s fate is grimly fitting.
Then we have Lorna Heilbron as Anna Grant/Sula/Batholomew. Presumably her cover as Bartholomew was so good that even her own brother didn’t realise she was the Federation’s top agent. Heilbron is lovely enough that one can imagine Avon being captivated by her, but there’s fire behind her eyes which no doubt sealed the deal with Kerr, and even now, having watched this episode so many times, I’m still not entirely sure of her motives. There’s her sneering line about ‘whetting the appetite of the people’s council’ but she also refuses to kill Servalan, arguing there have been enough deaths. And see how appalled she is near the start when arguing they could have built two cities for what it cost to rebuild Servalan’s palace. It’s entirely possible that she both wants to take Servalan’s place (albeit perhaps as the power behind the throne) whilst also championing a more democratic model. She was a spy after all, and such individuals are good at compartmentalising different aspects of their personality and holding multiple differing views at the same time.
Given how important she is to Avon, it’s amazing that Darrow and Heilbron share literally a couple of minutes of screen time outside of the flashbacks (and on the subject of flashbacks, as a friend of mine once remarked, it is refreshing to see a memory from the character’s POV rather than some weird omnipresent observer.)
The assault on the house is fun in an old school kind of way, and seeing men dressed as Federation troopers shooting other men dressed as Federation troopers is quite enjoyable. I’m not sure as a grand plan it makes a huge amount of sense, even with Servalan as a prisoner surely some enterprising senior officer would take the opportunity to seize power for themselves?
A reminder that Blakes 7 went out in the early evening, yet here we have Servalan slapped and knocked to the ground, admittedly the hit is off screen but judging by the bruises she’s sporting later on one imagines she was knocked about a bit on her way to the cellar. Plus there’s Shrinker telling Avon exactly what he’s going to do with that laser probe and glorying in all the torture he’s done, before Avon buries him alive. That’s a heck of a lot of dark stuff going out at 7.15 of an evening!
It’s incredible to think that even after talking about Anna Grant and Shrinker, we still have more guest stars in the form of Major Grenlee and Section Leader Forres, now I know not everyone is a fan, Boucher himself complained about Donald Douglas’ American accent and David Haig hamming things up a bit, but I like them, much as with ‘Trial’ Boucher humanises the average squaddie, and the dialogue between them is very good, if only for highlighting how boring such a job would be. Much like Ripley in Alien though, if Grenlee had listened to Forres and locked down the estate, Sula’s little attack would have come to a quick and bloody end. Their deaths are sad, plus the badly injured major affords Steven Pacey an opportunity to show Tarrant isn’t a complete monster, he has empathy for Grenlee, even if Avon doesn’t.
Oh yes, Tarrant, and those other guys. Fear not, Boucher gives them plenty to get their teeth into, in particular, this exchange, which showcases how they feel about one another long before Dorian put it more succinctly.
Cally: We’ve decided we care what happens to you.
Tarrant: Up to a point.
Dayna: We’re as surprised as you are.
Vila: Not to mention, embarrassed.
Yes, not for the first time Keating steals the show.
But not really, the show is stolen by Darrow and Pearce in a dank cellar, one of them chained to a wall, the other about to have his heart torn in two, again, by the same woman, this time when he’s forced to kill her. It’s very easy to see both Darrow and Pearce as actors who delight in going up to eleven, but here both prove just how good they can be with just a look, even before we get to how well they deliver Boucher’s dialogue about murdering your way to a wall in an underground room and how it’s an old wall I hope you don’t die before you reach it.
Best of all is how quickly Servalan regains her mojo once she’s free, delighting in the notion of sending the others Avon’s corpse, luckily poor old Hob inadvertently saves Avon’s life at the cost of his own. Cue the episode starts and ends with Vila providing Avon with a much needed drink.
If this episode has a flaw, it’s that it shows again how aimless the crew are without a Blake to drive them on. Rebels have seized Servalan, this is a huge moment and if Blake were here the crew of the Liberator would be doing all they could to help, instead our heroes are peripheral characters to the rebellion, they don’t hinder it but sure as hell don’t help, and much as I love Series C I’m noting the lack of focus in a way I never did before.
I could go on about this episode all day, but a final point of note, it’s directed by Fiona Cummings, making it the first Blakes 7 episode to be directed by a woman.
In conclusion, and to paraphrase Forres, some episodes are better than others, and Rumours of Death is a belter.
David Ash is a researcher working for the British Parapsychological Society, but unlike most people working there he firmly doesn’t believe in the supernatural and is a famous debunker of ghosts and mediums.
When he’s invited to the remote Edbrook house he thinks this will be a case like any other. The secretive Mariell family believe they are being haunted by a spectre, Ash suspects it’s a combination of environmental factors and the power of suggestion. The house is very old, and in a poor state of repair. The three Mariell children, Robert, Simon and Christina live with their aunt who they call Nanny Tess, the woman who raised them after the untimely death of their parents.
It soon becomes apparent that the Mariell children, thought adults, are childish, and Ash suspects they may be behind the haunting. Nanny Tess encourages him to leave but Ash is going to complete his investigation.
Over three nights his reason and his sanity will be tested by events that can’t be explained, and he will start to recall a trauma from his own past, and the real reason he doesn’t want to believe ghosts are real.
This was originally written as a script for the BBC, there was going to be a TV movie made but for one reason or another this fell through and, not wanting to waste his idea, Herbert turned it into a novel.
It’s incredible to believe that in 1988 Haunted became his 14th published novel, especially when you consider that The Rats was published in 1974! It’s quite different to most of the books that came before it, more subtle and much less gory, but Herbert was evolving as a writer and this book fits neatly into that evolution.
It’s a thin book, with a relatively simple story, although Herbert still feels the need to pad things out with a few flashbacks, not that any of them feel superfluous. There’s more going on than a simple case of ghosts of course, and it would have been interesting to see this as was originally intended, there’s a reveal late on that I distinctly recall scared the bejesus out of me the first time I read this back in the day, and I imagine it would have terrified a generation on screen. Ironically Haunted was eventually made as a film, albeit one that jettisoned much of Herbert’s story and recast one villainous character as a hero, which kinda missed the point.
Haunted will never rank as one of my favourite Herbert’s, but there is still a lot to like whether you’re a fan of his, or just a fan of good haunted house stories. Ash is an interesting hero, with his hardened sceptic predating Dana Scully by a few years, though the alcoholism feels a trifle on the nose. The Mariell children and Nanny Tess are somewhat stereotypes, but again that is the point because Herbert is using the language of the genre, and these are the characters you’d have found in haunted house tales going back to centuries past. Herbert does cast an interesting spin on familiar tropes, and that is where this book succeeds.
Is it Shirley Jackson or Susan Hill levels of good, perhaps not, the story meanders a little, and the off screen death of a character later on feels unfair on both the reader and the character, but this is still a good book, and possibly a great entry point to the world of Herbert.
Servalan’s flagship finds an Auron scout ship in space. They set course for it and Servalan asks for the disease pathogens to be sent up.
Liberator is heading for Earth, but this is no mission of mercy, there’s someone there Avon very much wants to kill, Shrinker, the man who killed Anna Grant. Cally is dismissive of Avon’s pointless revenge. Avon, oddly enough, doesn’t care, no one’s going to stop him.
Servalan’s ship disables the Auron ship with an ionic beam, which also renders the pilot’s natural telepathy useless, so he doesn’t twig when Servalan has him brought to the flight deck and she hands him something to drink.
Back on Liberator and Avon is dismissive of the pacifistic, isolationist Aurons. Cally argues that some of them wanted to get involved in galactic affairs, and that’s why she was exiled to Saurian Major. It’s a nice callback to Time Squad but it also wants to retcon that episode, remember back in Series A Cally had apparently been sent by Auron to aid the guerrillas, this rewriting of history does allow for a zinger of a line however. “Why do you think I’ve never gone back? Affection for him?”
Him being Avon. Methinks the telepath doth protest too much…
Auron’s ludicrously garbed pilot (Patrick Troughton’s son!) just manages to land before dying from the plague Servalan infected him with. Foolishly the Auron’s have no quarantine procedures and before you can say “Diseases don’t work like that” half the planet’s dying, and the other half won’t be far behind. Time to send out a distress call.
Who’s that coming to the rescue? Why it’s Servalan, all part of her nefariously complex scheme to capture Liberator, and if she can generate a few heirs in the process why not?
There’s a lot of good stuff in Children of Auron. The seeds of the next episode are sown with Avon on his way to avenge Anna Grant, meaning she’s mentioned twice before she actually appears, and given how often genre shows will just have a never before mentioned former love turn up out of the blue the foreshadowing is nice to see. There’s good stuff for Jan Chappell to get her teeth into with a dual role as Cally’s clone/twin Zelda, and some nice guest performances.
But…
There’s a lot of bad stuff too.
Where to start? The reconning of Cally’s exile for one, but it goes beyond that as everything we thought we knew about the Auron is jettisoned out of the window by writer Roger Parkes. Remember just a few episodes ago when Cally talked about the Dawn of the Gods and it’s heavily implied that her people have always been telepathic? Apparently Parkes hadn’t seen this episode. Now telepathy is a handy side effect of cloning, and cloning is something the Aurons have only been doing for a few decades. The Aurons themselves are a fairly bland lot too, much like timelords in Dr Who you wonder if it might have been preferable if they’d remained an enigmatic race we never met?
That isn’t the only history being rewritten. After capturing Avon, Cally and Tarrant, Servalan believes she only has Vila to deal with, somehow forgetting Dayna exists, which is weird given A/ she killed Dayna’s dad, and B/She was on Liberator with Dayna just two episodes ago. It’s a really odd moment, and so unnecessary, even if she knows Vila and Dayna are on the ship, she still doesn’t know about Patar (not sure his name’s ever mentioned) so they still had the element of surprise.
It’s weird to find an episode that delves so much into the show’s past (Saurian Major, Countdown, Weapon) yet at the same time gives the impression those were very different episodes to the ones we watched!
Servalan’s motives are interesting, with the demise of the Clonemasters it appears the Aurons are the only ones who can successfully clone humans. Servalan wants to have kids, but obviously doesn’t want any of the messy biology that usually goes along with the process, so she wants to be cloned. This is all reasonable enough for an egotist like her, that she’d infect an entire populace to do it seems heavy handed, even for Servalan, and I’m not sure a plan to capture the Liberator as her main goal justifies things. Still, Jacqui gives it her all and is genuinely heartbroken when her babies die. It’s noted that Servalan only wears black from this point on in a Queen Victoria style display of grief. Of course, she’s already wearing black here before her babies die, and to be honest I’m not sure she only wears black from now on, but it’s an interesting shift in the character, even if it doesn’t fully hold water.
Much like Killer, Children of Auron wants us to buy an incredibly deadly pathogen that can seemingly infect an entire populace in a matter of hours. I could just about buy this in Killer, but unless everyone on Auron lives in the same small city it seems unlikely. As I said in Killer, a disease that deadly would burn itself out before it could infect everyone.
The Aurons might be a tad dull (even Zelda) but at least Servalan has not one but two henchmen of the week in Deral and the wonderfully duplicitous Ginka, and they get some decent material. I still can’t decide if Ric Young’s role as Ginka is a progressive move (the first Federation officer of colour?) or an example of the untrustworthy Asian trope? Maybe it can be both things? And Young is definitely memorable. Compared to some henchmen of the week Servalan has Ginka’s one you kinda wish had turned up more than once. He gets quite a memorable end, as does Deral, does Servalan implant all her lackies with self-destruct devices now you wonder?
Franton and Patar settling on an uninhabited planet with enough genetic stock to produce 5000 babies makes zero sense. Will they have any infrastructure or, will they live like primitives? And wouldn’t Cally consider going with them at least? Like a lot of things in this episode it’s hard to get your head around.
And then we have the final moments. The comedy ending is a stock in trade of Blakes 7, as it was for the original Star Trek, but as ha-ha endings go this must be the most ill judged given AN ENTIRE POPULACE just died! Read the flight deck guys. At least Cally is thankfully absent.
Next time, some days are better than others, and some episodes are better than others too…
Liberator is in orbit and Tarrant is persuading Vila to teleport down to the planet. Apparently the locals need his expertise in exchange for some crystals that are needed for Liberator’s weapons systems. Vila being Vila he doesn’t want to go, at which point Del boy promptly begins bullying him threatening to toss him off the ship and that no one would stop him. Vila counters by pointing out that he was here first, but this cuts no mustard with Tarrant.
With no choice he goes down. Avon asks him to swallow a tracer. Tarrant points out he gave the natives his word there’d be no tricks. “You didn’t give my word,” says Avon.
After Vila teleports down Avon uncharacteristically tells Tarrant to leave Vila alone. Avon may despise him, but a talented thief is worth more than a pilot in Kerr’s opinion. Cally isn’t happy with how Tarrant treated Vila either (noticeably neither of them stopped him teleporting down!)
“Do you like being helpless?” Tarrant asks Cally in reference to the weapons. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried it.” Meow, saucer of milk to the teleport chamber.
Cally teleports down where a box of crystals is waiting. Not being a fool Cally tests it from a distance and the box explodes. Back on Liberator they search for the tracer only to discover Vila left it behind.
Meanwhile down on the planet some docile natives escort Vila to a ruined city whose name translates as City at the Edge of the World. Inside he soon discovers that it wasn’t the natives who lured him here, it was a band of pirates led by the infamous Bayban the Butcher. He has a door that needs opening, and he’s heard Vila’s quite good at that…
Chris Boucher’s script + Michael Keating’s performance = absolute joy. Seriously, I’d forgotten just how wonderful this episode was. Famously conceived off the back of Keating’s daughter complaining that her dad was never the hero, Boucher contrives to remedy that slight, yet Vila never acts out of character, he’s still the same old Vila, only for once he isn’t the butt of everyone’s jokes, he’s the hero, and more than this he’s the romantic lead as he quite probably becomes the first character in the show to get their end away.
It’s still amazing to think there were times when the powers that be considered getting rid of Vila (it was almost him rather than Gan after all). I don’t understand why given Keating was one of the show’s unsung heroes from the off and, setting aside Pearce and Darrow, is in many ways Blakes 7’s MVP. Quietly stealing most scenes he’s in, happy to play the fool and the coward and be the punchline of many, many episodes.
After bouncing off Darrow and others for some time, here he gets a new opponent in Colin Baker’s nuanced and understated Bayban the Butcher, Babe as his mother called him. I’ll be honest, I was never the biggest fan of Colin Baker’s Doctor, but as Bayban he’s brilliant, out hamming Darrow to the point where Darrow saw fit to respond by dialling things up to 11 when he stared in Timelash. Keating’s genuine terror as Baker chews the scenery is great, and yet he’s always smart enough to try and give Bayban what he wants.
A quick mention of the concern Vila shows as well once Bayban reveals that he boobytrapped the box. Bayban thinks Tarrant was going to be the one to be blown sky high, Vila on the other hand knows that it was Cally who was going to retrieve the crystals, and he’s genuinely upset.
Despite the fact he’s scared, Vila knows he’s valuable to Bayban, for the moment at least, which gives him the balls to snipe at the wonderfully named (and acted) Sherm and sexy gunsel (and proto-Soolin) Kerril, though as opening romantic gambits go, telling Kerril that she needs a bath, and possibly some mouthwash, isn’t a great idea, yet somehow Vila’s negging works and before you can say “shut up Orac” she’s had a shower and slipped into a slinkier outfit. I guess when you’re stuck on a ship with the likes of Sherm and Bayban then even Vila Restil might look like Ryan Gosling by comparison.
Kerril is a good character and must have made a pleasant change for Carol Hawkins, better known for sitcom roles and Carry on Films. It’s shame she becomes something of a damsel in distress and fancying Vila is one thing, but falling in love with him as only characters in 50 minute dramas ever do is a bit much, still for a moment at least Vila had a way out of life as a fugitive, a truly fresh start. I wonder if, while he was hiding in that shuttle with Avon was looking for him, he regretted his decision not to stay on Homeworld with Kerril? It does give Keating the chance to utter the line that sums Vila up almost as surely as “Other people’s property comes naturally to me.”
“I thief isn’t what I am, it’s who I am.”
Another Vila quote springs to mind. “There isn’t a door I can’t open, if I’m scared enough,” and true to his word he’s scared enough to open this one. Credit to Boucher for coming up with a plausible sci-fi security system, a forcefield made to look like a door, and Vila’s trick of pushing a probe very slowly through it makes perfect sense in a way many faux science aspects of the show never did.
Yes we have yet another advanced civilisation reduced to barbarism, but at least there’s a logical reason for it beyond ‘war’ and the central conceit of a teleport terminal placed on a starship three thousand light years away is a great premise. The door did contain, this world and the next, but not in the way Bayban thought.
While Vila gets the best of the material, there’s plenty for the others to do, especially once they start taking out Bayban’s men, and it’s interesting to note that they’re already pairing up in a way they’ll continue to do. Avon with Cally, Tarrant with Dayna.
Tarrant’s “Gaudy but effective,” line to Dayna after she uses a remote control mine is great (seriously though where was Dayna hiding that thing?) but even better is Jan Chappell’s delivery of “But I thought you were?” when Avon complains that nobody else is as reliable as Zen. Avon’s “Every silver lining has a cloud is great also.” I meant the episode is full to the brim with zingers.
It isn’t perfect, the exterior shots of the city waking up clearly don’t remotely resemble the planet we’ve seen, and Homeworld doesn’t look that inviting, but these are minor quibbles. This is a great episode with a great ending as Vila gets depressed, thinking he’s made a terrible mistake. Orac advises that given his talents he’s likely to make worse mistakes in future. Keating gets the last laugh for once. “Still, it’s a comforting thought, let’s hope they all have great legs.”
Next time: do you think Jan Chappell got paid twice?
Earth fell long ago, leaving partially terraformed planets out in the depths of space. Eventually enough of civilisation recovered on Earth that a handful of ark ships were sent out to try and find a new life on these worlds. One such ship was the Enkidu, captained by Heorest Holt, its cargo thousands of humans in suspended animation.
The Enkidu reaches its destination, the planet Imir. The world is habitable, but its no paradise. Holt and his crew have no choice though, the Enkidu is on its last legs, they have no where else to go, and so they settle on Imir.
Generations later and a fragile colony exists on Imir, eking out a pitiful existence, terrified of Seccers, mysterious raiders who want what little they have, and Watchers in the sky who they also fear, and yet who also inspires guilt.
Strangers have come to Imir though, led by a woman named Miranda. She claims to have come from a remote farm, but in fact she’s come from the stars. She wants to help the colony, but fear and paranoia mean she must tread carefully, or else all might be lost.
And so the third book in Tchaikovsky’s “Children of…” series arrives and I have to say it’s good and a worthy successor to the first two books. It’s also a somewhat more intimate story, even though it deals with huge themes and covers a long timeframe.
There’s a handy explainer at the start, which was useful to remind me of what had gone before, but I really wouldn’t recommend reading this book until you’ve read the first two!
In the first book Tchaikovsky gave us a race of intelligent spiders who’d been inadvertently uplifted by a human designed virus intended for primates. In the second book the virus was also used, more intentionally this time, to evolve octopuses, and in the second book we were also introduced to another life form, albeit one truly alien and, initially at least, incredibly dangerous. In Children of Memory spiders, octopuses, Humans (as opposed to humans, the capital H denoting those humans who’ve been altered by the Portiids to no longer irrationally fear spiders) and the aliens are working together to explore the galaxy and they are joined by a new race who evolved from corvids, although there is some debate about whether these evolved crows are actually sentient or not, and sentience is a theme running through the book, especially when you factor in the digital consciousnesses of Dr. Avrana Kern, she exists as multiple independent computer programs. Are they all alive, are they sentient?
The book isn’t just about interesting philosophical questions however, we also get to see the struggles of a band of humans trying desperately to forge a colony on a world unsuited for colonisation, and here the book is especially heart-breaking.
The characters are interesting, though at times each of them is a little too complex, Miranda for example isn’t really a Human called Miranda, she’s an alien copy of a Human called Miranda who assumes the role of a schoolteacher on Imir. Her interactions with a girl named Liff form the emotional heart of the story.
Tchaikovsky’s prose is very good, as is his ability to explain complex ideas relatively simply, and as always, his world building is simply superb. I do have to say that I didn’t enjoy this as much as the previous two books. As the universe expands and the number of intelligent life forms increases things can become cluttered, and once you realise that all on Imir is not what it seems the story becomes even more complex and at times a trifle too complex, and there are endings within endings and whilst I realise Tchaikovsky knew exactly where he was going, at times it felt like the author had gone rogue, only for you to realise that, no he hadn’t.
I am, of course, being overly picky. This is an excellent story tackling huge themes while still giving you characters you can empathise with, that it’s subjectively the weakest of the three books doesn’t mean it’s not a great read in its own right, and I really hope he has a fourth book planned because I’m not ready to leave this universe behind. Highly recommended.
Liberator is in orbit of a planet and Pursuit Ships are closing in. Liberator can’t run because Avon and Vila are down on the surface.
Servalan is watching from Space Command and is perplexed as to why Tarrant isn’t running. Her advisor says that people are talking, suggesting that Servalan is afraid of Tarrant (someone had to be). Servalan asks who is talking and apparently it’s people below decks, in particular a construction worker named Jarvik who says that “Any fool could take the Liberator with three pursuit ships.” Servalan demands he’s brought before her.
Avon and Vila have finally returned to Liberator. Avon has a rock he’s very interested in, so fascinated by in fact that he demands Zen runs scans on it, despite Tarrant needing Zen to plot evasive manoeuvres.
Jarvik arrives and immediately starts beating up Federation guards before telling Servalan she’s beautiful and snogging her. Servalan wants him punished but before she gets her (frankly useless) bodyguards to carry this order out, Jarvik is proven correct when Tarrant somehow evades Servalan’s impossible to evade plan by basically avoiding the very obvious trap. Jarvik says this is because Tarrant is a MAN, not a computer. As a fellow MAN, Jarvik knows where Tarrant will head next. The planet Kairos where the famed harvest is about to be gathered, a precious substance imaginatively known as kairopan.
Annoyingly Jarvik is right, Liberator is heading for Kairos and the scene is set for the ultimate battle between Tarrant and the original Jack Sugden from Emmerdale Farm…
Ok, I admit it, I used to really like this episode. What can I say, time changes a man (or should that be MAN? I’ll stop doing that now.) Harvest isn’t without its charms, it’s unintentionally hilarious after all, but it’s also incredibly problematic. On the whole I don’t think Blakes 7 has aged that poorly, but blimey this episode has.
On the face of it Jarvik is a character with a huge amount of potential, a former Federation officer who quit to become an artisan, a man who knows Tarrant and can go toe to toe with him. Frankly there’s a potential recurring adversary there, not that the show really needs a new Travis, but he’s there if needed.
Unfortunately any positive qualities Jarvik possesses are outweighed by terrible dialogue and Andrew Burt’s arch performance. People joke about Croucher, but his Travis is Olivier next to this.
Yes “Woman you’re beautiful.” Is funny, and for a moment there’s something unexpected about Servalan succumbing to Jarvik’s bit of rough, masculine charms, but only for a moment. This is the President of the effing Federation, a woman who’d stab anyone in the back to hold onto power, to have her going googly eyed over a man is an offence to the character, that Jarvik almost ends up suggesting he become her co-ruler is just laughable.
Even Dayna isn’t allowed to put Jarvik in his place, she kicks his butt but in the end he prevails because men will always be stronger. Give me strength, better yet give Dayna strength so she can throttle him like she did Klegg…
Let’s focus on some positives. The space battles are nicely handled, and I think Pacey convinces as an accomplished starship captain, though the idea of him as the most astute space warfare commander in the galaxy seems a stretch, as does the fact that the masses have heard about him and decided Servalan is terrified of him. He’s been on Liberator five minutes for God’s sake! It’s an odd attempt to make him some kind of super warrior, and while he and Avon sniping at each other is good, it’s not remotely the same kind of dynamic that Avon and Blake had. Roj and Kerr were equals, these days it feels like Avon is punching down too often.
Jarvik’s plan to capture Liberator is overly convoluted, but does in the end work, and the fact that we don’t know it’s worked until Captain Shad appears in front of a surprised Servalan is nicely handled.
The less said about what happens down on Kairos the better. The premise that no one who stays after the harvest lives more than a few hours is great, the reality is really poor. I feel sorry for the guys who made the giant spider thing, I’m sure they did the best they could with what they had but it’s laughable. Perhaps they should have just exempted it all together, leave the bodies, and the webbing everywhere and let our imaginations fill in the blanks. I guarantee we’d have thought of something scarier.
Similarly the hanger containing a lunar module is bizarre. Why would such an old ship be here, who built the hanger? The incongruity is jarring, even before we see inside the ship and it doesn’t reflect the exterior. It feels like the writer dug himself into a hole and had to come up with a contrived way to get out of it. Same with the sopron, the idea of a creature that reflects back a slightly more powerful version of what’s examining it is interesting, but falls apart very quickly given it can fool telepaths and computers but visually still looks like a rock? Bluffing Servalan than they’re going to blow up Liberator is a terrible plan—but I guess they were desperate—made worse by Burt’s forced laughter and ridiculously staged death as he puts himself in the line of fire as slowly as that henchman in Austin Powers being run over by a steam roller.
And why does Servalan insist Jarvik goes down to get everyone’s bracelets? Establishing some boundaries for her man, or does even she realise the episode needs padding?
Harvest is terrible, the real question is whether it’s so bad it’s good? It’s definitely not an episode to sell the show to a newcomer, but popping it on after a night down the pub with a few beers in me, well, that has some appeal.
Next time, how exciting can opening a door really be?
werewolves on the moon 