Blakes 7. Series C, Episode 12: Death Watch

In space the passenger liner Teal Star receives a priority message for one of its passengers. The man looks strangely familiar. He’s in the observation lounge of the ship (so good a set they used it twice). A nervous young woman, Karla, recognises him and gushes over meeting the famous Deeta Tarrant. When she trips Deeta catches her but realises he’s been set up. There’s a gunman waiting but Deeta is a fast draw, he turns and kills the man. The woman protests her innocence but eventually (in a lovely bit of acting as the mask drops) reveals that she was in cahoots with the gunman. Deeta wants to know why they attacked him and discovers that the planets of Teal and the Vandor Confederacy are at war. Deeta is Teal’s champion and as they speak a message comes over the loudspeaker telling Deeta to report to the authorities. In desperation Karla goes for her gun but is no match for Deeta.

On Liberator Vila informs the rest of the crew that Orac has discovered that Teal and Vandor are at war. Dayna isn’t impressed. “There’s nothing like someone else’s war to take your mind off your own,” she says snarkily. Avon and Tarrant are interested though, and it’s explained that wars between Teal and the Vandor Confederacy involve trial by combat between champions. It’s a great occasion and outsiders are treated as honoured guests are granted immunity. There’ll be “wine, women and song” suggests Vila. Cally isn’t convinced but they agree to go.

En route they pick up vidcasts from the planet and learn that Teal’s champion is Del’s brother, and that a neutral arbiter has been appointed to ensure nothing untoward goes on. That neutral arbiter is the distinctly unneutral Servalan!

Soon Deeta will go mano a mano against Vinni, the Vandor Confederacy’s mysterious and overly cocky champion, but is Vinni all he appears to be?  

There’s a wonderful conceit at the heart of Death Watch which in some ways is reminiscent of Star Trek’s A Taste of Armageddon where war is simulated. Of course, in Trek Captain Kirk persuaded the people involved that sometimes you needed the horror of real war to encourage you not to fight. There’s no such moral imperative at the heart of Death Watch, a reminder that Trek and Blakes 7 are very different shows. The only moral here is that cheats never prosper, or maybe they do, Servalan’s plan fails, but only because Avon and co cheat to undo the cheating she did? That’s a VERY Blakes 7 theme.

For the second time in Series C the producers save money by getting one of the regulars to play their own sibling, here it’s Steven Pacey playing his own brother. It must be noted right from the off that, dodgy haircut aside, in many ways Deeta is a far nicer, more noble character than Del, but where does being honourable get him, eh?

After acting proactively in the last episode by following Servalan, here the crew are back in reactive mode, as they chance upon Servalan’s plan. Much as I love this episode it does rely on a few contrivances. Vila picking up on the fact that war has been declared, and the fact that Del’s brother is one of the champions. Perhaps Avon and co would have suspected foul play if Teal’s champion had been Bob Nobody given Servalan’s involvement.

If the episode had been poor the set up would have likely annoyed me, but since it’s a great episode I’m happy to let it slide.

I’ll also forgive it the padding, just see how much time is spent on Teal Star getting a message at the start!

There’s a fair amount of exposition too, but Boucher handles it well. Avon and Tarrant give us the bare bones, but then the ingenious use of the news broadcasts fills in the blanks in a fun manner as we get the frazzled off screen producer, and the camp presenter who wonderfully bitch at one another.

“I’m not a professional killer.”

“That’s not what the critics say.”

Meow!

This is a good episode for guest stars. David Sibley is fun as the camp presenter, and Stewart Bevan is excellent as Max, the not very diplomatic diplomat tasked with undertaking the titular death watch over Deeta. His nervous inexperience is offset by some genuine kindness, it’s a nicely played role and narratively speaking you feel Deeta could have had far worse people to spend his last few hours with. Pacey and Bevan work well together, but Boucher’s script helps. Take the moment where Max decides not to close his eyes and listen in on what Deeta is thinking.

“Maybe you’re in the right job after all, Max.”

And then there’s Vinni, not a man, instead a sophisticated (spoiler alert) android. Given we’ve already seen androids that are indistinguishable from humans (Project Avalon) this isn’t a total surprise, though you do have to wonder why we don’t see more of them. Too expensive to build perhaps.

Mark Elliott’s performance is wonderfully arrogant, and he has all the swagger of a villain on the Sweeney, and it’s such an antithesis of a character playing a robot, which is why it works. Vinni doesn’t know he’s an android.

Unlike Children of Auron where Cally and Zelda got to meet, there’s no brotherly reunion for Del and Deeta, which saves money but also makes things a little melancholier.

Death Watch is by no means a perfect episode, but it is clearly the best episode since Sarcophagus and one of the best episodes of Series C. The location work for Deeta and Vinni’s duel is nice, and while it is a trifle 20^th Century the best thing about watching it again now is that we’re no longer in the 20^th Century so it works even better as a location now than it did then.

Avon visiting a sick friend is a lovely notion, especially when you realise who the sick friend is. Apparently Avon and Servalan’s snog was improvised by Darrow and Pearce on set, and you have to love the way Avon says “I’m ready to come up now” immediately afterwards. It’s amazing that two characters who, let’s be honest, never shared that much screen time when Roj was around have become the beating heart of the show.

Vila’s metaphor for Servalan’s idea of fairness is clunky as anything but does serve to remind people that she killed Daya’s dad, and though it would have been nice to see a longer scene, Dayna holding Servalan at gunpoint is great, especially when she tells Madam President to close her eyes!

For once Tarrant and Avon are on the same page and it’s refreshing to see. Unlike his brother, Del has no qualms about cheating and Darrow’s “Oh good,” is wonderfully delivered. Their synchronised call for teleport at the end is great.

My favourite bit of the episode though is the lovely moment between Cally and Vila where she says she’ll have a nice time because he won’t be there and Vila chases after her like they were a pair of schoolkids, I just love the annoying brother/sister vibe they have going on. Shame we didn’t see more of it over the years.

Next time, things get Terminal…

Blakes 7. Series C, Episode 11: Moloch

Servalan’s ship is heading into deep space. Liberator is following and has been for 27 days, eager to find out where Servalan is heading.

As it turns out she might be heading nowhere. The only habitable planet out here, so far as anyone knows, is the penal colony of Calcos, but when Servalan bypasses even that planet the crew wonder if she’s gone mad. Dayna, unsurprisingly, wants them to blow her out of the sky but is overruled.

When Servalan’s ship seems to disappear Liberator follows, and almost crashes into another planet that’s somehow screened from the outside. They make it back into orbit but not before they’re spotted by two women, Poola and Chesil, monitoring scanners on the planet. Chesil says they need to report this, Poola disagrees, hoping whoever is on this ship might be able to help them. She deletes the footage.

On Liberator Avon and Tarrant banter, Tarrant wants to teleport down, Avon points out that the screening shield enclosing the planet would make this a very risky endeavour.

Down on the planet, Sardos, Poola has been found out, the Federation know she deleted the footage. The Federation troopers ask what they should do with her and a mysterious voice prompts; “Give her to your men.”

Servalan arrives and is dismissive of Poola’s plight (she might soon think differently). She’s come a long way to retrieve the infamous 5^th Legion, but apparently there isn’t much left of it aside from a transport ship. The two men in charge are Grosse and Lector and it appears they were non-commissioned officers but are now in charge. Servalan is ready to have them shot until they explain the secret of Sardos, the people here have learned to transmute matter into anything you want. Apples, guns or even ships. Servalan is impressed, until they point out they only called her here because they want her ship.

Orac meanwhile has found a way to get to the planet, that old transport ship is arriving and there’s a spot in the back a couple of people could teleport into. Someone would need to open the door from the inside once they land and Orac points out that Vila has the necessary skills (not the last time Orac will drop Vila in it.) Vila doesn’t want to go but Tarrant insists. What could possibly go wrong…

And after the damp squib that was Ultraworld we get something moderately more interesting, but also slightly more unsettling. Ben Steed, the man who gave us all that MEN guff in The Harvest of Kairos is back, and once again there’s a lot of toxic masculinity on show here. I don’t want to speak ill of Steed but, especially once you factor Series D’s Power into the equation, you do see a recurring theme when it comes to women.

Yes Grosse and Lector are nasty sorts (and to be fair they treat Colonel Astrid pretty poorly), and yes women have often been the victims of violence meted out by men in uniform in wars across the ages, but there is something so very distasteful about Molach’s “Give her to your men line,” especially  the fact it’s uttered twice. Show some imagination, Moloch!

Yes, I realise that in some respects the repetition is the narrative set up and punchline when Moloch tells Grosse to give Servalan to his men, and yes I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a wonderful scene when Vila is told he’s been given a woman, only to find it’s Servalan.

I do feel more uncomfortable in finding that amusing than I once did however.

Moloch is notable for two things. Firstly it shows that the crew of Liberator are taking an aggressive interest in the Federation again, following Servalan shows that, and it is good to see after they’ve spent most of series C just meandering around.

The second thing is the delightful team up of Vila and Servalan. The only downsides are that it doesn’t last longer, and That it’ll never really be repeated again. It’s shame as Keating and Pearce have great chemistry. It’s not Avon and Servalan for sure but for a few minutes it’s wonderful.

Talking of Vila, for the second time this season he’s harassed by Tarrant into going on a dangerous mission. Forget that Tarrant apologised in City at the Edge of the World because he’s back in bullying mode here, and once again Avon defends Vila.

Vila also gets a new best buddy in Davyd Harries’ Doran. It’s a broad performance almost better suited to a sitcom, and it does serve to mask Doran’s less salubrious traits. For starters he’s coming from a penal colony, now of course he could be a political prisoner but given his statement to Vila it seems likely that he’s something altogether more distasteful.

Doran: My problem was always women.

Vila: You like them?

Doran: No.

Couple with his “Go on my son” mentality after he offers Vila Servalan you do have to worry about him still at least he’s nice to Vila, which is more than anyone else is. Plus he randomly dies along with Chesil for no readily apparent reason other than the set was too crowded as far as I can see. Presumably that’s why Servalan gets away off screen. Shame, seeing her rescue her pilots would have rebalanced things nicely and allowed her to agency.

I suppose we should talk about the titular Moloch. Of all Deep Roy’s appearances on Blakes 7, this might be the weakest. I get that this was a last minute replacement episode, but still, the Moloch puppet is a little on the cheap side. “Yes I theorised that is what you would look like,” says Avon. Really, Kerr? I thought you had better imagination than that. It will only be a couple of episodes time that we get another example of what mankind will evolve into, while the Links aren’t great they are at least better than the sock puppet that is Moloch—nice Tasche though.

If you can ignore some of the gender politics this isn’t a terrible episode, and it is nice to see the crew of the Liberator taking an active part in the war against the Federation, even if it’s likely only out of self interest rather than nobility, and any episode where Keating gets good stuff to do is never completely irredeemable.

Next time, does that Deeta guy remind you of anyone?

Blakes 7. Series C, Episode 10: Ultraworld

Liberator has something on its sensors, something mysterious. As they draw closer, they realise it’s huge, an artificial planet that looks like a spikey Christmas tree decoration. It appears dead and Avon wants to investigate further. The others aren’t so sure, although Vila doesn’t proffer an opinion as he’s too busy teaching Orac Chekov’s riddles.

Eventually they decide to merely orbit it for a while and see if they can find out before about it before venturing inside. At this point everyone leaves the flight deck with the exception of the one crew member most likely to be possessed. Guess who.

Later Dayna is looking for Cally. Someone’s messed with the teleport controls and when a strange message comes in from Cally— “I don’t know where I am?”— people get worried.

 Avon, Tarrant and Dayna teleport over to the planet, Vila bravely volunteers to stay behind. Inside the planet the others discover a trio of blue skinned men who say they are the Ultra, and that the planet is called Ultraworld. They explain that they are seeking all knowledge in universe and that Cally has suffered a breakdown. Avon stays with her while Dayna and Tarrant explore.

It soon becomes clear that when the Ultras said they were collecting all the knowledge in the universe they weren’t joking, and right know they want the knowledge contained in each of our heroes’ heads…

And for the second episode in a row Cally is possessed/controlled by an external force, and if Sarcophagus was an example of that trope done well, Ultraworld is an example of the ‘Cally gets possessed’ trope done really badly. For starters there’s no reason for the Ultra to pick on her, they don’t appear to need a telepath as proven when they transfix Vila. Maybe after Sarcophagus the idea was to give other cast members more to do? I don’t know but if Sarcophagus gave Jan Chappell great material to work with, Ultraworld gives here practically nothing, not that it gives the others much more.

I supposed after two absolute bangers it was almost inevitable that we’d be brought back down to earth by an episode that’s less banger and more damp-squib.

It isn’t a complete washout, few episodes are completely without their charms, but it’s close to it.

One of the main problems is the Ultra themselves, or more specifically their power. They were clearly able to transfix Cally and get her to teleport down, and were able, to a degree, to control Vila as well, so why didn’t they do the same with the others? It’s a common problem in fiction I suppose, creating a powerful enemy but then needing them to not be so powerful that they can’t be defeated by the heroes. They look effective at least, in a Blue Man Group kinda way, though the less said about the Ultra who clearly refused to shave his head the better! Shades of Caeser Romero and his Joker moustache.

There’s nothing here for Jan to do, and not a great deal for Darrow. The others are better served. Keating gets some great comic material in teaching Orac about riddles, and his heartfelt “Oh no, please no” when he loses contact with Avon is wonderful, though why he doesn’t immediately try and contact Tarrant and Dayna is anyone’s guess? If this episode belongs to anyone (assuming anyone wants to accept ownership) it’s Tarrant and Dayna, and again Pacey and Simon make for an effective double act. Dayna gets to use her remote control car/bomb thing again (and seriously where does she hide it?) and they then trick the Ultras by offering to show them the human bonding ceremony, which for some reason the Ultra have no records of. It’s comedy gold, from Dayna’s “I’m not that repulsive, am I?” to the pervy Ultra watching on camera and classic lines like; “Has the bonding ceremony begun?” and “Was that the bonding ceremony?” after Dayna detonates a grenade. Just don’t give too much thought to why the Ultra would have no information on sex despite having downloaded the entire brain patterns of many, many humans. Were they all virgins or something?

Talking of brain patterns, just how does Tarrant know those tubes belong to Avon and Cally? I like to think there’s a slightly more interesting episode where Tarrant’s concern is well realised and Avon and Cally are swapped, Freaky Friday style, if only for a minute or two, I’d have loved to see Paul playing Cally and Jan channelling Darrow! But no, why do something interesting when you can just have Tarrant and Dayna running down corridors!

There’s some very on the nose dialogue, “food for thought” and Dayna’s “I’m too young to be absorbed”, Vila distracting Ultraworld with the chaos of his mind while Orac reflects Ultraworld’s power back at it is neat, and kudos on the makeup job on the Ultras, especially when their skin has to flake at the end, the menials themselves are quite creepy as well, for a while, usually when they’re approaching at a distance, close up they’re easily taken out.

There’s a great ending as well, with Orac pointing out that Vila spouted nonsense, and after Avon says that a logical, rational intelligence is no match for Vila’s brain power, the facial expressions of Vila, Cally and Avon are a joy. 

Next time, yes, I reasoned that is what this episode would look like.

Blakes 7. Series C, Episode 9: Sarcophagus

The episode opens on a strange, alien world. The inhabitants are humanoid but not human. We see a funeral procession leading to a curiously designed spaceship.

A ritual is undertaken by the pallbearers. One by one masked figures appear; a jester, a musician and then a fighter.

A fourth figure appears, dressed all in black, but it is quickly shooed away by the woman leading the ritual. She then places her ring on the finger of the corpse.

The ship then rises into the sky and we go from ship, to ring, to the eye of Cally.

Avon finds her alone in her cabin, brooding over the fact that she’ll never see Auron again. Avon tells her that he wishes the sparkling company on the flight deck would break her out of her funk, but he knows it won’t. He reassures her that though she isn’t ok now she soon will be. He then dispenses some exceedingly Avon like wisdom.

“Regret is part of being alive, but keep it a small part.”

On the flight deck the crew are preparing to intercept an asteroid bearing rare minerals but when Zen informs them that there’s a ship nearby they decide to investigate. Surprise surprise, it’s the ship we saw at the start of the episode. After some top drawer snarking between Avon and Tarrant, Cally Avon and Vila teleport over to discover it is just a tomb. When Zen warns that the ship is about to self-destruct they try to come back for some reason the teleport will only let Cally return to Liberator…

I think Sarcophagus is one of those episodes like Gambit, you either roll with it or you hate it.

Me? I’m rolling with it. I love Sarcophagus. It’s so different to anything we’ve seen before, or anything we’ll see after. It’s surreal, eerie, fantastical and yet grounded in science fiction. The being that wants to absorb Cally isn’t using magic, she’s using technology that’s indistinguishable from magic.  Just don’t think too deeply about why a race would cast one of its dead into the void when they knew she could return to life one day.

Let’s get the obvious complaint out of the way first. Cally gets possessed. Again! On the flipside you could argue this might be the best version of that trope, and it gives Jan Chappell some great material to work with.

The scene early on between Cally and Avon is lovely, I’ll always be a Cally/Avon shipper so I greedily ate up much of what this episode was selling.

It’s easy to suggest that it’s the alien influences that are causing everyone on board to either retreat into melancholy or snipe at one another, but this is happening before they encounter the ship, so maybe it’s just a case of cabin fever. Liberator is a big ship, but it isn’t that big, and egos are always going to clash, here in the case of Avon and Tarrant, and let’s be honest, this is one of those episodes where Tarrant is a bit of a dick, not that Avon is much better.

Yet again it’s obvious that, unlike Blake and Avon, which was a battle of equals, here Avon as usual gets the upper hand, in the banter stakes at least. There’s also a sense of grim resignation to Avon’s responses after Tarrant spends quite a while pontificating about how he’s made a success of his life. If you have to tell everyone how great you are, Del, it suggests you’re not that great at all. Still, I like Tarrant. It would have been easy to give us Blake Mk II, or to give us a real square jawed hero, instead they give us someone who’s vain and arrogant, yet also brave and curiously noble at times. Avon and Tarrant’s backbiting does give us another zinger in the dialogue stakes however:

 Tarrant: And tomorrow everything will look different?

Avon: If it does, you can assume you’re on the wrong ship.

Blakes 7 doesn’t really do horror (although Animals is pretty terrifying, boom tish) but Sarcophagus might be as close as the show gets, effectively a ghost possesses one of the living, and turns Liberator into a spacefaring haunted house. Tanith Lee’s script is excellent and you can see why she was called back for Series D. I don’t think Sand is as good as Sarcophagus but both play with horror tropes in interesting ways.

The moody way Liberator is shot is nicely done, and while the effect of the lyre floating is silly, Vila’s reaction is anything but. Chappell is great in a dual role, and you can feel Cally’s melancholy and frustration during that early scene with Avon, this is flipped late on when we witness the sorrow of the nameless alien who possesses Cally. It would be easy to feel nothing for the creature who talks about “intelligent menials” but between Lee’s words and Chappell’s performance, she becomes someone we can empathise with, even as we cheer at Avon’s actions in thwarting her. There’s a sense of deep time going on here, she’s been adrift for thousands of years, and however fast Liberator is, she knows it will take decades, maybe even centuries to reach the world and the people she yearns for, and maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there, but I think she knows her world is likely long gone, which make her even more pitiable. You also have to admire that Avon is basically Death, a role he was prophesised to take millennia ago. 

Dayna doesn’t get a lot to do, but Josette Simon’s singling is lovely at least. Darrow gets most of the good dialogue, from “It’s a door, and it’s closed” to “Make me die, there’s nothing else you can make me do.” He also gets to snog Jan, lucky bugger!

Vila’s indignation that Cally wouldn’t allow her possessor to kill Avon, but was quite happy to hurt the rest of them is wonderful.

An enjoyable episode that’s unique in all sorts of ways; the first episode to be written by a woman, and consequently the first to be written and directed by women (and after this there’s only Sand) the first where the Federation is not mentioned, and the only episode with no credited guest stars (though obviously there are other actors I it) you also have to love that nothing’s said for the first six minutes of the episode.

And to cap it all off we get THAT look between Cally and Avon. Yeah, tell me again how there’s nothing between those two.

Next time, has the bonding ceremony begun?