Blakes 7. Series D, Episode 3: Traitor

On the planet Helotrix a Federation officer, Colonel Quute, interrogates a guerilla fighter. As interrogations go it’s nice and friendly and the rebel seems extremely compliant. Quute gets all that he needs out of the man and then gives him a drink. He then releases him. After the prisoner’s gone Quute says it’s too easy.

The prisoner, Igin, heads back into the marshlands surrounding the city to connect with the guerrilla army of Major Hunda. He’s spotted by scouts who report to Hunda who tells them to signal Igin to stay where he is and not approach any closer until they’re sure he hadn’t been followed.

It’s a precaution that saves all their lives because the drink contained a tracker and now, after Igin’s signal stays still for some time, Quute assumes he’s contacted Hunda and Federation artillery blasts the area.

On Scorpio Orac reports that Helotrix is now back in Federation hands. The crew are surprised at this because the Helots are renowned fighters and it took the Federation a huge amount of effort to suppress them last time, now they seem to have been retaken very easily and they’re not the first, a series of former colonies have been retaken by the Federation without effort and Avon wants to know why. 

Tarrant and Dayna will teleport down to find out more, they’ll discover details of the Federation’s new pacification program, and they’ll also bump into an old ‘friend’.

That Traitor somewhat falls short of being a classic is down, I suspect, to a simple lack of budget. There is a lot going on in this episode and some plot threads are explored better than others, with a slightly longer run time to breathe this could have been a classic, as it stands some elements feel rushed, and the final battle is awful. I recall someone once telling me that it was supposed to take place in some grand bustling concourse, that could have been great. Everyone brawling on an obviously fake set works less well.

There is a lot to like about Traitor however, not least the introduction of Commissioner Sleer, who we don’t see for a long time, and whose gender is explicitly not mentioned for some reason. We then have someone killing high ranking Federation officials and destroying paintings of Servalan, and when we finally hear Sleer’s voice, it does sound a little like Jacqui, but Servalan’s dead, isn’t she?

As always it’s hard to consider this in context. Did people guess Servalan was back very quickly, or were there genuine gasps of shock when she appeared at the end? Who can say. I certainly don’t remember if I was surprised back in 1981. I have to say that I’m not sure Jacqui has ever looked sexier, I’m almost envious of Leitz…what a way to go!

It is a trifle preposterous that so few people know what the President and Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation looked like of course, and I’m sure there’s an argument to say that Servalan should have stayed dead, but when you have a villain as glorious as her, it would have been a shame if she hadn’t returned, the only annoyance (spoiler!) is that she won’t feature in the series finale.

The Pacification Program is a wonderful conceit, giving a weakened Federation quite a shot in the arm, and forcing our heroes to take a more proactive interest in galactic affairs than they’d had in Series C where any meddling with Servalan’s plans tended to be happy coincidence rather than anything planned. That pylene-50 was originally designed for a more benign purpose is an interesting wrinkle, foreshadowing the invention of Viagra which was designed to treat angina and ended up becoming more famous for a very different use!

If pylene-50 is great then it’s creator Forbus is a little undercooked, and just why does Servalan kill him at the end? Who’s going to make her drug now?

The guest cast are good, although there’s a lot of white males around, would have been nice to see a token female resistance fighter, and given Robert Holmes makes a big deal of lampshading Dayna’s ethnicity it’s a shame we don’t see many people who look like her. In particular Malcolm Stoddard as Leitz and Nick Brimble as the General are a little interchangeable at first. It’s hard to mistake Christopher Neame for anyone else of course, even before the eye patch, and I love his scenes, playing chess while he launches artillery (chess of course being something Holmes put in practically every script) and his conversations with the General over (space) wine, and they have a nice difference of opinions. The Colonel is happy to stay behind the lines and pick his enemy off with brainwashing and long range missiles, while the General is a hands-on kind of man and seems to miss the hand to hand nature of combat.

Leitz is an interesting character, playing both ends against the middle, though he goes from being a Machiavellian character to a complete idiot in his final moments of course.

There are some nice exterior shots of Binnegar Heath sandpits, though in some respects this only highlights how ropey the studio bits are.

It’s also nice to see shadows of colonialism here, with the Federation recruiting locals (albeit unwillingly) to do their fighting for them, which of course means that even as the rebels win their skirmish, in some ways they also lose because they’re killing their own people. We also have Practor, the new planetary governor who, much like Ro in Horizon, is a local and who, unlike those Helot soldiers, is a willing Federation tool. The conversations between the general and the colonel feed into this also, discussing the next far flung destination they’re going to pacify, and talking about the locals the way one might imagine colonial officers discussing native tribesmen in the 19^th Century.

This is mainly a Tarrant/Dayna story and as usual they work well together. Tarrant is a trifle more heroic and less of a dick than usual, even after Avon warns him not to get involved, even if they’re executing the population. Dayna and Tarrant of course completely ignore this order.

The others don’t get much to do. Soolin in particular is shortchanged. Given this is her first full episode as a member of the crew it you’d think it would be good for her to get involved—in fact imagine how cool if Soolin and Dayna had been the ones to teleport down? 

Vila mainly complains that they should leave Tarrant and Dayna to their fate, though he does get a nice moment when he tells Avon Blake would be proud of him.

“Yes,” replies Avon. “But then he never was very bright.” This is probably the Avon highlight of the episode, though he has another great moment where it appears he’s glad Servalan is still alive, and he is, but only because he wants to kill her himself.

Aside from this it’s amusing that Orac’s laziness drops them in it, and thankfully Forbus provided them with an antidote to Pylene-50. All in all, not a bad days work for the heroes and a solid episode even if it isn’t a classic.

Next time, Dr Who?

Blakes 7. Series D, Episode 2: Power

Scorpio is locked in the hanger and can’t be reached. Tarrant and Dayna pressure Vila to open the door.

Avon is out on the surface being pursued by some hairy primitives. He shoots several before running out of ammunition, at which point he calls Orac for help and demands teleport. Orac refuses as the chances of successful reintegration are only 11%. He’d be too late anyway as Avon is captured and knocked out for the first (but not last) time this episode.

Tarrant and Dayna go looking for Avon, leaving Vila on his own. Vila of course isn’t happy about this, reminding them that Soolin is still around somewhere.

Avon is carried off by the barbarians, watched by a group of young women, the Seska, led by Pella.

In a throne room we meet Gunn Sar, who’s treating his wife Nina less than pleasantly. He tells Avon he rules by right of challenge having seen off 26 rivals (though this is corrected to 25 plus 1 missing, much to his chagrin.)  Avon says that if he’d known they were keeping score he’d have brought more ammunition, then says he was looking for dynamon crystals. Gunn Sar sneers at this, it seems dynamon isn’t considered very masculine.

Pella sneaks up on Vila causing him to burn himself, but she soon heals the wound and explains Dorian used to bring them supplies, she also explains that the door to the hanger is rigged with a nuclear compression charge, and unless Dorian resets the password every 48 hours it’ll go off.

Back in the land of the Hommiks Avon stops Gunn Sar from slapping Nina, which is taken as a challenge. It looks like Avon might be number 27…or is it 26?

The fairest thing you can say about Power is that of his three scripts this might be Ben Steed’s best. It’s an enjoyable episode and while the crew regaining the ability to teleport is a trifle contrived, at least they’re made to work for it. What lets it down is the ridiculous battle of the sexes, and more importantly Steed’s evocation of such a battle. Harvest of Kairos’ “Woman you’re beautiful” was at least funny, Moloch’s “Give her to your men” unsettling, but Nina’s “And now I am a woman” to Pella made me want to throw something at the telly, and it’s made worse by having her repeat the phrase to Kate around ten minutes later. Steed makes an effort to show genuine affection between Gunn Sar and Nina, but it’s too little, too late, given the first time we see the pair of them he’s treating her like a doormat and practically slapping her around, one can’t escape the conclusion that Nina is in a coercive relationship.

One can forgive the barbarian chief of the week of course, I’m not sure one can quite forgive Avon, from his “It’s your power and however you use it a man will always be stronger” shortly before snogging Pella (with zero consent) to shooting her dead with a pithy “If you didn’t like the answer you shouldn’t have asked the question”. Kerr Avon never struck me as the sexist type, and given he’s known some arse kicking women in his time (Jenna, Cally, Servalan, Dayna etc) you’d expect him to know better. All Darrow can do is utter the lines of course.

And this is even before we get into Steed having Dayna challenge Gunn Sar before getting her arse kicked, and though she wins she only does so because several of the Seska psychically come to her aid. Not a great look. What makes it worse is Pella’s “The black woman must win” line. There’s literally one woman down there fighting Gunn Sar, you don’t need to highlight her ethnicity to differentiate her from anyone. One of the things that’s great about Dayna is that her ethnicity is barely ever mentioned, there’ll be reference to it next episode but outside of Power and Traitor I’m not sure it’s ever a thing. Suffice to say Robert Holmes will be somewhat less clunky about it.

To cap it off we have one of the Seska being operated on to remove her power as a Seska!

Maybe Steed wanted to show how appallingly women can be treated, maybe he’s a huge feminist after all, but it doesn’t come across that way. This is an episode that could have had something to say about sexism, about controlling relationships and even female genital mutilation given the operations, but as written you can’t help thinking Steed’s on the side of Gunn Sar.

I’ll stop ranting now!

Let’s talk some positives. It rattles along at a good pace. Michael Keating does some good work when Vila starts babbling, Tarrant and Dayna get to team up with the usual impressive results, and Tarrant’s just walk away after Dayna (with help) kills Gunn Sar is quite amusing, as is how many times Avon gets knocked out. Seriously, I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone to get bopped on the head quite so many times. Maybe this is the start of him going a little psychotic towards the end of the show’s run? There’s some good action and when he’s not indulging in domestic violence Gunn Sar is quite amusing, especially when he’s doing needlepoint.

On the guest front everyone gives it their all, especially Juliet Hammond Hill as Pella who’s icy superiority is wonderful, and with a better script she could have been phenomenal, as it is she is a good villain (even if we don’t realise she is a villain) and one who’s the best kind of fictional bad guy given she’s clearly the hero of her own story. Sacrificing Kate to get to Scorpio is cold, but sadly just plays into Steed’s narrative. See, women are so duplicitous!

Back to the bad. The Hommik/Seska society makes no sense. The Hommiks capture Seska who give them sons, but the daughters are left to die? There’s no logic to this, unless the Hommiks don’t know where Seska come from. Then there’s Cato and his computers, which are apparently a secret, except Gunn Sar talks about computers earlier. And that surgery looks pretty advanced?

Finally there’s Soolin who gets to be in the last few moments of the show. We’ll never know where she was hiding but she’s out now and she wants…I don’t know, a job? The whole “I don’t give my allegiance, I sell my skill” makes no sense. Does this imply Avon pays her to join them? What with? Why would she possibly join up? Surely she’d just ask them to drop her at the nearest inhabited world where she’ll get a job as a gunsel?

Barber is great but she really could have done with more back story.

All in all an episode that’s more enjoyable than it has any right to be, but thankfully this is the last Steed script.

Next time. This Commissioner Sleer sounds nasty. Anyone else notice how they explicitly don’t mention Sleer’s gender? It’s probably nothing…  

Blakes 7. Series D, Episode 1: Rescue

On Terminal the weather’s got worse (the planets also gone from elliptical to spherical but let’s not talk about that) and it’s now snowing. Avon and Dayna are surveying the ship Servalan left them. “Servalan told us it was old,” says Dayna. “It’s what she didn’t tell us that bothers me,” says Avon, the old cynic him.

When one of the links shambles inside Avon’s sixth sense kicks in. He and Dayna run and behind them the ship blows up. Servalan had, of course, boobytrapped it. Or as Avon intuits, half a boobytrap because he suspects the underground base would be sabotaged as well. Dayna rushes off, despite Avon suggesting caution. She immediately comes across a weird worm creature that would have her for lunch, except Avon deftly blows its head off.

Dayna: “Don’t you get tired of always being right?”

Avon: “Only with the rest of you always being wrong.”

As usual Avon’s spot on. The base was rigged too. Vila, proving yet again that he can be quite brave when the mood takes him, drags Tarrant to safety (best not to ask how he got an unconscious man up that ladder) and is about to head back for Cally when the hatch starts to close. More explosions soon follow, and he goes all selfless again by throwing his own body across Tarrant’s while off camera people throw bits of metal on him.

Cally’s final word is Blake, which is nonsense because obviously it should be Avon…

Meanwhile on an approaching Star Destroyer…er, I mean Wanderer class planet hopper, named Scorpio, a man named Dorian is asking his obsequious computer Slave whether there’s any sign of Liberator.

Avon complains that he’s hip deep in heroes, apparently miffed that Vila rescued Tarrant but not Orac. Avon retrieves Orac, and confirms Cally is dead.

The group set off, it isn’t clear where to, but soon Tarrant falls behind and then falls over. Avon goes back for him while Dayna, having not learned her lesson, goes wandering, with Vila in tow, and nearly ends up worm food yet again until rescued by Dorian. As Avon says, no good deed goes unpunished and before you can say “Do you have a portrait in the attic?” the gang have hijacked Scorpio, or think they have, once in orbit Slave will set a course for home, Xenon Base, where a lady gunfighter named Soolin is waiting, and while Dorian doesn’t actually have a portrait in the attic, he does have a Strictly Come Dancing judge in the basement…

And the production team go into panic mode when they realise Terminal wasn’t the last episode after all. With Liberator gone the crew need a ship, and it would really help if it had teleport, which rules out the ship Servalan left behind, even if it wasn’t boobytrapped.

Enter Dorian and his battered old freighter. Enter also Soolin, with Jan Chappell choosing not to return a new cast member is needed and someone remembered that mutoid from Series A…

You might have thought both Dorian and Soolin could be new cast members, at least on first glance Dorian seems a likeable chap, but soon enough even if you weren’t a fan of Oscar Wilde you’ll have him pegged for a wrong un, especially once he starts looking a tad old, before he pops to see the thing in the basement (those Sea Devils get everywhere) and suddenly looks young again. He gets increasingly deranged as the episode goes on.

The important thing to note here is that Vila’s the hero, in fact he’s a hero several times over. Not only does he rescue Tarrant, and then shield him, but he was quite prepared to go back for Cally and, most important of all, if it wasn’t for him they’d all be dead, or at least all absorbed into a gestalt which might be worse. Everyone is saved by Vila’s preference for a Federation blaster, and his love of other people’s booze. As always Michael Keating understood the assignment, from creepily flirting with Dayna to pondering that there’s something untrustworthy about someone who locks up the wine, to the final line of the episode and his reference to pink asteroids.

Darrow, of course, gets some great material and he bounces well off Geoffrey Burridge, their conversation about teleports and Orac/Ensor is joyous, as is the perplexation on Avon’s face. He knows something’s up with Dorian, he just has no clue what.

The others fare less well. Tarrant gets some decent moments, and his little chat with Avon on Terminal is wonderfully done, but aside from some genuine glee over finding the clip guns, Dayna is treated poorly. From running into danger twice and having to be saved both times by a white man, she then winds up in the basement with the creature and falls apart. Throwing her useless gun in the vague direction of the creature isn’t a great moment (if nothing else keep it as a club) and nor is weeping in Tarrant’s arms. On the plus side Pacey and Simon prove yet again that they have great chemistry.

That leaves Soolin. Glynis Barber will get more to do eventually but here she’s just eye candy, albeit eye candy who can draw her gun real fast. Her best moment is the one I don’t think I noticed before, while the guys are staring at the body of the creature, Soolin sneaks up the staircase behind them.

There’s nothing wrong with sci-fi riffing on the classics, lest we forget Forbidden Planet is basically Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but even so Rescue is perhaps a bit on the nose as a homage to The Portrait of Dorian Grey, but Boucher’s a good enough writer that it works, and while I know some fans think Burridge is a little arch as Dorian, I like his performance, in particular his delivery of the line where he explains that the room cleanse him of all the corruption of time and appetite that would have been his is wonderfully done, especially the relish with which he pronounces the word ‘appetite’. It’s left to the viewer to determine what Dorian’s ‘appetites’ run to but you’re reminded that this show went out in the early evening!

I like the notion that despite everything the crew do care about one another, all the better for Dorian’s nefarious purposes!

I know I joked about it looking like a Star Destroyer, but I always liked Scorpio, at least externally. The flight deck is a little too clean and brightly lit, which at times shows how flimsy it is, I wish they’d gone for something grungier, but understand why they didn’t.

Rescue is a great episode that straddles the move from the old to the new. The new title sequence is flashy yet dull, and the fact that characters will tend to wear the same costume will annoy me a lot, but Scorpio is a cool ship, even if they have to contrive it to be more than it appears. I wish Jan had stuck around though.

I joked about a Strictly Come Dancing Judge but it’s true, that beautiful young man the monster transmutes into is one Bruno Tonioli, former Strictly and current Dancing with the Stars Judge.

Well, everyone needs to start somewhere.

Next time, gasp as Avon gets knocked out more times than can be healthy, and be amazed as Ben Steed is more than a little sexist…again!

Thanksgiving

Directed by Eli Roth.  Starring Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Rick Hoffman and Gina Gershon.

Seen in November

In Plymouth Massachusetts the RightMart store is preparing for a huge Black Friday sale, and crowds are massing outside, many intent on getting a low price waffle iron. Jessica (Verlaque) whose father owns the store lets her boyfriend and her friends into the store though the back entrance but when they’re spotted  the crowd go nuts and force their way into the store. There’s a riot and several people are killed, including the wife of the store manager. Jessica’s boyfriend Bobby (Brooks) a baseball pitcher gets his arm broken.

A year later its Thanksgiving again, but this year a deranged maniac wearing a John Carver mask has decided to punish the town for the previous year’s riot. He has his sights set on several notable rioters from the previous year, and he especially wants to punish Jessica and her friends.

Shockingly this might be my first Eli Roth film, but let’s start with the headline here, Thanksgiving is no turkey!  In fact, it’s a smartly written and directed slasher film that, while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, provides enough laughs and inventive kills to keep most fans of the genre happy. It’s also, in a time of bloodless PG13 horror—I’m looking at you M3gan—wonderfully gory, earning it’s 18 certificate with innovative kills involving ovens, trampolines and even corn cob holders.

Being British Thanksgiving doesn’t mean a while lot to me, I had to look John Carver up in fact, but this didn’t dent my enjoyment, in fact the pronounced Guy Fawkes vibe helped if anything.

In keeping with a lot of slashers you can argue that John Carver has a justifiable anger, given what happened a year ago, and the link to Black Friday is a nice touch, let’s face it a Thanksgiving slasher might not have worked as well without this prompt (other than getting into some messy Native American revenge trope which wouldn’t have been great)  and even after the horrors of the previous year’s horror the owner of RightMart Thomas Right (Hoffman) and his irritating second wife Kathleen (Cliché, who has the best death) seem intent on opening for a Black Friday sale again!

As well as satirising the commercialisation of a public holiday, Roth also has a go at social media, which made the previous year’s riot a viral hit, and John Carver uses the internet to promote his revenge.

There are a few twists and turns, but the film follows the beats you’d expect, not that this is a bad thing, the film trades on familiarity, and that’s probably what we want. As out final girl Verlaque is engaging and empathetic, and while we might, for a moment or two, delight in some annoying characters getting their comeuppance, she remains likeable and engaging, and of course smart and resourceful. Several of the characters are a tad interchangeable, but special mention for Gabriel Davenport as Scuba, who I thought deserved a larger role than he got.

I’ll be honest, I guessed who was under the John Carver mask, though I didn’t guess why they were so intent on revenge, but I do want to watch the film again because I’m not a hundred percent sure the logistics completely tie up. Also the romantic triangle at the heart of the film feels kinda off.

But you know what? The film’s so much fun that I’m in a very forgiving mood.

Very much recommended, but maybe don’t watch it just before you put your turkey in the oven!

Let the Old Dreams Die

By John Ajvide Lindqvist

An anthology of horror stories by the Swedish writer of the novel Let the Right One In, famously made into a superb film (and a Hollywood remake because heaven forbid people read subtitles). The anthology features a follow up to the novel, and events of the novel are vaguely sprinkled in a few other stories as well, though they don’t really connect in anyway. Here’s my take on each story.

Border

A disfigured border guard has an almost supernatural gift for knowing when people passing through customs are hiding something, but when her gift flags up one man who appears to be innocent it will start a reappraisal of her life, and she’ll discover a terrible secret about her own origins. This story was a great way to start the anthology. It doesn’t remotely go where you think it will, and what starts almost as a procedural becomes something more akin to folk horror with a dash of romance. It’s a trifle too long, and the ending is a bit limp, but neither is enough to spoil it.

Village on the Hill

A man living in a tower block suddenly notices that the building is ever so slightly leaning to one side. Another one that doesn’t go where you think it will, ending up somewhere almost Lovecraftian. It’s interesting and doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

Equinox

A woman alleviates her boredom by breaking into nearby holiday homes when they’re empty, but when she finds a dead body in one, rather than call the police she decides to keep it for herself. This is a great mixture of mundanity and the fantastical.

Can’t See It! It Doesn’t Exist!

I’ve seen this one called Itsy Bitsy elsewhere which is a better title. A paparazzi spends days outside of a villa to try and get a photo of a celebrity In flagrante with her secret lover, but after he sees them cavorting in the pool, he’s amazed to discover his photos are all devoid of life. I liked this one, another Lovecraftian horror.

Substitute

More Lovecraftian horror as a young man is visited by a former schoolfriend who disappeared many years ago after “an incident”. He wants to know if the protagonist remembers the substitute teacher they had, a woman the schoolfriend insists wasn’t human. I liked this one, it was very creepy, did end a tad abruptly mind you.

Eternal/Love

We’re back in Lovecraft territory again. A couple with a deep romantic love for one another are terrified by the idea that one day they’ll die and the husband goes to desperate lengths to keep their love alive forever. I liked this one a lot, even if I did see the EC comics’ ending coming.

Let the Old Dreams Die

This was the story I was most interested in. I’ve never read the novel, but Tomas Alfredson’s film adaptation is simply superb. I think I, like many others, got a very distinct idea about the relationship between Oskar and Eli, but it seems I was wrong. Even Lindqvist admits he made an error in not being clearer in the screenplay. Let the Old Dreams Die corrects the mistake, but this isn’t really a story about Oskar and Eli who feature only tangentially. Instead this is a melancholy, romantic story about a ticket collector who befriends a local couple, the woman is a cop who worked the Blackeberg killings, and she and her husband have a deep love that the narrator is envious of. At its heart this is really a story about love and time, and how we all have to face losing the ones we love. Except it’s also very clearly a sequel to Let the Right One In, but I shall say no more except that this was the standout story in the book for me.  

TO HOLD YOU WHILE MUSIC PLAYS

I didn’t get this one, I didn’t like this one. Plays like we’re hearing one half of a conversation, but I couldn’t work out what I was missing. I think even the author has said he’s the only person who likes this one! One to revisit perhaps.

Majken

Another story that deals with aging. An old woman caring for her invalid husband gets embroiled with a gang of pensioner shoplifters led by the enigmatic Majken, but are the group about to graduate from petty theft to terrorism? A very interesting tale.

Paper Walls

A young boy acquires a large carboard box and decides to camp out in it. Given many of the stories in this collection felt too long, this was infuriating too short. Another one that I think I need to reread to “Get”.

The Final Processing

Another sequel to a previous novel, in this instance the zombie novel ‘Handling the Undead’. I couldn’t connect with this, in part because it’s very long. Perhaps if I’d read the novel it would have made more sense.

All in all this is a decent anthology and appears well translated. I didn’t enjoy everything, and some of the stories are way too long, but as with most such collections I liked as many stories as I didn’t, and it really was worth it for the titular story alone. Lindqvist’s Nordic sensibilities are evident, and you can tell these stories were written by someone living in a country with long, dark, cold winters. That said, however mournful his stories might be at times, there’s also throughlines of hope and love throughout.

Blakes 7. Series C, Episode 13: Terminal

Avon is alone on the flight deck; he seems troubled and gets Zen to confirm that they’ll reach the rendezvous on time.

Dayna and Cally meanwhile are playing space monopoly in the teleport chamber. Vila is helping, well actually he isn’t as he convinces Dayna to make a risky move which loses her the game. Tarrant asks what they’re all doing there? They tell him Avon shooed them off the flight deck, where he’s been for thirty hours. Tarrant wants answers, Avon wants to be left alone in peace. Tarrant is ok with this but he’s less amenable once he realises Liberator isn’t heading where it’s supposed to. At this moment they arrive at their destination, which is empty space. Avon is about to reveal all when a message comes in with new coordinates. Avon shoos Tarrant off the bridge and Liberator sets a new course.

Unfortunately that course is going to take them through a cloud of fluid particles. It doesn’t look dangerous, but the others want to go around the cloud anyway. Avon orders Liberator to power on through with an order that can’t be countermanded (just one of many great decisions by Kerr in this episode.)

Liberator’s final destination is a planet Zen identifies as Terminal, an artificial planet created four hundred years ago. Avon insists on teleporting down alone and tells the others to leave if they lose contact with him, he says he’ll kill anyone who follows him, so of course Tarrant and Cally follow him.

Down on the planet Avon is shadowed by some mysterious humans before he finds a hatch leading underground. Tarrant and Cally find the humans just in time to see them murdered by…I mean, I try to be forgiving of the show, but seriously? They’re murdered by men in gorilla outfits. Tarrant and Cally have their own tussle with the “links” before following Avon underground.  

Below Avon has found a familiar face, whilst up in orbit Dayna and Vila have just discovered that that cloud of liquid molecules wasn’t so harmless after all…

Could this be the final episode of Blakes 7?

Spoiler alert, this was not the final episode of Blakes 7, although it was clearly designed to be the show’s finale.

This may not be the last episode of Blakes 7, but it is the last call for some. It’s Jan Chappell’s last episode. It sees the destruction of Liberator and, by extension, Zen, and off screen it would be the last episode written by Terry Nation.

It’s a curious episode, it feels at once like lots is going on whilst at the same time relatively little is happening. That Avon would go behind everyone’s back to find Blake makes perfect sense, that he’d do this because Blake said he had a discovery that would make them rich and invincible makes slightly less sense. Here is your billionth reminder that Liberator has strongrooms full of precious jewels, and when was Roj Blake ever bothered about wealth? As for invincible, isn’t possession of Liberator about as invincible as you’re gonna get? Let’s be honest, Avon is just looking for excuses. He wants to find Blake because he wants to find Blake, money and invincibility are just lies he tells himself to justify it.

Despite coming close to killing Tarrant, and telling everyone he doesn’t need any of them, in the end he does care after all, telling Vila to take the Liberator and run, though maybe this is more about thwarting Servalan.

Liberator can’t run, all because of Avon’s singlemindedness in searching for Blake. Of course, if they hadn’t flown through that cloud Liberator would have been in one piece and Servalan’s scientists would have had to make good on their claims that they could duplicate it.

As endings go it would have been a good one. Avon and co survive, and Servalan dies, but they’ve lost Liberator and they’re stranded on a hostile planet. As Tarrant says, everyone loses, which is very on brand for the show.

Terminal is an interesting concept, though its existence throws up more questions than it answers, how did it get from Mars orbit to the middle of nowhere for example? Given they could have just gone to any old planet of the week it shows imagination on Nation’s part, as does the true nature of the links. They could have just been random monsters, instead Nation gives us some lovely cold, existential horror as their true nature is revealed, and Jacqui’s acting sells the concept much better than the gorilla costumes ever could. Does it serve a story purpose? Perhaps, maybe Nation is making the point that none of this matters, who cares if the Federation stands or falls, sooner or later we’ll all be hairy primitives.

Terminal isn’t the most inviting of planets and it looks like the weather was suitably bracing in Oxfordshire for the location filming. Lucky for Keating and Simon they weren’t required, everyone else must have been freezing!

The uniforms of Servalan’s troops used to bother me, but they aren’t that bad really, and they couldn’t use Federation uniforms because that would have given the game away, it’s the blonde wigs that are truly ludicrous.

Servalan’s new henchwoman is very annoying, snapping her fingers every few minutes, and she isn’t very bright, letting Vila walk off with Orac and believing all that guff about it being a sculpture. Of course, Orac is about as useful as a sculpture seeing as Avon has the key, neatly excluding Orac from helping to solve the very big problem Liberator’s in.

If her henchwoman isn’t very bright, well neither is madame president. She’s been on Liberator before, yet doesn’t seem to notice that the ship’s basically rotting, and as cool as her “Maximum power!” line will always be, it’s a tad annoying that she needed her voiceprint accepting by Zen just a handful of episode ago, yet now her people can apparently fly the ship on manual.

Almost nobody comes out well here though, Avon, Mr Cynic, is completely fooled, his need to find Blake blinding him to the obviousness of the trap. Only Vila, amazingly, shines, delivering the kind of technical jargon that in other episodes it would likely have been left to Avon to spout. Sadly it’s to no avail. Zen dies, and his final “I have failed you.” Is truly heartbreaking.

Thomas’ cameo is intriguing, and not remotely what you would have expected (and the teddy bear out take is very funny). Servalan’s people did a good job of creating a Blake Avon would fall for. It is of course a shame that it isn’t really Roj Blake, who according to Servalan is dead. She could be lying, but she seems genuine (as crazy as that sounds). My own personal head canon is that Servalan did see Blake’s body, only it was the clone created in “Weapon”.

There’s nice foreshadowing to the true end of the series, as we close with Avon grinning, though not before each of the crew take a moment to glare at him. Keating’s smug “for once I’m not the butt of everyone’s jokes” stare is best of all.

I’m really gonna miss Cally.

Next time, what do Blakes 7, Oscar Wilde and Strictly Come Dancing have in common?