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Blakes 7 – Headhunter

October 29, 2016October 29, 2016 archivetvmusings BBC Drama - 1970's BBC, blakes 7, glynis barber, josette simon, lynda bellingham, michael keating, paul darrow, peter tuddenham, roger parkes, stephen pacey

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The previous episode, Animals, established the concept that Avon is keen to recruit a whole group of experts to join him in his fight against the Federation. Alas, Justin didn’t make it the end of that episode, I wonder if top cybernetics expert Muller (John Westbrook) will fare any better here? Gosh, that’s a tough one …..

Tarrant and Vila have drawn the short straw of escorting Muller back to base. Tarrant teleports down to the rendezvous, but it seems obvious that Muller’s colleagues don’t want him to leave (there’s a dead body under the table, although Muller himself seems unharmed). Tarrant takes a cursory look at the body but seems to miss the obvious point, mentioned later, that the corpse is missing its head. You’d have thought a small thing like that would be easy to spot, but clearly not.

Muller is a man of peace, something confirmed by Vena (Lynda Bellingham) who’s back at base with Avon, Dayna and Soolin. But when they teleport back to Scorpio, Muller goes crazy and attempts to bear-hug Tarrant to death. Vila gives Muller a tap on the shoulder with a monkey-wrench which apparently kills him. Muller’s brief homicidal interlude is one of several (I assume unintentional) comic highlights.

Muller went mad after Tarrant brought back a box from Muller’s workshop. After we learn of the headless corpse it seems obvious that the box contains Muller’s head, but not so, the truth is even stranger. Muller’s android killed his creator, cut off his head and put it on his own, android, body. Quite why the apparently peace-loving Muller would have created a homicidal android (who incidentally wants to enslave all human life) is anyone’s guess. But it explains the faux-Muller’s strange dress sense and robotic delivery.

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Poor Lynda Bellingham isn’t very well served by the script. Vena spends most of her time moping that her loved one is dead, only to briefly spring back into life when it appears that he isn’t. But her joy is short-lived as the android with Muller’s head then bear-hugs her to death. It’s not a very dignified way to go I’m afraid.

So far, so strange, but the best is yet to come. During the last fifteen minutes or so, Muller’s head drops off – meaning that we’re able to enjoy the vision of a headless android stomping around Xenon base, threatening to kill everyone. There can be few funnier sights in all of B7‘s 52 episodes.

I also have to mention the wonderfully expressive hand acting from Nick Joseph who plays the headless android. When you don’t have a head it’s hard to get your point across, so Joseph elects to waggle his hands and arms in a very emphatic fashion. Another great comedy moment.

Muller was a protégé of Ensor, which means that Muller’s android is keen to join up with Orac in order to fulfil his dream of universal domination. Quite how one android hopes to dominate all life is another of those small plot points which never gets adequately explained, but it does give Peter Tuddenham the chance to do a little more with Orac for once. And indeed also with Slave, who subtly changes from servile to surly as the mysterious effect of Muller’s android takes hold.

Since Headhunter only features the regulars plus Muller and Vena, everyone – even the rather underwritten-to-date Soolin – gets a chance for a decent share of the action. Paul Darrow elects to intone his lines with the sort of distracted, far-away delivery which would be his trademark style during S4. He has the odd killer line (“Tarrant, what have you got up there apart from yourself, a half-wit and a corpse?”) but the best exchange is saved until the end. After a big bang organised by Tarrant, Avon asks him what’s happened to the android.

TARRANT: Gone to the great cyberneticist in the sky.
AVON: You fool! It’s superstitious half-wits like you who hold back every advance we make.
ORAC: And arrogance, Avon, like yours and Muller’s which threaten to destroy …
AVON: Shut up!
ORAC: Yes, master!

After a less-than-serious romp, this small moment once again highlights how detached Avon has become from reality. The android, if controllable, would have been an asset, but everyone except Avon is clearly able to see that it would have been suicidal to keep it operational. Yet another example of Avon’s lack of judgement.

Whatever else Headhunter is, it certainly isn’t dull. The third and final of Roger Parkes’ scripts for the series, it falls somewhere between his other two. It’s not as good as Children of Auron, nor is it as crazy as Voice from the Past (although it’s close). But whatever its faults, the loopy concept never fails to raise a smile.

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Blakes 7 – Children of Auron

February 5, 2016February 5, 2016 archivetvmusings BBC Drama - 1980's BBC, blakes 7, jacqueline pearce, jan chappell, josette simon, michael keating, paul darrow, peter tuddenham, roger parkes, stephen pacey

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Servalan’s always been insanely ruthless, but Children of Auron is extreme, even by her standards. She infects the whole population of Auron with a deadly pathogen to achieve two goals – firstly to capture the Liberator and secondly to continue her bloodline.

She explains why capturing the Liberator remains such a high priory – with the Federation in tatters she’ll be able to take control again quicker with the most powerful ship in the galaxy. Does this really make sense? The galaxy’s a big place and the Liberator, powerful though it is, is only one ship. I can’t see that it would make that much difference (and anyway, it’s not ships she needs but good men). The fact that she effectively wants to have children (although the technique on Auron is only able to create clones of herself) is even more startling. Servalan’s never shown any sort of maternal instinct, so this revelation is rather hard to take.

It was perhaps inevitable that we’d return to Cally’s home planet one day and although there isn’t a great deal of time to develop its backstory, we still learn a little. C.A. One (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) has kept Auron strictly neutral – any contact with outsiders has been discouraged, but the unfortunate result is that the pathogen is able to spread unchecked (few of his people have any sort of resistance to space viruses due to their strict isolationist policy). It’s a shame that Leigh-Hunt doesn’t essay a subtler performance, as C.A. One ends up as little more than a bluff blusterer.

Cally has an identical twin, Zelda. Given Auron’s skills in cloning this is reasonable enough (although credibility is stretched later in the series when we meet Tarrant’s identical twin – no cloning involved there). Zelda isn’t a very proactive figure and doesn’t do a great deal to further the plot (although she has an inevitable and pointless death). It’s a pity that more couldn’t have been done, as her demise does feel like a wasted opportunity. Jan Chappell is, of course, excellent as both Cally and Zelda – especially when we see Cally take on Avon. Avon is keen to head to Earth for a mission of vengeance (sowing the seeds for Rumours of Death). Even when the plight of the Aurons is known he’s still disinclined to get involved, so there’s a nice tension that exists between them (which pays off later in Sarcophagus).

If Servalan’s going to rebuild the Federation then she needs good men, but alas they seem hard to find. In Children of Auron she’s lumbered with a right pair – Deral (Rio Fanning) and Ginka (Ric Young). They spend most of the episode bickering (Ginka’s unhappy that Deral was promoted ahead of him) and generally bumbling about. Deral is unable to capture the Liberator even when only two of the crew are aboard and one of them is Vila, now back to his default setting of cowardly.

Ginka’s lack of judgement is even more striking. Avon, Cally and Tarrant are taking refuge in the replication plant – they know they’re safe there, as Servalan wouldn’t destroy her own clones. But Ginka is able to convince her that Deral switched her genetic material for his, so she gives the order to fire. As the plant is destroyed Jacqueline Pearce gives one of her finest performances in the series – Servalan clearly feels intense pain as her clones go up in flames. But Ginka obviously never stopped to think that possibly, just possibly, Servalan wouldn’t be terribly pleased when she discovered that he’d tricked her (as I said, he’s not the sharpest knife in the draw). So he’s not long for this world (and neither is Deral) which leaves Servalan with yet another staffing crises. Possibly she’s pining for the good old days with Travis.

If Auron remains a rather undeveloped world and Servalan’s schemes are barmy, that doesn’t stop Children of Auron from being a strong mid series episode. Sandwiched between City at the Edge of the World and Rumours of Death it probably slightly pales in comparison, but it’s still much stronger than the likes of Volcano and Dawn of the Gods.

Ten points docked for the final scene though, as everybody has a good laugh on the bridge of the Liberator. It’s not the first time it’s happened (the crew had a chuckle at the end of Breakdown, seemingly oblivious to the loss of life they’d just witnessed) but again it just feels so out of place. We’ve just witnessed a planet devastated, so a little show of solemnity wouldn’t have been out of place. Apart from that, this is decent stuff.

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Blakes 7 – Voice from the Past

October 17, 2015October 18, 2015 archivetvmusings BBC Drama - 1970's BBC, blakes 7, brian croucher, gareth thomas, jacqueline pearce, jan chappell, michael keating, paul darrow, peter tuddenham, roger parkes, sally knyvette

Where to start with Voice from the Past? There’s some good ideas in Roger Parkes’ script but ultimately the story is incoherent and illogical. It does have a decent opening hook though – Blake starts acting oddly and changes course from the idyllic sounding Del Ten to a lifeless asteroid called PK One One Eight. He offers no explanation, beyond “try trusting me.” Paul Darrow has the best of the early exchanges especially when he decides that Blake is “certainly not normal, not even for Blake.”

This is somewhat ironic, since Blake’s command style has so often kept everyone in the dark whilst he formulated elaborate plans that sometimes (as in Pressure Point) end in disaster. So his behaviour here isn’t particularly out of character, though Cally picks up a faint tone oscillation which suggests somehow he’s being manipulated.

With the unstable Blake under restraint it falls to Vila to look after him. Bad move. It recalls a similar scene in Breakdown, where Gan was restrained and Cally was monitoring him. Both Gan and Blake appeared quite normal and asked to be freed, but Vila proves much more gullible than Cally was – he not only releases him but also swallows his story that Avon and Cally have been plotting against the rest of them. This whole part of the story does no favours at all for Vila, since it portrays him as an easily duped simpleton.

With Avon, Cally and Jenna locked up, Vila teleports Blake down to the surface of the asteroid. The opening shot of Blake on the asteroid’s surface is a stunning example of incredibly poor CSO – not helped by the fact that the background image seems to have been drawn by a child. Things then get stranger still when he meets the people who have summoned him.

Ven Glynd (Richard Bebb) was the arbiter at Blake’s trial, but he’s now defected from the Federation and has in his possession information which he claims will bring down both the civil administration and the space corps. Also present is a broken, bandaged figure who we’re told is Shivan, a notable resistance leader.

Sadly Robert James wasn’t able to reprise his role as Ven Glynd, so Richard Bedd stepped into the part. Whilst he’s not as compelling an actor as James, he still manages to do his best and there are the odd signs of just how wily an operator Ven Glynd is (he wants Blake to rule as a puppet leader whilst he enjoys the real power). Glynd asks Blake and the others to accompany him to the Governor’s Summit Meeting at Atlay. There, along with a powerful ally, Governor Le Grand (Freda Knorr), they will present their evidence.

One of the most obvious plot-flaws is why Ven Glynd and Le Grand should attempt to manipulate Blake by beaming messages into his mind. Why not just contact the Liberator direct? The most obvious answer is that they’re not telling the truth, but although they have agendas both are honest in what they want Blake to do – so why attempt to brainwash him, when he probably would have agreed to help anyway?

Le Grand explains to Blake what will happen and that they want him to be the new ruler of the Terran administration.

LE GRAND: For years now, the Arbiter General and I have prepared for this moment. He gathering evidence of the Administration’s infamies, while I lobbied the support of my fellow governors. However, we could not challenge and discredit the Administration until we had found an alternative leadership, capable of uniting all factions.
BLAKE: Well, you, Governor.
LE GRAND: No. He who leads must be from Earth. Someone of renowned integrity, someone who has become a legend of hope to the great mass of the oppressed. A messiah.

It all comes to nothing though, since Servalan has been pulling the strings all along. Shivan is really Travis in disguise(!) and Servalan seems to have allowed Ven Glynd and Le Grand to hatch their plot just so she can enjoy crushing their feeble attempt at rebellion in the most dramatic way. Again, this doesn’t make much sense – why not simply arrest Ven Glynd and Le Grand? Even if the evidence wasn’t particularly strong we’ve seen how the Federation can easily trump up charges, so the only possible reason for letting them live was so Servalan could enjoy their ultimate humiliation.

As for Shivan really being Travis …. words almost fail me, but it’s an undeniably enjoyable piece of very bad acting. His initial scene is notable for the appearance of two of the most familiar faces from this era of television – highly experienced walk-ons Harry Fielder and Pat Gorman (who between them racked up hundreds of television and film credits). They don’t do anything, but their presence is remarkably comforting.

Gareth Thomas struggles somewhat in this one. Blake’s sudden mood swings would be difficult for any actor to cope with, so I wouldn’t want to be too hard on him. Paul Darrow gets some great lines and makes the most of them whilst Michael Keating isn’t best served with a script that turns him into a credulous fool.

Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette both have a little more to do in this episode. Especially Jenna, who agrees (rather reluctantly) to undergo dual therapy with Blake in order to probe the reason for his erratic behaviour. But Brian Croucher need not have taken part at all – Travis serves no useful function in the story which means that Shivan might just as well have been the man he claimed he was. Jacqueline Pearce’s role is quite small, but her scene at the end (as her image is presented in widescreen) is a memorable one.

Not an episode you could say is actually good, but it’s certainly never dull.