TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E11 Bounty

As touched upon before with B7, there's a tendency to credit Chris Boucher with anything good in Terry Nation's scripts and blame anything rubbish on El Tel. This can be a bit unfair; Nation can be a pretty decent writer though historically he's had a habit of getting a bit lazy when his feet are under the table, most famously selling the BBC exactly the same Dalek story several times. But there are occasions in B7 when the script editor's clearly had to work on the screenplay hard. and "Bounty" is one of those. It features a return to the A/B plot structure (which isn't in the first season as much as I remembered, mainly because Nation had enough problems coming up with 13 plots, let alone 26, and "Bounty" is one of the most frequently referred to as needing extending, with various tales of some parts being spontaneously extended during filming) and the clue is that the episode title only really refers to one of the plots - and it's the worst and least subtle of them.

"Bounty" touches on a broadly similar area to "Project Avalon", in that it again sees the crew of the Liberator trying to link up with other anti-Federation elements. In this case it's Sarkoff, deposed president of the planet of Lindor (chief export: posh wanky chocolate) and basically under house arrest by Federation troopers. There's probably the first serious political comment and content since "Seek-Locate-Destroy" on show here, with the stuff about sham elections to put in a pro-Federation government on the planet on the nose a few years after the USA had helped bring about a coupe in Chile, which isn't bad for a show that sometimes used a cardboard cut-out Liberator instead of model effects.

Crucial to it all is T P McKenna's performance as Sarkoff. Between its' perennially small budget, downmarket reputation and relatively large central cast eating up so much of the action B7 rarely went for genuine heavyweight guest actors, let alone the shifting genre TV series roulette of getting them in a good part in a good episode and the thesp not taking the piss. But here it all comes together and McKenna adds layers of hurt dignity to Sarkoff. His scenes with Blake are brilliant, transcending that his collection of invaluable antiques are the result of the props lads raiding a Blue Peter set; when Sarkoff pops some vinyl on you're half-expecting it to be Father Dougal's BBC sound effects album. "Bounty" is cheap all over, from the low speed chase in a vintage car presumably hired from a reluctant local to the caterers' cooler box our heroes lug around their sabotage equipment in. But then B7 is always basically cheap so to pick on "Bounty" seems harsh.

McKenna is well backed up by Carinthia West as Sarkoff's valet-cum-bodyguard Tyce, who's nicely acidic and brings off some good tough girl dialogue of the sort Jenna was given what feels like a long time ago. Jenna herself is left on the ship; presumably Jan Chappell had complained this week as Cally gets out of medical and teleport duty and joins Blake on the mission to extract the reluctant Sarkoff. She does well with it too and there's a glimpse of the character seen in "Time Squad", though either Chappell was dashing back and forth from playing a hooker with a heart of gold in an episode of Juliet Bravo at the same time or the character really felt her amazing leopard-pattern fur coat was just the thing for covert operations. Seriously, it looks like something she was given to wear between takes to keep warm, forgot to take off and was then left in as reshooting would be too expensive. That might sound like a lot to write about a coat but it really is incredible.

However, it's not quite the most tasteless thing in the episode. The B-plot concerns Jenna, Avon, Vila and Gan in orbit and wouldn't you know it, something happens to make their simple brief of hanging around and waiting to teleport up the away team more complicated. They pick up a distress signal and after a bit of an argument Gan offers to teleport over to it, resulting in the lot of them being captured by space pirates. Space pirates led by Hindi actor Marc Zuber (doing the rounds as a generic Asian in the UK at the time in things like The Sweeney, Minder and Space: 1999; his most famous role though is probably as the Saracen interrogator at the start of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). Dressed in Arabian robes and with most of his lines ridiculously signposting his greed. It's all a bit wide, really.

The ease at which Tarvin takes the ship and then overcomes Blake and Cally (who just sort of melts away once she's back with the other regulars) isn't exactly convincing. He makes a more plausible (well, insofar as a guy in purple Sheikh robes going on about selling his grandmother can be plausible) acquaintance for a pre-series Jenna than Avalon but the whole angle of Jenna selling out the crew suddenly never gains even a fraction of credibility. Tarvin flagging this up doesn't particularly help either; they probably should have gone for either him being besotted with her and thus easily fooled or have him immediately throw her in with the rest. Still, at least Vila gets to work on some locks for the restraining collars, a sure sign this part is written by Nation. Avon meanwhile just gets to be a bit withering but not much more; it's in the running for his most low-key episode of the whole run. He still does better than Gan, who gets to fall hook, line and sinker for the pirates' ruse and then do nothing to redeem himself.

The way the two plots dovetail together isn't the cleanest; it's not particularly clear why Sarkoff and Tyce are kept restrained on the bridge instead of with everyone else apart from that it probably saved a day on the different sets for McKenna and West. I suppose shooting Tarvin (I do like Blake's blatant glee when the pirate tries to activate the removed restraining collar) is as good a way for Sarkoff to rediscover his fire as any other, though the revelation that Tyce is his daughter is a bit random and just seems tossed in for the sake of it. It's inevitable if a shame that his attempts to retake his position on Lindor are never followed up on - there's a fanfic in that, surely? Plus Tyce will be the first of a few women to take a shine to Blake and put Jenna's nose out of joint; she can be odd with these, never showing any interest in Blake (who's married to his war on the Federation) but still acting like a bitter ex whenever anyone else does.

It all adds up to a superb little episode, with the quality of the Sarkoff stuff overpowering the cheesy piracy/betrayal storyline. It's nice to have a break from Servalan and Travis and it's also good to have an episode that's actually about fighting the Federation that doesn't involve them too, much better than the random sci-fi adventures seen elsewhere.