TV Review - Survivors S1E06: Garland's War

Survivors is overall a positive show - it might start off with the near-annihilation of the human race but really it's about the reaction to the death, one that is quite often positive. To some degree the likes of Abby, Greg, Charles Vaughan and even the likes of Arthur Wormleigh and Ann Tranter are thriving, using skills and knowledge that would have been locked away in their day-to-day lives. Maybe even Jenny was even wetter and thicker in day to day life before the plague, though I'll admit that is a push. Terry Nation returned to script the sixth episode (he wrote seven of the first 13 for the show before leaving) and it makes this theme explicit in the form of Jimmy Garland.

TV Review - Survivors S1E03: Gone Away

It hit me rewatching this episode that Survivors is actually a lot more optimistic than Blake's 7. Sure, 99.5% of the human race die but once that's done with (basically in the first episode) everything's back on the way up. Not without obstacles and diversions, of course, but as the seasons develop there's a positive response. It's not a bad thing and the show is basically a tenet to the hardiness of the human race, and the real nihilism of B7 (the abject failure of the heroes to destroy the Federation and their increasing irrelevance as opposition to it) didn't come in until Terry Nation's fingers came back out of the mix. In Survivors there's never anything as broadly depressing for the species as the huddled figures moving from campfire to campfire in the opener or Abby living out of the back of a Volvo estate.

TV Review - Survivors S1E02: Genesis

The problem with a concept like Survivors is that it would quite rapidly get depressing to just watch everything break down and everyone die. Terry Nation's concept for the series was more about how people would deal with the result than the plague itself, which was really just an excuse to get society in a good position to be explored. So here, as the name suggests, are the first kernels of a new start for the characters. A handful of isolated cases over the next few episodes aside the plague has done its' killing - but worry not, as Nation will show, there are plenty of other ways to die horribly in this brave new world. For now though we've hit a level where most of the people who would die from the death or initial death-related stupidity have done so and the survivors are beginning to respond.

TV Review - Survivors S1E01: The Fourth Horseman

Terry Nation spent most of the seventies trying to hawk the Daleks to American TV networks and make himself even more money (and when that happened he definitely would have passed on the money to Dalek designer Raymond Cusick, definitely), only occasionally popping back to Blighty in order to turn in effortless occasional Doctor Who scripts (one effortlessly brilliant, three simply effortless) and create a couple of excellent series. A few years before the infamous Blake's 7 pitch he had considerable success with Survivors, which hinged on a single simple premise - if then-present day Earth is struck by a deadly virus which wipes out 99% of the population, how would people cope?

TV Review - Blake's 7: S3E13 Terminal

For the conclusion of Season 3 Terry Nation returned as writer for his third script of the year, and the last of eighteen he penned. The story was famously planned to kill off the series but watching at home was Head of the BBC Bill Cotton, who was impressed and phoned the station while the finale was still on air so the continuity announcer could relay news that it would be back for another series, bypassing the then-closed production office. Which is a bit of a weird decision when you think about it; the majority of the cast were delighted to come back and before Season 3 wrapped it had already bounced back in the ratings, which were around 9-10m compared to the 6-7m of Season 2. Why go to all the effort of reworking the format in order to then wind the thing down? Anyway; "Terminal" works as a fine episode and a fine season finale but overall I'm glad it didn't end the whole series for several reasons.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S3E02 Powerplay

The second episode of the third season follows on directly from the first, but this will be the last time one runs into another until the Season 3/4 handover. The result is largely dependent on watching "Aftermath", possibly moreso than any of the other 'second part' episodes, following directly on from the shock discovery that waiting for Avon and Dayna on the repaired Liberator are a squad of Federation troopers, let by a dashing young man with Blake's hair.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S3E01 Aftermath

Blake's 7 had always been one to leave plenty open for critics and Season 3 would give a cheap shot in that Blake was no longer in it. You could argue that the apostrophe meant they could still be his 7 not counting him, but then that would only work for the first five episodes of Season 2. Many programmes have tried to press on without the lead (and in this case the third lead as well) and it's usually a disaster but B7 largely span a victory out of it.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S2E09 Countdown

After his mammoth role in writing all of Season 1 Terry Nation only wrote "big" scripts for the series - the opener for Season 2 concluding the cliffhanger he'd set up, the death of regular Gan, the two linked episodes overseeing the cast reshuffle at the start of the third season and would-be series finale "Terminal". The one exception was "Countdown", on the face of it a run-of-the-mill mid-season actioner. 

TV Review - Blake's 7: S2E05 Pressure Point

For a show that's known for killing off most of the cast there's only one occasion before five minutes from the end of the last episode that a regular crew member actually dies onscreen, and this is in "Pressure Point". The episode - written like several of the more "significant" ones over the next couple of years by a returning Terry Nation - effectively launches the season off on an arc that will technically run up until the finale, namely Blake's attempts to destroy the Federation's key computer Control. And it does a lot more besides.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S2E01 Redemption

The season opener of B7's second series solves two mysteries, uncovering the origin of the Liberator and resolving the cliffhanger ending of the first series. And it does this in a somewhat breathless way that belays the age of the show and the simplicity expected of genre drama at the time. If the show was made now the whole thing of where the Liberator came from would be a carefully teased out mystery while Orac's prediction would be left to hang over the crew for considerably longer than fifty minutes. However, on all three occasions the questions posed by the show's season closers are answered within the first episode to a large degree. To be fair this all happened before VCRs were owned by all but the really rich in the UK, let alone detailed online summaries (Blake's 7 wouldn't even get a dedicated magazine until the fourth series) and the like; questions needed to be answered while viewers still remembered them.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E13 Orac

One of the Blake's 7 trademarks - along with often not having Blake or a 7 in it, being cheap as chips and lots of people dying - was the big end of season cliffhanger. At the time it didn't really happen much in TV, let alone British TV - a mix of the need to make narratives as loose as possible for overseas markets where episodes might be shown out of order or series might not be ordered in full, and that quite often even popular and successful shows wouldn't be commissioned for a further series until after the current one was written, filmed or even broadcast. So ending the first series on a cliffhanger might not have been a first but it was certainly innovative and unexpected in 1978 and still a long way from being de rigeur for most ongoing TV shows. 

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E12 Deliverance

After a cycle of episodes that - the debut of Servalan and Travis happening ahead of any of their other appearances aside - could have been shown in any order Blake's 7 returns to a plot arc for the first time since its' formative episodes. "Deliverance" has the same A/B plot format as the previous episode but here one of the plot-lines is actually kept open at the end of the episode, leading directly to season closer "Orac". After the variable quality and tone of recent adventures it's actually well-placed and gives the season a thread to follow through to avoid just petering out as the money and ideas ran out. On paper.

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.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E10 Breakdown

Part of the problem with standalone episodes like "The Web" and "Mission to Destiny" was that they rapidly established that the Federation wasn't all that far-reaching considering the crew could fly beyond its' clutches with relative ease and meet people who either didn't know or didn't care about its' existence. "Breakdown" however is a largely Federation-free episode (pursuit ships and voice-overs only) that features a neutral station fully aware of all involved; the different degrees of neutrality is a theme that will be revisited from time to time. 

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E09 Project Avalon

The alternating Federation/non-Federation pattern was short-lived (which is code for me forgetting "Project Avalon" was before "Breakdown") and this episode gives Travis an almost immediate rematch with Blake, though this time he's got Servalan on his back. In many ways it's the quintessential Season 1 episode, featuring a raid on a power station, Servalan, Travis and an over-complicated plot. It is the first sign that the 7 (or six, I was never really convinced Zen gave much of a shit) weren't the only ones fighting against the Federation, though the "other revolutionary we've not mentioned before and won't mention again" device would get a workout in several episodes before the end.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E08 Duel

After the blatant rejected Avengers/The Saint/The Baron script of "Mission to Destiny" Terry Nation's solution to writer's block extended to thieving from stories he didn't even write with "Duel". While an American series from the days when the things didn't have the best reputation in dear old Blighty, Star Trek had debuted on the BBC in 1970 and rapidly became just as much of a cult hit as it had in America; when B7 began it was due for the big screen treatment as Star Wars had suddenly made sci-fi very big but the series was probably already being endlessly repeated. Of course, most people can only remember about a dozen episodes but "Duel" quite shamelessly rips off the famous "Arena" - which was of course based on a forties short story, though I personally think it's highly unlikely Tel ever read a book.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E07 Mission to Destiny

After introducing Servalan and Travis as the effective face of the Federation in "Seek-Locate-Destroy" the series initially alternated encounters between them and the crew for six episodes with self-contained stories that took a more peripheral approach. Actually, the next five would all be self-contained and could work in any order before the twelfth episode, "Deliverance", sets up the first season finale. This is one of the Federation's episodes "off", the second and last of the season to not feature them in anything other than a parting reference. There seems to be a simple reason for this; having taken the money to write all 13 episodes of the series himself, Terry Nation often used to retell with some humour how draining this was, and of pacing around his house telling his wife there were no more stories to tell. "Mission to Destiny" presumably comes after all the stories ran out.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E06 Seek-Locate-Destroy

The final part of the B7 jigsaw slots into place in "Seek, Locate, Destroy" - that of regular recurring villains. Aside from Leylan and Artix (and they were only in it as a recap, with extant footage of Rayker, and if the couple of London crew members seen at the end of "The Way Back" are in "Space Fall" I haven't spotted them) no-one outside of the Liberator crew had been in more than one episode so far and only two non-crew characters (one of whom was recast) would be added to the list over the rest of the series (though both John Bryans and Michael Wisher's characters, Bercol and Rontaine, would return for one other episode. "Seek-Locate-Destroy" however would introduce a pair of regular Federation characters in the form of Servalan and Travis. The former would go on to appear in 28 of the remaining 46 episodes, the latter in 12 of the next 21 - basically just over half of each character's lifespan.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E05 The Web

"The Web" is a first for B7 for several reasons. It's the first with a settled crew, an entirely self-contained adventure - allowing for a brief moment where the crew are unsure of the procedure for firing the neutron blasters it could be switched with a later stand-alone like "Bounty" or "Mission to Destiny" with no problem. It's also the first not to actually feature the Federation, which would go on to be an occasional feature of the show. And finally for the first time and not the last something tries to use Cally as a telepathic conduit to take over the ship - it's also not the first or last time it will be some long lost creature from Auron that does it either. Considering Jenna's initial distrust of her that this happens straight away is either very smart or very dumb. Or would be if her remarks from "Time Squad" were ever followed up on as the pair instantly become pals because they're both women. Both Terry Nation (Abby Grant) and Chris Boucher  (Leela) can write strong, well-rounded female characters but for B7 most of their energy was quickly drawn towards the Blake/Avon dynamic.

TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E04 Time Squad

"Time Squad" is often grouped with the opening trilogy of episodes due to the debut of Cally, the last of the original crew but that aside the format is much closer for what will become the default template of the first season and the opening episodes of the second - part of the crew teleport down to do something proactive against the Federation while the remainder face some minor crisis on the Liberator which may or may not dovetail with  the surface action - but more likely will just result in the ship not being on station at some crucial point to provide a getaway, allowing for people to be locked up. Indeed, the only real difference between Cally and the later guest allies is that she survives and gets offered a slot on the crew.