When I saw this episode’s title appear onscreen, it seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn’t remember what a corn dolly was. I was hoping it wasn’t going to end up as a metaphor for something horrific here because I didn’t fancy an evening that climaxed with The Wicker Man-type terrors. After all the opening grimness, …
Flight Through Entirety has been working through every episode of Doctor Who for almost a decade now – quite the podcast commitment. Despite dabbling in such vast viewings, I’ve never managed to see it through as there is just so much other fascinating television out there to distract me. I do think there is a lot …
I’ve mixed feelings about The Sarah Jane Adventures kicking off its series with returning villains from Doctor Who. A part of me thinks it should have been attempting to be distinct from the start. However, there had been a large gap since Invasion of the Bane – over nine months – and viewers needed to …
Abby has started to establish her own little group but we soon see that, even with hardly any other people around, some of the Survivors are still truly terrible human beings. Whatever this plague was, it’s looking highly doubtful that it was divine intervention. Why couldn’t only the nice ones survive? Looting At some point, …
I didn’t really see much of The Sarah Jane Adventures when it was originally broadcast. In April 2005 I was 11 going on 12, so I was just about young enough to still become enthralled in childish joy when the new series of Doctor Who started. That Christmas I was among the many kids who …
If you are considering a trip to Yorkshire to check out some Blake’s 7 filming locations, here’s a guide for those without teleport bracelets that includes the important stuff, like where to park, grab a bite to eat and the nearest toilets. This guide does presume you have access to a car as public transport …
Last episode’s title represented Death and I like that the biblical namings have continued with Genesis – the first book in the Bible – offering us a new beginning. Can Terry Nation keep these up? I hope so, even if my own biblical knowledge may become stretched quite quickly. If The Fourth Horseman was brutal …
ThePreacher711 has launched this new podcast series to ‘Seek, Locate & Interview Blake’s 7 fans from across the community’. One of the greatest joys of writing my Blake’s 7 blogs was that it helped to connect me with the rest of Blake’s 7 fandom. I now know there are plenty of fellow fans out there …
After getting so much enjoyment from Blake’s 7, I was keen to explore other work from its contributors. I’d seen various versions of Terry Nation Bingo and 1975’s Survivors seemed to tick the kind of boxes I liked. A box set emerged from my stocking on Christmas Day 2020… I initially liked the idea of …
The posts on this blog are evidence of my huge love for Blake’s 7, so I was delighted when Series A of Maximum Power launched. For me, the podcast has the right balance of a fondness for the show that also enables its fans to gently rib it when it falls short. There is an appreciation that …
This article was originally published in Issue 1 of the Curious British Telly fanzine. The opening episode of Parkin’s Patch sets up its rural atmosphere as Police Constable Moss Parkin (John Flanagan) deals with a case of sheep rustling. In the fictional Yorkshire village of Fickley, Moss knows everyone, cares about his patch and seems respected …
10 out of Callan’s 21 black and white episodes are missing, and Goodbye Nobby Clarke is the earliest. As far as I’m aware, the only part of this episode that exists comes from a censor clip. As just two episodes exist from Callan’s first series, this made me savour the programme’s monochrome era during my …
As the first episode of Callan, The Good Ones Are All Dead emphasises a few key details for those who didn’t see A Magnum for Schneider or else need reminding – it was broadcast five months before. Callan has another similar meeting with Hunter that tells us what the Section is and how Callan came …
As I was drafting this, I wrote variations on ‘this may have been my favourite part of the episode’ several times. Therefore, I decided it was best to simply remove them all because I couldn’t choose one. When we left Ford and Arthur, they were just about to be caught by the Vogons. But before …
In this final part of our Sandbaggers‘ podcast series , I joined Spybrary host Shane Whaley and fellow fans Jeffrey Westhoff and Paul Hodges to discuss the third and final series of The Sandbaggers. Paul’s a long-term fan and had some really fascinating knowledge to bring to the table, so it was great to be able …
The Strangerers follows two aliens that have taken human form on a visit to Earth to find out more about the planet. Written by Rob Grant, The Strangerers ran for a single series on Sky One in 2000, hasn’t been repeated and doesn’t have a DVD release, which are all good reasons why I’d never …
The best thing about my birthday as a kid was that it always fell in half term. We didn’t live that near any multiplex cinemas, so most of my trips to the pictures were in school holidays. My mother started dropping me off at the Showcase more often from the age of 10 or 11 …
Since finishing Blake’s 7, I’ve been enjoying Tim Dickinson’s Watching Blake’s 7 blog and his post on Sarcophagus mulls on a rejigged episode order for Series C. “I did wonder what would happen if this was the penultimate episode of season C. It felt like a late series episode. A coda. A summing up of …
I will praise A Magnum for Schneider to whoever will listen and, as you’re reading this, I presume you fancy listening. It’s a wonderful introduction to the world of David Callan, who is persuaded to return to the distinctly dodgy secret government department he recently left on principle – the principle that he didn’t enjoy …
I’ve had a lovely time listening to RetroTube over the last few months, enjoying the conversations of two friends as they share their love of archive television with one another – it really is right up my street. Heather and Adam’s slightly different tastes ensure the show varies from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) to Blake’s 7 …
It’s been 19 months since I sat down with The Way Back. That’s a relatively long time to spend, almost non-stop, with a series and its characters. They have lived in my head between episodes, between writing these blogs, between doodling them in notebooks, and between chatting about Blake’s 7 with friends. Partway through, I …
After realising I may never entirely recover from Orbit, I decided I was going to have to press on with Warlord eventually. The trauma was one reason holding me back, but I also know I’m nearing the end and I don’t want there to be no more new episodes of Blake’s 7 for me. The …
I had known there was another episode by Robert Holmes to come and I needed him to redeem himself after Traitor let me down. The word ‘enjoyed’ feels ill-suited for Orbit because it left me disturbingly shocked. Its final act has haunted me and the execution was utterly brilliant. A complete aside, but I loved …
By the start of Gold, no one on the Scorpio seems to care anymore that Tarrant shagged their mortal enemy and I was intrigued by some viewers’ suggestions that the sand in Sand had influenced him and Servalan. Maybe the rest of the crew came to think this too, or perhaps they all decided that …
Someone joyfully stated to me that Die Hard is a Christmas film, then in the next breath insisted that the classic James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is not. I could not let this second statement lie, so here is why they are wrong. For those unfamiliar with the film’s plot, it sees …
I have always known Look-In as the junior TV Times – it even says so on the cover – and therefore know it won’t be covering any BBC programmes. The ‘junior’ part and most of the (mainly 1970s) cover images I’ve seen led me to believe the target market was fairly young. However, Look-In‘s readers …
Issue 3 is the final edition of Blake’s 7 Monthly to be released while the programme is still on air and I can’t help but feel a tad sorry for the team behind it. Ideally, the magazine would have been launched after Series B and it could then have had a fairly decent lifespan while …
Every year, for a few weeks my Twitter feed fills up with people watching The Box of Delights. This has become a Christmas tradition for many and it seems to bring them a lot of joy. As I tend to find myself drawn back to the same films and sitcom specials every year, I fancied …
After a couple of debuts, Blake’s 7 is back to a proven writer with Sand penned by Tanith Lee. Despite needing to watch Series C’s Sarcophagus twice to understand much of what was happening, I had enjoyed it for being so interesting and different. Sand would provide something equally weird. I like that Tanith Lee …
With Games I noticed we had another new writer in Bill Lyons. I felt Avon and Vila were written well, with the latter getting the sort of humour that’s felt somewhat absent. I also loved the character of Belkov and Stratford Johns provides a wonderfully entertaining performance, which helped make Games such fun. Another scientist… …
