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, …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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’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 …
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… …
Until Assassin, Series D has relied on writers who have written for Blake’s 7 before. Positioning a new one in the middle of the series probably felt safer, especially as Rod Beacham was not an experienced television writer, but looking back at the first half of Series D this hardly mattered. Considering the overall series …
Headhunter was the most fun I’ve had all series. I loved that even the title confounded my expectations – I was expecting a bounty hunter to come after Team Avon, so to have an actual head was marvellous. I really enjoyed Blake’s 7 as a horror film, with various familiar aspects from the genre to …
After watching Animals, I discovered that I appear to be in a small minority of Blake’s 7 viewers who got some enjoyment from this episode. Lucky me! I tend to use the term ‘least favourite’ for episodes lower down my rankings of anything because there is usually more good than bad. Series D isn’t exactly …
We’re four episodes into Series D of Blake’s 7 and now have another issue of Blake’s 7 Monthly to keep us going between episodes. Let’s take a look at some of the features from issue 2, published in November 1981. It’s another bright cover for Blake’s 7 Monthly, with the series logo once again done …
This is the first time I’ve ever struggled with Blake’s 7 and I needed something from Stardrive, just a little bit, to liven up Series D. Just a machine I’ve given up entirely on Orac, whose personality increasingly resembles his creator: a grumpy old man who wanted to be left alone to get on with …
After the last episode I mentioned that there were a couple of writers I was hoping to see again – Robert Holmes was one of them. What the plot One aspect I liked from Robert Holmes’ previous stories was his ability to write two separate but fun, compelling plots. This worked particularly well in Gambit …
I approached Power with a degree of trepidation as I had been frustrated by Ben Steed’s previous Blake’s 7 scripts. It had been reassuring to learn from other viewers that I was not alone, but I was also informed that I had another of his stories to come in Series D. Blake’s 7 Monthly delivered …
The Blake’s 7 fans of the 1980s had a long wait between Series C and D, with the former finishing in March 1980 and the latter not starting until October 1981. This was longer than the usual 12 months or so between series but I actually think it’s impressive, having been informed since I finished …
Doctor Who had had its own magazine for two years by the time Blake’s 7 Monthly launched. After just over a year of being published weekly, the magazine went monthly. On the cover of issue 57 it is simply titled Doctor Who, but inside it’s clear that the contributors now consider the magazine to be …
It’s Autumn 1981. With Series D of Blake’s 7 on the horizon, what better time to launch a magazine devoted to the programme than just before the final series airs? Enter: Blake’s 7 Monthly! In between watching Series D, I’ll be sharing a few features from each issue. Throughout the magazine, there is no consistency …
‘Terminal’ is associated with death and can be where a journey ends, so I was curious about this episode’s title. The reveal that is was simply a planet’s name was initially underwhelming. But overall ‘terminal’ stands for an endpoint and this was Blake’s 7‘s most emotional one yet. Avon’s deception Avon’s change of character was …
Early on, I thought I could happily observe the combatants, with the Liberator crew sipping cocktails while commenting on proceedings, for the entire of Death-Watch – a kind-of Blake’s 7 version of Gogglebox. But when the crew did teleport from the ship, more fun was to be had and I wanted it to last longer. …
Ben Steed? That name is familiar. Have we had one of his stories before? Oh, we have. Oh no. I was frustrated by how Ben Steed wrote Servalan in The Harvest of Kairos and after viewing Moloch it’s abundantly clear that the word ‘feminism’ has never registered. I did not find Moloch as bad an …