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 …
Looking for the start of Blake’s 7? The Way Back 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 …
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… …