Blake's 7 #1: The Way Back

"Can you put a word in for me?" "I'll try and think of one."

IN THIS ONE... A brainwashed Blake is brought back into the resistance's fold.

REVIEW: Given its DNA, it's not surprising that Blake's 7 looks like a late 70s Doctor Who episode - hair, costuming, sets, CSO effects - you're just waiting for the TARDIS to materialize. Instead, we're shocked by some post-watershed (which is to say adult) content, including massacres, a couple getting frisky in bed, torture, and at its darkest, not only the Federation framing Blake for child abuse/paedophilia, but actually implanting such memories in three children so they can sell their story. Whaaaa???! This isn't Doctor Who!

I'm also surprised that as Terry Nation's baby, it doesn't feel that, uhm, National. I'm so used to his Dalek stories often being creaky, padded affairs with pre-WWII pop science that I wasn't expecting something so focused on people, and so uncompromising in terms of its story. Doing space opera after Star Wars makes sense - many did - but that's for the pencil pushers at the BBC. Really, Nation and his team are working from the template of 70s dystopian films like Logan's Run (domed cities, Orwellian group think, rebels without a chance). There might be spaceships, but the only one we see is the London, a prison ship named after what Nation might really be going after. Its Britishness makes it sound like he's addressing the rising tide of fascist nationalism (Thatcher would become PM a year later), though I don't have the context to really know if he was striking at proper targets.

Another surprise is the show's serialization. It's called Blake's 7, it seems to promise a crew aboard a ship, and given the circumstances, the Seven are to be a Dirty Dozen-type bunch of criminals and renegades. But we only meet two in addition to Blake, and at the end of the episode, when he ISN'T released like he's expecting (indeed, the Feds expedite his transport to a prison colony before anything can happen), he can only promise he'll return to Earth. Terry Nation will go on to write the next 13 episodes, which was apparently an inspiration for JMS to write Babylon 5 alone (going for many more episodes). The way BBC shows worked in 1978, it's incredible that they let him do it, never mind that he managed it.

Roj Blake himself was a popular leader of the dissident movement who, prior to The Way Back, was captured and brainwashed. Now the movement is trying to recruit him all over again, but they're almost immediately mowed down by troopers, with Blake the only survivor. He's once again taken into custody and faces a kangaroo court (and a justice system that weighs evidence electronically, no wonder you can't beat any rap). Both times, he was betrayed by an inside man, and the show doesn't try to hide who it is - security officer Dev Tarrant. In jail, waiting for transport, Blake meets a couple of interesting types who will become part of his gang. Vila Restal is a fun kleptomaniac and expert thief who has some amusing lines and an easy matter. And Jenna Stannis is a smuggler who using a hard exterior to hide a soft center. But though Blake is clearly the protagonist, he doesn't seem like the hero of the episode.

That title instead goes to Tel Varon, his advocate, who loses the case, but soon takes a page from Hitchcock's Murder! and tries to get the case reopened when things don't add up after the verdict. He and his wife Maja tries to Thin Man some answers, but it seems like everyone else is in on the conspiracy, including a slimy archivist who would rather bop to his giant walkman than help them. There's some clever investigative stuff, and you're looking forward to Varon becoming one of the Seven. But no, he and Maja, the aforementioned frisky couple, are shot dead by Federation troopers when they go out snooping for the truth and find it (because the Federation doesn't even TRY to clean up its massacre, it's so evil!). That's when you realize this show takes no prisoners (well, except Blake) and anyone could die at any time (even Blake as the title doesn't REQUIRE his participation). And that makes for exciting television.

NOT MY FEDERATION: The United Federation of Planets is a post-scarcity utopia and consequently, food and water are conveniently replicated. When Blake is told he can drink natural stream water, he's disgusted. Probably likes replicated. Just imagine THAT Federation spiking the replicators with drugs that make citizens compliant. But this isn't the UFP, this is the "Terran Federation". Interesting, since "Terran" is the name given to the Mirror Universe Empire. Still, the Federation insignia, seen in the Blake's 7 logo and the Justice Dept. badge looks a heck of a lot like a Starfleet emblem set in its side!

BUT MIGHT BE MY EMPIRE: Aside from anonymous helmeted troopers, the Federation's cities are also under domes that look like Death Stars. Interiors are all in white, but that's a science fiction trope from before Star Wars.

WHO?: Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, conceived of Blake's 7 and wrote the first 14 episodes. But that's not the last Doctor Who connection. The first three series were produced by David Maloney, frequent director on Doctor Who. Chris Boucher served as script editor throughout and wrote several Who episodes and novels, including The Robots of Death. He created Leela, so we owe him a particular debt. The episode was directed by Michael E. Briant (The Sea Devils, The Green Death and again, The Robots of Death). The score and incidental music is by Dudley Simpson, THE Doctor Who composer of the 1970s. Visual effects designer Ian Scoones also worked on many of the best-remembered Doctor Who serials of the era. What about in FRONT of the camera? Gareth Thomas (Blake himself) will be Ed Morgan in Torchwood's Ghost Machine (and he's in lots of Big Finish's Dalek Empire audios, but so as not to complicate matters, I'll leave Big Finish out of it from now on). Michael Keating (Vila) was in The Sun Makers only weeks before. Robert Beatty (the sage old man who tries to recruit Blake) was in The Tenth Planet. Robert James (Glynd, the Justice Dept. head) appeared in both The Power of the Daleks and The Masque of Mandragora. Jeremy Wilkin (Dev Tarrant) was Professor Kellman in Revenge of the Cybermen. (I'm going in credit order, and only here do I finally hit people who HAVEN'T been in the Whoniverse.) Alan Butler (a resistance member) had a role in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Margaret John (the Arbiter) was in Fury from the Deep, and would be in The Idiot's Lantern as the granny. Nigel Lambert (the slimy computer operator) would be Hardin in The Leisure Hive and lend his voice to the Priest Triangles in Flux. And of that wasn't enough, there's an extra Robots of Death connection with the reuse of those sandbag couches the conspirators sit on. I bet there's more if I sit down and watch 1977-78 Doctor Who serials.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - All the pieces aren't on the board yet, but there are enough shocks and surprises to promise something special.