Sunday, January 18, 2015

Der der DER der der, der der DER der der...

That was the Blake's 7 theme tune, if you couldn't tell. Possibly it's not as obvious as I thought it might be, even to people intimately familiar with the series.

Anyway, the point is that I am now, officially, a huge obsessive fanatical Blake's 7 fan. Is there a name for fans? I'll look it up. I am one, anyway. I've only watched the first ten episodes in the past week or so, but even if the other 42 turn out to be rubbish (and the online consensus seems to be that they tend that way as the series progresses), I'm sufficiently enraptured by season one that I'm pretty sure I'm a fan for life. With hindsight, I really should have watched it when it was first on telly, and even the fact that I was 15 months old when it started really isn't much of an excuse. Shame on me.

Episode 10, "Breakdown", is the one I've been watching tonight, and it's a perfect example of what I love about the show. On a minimal budget, ten actors on a couple of sets in BBC Television Centre produce a real masterpiece of character drama. That's what the best episodes of B7 (if that's what the official way to abbreviate it is) do - every person who appears in the story has a full, rich, individual personality and they interact in clever and interesting ways. This one is especially good at giving each one of the Seven full scope to explore their characters and motivations in depth (well, except maybe Gan, who spends most of the episode either unconscious or homicidally insane, but even he has his moments).

I won't spoil the story for anyone else who might want to check it out, but I urge you all to go and become a Blake's 7 fan too, please. I'm going to the next convention. If there aren't conventions, I'm organising one. I'll start working on my Avon costume.

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