Not long ago, I made a new chum who shares many of my interests. We are on the same page about so many things. We laugh at the same jokes, we like the same music, we share the same enthusiasms and the same peeves. One of the pleasures of forming such friendships is presenting to your pal something that’s somehow passed them by, something you just know they’re going to love, same as you do.
It could be macramé, it could be Shostakovich, it could be macro-biotic cookery. In my case, with this friend, it was Blake’s 7.
Towards the end of episode five, ‘The Web’, at the point where the Decimas swarm through the door that their cruel clone creators/oppressors inexplicably neglected to shut, he turned to me and said ‘You’re making me watch a load of old sci-fi rubbish’.
Now this is someone who, despite being roughly half my age, loves 70s Doctor Who, and The Avengers, and I, Claudius. Rough-and-ready vintage TV and science fiction are not foreign countries to him. He did rally in the next episode, and was sufficiently curious (or courteous) to continue and complete our watch through, which took us nicely through the doldrums of lockdown.
But Blake’s 7, Servalan aside, never completely ‘clicked’ with him. He liked a lot of the banter and the brio of it, but he found it frequently either bafflingly over-complex and unclear (‘Weapon’ ‘Rumours Of Death’) or laughably crass and juvenile (‘Hostage’ ‘Headhunter’). He was frustrated that the dramatic and political implications of the series were skimmed over, or only lightly touched upon. Now those are reasonable criticisms - but for disciples they don’t really matter. It’s all part of the fun and the sheer, blundering swagger of it.
As we proceeded, I began to wonder if he was right. I had long ago twigged that Blake’s 7 was high old hokum, but I thought it was interesting high old hokum that had something very unique about it, something people like me - and him - could appreciate.
But was I wrong? Was it just a tatty old sci-fi that I still loved only because I had seen it as a child? Was I making excuses for it, and seeing things in it that were not there?
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