The Annotated Blake’s 7 - Project Avalon

Is she or isn’t she wearing Harmony Hairspray

This is Blake, and his series, in their imperial phase. If the series follows the classic pattern of a tragedy, which it kind of does, these are its legend-making glory days, before the inevitable complications and fall. ‘Project Avalon’ is a tale of heroism, daring and exemplary moral goodness, the literal rescue of a damsel-in-distress, with Robin ultimately bearding the Sheriff in his den.

In the real world of the production it is also a heroic success. Time and money are running out. This is a punchy, efficient episode with swagger and confidence.

It’s appropriate, though surely unintentional, that this casual bravado in the production is shaken in Series B, in which the fictional legend is likewise rattled about. The traumatised Series A directors (excepting Vere) all flee to the hills (along with Ian Scoones), which means that this hard-gained saunter is mostly lost, despite the increase in budget and changes to the impossible schedule. A lot of things have to be learned all over again, or worked on to be achieved in other ways. Some of them never are.

Series A is literally unmakeable on a technical level, and yet it was made, and in this, its latter stages, it even comes out swinging punches. (I’m reminded here of how, ten years later, Sheila Hancock tells her husband John Thaw - used to comparatively lavish budgets and film series schedules - about the production turnaround on the highly complex Doctor Who, and he flatly refuses to believe it can be done. ‘But I’ve just done it, John,’ she tells him.)

Blake’s 7 is now itself, Terry Nation’s vision of Robin Hood In Space. It could easily have just carried on like this. But the series starts immediately to disassemble its own legend, to show us the days that follow the glory days. Series B is all about idols with whole lower halves of clay.

But today is about Blake The Invincible.

And it was sensational

This episode, like ‘Duel’, is just very, very good. It positively rollicks along.

True, you can’t really go wrong with a commando raid on a fortress. This is the series’ attempt at Where Eagles Dare, complete with snowbound ‘castle’, and a similar chunky, uncomplicated story with great characters and one big twist. Everybody on the production ‘gets’ the story, because they’ve all seen this sort of thing before. Dudley Simpson is noticeably enthused, and starts glissing up and down his piano à la ‘City Of Death’, always a good sign. The extras playing the guards know what their job is, giving us the best gun battle in the entire series. (David Sterne of Detectorists is instantly recognisable thanks to his very distinctive voice.) There are many pleasing little details - the perfectly judged facial reactions of Cally and Gan to Avon’s withdrawal plan, Cally’s naughty smile when Avon teleports Vila down before he’s ready.

These things are possible because the meat of the story is achieved so well. Time is taken to establish the location. It is technically not strictly necessary to include an exterior of the planet’s surface. We could easily begin down in the caves. But the snowbound opening provides weight to the scenario, and gives us the brilliant visual of fur-wrapped Travis and the Mutoid against the white. (In the script the mutoids are wearing camouflage whites, but the arrogance of them not bothering is much better.) Similarly, our first glimpse of the Centre gets an ‘unnecessary’ shot of the Mutoid walking down the corridor. We are shown a full picture of the stronghold and its defences.