Administration or Federation
A white wall. A CCTV camera. Shuffling drugged citizens in drab overalls. Tinny muzak and terse public address announcements. Welcome to the Federation.
Or rather, welcome to the Civil Administration, the terrestrial heart of the Federation. The word ‘Federation’ - so central to the series, the very thing it is about - is heard only four times in its opening episode. Three of its uses occur in the procedural rubric at Blake’s trial; Foster uses it to tell Blake of how his, Blake’s, former followers were allowed to emigrate to the outer worlds. The Federation is the military space empire, attached to but not synonymous with the Civil Administration. (Which gets twelve mentions in this episode.)
This kind of unnecessary detail - it has no good dramatic reason to be there, and is in fact slightly confusing to a new viewer, ie in this case in 1978, everybody - is a nice, perhaps accidental, way of building the world, or rather the galaxy, of the series. A by-the-book script editor would have changed it, as the Federation surely needs to be clearly named and positioned as the dominating force Blake is fighting against. But it remains, and it feeds pleasingly into the later background-bubbling story of the political conflict between the civil authorities on Earth and the military authorities at Space Command.
The political pressure on Servalan from the Earth administration is a narrative justification for her hiring somebody as unpredictably extreme as Travis to hunt Blake, yes. But it’s worth noting that this is considered as a factor at all. In a more straightforward, clearer, and dumber space adventure, evil Servalan would appoint evil Travis because the Federation is an evil space dictatorship of evilness. The fact that Terry Nation goes to considerable narrative pains to complicate it gives the lie to the accusation that he is a thoughtless hack. Again, there is no narrative need for Travis to be too rich for the blood of the rank-and-file, as demonstrated by the scene with Servalan’s twink.
What this all shows is that, at its best, Blake’s 7 is taking its world-building seriously. Which is deeply satisfying for the attentive viewer. (Of course, sometimes it lets itself down on this score quite dismally.)
But -
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