Out of the Unknown - The Last Lonely Man

Out of the Unknown is one of those series that holds an almost mythical status. It has never been released in any form of home video and depending on who you talk to, it never will. There is a lot of interesting theories as to why there is a lack of release for Out of the Unknown. One big problem is something that faces a ton of BBC series from the 1970s which is a fair amount of the episodes are missing. The survival rate of this series is not 100% but there is enough episodes which could easily warrant a mutli-disc set kind of like the release to Adam Adamant Lives! Out of the 59 episodes made only 20 still exist.  The bigger problem to this is what a lot of people dub as “rights hell”.

Do you ever go to DVD or home entertainment forums and when there is something that cannot be released it is invariably people say it is because the series is in “rights hell”. The studio cannot get the rights or come to terms with other parties to release the material. One of the classic cases of this was the 1960s Batman series. Two groups had claim to the series but couldn’t come to terms. Who loses out? We do. This is exactly what is happening with Out of the Unknown. For series 1-3, Out of the Unknown took stories from well-established Science Fiction authors and adapted their work for the series. The problem is that it may become too difficult to get the deals sorted out with all of the different writers and may be a very expensive venture or possibly not being able to come to terms with authors or their estates making it that some of the already few existing episodes not get any release at all. Now, I’m not an expert on that; I am just relaying what I have heard from other people. Another problem on top of this is that say the BBC did do a payout to all of the authors; they came to some agreement and release the existing episodes on DVD. Historically, these niche series have not sold as well as the BBC has hoped. It appears Adam Adamant Lives! in particular is one that is often cited for being a low seller. Doomwatch was on the cards to be released but it was scrapped. So, even after attaining the rights and putting together a DVD set, if it under sells that could be a real problem and a major money loser.

Radio Times listing sourced from RandomTVStuff Blog

Now to use my example from above, the good news about Batman is that it still shows up in the TV schedules in different areas. It is not impossible to find. Unfortunately, Out of the Unknown is not quite like that. It aired on BBC2 back in the 1960s and early 1970s never to be seen again apart from one or two examples over the years. It reached mythical status. A lot of us had to turn to other means to view the series we want. I have been lucky as I received copies from a friend who got them from the master 2” tapes or directly from 16mm film prints. It doesn’t change the fact that this would be a great series to buy and support the BBC range.

The Last Lonely Man TX: 21/01/69

This week I take a look at an episode from Series 3. In fact this is the only episode that exists in full from the third series and it is the first series to be made in colour. The episode starts off by confusing me right away.  This is the first time I have even seen it and it begins with a super-fast sequence of a car driving. It’s a man and a woman driving down some country roads in a yellow sports car recklessly driving around. He is trying to impress her and she is loving it. She loves it so much she goes over to him and gives him a big kiss while they are driving so fast. Suddenly a truck pulls out in front of them and they slam right into it. It is very gruesome for 1960s BBC television! There is blood everywhere and they are mangled. None of it matters because it’s a PSA. At least it’s like a PSA which means Public Service Announcement but it’s not one that is bestowing responsible behavior, at least not in a way we would expect.

It is a PSA for Contact. We are not privy to what Contact is right from the start and to be honest by the time the episode ends I am still not 100% clear on what it is. What I do know is that a person gets someone else to be their Contact. Generally family members will have each other as Contacts. Some will have Mutual Contacts.  What happens is that some kind of procedure takes place and gets a person set up so when their person they have Contact with dies, that person’s memories and possibly personality is automatically  transferred into the other person’s brain. Sadly the two young people in the PSA had no Mutuals (the person they would download to after dying) so they are really just dead. Their memories and personality are not passed along to anyone. The moral of the PSA, make sure you have a Mutual Contact. It is a new form of insurance. I think I got it.

It’s a way to introduce us to the concept of Contact. The episode really gets going in a bar. James Hale (played by George Cole) hasn’t been in there for a while but comes in for a drink. He is obviously a very conscientious if not a little dull of a person. As he is at the bar having a drink and chatting to the bartender a man by the name of Patrick (played by Peter Halliday) comes in to the place and he is obviously very drunk. He starts talking to a couple at the table and it is very clear that the woman at the table knows him. The woman at the table whose name is Mary just told Patrick that he has been expunged. Basically means that she has dropped him as his Contact. The way that Contact is spoken about in this episode it’s kind of like a grander form of insurance. It is insinuated that people should not be walking around without having a Contact of any kind. Once Patrick realizes he doesn’t have Contact anymore he gets distraught, drinks more and starts up a conversation with James.

Patrick keeps pouring James drinks and somehow talks him into allowing Patrick to be one of his Contacts just for a couple of days until he can make other arrangements for a new person to be his Contact. They end up going to the airport that night since there is an all-night place that does it. It is there that we start seeing that Patrick is a bit of a jerk to everyone.

Apparently there is no limit to how drunk you can be to get a Contact procedure done. Plus, you can show up publicly drunk and they will still do the procedure to you. It’s kind of odd. The next day, Mary tracks James down to explain Patrick a little better to him. Apparently, Patrick keeps trying to get people to be his Mutual and when they agree he will not leave them alone. He is so worried something will happen to them that he won’t let them out of his sight at any cost. He becomes clingy and horrible. Patrick is in fact a very creepy man.

James doesn’t believe Mary as James is a good person and takes people on their word. He will regret this with Patrick. That night, Patrick stays with the Hales. They are having dinner together and Patrick almost leers at James’ wife Rowena throughout the whole meal. Did I mention that Douglas Camfield directed this? Right there you know it’s pretty good. It seems like when we start to get more scenes with Patrick, he is almost lit in a way to look as creepy as possible. Somehow Patrick ingratiates himself into the Hale family to the point that they trust him to watch their twins while they go and see a movie. This is even though they have known Patrick for just over a day. The scene where James and Rowena are at the theatre watching the film has a very Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four vibe to it. The film is about the virtues of Contact. The film shows old footage of soldiers fighting in a battle before there ever was Contact. The audience watching the film is just laughing at those soldiers because they do not have any Mutuals to pass along. It’s unnerving. It reminds of me of Nineteen Eighty-Four with the 2-minutes of hate that Winston had to endure with other Outer Party members as they screamed hatred at footage of their enemy every day for two minutes.  

Back to our episode, James looks to the back of the theatre and sees Patrick there watching him. Why is Patrick there when he should be watching their twins? James chases Patrick down only to find out the Patrick just wanted to make sure that nothing happened to James on his way to the theatre. The twins are alright but James tells Patrick to get out of their life and I would assume that James will expunge Patrick the next day. He probably should have gone back to that clinic at the airport. That night in bed, Rowena and James come to the conclusion that Patrick might do something awful so in the middle of the night they go to the room Patrick rents. Just as they are about to enter his room Patrick commits suicide. Immediately, James picks up all of Patrick’s memories and bad habits.

James starts acting like Patrick. He starts to lie about things and he is rude to just about everyone. More and more Patrick is taking over James’ mind. James loses interest in the kids. James returns to the bar from the beginning of the episode and sees Mary there again. At first she talks to James not knowing how much Patrick has infiltrated James’ life. Then she realises that she is being played by Patrick from within James’s head. James/Patrick wants Mary to be a Mutual to them. She doesn’t want to do so  which nearly ends in a big fight. Then James collects himself and apologizes. He apologizes that Patrick sometimes takes over. The brilliant part of this is that it is still Patrick talking. Patrick is even duping us, the viewer!

Rowena is supposed to go to Manchester to visit her brother but comes home to find James unpacking her bags. He explains that he wants her to stay. Then he tells her he needs her to stay. She is his only Contact now as James has been expunged from other family members due to his new behavior which Patrick’s personality. He wants to make sure nothing happens to her. At any cost! That is when she realises all of the windows have bars on it. That is when he ultra-bolts the door. She sees he has stored up on canned food. He plans to watch her all the time and will not allow anyone to enter or leave the apartment to make sure nothing happens to her. He pulls out a gun as he says they may need to use it when people come by such as various government services. She is trapped there for the rest of her life and that may not be too long.

When I finished watching this I actually became disturbed and depressed. James was a good, kind man who only wanted to make sure Patrick was taken care of until he could find other arrangements. Patrick has ruined a whole family. It can only be assumed it didn’t work out well for anyone. Contact is an interesting concept. It is one of those plot devices where it has been in service for some time before we join into the episode. Contact isn’t new but even the people who have created don’t think it has been fully developed. In the episode, there are clinics set up to deal with what happens when you get people who have Contact transfer and they take over the other person. It is not something you can just get rid of but more of weekly sessions to help people deal. James already has his father’s memories in him. The question I had is how does human life evolve after generations and generations of taking on other people’s memories and personalities? How many people can fit into one brain? It is even talked about how one side effect is that a lot of people are becoming bisexual because they are taking on memories and personalities of people from the opposite sex. Another side effect on society is that people are taking more and more chances. A lot of people are careless if they get killed because they have this “insurance policy” of basically living in someone else’s brain. I would love to see a story about Contact taking place 100 years after the events of this story and see how humanity had evolved with this process.

The Last Lonely Man is a story by John Brunner and was adapted by Jeremy Paul. Douglas Camfield was the director. What is interesting is that music was composed by Don Harper. He composed the very distinctive music for Doctor Who The Invasion. The music is basically the same as in The Invasion but I like it that way. The music is grim and accentuates the action with harsh moments of a musical clash.

George Cole and Peter Halliday are amazing in this for their own reasons. Peter Halliday plays Patrick very disturbed and creepy. He is a psycho. The scene before he kills himself he is sitting alone in his room with the gun right next to himself just weeping uncontrollably. It is so disturbing. The whole scene is awful which in this case I mean good. It would be easy to think George Cole would play it safe because James is a very straight laced character. After Patrick’s memory starts entering into James, the change is very obvious right away. As the rest of the episode goes on, we see James change into a horrible person. James starts to even talk like Patrick. What I mean by that is George Cole starts to speak in the same cadence that Peter Halliday speaks. It is sadly brilliant.

Now in colour, Series 3 uses the same title sequence created for the black & white series but in colour. At first I assume they achieved this the same way they made the Pertwee title sequence for Doctor Who. That was made in black & white and then “coloured” afterwards but after re-watching the sequence it looks like it had been done that way to a certain degree but other shots had been completely replaced.  It looks great and the sequence itself is very cool and one of the best ever for British television. It changes to something pretty bland for Series 4.  Out of the 13 episodes from the third series, this is the only full episode that exists. There is an extract from Liar! Thirty minutes exist from The Little Black Bag and an off-air audio recording exists for The Yellow Pill. Not a great survival rate. It is also too bad that the final episode of the third series doesn’t exist titled Get Off My Cloud. It has a couple of Daleks in it. I was thinking about it the other day, if it did exist like The Last Lonely Man on colour videotape, we would have a rare look at the original Dalek in their original colour scheme on 1960s colour videotape. I can dream! Don’t get me wrong, I am not lamenting just that one episode is gone; I am frustrated that many of them are gone. Maybe someday one will be found again. The last episode of Out of the Unknown found was Level Seven in 2006. I think we are due for another find!

Farewell

It is hard for me to put into words the loss of Richard Briers. He certainly wasn’t a one-note actor. He always had a playful mischief in his eyes and seemed like just a wonderful feller. It will be weird watching The Good Life in the future knowing that this energetic full of life fun human being is gone. Very soon, I will write up something about him. Rest in Peace Richard Briers.

Next week: I will publish the second 50WHO article as I look at the Ninth Doctor and look at Rose. Not so much just the episode but also the excitement about my favourite series coming back on the air plus the ups and downs of that period of time. When the Doctor explains that Harriet Jones ushers in the golden age to Britain, I feel that Christopher Eccleston brought in the Golden Age for Doctor Who.

From another source, here's the VT Countdown clock!

Have a great week!

Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but do not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com

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The Trial of Travis

For a series that I was not a huge fan of, Blake’s 7 has popped up 3 separate times in my articles this year alone. This just goes to show that the articles I write really are randomly picked. If I picked the programs I watched every week myself instead of being random, there is a really good chance that Blake’s 7 would not be in the top tier of programs that I would pick. Did you notice that my favourite show, Doctor Who, is hardly ever featured on here? I think that’s what makes it fun. More than often, when I pick a series that I am not very interested it turns out that by the time the episode is over, I have found a new appreciation for that series.

At the risk of going over old ground again, I never really took to Blake’s 7. I talk about that here. It is a series by all accounts I should have liked. It takes place in space and it has cool spaceship designs. What usually lets it down for me is the acting usually by the main characters. So far this year, I watched Orac which was alright but I found a ton of flaws to it. Then in May, I took a look at Blake. It was a massive improvement to what I had seen before. Though I know that the episode is of a very high standard because it was the final episode, I started to see what everyone else was seeing. Would finally I start to see why the fans of this series love it so much?

Trial TX: 13/02/79

Just as when I viewed Orac, some major stuff was happening in the previous episode of Trial, Pressure Point. Blake is feeling guilty and responsible for the death of Gan. To deal with Gan’s death Blake decides to go off to a planet to think about his future and whether or not he wants to continue to lead the group. Of course Avon doesn’t help the situation at all. He continually reminds Blake (and everyone else) that because of Blake, Gan was killed. Blake leaves for this unknown planet.

The much more interesting part of the story revolves around Travis with the Federation. He is on trial (thus the name of the episode) for killing thousands of civilians years ago. What makes this interesting is that these charges are brought up against Travis prior to anyone having the chance to go after Servalan for the mishandling of eliminating Blake. Blake and his band of renegades are causing a lot of problems for the Federation. Servalan wants to make sure that Travis does not have a chance to testify against her. The trial itself is not very interesting but what is kind of cool is a glimpse into the inside of the Federation. Secretary Rontane (who was previously seen in Seek-Locate-Destroy from Series 1) gives a lot of exposition into what is happening at the trial and that event, though Servalan is not at the trial, not only does she know exactly what is going on all the time, she is basically controlling it. Rontane is helpful to us the viewer to get an inside look of what is going on without us explicitly seeing Servalan doing it. This is where a character like Servalan is so golden. She is one or two steps of head of everyone, even people who are her own allies. She is basically the puppet master. She controls the strings and manipulates every one she can. She is a true villain and she is wonderful. I love watching her.

Meanwhile on the planet, Blake has set up a way for himself to get back to the Liberator if the rest of the crew wants him back. He has met an alien called Zil. Zil is friendly enough and she actually thinks that Blake is one of her children. She has eggs all over the place. The problem is the planet is alive as a creature and will open itself up and swallow things. Sadly, soon enough Zil is one of the things that is swallowed. Luckily, just in time Blake is transported back to the Liberator.

One of the things Blake was worried about was that the Federation might think Blake’s group and their cause would be forever hindered by the events in Pressure Point. Little does Blake know about the trial going on with Travis. Avon has created a way to make the Liberator basically a stealth machine and Blake decides to send the message to the Federation that he is still around. He gives orders to attack Servalan’s command ship.

Travis is found guilty of the crimes against him and is ordered to be dishonorably discharged from the Federation and then executed. Just then, the Liberator comes out of nowhere and attacks the command ship. Before escaping, Travis pays a visit to Servalan and forces her to get a ship for Travis to escape. Based on what happened to Blake and his crew in the previous episode, this attack on Servalan’s ship is payback.

This episode is sort of a Blake’s 7-lite of the series. The storyline gives us very little of Blake as he is mostly on the planet and even less of everyone else. The focus is on Travis and Servalan even the two characters do not share a scene until the end of the episode. As I mentioned earlier it gave us a little insight into the politics of the Federation and how Servalan needs to watch her back as she is feeling the pressure from the people within her government about what she is doing.

One of the greatest eye-opening moments for me in regards to Blake’s 7 is when, about 22 years ago, a friend explained to me the general idea to how Blake’s 7 could be considered a anti-Star Trek series. It’s almost as if Star Trek and Blake’s 7 as series are in fact history books. Star Trek as it looks at the Federation from the winning side and Blake’s 7 from the losing side. Star Trek has a very optimistic view of the future. Even more so if you look at Star Trek: The Next Generation. Even in First Contact, we are told there is no money. Everything is Utopian and all the Federation wants to do is help out new civilizations and create goodwill. Obviously, that is a very generic and quick overview but Blake’s 7 Federation is power hungry. They allow slaves and they do whatever it takes to keep themselves as the major power of the galaxy. It two sides of the same coin as far as the “prime directive” is concerned. Now, I am talking as if it was a foregone conclusion that Blake’s 7 is a spin off of Star Trek. It is not but it really is an interesting concept. For Blake’s 7, even the Starfleet Insignia is flopped to its side. It’s actually pretty cool.

You can tell the episode was in the good hands of someone with experience such as director Derek Martinus . I love his work and it shows off here. Shots of the crew on the bridge of Liberator are from above and the camera pans down to their level. Same with the shots of the trial. All handled expertly and a series such as Blake’s 7 really needs this. Just like Doctor Who, you need a director to embellish the good things going for the series and mask some of the more dubious designs and creations. After watching this episode, I came to the realization that I love this title sequence. This is still the same sequence used from Series 1. It is commanding and confident. The sequence for Series 4 has some good things going for it but it is dull. This sequence is great. With the theme music added to the visuals, it gives it all a vast and enormous feel of space to it all. It’s impressive and in some ways is on the same scale as Star Wars.

As for the actors in the episode, once again Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan has to be the best thing in the series. It could be so easy to play it up and be camp yet she does so with an impressive turn of almost being sweet and non-emotional unless she has to be. It is all taken seriously and she dominates every scene she is in. We also get some decent guest stars with Peter Miles and John Savident who both put in solid performances. I also enjoyed Brian Croucher as Travis. I prefer Stephen Grief but Brian does a really good job of it this episode. Of course by this point Travis’ days are numbered.

As far as how this episode fares in my overall interest in Blake’s 7? I am starting to get more and more into this series. I am curious to see more of the episodes that I have only heard about. I know how the series progresses so that is not an issue; it’s not just sitting down and watching this series. It is now something I look forward to doing soon. My DVD sets are just sitting on the shelf waiting…..

 Some Farewells….

This week we found out that Eric Sykes passed away at the age of 89. If you ever get a chance to see the early episodes of Sykes And A …. from the 1960s then please do so. It is funny and unique. In this series he also partners with Hattie Jacques who I adore.

We also say farewell this week to James Grout. To me, James will always be the overly indulgent vet Granville in All Creatures Great & Small whose character is married to Zoe played by the beautiful Pamela Salem. James appeared in such series as Inspector Morse, Rumpole of the Bailey, Yes, Minister, Z Cars, A Very Peculiar Practice and so much more. James Grout was 84.

Next week: I need a break and am going to rest. I am tired and I think it is showing in my writing.  I will post one of my unpublished articles that I have handy to go when I want to take a week off. Next week I move away from television and listen to the soundtrack for Series 2 of Sherlock.

Have a great week!

Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but do not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com

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Also please subscribe to my From the Archive: British Television Blog Facebook Page for updates about new articles.

Blake's 7: Orac

As a full-fledged card carrying lover of all things British television, I should adore Blake’s 7.  This series should be on the regular rotation of television programs that I watch or at least I should go through the entire series once a year. Why is it that I do not really care for it too much? Obviously my first love is Doctor Who. As my love in British television grew, I became hungrier for other British television that had sci-fi influences. My PBS station started to run Blake’s 7 in the late 1980s. I was pretty excited for it especially since it was created by the creator of the Daleks himself, Terry Nation. I watched the first episode, The Way Back, and was left pretty unimpressed by it. So I stuck it out for the next couple of weeks and it just didn’t do anything for me at all. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t love the series and I don’t hate the series, it’s just there. I have all the episodes because I do think one day, I will watch one that will ignite my interest in the whole series. I’ve seen a handful of episodes. It’s not uncommon for me to watch a series from the beginning, find no interest in it and maybe jump ahead and watch something later on from that series. There have been times when I did that, I find something about the series I connect with and I end up loving it. I have done this for series such as The Simpsons, Men Behaving Badly, and Only Fools and Horses. I am still holding out hope for Blake’s 7. It seems like everyone really digs it except me!

Orac TX: 27/03/78

The whole name of the game for this blog is randomly picking something to watch. This forces me to take something off the shelf that I may not watch that often. This week takes me to the very end of the first series of Blake’s 7. Blake’s 7 came about as there was a need to replace the series Softly, Softly.  The legend goes that Terry Nation came in a pitched the prepared series outline he had written only to have it outright rejected by Ronnie Marsh. Thinking on his feet, he came up with the idea of a ‘Dirty Dozen in Space’ type series which ended up being commissioned. Terry Nation was an ideas man. He had a lot of ideas but wasn’t always great about filling out a script. This very much was the case with Blake’s 7. Also in alignment with his other series Survivors, Nation creates the premise and launches it. Writes heavily, if not all, for the first series and then moves on or has a greatly reduced role. It may sound like this is a criticism but I can assure you that it is far from it. In particular, Survivors, is one of my favourite series of all time and Series One in particular is some of the best television ever made. Same with the claim that Terry Nation would re-use ideas. For Doctor Who, Planet of the Daleks is considered a re-telling of the very first Dalek story. Terrance Dicks has also said that the story outline Nation provided to him for his season 12 Dalek story was a re-hash of an earlier story. Dicks actually tells Nation to come up with something original which leads to Genesis of the Daleks. All of this may be true but I still think these stories are great. Planet of the Daleks is one of my favourite stories. Especially at a time when there were no such things as repeats, I could understand Terry Nation thinking he could re-use a lot of elements from a story made 10 years earlier.  To the ignorant like myself I certainly did not catch on right away. Plus I plan on doing the same thing for this Blog. My next article I need to write for All Creatures Great & Small I plan on taking an old article I wrote about Doctor Who and just switch out character and story names where appropriate. Instead of the Doctor hunted down a corridor by the Daleks, James Harriot will be chased down the countryside by prancing sheep. This stuff writes itself.

Anyway, what about the episode itself? This episode is a continuation from the previous story Deliverance. The crew knew about Orac from their journey to Cephlon where the Jr. Ensor wants to go back to his father on Aristo to give him badly needed medical supplies to keep his father alive. Blake is also aware that there is something called Orac and it is heavily wanted by the Federation. They will pay a lot for it. Ensor Jr. dies and the members of the crew who were down on Cephlon for an extended period of time are teleported back on the Liberator. The problem is that Jenna, Avon, Gan, and Vila now have radiation poisoning. The Liberator does not have the supplies needed to treat them and soon they will die. Blake thinks that Ensor Sr. will have the drugs the crew is looking for. Not only that but Blake has the medical supplies that Ensor will need so a trade could be worked out. Plus Ensor has Orac…..whatever that is.
As The Liberator is en route to Aristo, a couple of travelers have already landed on the planet. Servalan and Travis have already arrived and want Orac. This was something that annoyed me at first. I was annoyed that those two would travel on their own to get Orac but that was before I realized that this trip was not on behalf of the Federation. Because those two characters are power-hungry, they want Orac for themselves. If they get Orac, they can do anything. There are multiple ways to get to Ensor but that doesn’t mean you can get to him. Servalan and Travis opt to go underground to find their way. There are lizard creatures down there who serve as a barrier of sorts. They seem to enjoy the occasional taste of human flesh.

Above the planet, the Liberator is in orbit but has been taken over presumably by Orac. Ensor is very careful about who he has an audience with on the planet. He is very aware of the two Federation people underground and he is aware of the Liberator in orbit. Why Ensor didn’t have Orac paralyze Servalan and Travis’ ship in orbit is anyone’s guess. Anyway, after Ensor is assured that the Liberator only wants to help Ensor, he allows Blake and Cally to teleport down to the planet. There they need to follow strict instructions to get them to meet Ensor. Part of this is to leave their weapons behind.  Luckily Travis and Servalan are allowed to roam with more freedom.
Blake and Cally eventually go below ground and meet up with Ensor who thinks both of them are actual medics who can perform an operation on him rather than just give him medical supplies. After they convince him of who they are, tell him about his son, and get the drugs they need for their crew they convince Ensor to teleport back up to the Liberator with Orac. Just as they are heading back, Servalan and Travis blast their way into the base. Now Blake, Cally, and Ensor are running for their lives. They can’t teleport back to the Liberator from where they are because the defense barrier is still up. Taking down the barrier takes 5 hours for it to disperse.

Little does Blake or Cally know that Travis and Servalan go a different way to head them off at the point they can all teleport back to their ships. Maybe the smartest computer ever in the universe, Orac, could chime in and make some suggestion. Nope….not a peep from him.  It makes no difference. Ensor dies because of lack of medical attention. When Cally and Blake make it up to the surface they are met by Servalan and Travis who want Orac and now have the ability to kill Blake. Suddenly out of nowhere, Avon and Vila turn up. Avon shoots Travis in the hand. As Avon quips, “I was aiming for the head.”

Back on board the Liberator, Orac is not making friends but now at least he speaks. He doesn’t answer questions very clearly but does make a prediction. The Liberator will be destroyed.

The episode itself wasn’t too bad. Apart from Travis and Servalan able to get into Ensor’s fortress so easily, it is little wonder why someone hadn’t done anything like that sooner. Also the end of the episode with the crew sitting around criticizing Orac felt like it diminished the impact of how powerful we were told Orac was. Also, there wasn’t much urgency for the dying crew on the Liberator. In fact apart from some sweat on their foreheads, you would have hardly known anything was wrong with them. There was zero tension or any feeling that there was a real race against time. Yet, there was three separate plot points that were a race against time: Avon, Jenna, Vila, and Gan dying on the Liberator, Ensor dying on the planet desperately needing medical attention, and at the end Blake, Cally and Ensor trying to get back to a spot on Aristo where they can be teleported back to the Liberator. To me, there seemed to be no real urgency on any of these points. One thing I did like was the opening shot of the Liberator flying through space. It was not a traditional model shot. It was more simple animation. Both the ship and the space were illustrated rather than a model with a black background. It kind of gave it a comic book look which was stylized. To me, it didn’t look cheap. I know that has been done through out the series.

I think part of my problem with Blake’s 7 is that a lot of the cast don’t really fit the characters that they play. I know that this is travesty to die hard Blake’s 7 fans so please continue reading. Please note all of this is my humble opinion.  I know how the series end. The Blake we get at the end of the series seems much more in line with the type of character I could imagine leading this group. Avon is an interesting character. He actually evolves as a character especially after Blake leaves. Villa is perfect. I think Gan is awful; there is nothing dangerous about him at all. Cally and Jenna are easily replaced and forgotten. I think in this episode in particular. On the other side of it, I think Jacqueline Pearce is inspired as Servalan. She is wonderful without being over the top. This version of Travis is also amazing. Sadly this is the last episode with Stephen Greif as Travis. I thought he played it very well.
Like most of the BBC output in the late 1970s, this episode is sourced from 2” video tape. I have heard there is a point of contention among fans of this series because there was no restoration work done on this series like Doctor Who for the DVD releases. It sounds like things got complicated surrounding getting this series out including ditching a 4 part retrospective making of by Kevin Davies. That is a shame as he has a real talent for putting programs like this together and it would have been a lot of fun to watch. Now watching this episode I think the picture looked great. The video was very strong and to me looked like it had been put through a DVNR. In fact, look at the extra on this disc (Disc 5) of Blue Peter and it doesn’t look quite as good. A side note about that DVD extra. Am I the only one who doesn’t think Lesley Judd or the Blue Peter team came up with a cheap way of making those teleport bracelets and in fact that is the real way they made the bracelets for the actual show? One thing I did notice is that for the episode on the DVD, the sound was really hot. It was too loud and it seemed like no matter how much I turned it down, it was still over modulating out of my speakers. It also doesn’t help that for the theme music Dudley chose to go with continual non-stop cymbals which were starting to give me a head ache! Did I imagine that many years ago, maybe as many as 10 to 12 that BFS Entertainment were planning on releasing or did release this series on DVD in the US? It seemed to have been years before the BBC release and if I am not mistaken they were going to put the whole series on a ridiculously small amount of discs. I want to say something like 4 discs or something.  Am I dreaming this? If you remember, let me know. I can’t find mention of this anywhere.



The Hyatt Regency O'Hare

In another article I wrote from a few years ago, I mentioned how much I associate the holiday Thanksgiving with Doctor Who. This was because the anniversary was usually around or over that weekend. Also back in the day I would travel to Chicago every Thanksgiving for the Visions convention. As much as I associate Doctor Who with Thanksgiving, I have to associate Blake’s 7 with Visions. Every year there was a good collection of actors who attended plus there were so many cross-overs in front of the camera and behind the scenes from multiple series, you could always get your money’s worth with some of these people. I have so many memories of Friday and Saturday nights at the Hyatt O’Hare which was always darkly lit at night running into these actors or having a drink with them. I remember in the second floor by the restaurant, Jacqueline Pearce was nearly hit by a potted plant that someone must have accidentally nudged some floors up. The center of the hotel was completely open and it was balconies along all sides. It was opulent, gorgeous, and to me it was where serious fans of these series would converge in those days. This place and the convention was a hold over for the Spirit of Light conventions in the 1980s. Anyway back to Ms. Pearce. It barely missed her. I have no idea how many floors it traveled down (could have been as many as 12) but thankfully it did not hit her. Who knows how seriously it could have harmed her. I don’t go to Chicago for conventions any more but I do have a Doctor Who marathon the Friday after Thanksgiving every year. Maybe this year that needs to change and give another series a chance for old time’s sake. Maybe this year I need to have a Blake’s 7 marathon! What do you think?

Next week: I take a look at something I wanted to savor like a fine-wine. I have been waiting for the right time to watch it and now is that time. Over the next four weeks I will be watching and writing about To Play the King with Ian Richardson. The first installment, The House of Cards, is one of the best television programs of all time. I have not seen To Play the King so I am coming to this completely new. I can’t wait and next week I will explain why I took such a long hiatus between The House of Cards and To Play the King.
Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com

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Victory of the Daleks - A Loss for the Viewer

"You are everything I despise. The worst thing in all creation. I've defeated you time and time again, I've defeated you. I've sent you back into the void. I've saved the whole of reality from you. I am the Doctor and you are the Daleks."


The official BBC description from Victory of the Daleks:

The Doctor has been summoned by his old friend Winston Churchill but in the Cabinet War Rooms, far below the streets of blitz-torn London, he finds his oldest enemy waiting for him. The Daleks are back! And can Churchill really be in league with them?

This story has all the ingredients needed to make a fantastic episode. It has deceptively smart Daleks, World War II setting, London, and Winston Churchill. Why do I feel so empty when I watch this? The sets for the bunker in London are amazing. There is some great atmosphere throughout the whole episode. The shot of The Doctor and Amy looking out onto London during World War II is chilling. It is really, really well done.
It doesn’t take long at all for the Daleks to show up. We had the wonderful cliffhanger the week before with Churchill calling the Doctor with the imposing shadow of a Dalek on the wall. Now, once the Doctor is there, we see that the Daleks are fighting the plight of the war and are apparently a creation from some Professor Bracewell. The Doctor sees through this but can’t get anyone to believe him. In a nice nod to The Power of the Daleks, the green war coloured Dalek responds to the Doctor, “I AM YOUR SOLDIER!” It’s actually pretty neat. While the Doctor is trying to convince Churchill what is going on is wrong, there is a wonderful shot of the Doctor aware of a Dalek gliding behind him. These more unique shots are one major improvement on the production previous series. They are very welcome. The problem is the WWII charade does not last very long. The Doctor actually falls right into the Dalek’s hands (so to speak), and identifies them as Daleks. This starts a Progenator, which contains pure Dalek DNA, to percolating on a Dalek spaceship in orbit over the Earth. Now, the Progenator is new, to me, in which thousands existed but now only one had been found. The Daleks that we see in this episode is from a surviving ship from Journey’s End. They needed the Doctor to ID them as Daleks because they are not pure like the DNA in the Progenator and it wouldn’t work. This is where I get confused. The DNA to create the Daleks in Journey’s End came from Davros himself. He is a Kaled but presumably, he would have done whatever he did before to create Dalek DNA from his own DNA. Why is this now pure Dalek DNA? Is it possible that the Daleks had re-engineered their DNA to be the primary DNA for the Dalek species? Thus making Davros’ way of creating Daleks out of date? I thought my friend had a more interesting theory. The Dalek ship that survived was from Parting of the Ways had Daleks engineered with human DNA. That would be a better reason why they were impure.
The New Daleks
I understand why the episode is titled Victory of the Daleks. The story itself is a vehicle to make the Daleks a monster that comes back as a race instead of a few individuals of a dying race that the writers have to create a reason for their return each and every time. I think it is a very smart idea. Although I absolutely adore the Dalek design of the RTD era of Dalek stories, I understand new people in charge have their own vision on how things should look. I think the message becomes a bit muddied and becomes a story only to introduce the new redesigned Daleks. Even worse is that I don’t think the redesign is very successful.

What I think is the biggest problem with the redesign is that it looks out of proportion with everything else. Did you ever play with toys as a child? I did. Say, it was the early 80’s and I was playing with some Star Wars action figures and I needed a monster for them to fight, I would grab whatever looked right but it may not have been the right size but it’s all I had. I look at it a little like that. It also reminds me when the Sontarans returned in The Two Doctors. They were tall. Sontarans are not tall, they are short. That is how they were imagined by Robert Holmes. The new Daleks are too bulky and too big. They are almost bigger than people. They have a bizarre hunchback. I don’t understand the reason for such a dramatic redesign. There is a wonderful extra on the DVD of The Chase where Raymond Cusick, who designed the Daleks back in 1963, travels to Whales to meet the current designers of the series and look at the RTD era Daleks. Like I said, I love that design but Raymond didn’t look too impressed. I would be very interested to see his reaction to the new “Paradigm”.
The one thing leading up to transmission of the episode perplexed me and that was how the Daleks could come up with a story that could explain how Bracewell created them. Then the day of transmission before BBC1 even had a chance to broadcast the episode, the Official Doctor Who web site posted this image:
Talk about a major spoiler and it actually made a huge impact on my enjoyment of the story. Now, the more intelligent readers of this blog may have figured it out by that point but not yours truly. I hope they watch what they post in future. That was a major plot point ruined. I hope not many people saw it.
What about Churchill? I am not sure I like the idea of the Doctor to be available to major historical figures at beck and call. Especially a person like Churchill who was rallying everyone and everything he could to stop, which seemed inevitable, invasion from the Nazis. In my opinion, the Doctor, who has knowledge about everything, should not be in a position to pick and chooses how he helps a figure like Churchill because he knows the future. It just doesn’t seem right to me. Maybe I am taking it too far but it almost cheapens what everyone fought for as Churchill had a friend who knew the future the whole time. Ian McNeice who plays Churchill turns him into a warm loveable old gentleman. Maybe he was a warm loveable gentleman. What was weird was his little, “I’m a cute old man” looks he would give to Amy Pond. Obviously, he was played as a caricature of Churchill but I think it would have been better to stay away from that angle (and character) all together.
To me, it is clear that Mark Gatiss thought really hard about what he wanted to see in a really good Dalek story. It’s all cool stuff I wanted to see in a good Dalek story. Unfortunately, I think the episode could have benefitted from an extra episode to really set up the trap for the Doctor. The story moves too quickly for me and I wanted to see more of WWII. Next Time: The Weeping Angels and River Song return as I take a look at Time of the Angels.

The Beast Below - So Far So Good

"I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule!"

The official BBC description from The Beast Below:

The Doctor takes Amy to the distant future, where she finds Britain in space. Starship UK houses the future of the British people, as they search the stars for a new home. But as Amy explores, she encounters the terrifying Smilers and learns a deadly truth inside the Voting Booth.
The second episode of Series Five picks up pretty closely where The Eleventh Hour leaves off. Amy, still in her night attire and is floating outside of the TARDIS only with the Doctor holding onto her ankle to stop her flying off into oblivion. It’s a nice change to see the series have some fun. The specials were very heavy with a deep undertone of sadness knowing that David Tennant would be leaving the role. Now, the slate is clean and there is room for more fun.
There is a great scene at the beginning of the episode where the Doctor and Amy are watching Mandy, the little girl, on the TARDIS scanner. This is right after the Doctor explains that they are only observers. As Amy watches Mandy cry on screen, she laments the fact that it must be difficult to watch but not get involved. Suddenly, as Amy is still watching Mandy, the Doctor goes up to Mandy meaning he is outside and the TARDIS has landed. It’s a fun moment and possibly one of my favourite moments from Series Five. Its one small example of what Moffat does really well which is putting unique spins on how to tell the story.
The Beast Below is a pretty good story but I had to admit that I needed to watch it a couple of times in a row to get all of it. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first. I didn’t think it was a strong as The Eleventh Hour which was written as if the whole Doctor Who franchise depended on its success. To me, where The Beast Below goes a little off is when you think about Liz 10 and how the entire population on Starship UK seems to be unaware of the star whale even though it showed up to Earth at their hour of need. I understand that people voting would hit the forget switch but wouldn’t they forget everything? Wouldn’t they wonder about their existence onboard this ship and never knew they had to flee the Earth?
There are some great things about this story. I think the design is very strong. I like the idea of the classic television motif. The logo for Starship UK is based off a 1960’s version of the BBC logo. The poem girl on the monitor is surrounded by a test card design. Test cards were big on UK television and were used when stations such as the BBC were not on the air. The Smilers are suitably scary. They also look like they are made out of ceramic or porcelain with minute cracks detailing around the joints of their mask. We don’t really know what the Smilers are there for apart from policing but they are quite scary. Out of the 3 faces of the Smilers, I actually think the middle one, the disgusted one, is scariest because it is close to the “smiling” version but there is enough of a difference to be really creepy.
It’s been interesting to listen to the music for this series. Murray Gold is still writing the music but he really has gone out of the way to create a break from the last four series and do something very distinctive for this. The music with Amy floating outside of the TARDIS at the beginning is refreshing and beautiful. I can’t wait for the Series Five soundtrack to be released.
It is clear that Moffat is not a big fan of the NEXT TIME trailers. Each episode is made in a way that gives it very clean break from the episode. One nice touch with The Beast Below is that we get a lead in to the next episode as part of the narrative for this episode. Winston Churchill calls the Doctor and requests him to come over and see him. When he is on the phone with the Doctor, we see the unmistakable silhouette of a Dalek projected on the wall. That is more powerful than any NEXT TIME trailer can possibly be in terms of getting me revved up for the next episode.
NEXT TIME: We travel back to World War II. We meet Winston Churchill and the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks.

The Eleventh Hour - An Exciting New Beginning

"I have 20 minutes to save the world and I have a Post Office....and it's shut!"

This is the start of a series of articles I will write on Series Five of Doctor Who. Although I saw all the episodes already, I am going through them again as I view the episodes from the UK vanilla Blu Ray discs.

The official BBC description for The Eleventh Hour:

The Doctor has regenerated into a brand new man, but danger strikes before he can even recover. With the TARDIS wrecked, and the sonic screwdriver destroyed, the new Doctor has just 20 minutes to save the whole world - and only Amy Pond to help him.

The Eleventh Hour could possibly be the most important episode for the series since it came back in 2005. From this episode on, all the key players have changed. Russell T. Davies moved on and Steven Moffat takes over as Executive Producer and Head Writer. We get a new companion played by Karen Gillan named Amy Pond. Perhaps most importantly, Matt Smith takes over the role of Doctor Who from David Tennant. Tennant’s role in Doctor Who’s popularity can not be over looked. He really did raise the profile of the series. While Tennant was the Doctor, the series managed to be number 1 in the ratings a couple of times. Not bad for a series over 45 years old. I wonder what William Hartnell would have thought of that? Anyway, Matt Smith was taking over from a very popular Doctor. His work was cut out for him. (There was no way I could end that sentence without a cliché!)
I was kind of nervous prior to seeing The Eleventh Hour. I was always supportive of the casting of Matt Smith and didn’t care if he was in his twenties. Some said that was too young. What frightened me was the end of The End of Time Part Two. His voice cracked and he was all over the place. I get that the character had just regenerated but I wasn’t a big fan of his first couple of lines. Now, to be fair, the TARDIS was exploding around him with loud crashing sounds and bits of debris flying into his mouth. No one is going to give their best performance under those conditions. Any concerns I had about Smith soon dissolved…..
His first line about apples in The Eleventh Hour was beaming with confidence. When he was on screen, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He commanded the screen. I kept watching the episode with a giddy smile on my face thinking this is the future of Doctor Who. Matt Smith is simply brilliant as Doctor Who. He brings a natural eccentricity to the role that I haven’t seen since Tom Baker. I can’t believe my favourite show was lucky enough to get someone like him. A good actor alone does not make a good series. What about the writing?

This is an extremely strong episode to start Series Five. It has great comedic moments but without being silly. There is some good action and good use of the village as its locale. This is a nice change from the last four previous series as those were all set in London or big cities and most locations for Series Five have a more intimate setting. The threat is reasonable in the form of Prisoner Zero. It is someone on the run and the Atraxi are trying to hunt him down and will destroy the Earth rather than let him get away. It’s a threat that seems containable within the period of the episode. I think it was a good idea to not have the new Doctor to suffer from post regenerative symptoms. He does not have amnesia nor does any silly impersonations of previous Doctors. He notes that he’s not done cooking. This really helps get the story moving.
Steven Moffat has put new people behind the camera to give the series a different approach. Adam Smith directs the episode and we start to see shots that we haven’t seen in previous series. The lighting and colour palette for the episode is different and it’s a nice change. Don’t get me wrong, the RTD era episodes are fantastic. They are well produced and look great. It’s just nice to see things changed up. It’s also interesting that Murray Gold still is the composer but he disposes of all of the musical themes he had created over the past 5 years and all new music is used. It’s all very fairy tale in feel which is what Moffat was going for. I was dubious of this approach when I first heard of this but I am now a big fan. I think Murray has created some of the best themes for music in Doctor Who and in this episode I start to miss them. By the time we get to the end of the series, I love the new direction and feel the music has evolved.
Karen Gillan as Amy Pond has a strong debut too. We see the character in two forms. We first meet her as a child going by the name Amelia and then later as a grown up called Amy. Immediately, it is obvious something is different with this character. She is basically alone apart from an Aunt we do not meet. But the big reveal is at the end of the episode, after the TARDIS takes off with Amy on board that we see back into Amy’s room. The camera pans over countless figures and drawing of her childhood imaginary friend, The Raggedy Doctor, and stops on Amy’s wedding dress. She is to be married the next day.
In every first Doctor story, it seems that we have a checklist of what must be accomplished in the story. Here is a list of those items which happen but are not done in the traditional Doctor Who manner because Moffat is creative and wants to do things more creatively:
Meeting the new companion. As mentioned above, we first meet her as a child. She lives 12 years of her life before the Doctor returns. When he does, we find out that he has greatly impacted her life and he is considered as an imaginary friend. The Raggedy Doctor.
Seeing himself for the first time. Instead of looking into mirrors and making comments about noses or ears, it is Prisoner Zero who takes the form of Amelia who is holding hands with the Raggedy Doctor. The Doctor sees this guy and says, “That’s rubbish. Who’s that suppose to be?” Rory responds, “It’s you. You don’t know what you like?” It’s nice levity when the scene is tense.
Picking the Doctor’s new costume. This hasn’t happened in any of the post regeneration stories since the series returned but in the past the Doctor tries on a load of the old Doctor’s costumes. I am not sure why that ever originated but it is unnecessary. Here the Doctor is going to address the Atraxi and wants to be better dressed so he raids a locker room in the hospital to find the appropriate attire. Very reasonable I thought.
Some things I thought the episode fell down on were the effects. It seems to me that the individual episodes of Series Five do not have the same budget as the Specials. I would assume money is tight and some of the effects are just not as good as some others such as the exquisite Waters of Mars. The Atraxi eyeball ships are kind of silly looking as they are big eyeballs surrounding by tin foil. I was also disappointed with some of the continuity. When I say continuity, I don’t mean established story facts, I mean production continuity. For example, in the scene when the Doctor tells the Atraxi to push off when they are meeting on the hospital roof, the TARDIS key starts illuminating as it is finished. The way the scene plays out we get a long shot of the Atraxi taking off and as they do so, the Doctor reaches in his jacket pocket. We then cut to a closer shot of the Doctor, without his hand his jacket pocket suddenly becoming alert and reaching into his jacket pocket to get his key. It’s just sloppy from a production stand point. I found a couple of these in a few episodes this series. The big question is, the hospital badge Rory is wearing has the date he joined as 1990. This is impossible. Is that a mistake or is that intended for something down the road……

Now, as any scarf wearing Doctor Who fan, I need to judge some of the new elements introduced in this episode. These are items that appear in the forthcoming episodes. Here we go:
New Logo: I think the new logo is quite nice. It is a nice departure from the previous version. I wasn’t sure to think of it when I first saw it but now I really like it. Blue is a big part of the new colour scheme and it is very different from the reds that were used a lot in the previous series. I prefer the banner version of the logo opposed to the stack. I was unimpressed when I saw it in the title sequence but I was watching it from heavily compressed avi files. Now that I am watching it from the vanilla Blu Ray, it is very good. It is metallic and reflective from the fiery affects going on around it.

New Title Sequence: It is good. I think the animation is of a higher quality than the previous version. Though, it better be since the previous one was conceived over five years ago. The clouds are very realistic. My only complaint is that it is the same as the previous title sequence just with different graphics. It’s not very original. I wonder if this sequence will be changed when we get the Christmas special or Series Six.

Here is a link to Framestore's web site with the full version of the title sequence. They had very little time to get it together before the start of Series Five. Go here to view title sequence.

New Title Music: It grew on me. It really is a new take on the theme music. I didn’t really care for it at first. The base line is still there but almost non-existent. It also seems like Murray took his inspiration from Dominic Glynn’s Trial of a Time Lord version of the theme. Now, I actually quite like it and often find myself humming it. Not the Doctor Who theme, THAT version of the Doctor Who theme.

New TARDIS Exterior/Interior: The police box is nice and new looking. It looks beautiful in HD. Especially the way that not only the windows light up but so does the FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC sign. The Police Box also sees the return of the St. Johns Ambulance badge. The window frames are white and although I prefer the blue, this does look nice.
The interior is also quite nice. It has shiny copper walls and copper over hangs. The console sits on a completely different level. The only thing I don’t like is console itself. It just fails to impress me. I also think that having 2 levels actually makes the console room look smaller.

The Doctor’s Outfit: That’s more like it. It not only fits Matt’s character of the Doctor, it fit THE character of the Doctor. It is perfect and has no question marks.

I am viewing these episodes from the Vanilla Blu Ray discs. The episode is gorgeous and very clear with an amazing amount of detail. The only thing that sucks is that these episodes, and the episodes on the forthcoming boxset, do not have the NEXT TIME trailers. I don’t really miss them but what we do miss is the trailer at the end of The Eleventh Hour that is a nice preview of what’s to come with a nice voice over from Amy Pond.
Regardless, The Eleventh Hour is a bold confident new start for the next era of Doctor Who. May this era endure for many years to come!

Next Week: On Sunday I will post a small review on the second episode of Series Five, The Beast Below. I never had time to write anything up for Live and Let Die but I will post next week on an episode of the Nigel Kneale classic series Beasts. The episode is Buddyboy!