Jules Jones

30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 18

2026-05-18T20:22:59Z

~~Day 18: Favourite Liberator moment~~

Day 18: Ideas that should have been used more

So. Many. Options for the original question. And they don't even all involve Avon and/or Blake. I'm going to answer the new version from vilakins instead.

One thing I would really like to have seen more of was Cally's telepathy as something other than "taken over by alien of the week". It's used occasionally in situations where it's obvious just how useful it is as a way to give a silent warning to the others. In Bounty:

CALLY [V.O., telepathing] Guards! Don't speak or make a sound. [Blake quietly crouches beside her, and they watch as the guards confer and then depart.]

CALLY My reflexes are dull. They almost fell over me before I heard them.

BLAKE I've forgotten how useful telepathy is.

CALLY Oh, I must practice that, too.

Yes, Cally, you must. Presumably you did, given that in Star One a telepathic warning stops Avon getting caught by a horde of not-hairy aliens and he manages to catch Travis instead. It isn't the only other example of telepathy being useful, but there seems to be a lot more screen time devoted to "Cally is taken over by aliens because she is a telepath".

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 17

2026-05-17T21:15:55Z

Day 17: Two characters you wanted to get together that never did

To a first approximation, "nobody". This was not something I was particularly interested in when I first saw the series, at least not strongly enough to remember 45 years later. Possibly Avon and Cally, since the friendship with a hint of more was canonical.

In spite of the hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic I have since written, my answer for actual canon hasn't really changed. It would not be the show it was if you had any of the main characters pairing up - no matter which pairing you had, it would throw off the dynamics of the group. This is actually lampshaded in Voice From the Past, when a remote-controlled Blake convinces Vila that the others are plotting against Blake by telling him that Avon and Cally have paired up on the sly. Avon and Servalan might have a Masochism Tango thing going on in series C and D, but it only works because they both know it would never work and don't actually do anything about it.

This might be (almost) the last one I do for the original list of questions, because most of the remaining ones are either "how am I supposed to choose amongst so many" or "does not compute". (It doesn't help that much of C and D I haven't watched for years, only selected episodes.) vilakins apparently has a similar problem and is thinking of coming up with some new ones, so I may follow along with those.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 16

2026-05-17T20:47:34Z

Day 16: Best use of a hoary old trope

The entire concept of the show is "Robin Hood leading the Dirty Dozen in space", and I think it does it very well. There are many reworkings of Robin Hood out there, but I think this is one of the best. Blending it with 1984 as Robin's motivation makes it even better.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 15

2026-05-16T11:31:20Z

Day 15: Character who didn’t get enough screen time

A day late again, for the same reason - Eurovision semi finals. Anyway...

Gan, of course. With that many main characters and only 50 minutes per episode, something had to give, and that something was Gan. His primary role is as muscle, and he's not as smart/obnoxious as the others so presumably less interesting to write - although he's perfectly capable of giving as good as he gets from Avon. "For a clever man you're not very bright". :-> In some ways he serves the same function as the Doctor's companion, being the one who tends to ground the others when they get a bit too carried away with whatever shiny thing has caught their attention/obsession/ego. Also the one who's frequently lectured at for "as you know, Bob" purposes. Even Avon manages to forget his own ego long enough to genuinely enjoy teaching Gan about some of the ship systems, minus the usual snark once he has a genuinely interested student. (And I do find that scene very believable.)

Some people see him as a violent thug only restrained by the limiter. But what he claims to have been sentenced for doesn't match that. Obviously, the word there is "claims", but it's all too plausible in the what we see of the Federation. He enjoys fighting the primitives in Deliverance, but doesn't give the impression that he'd kill them without the limiter inhibiting him. It reads much more as enjoying a wrestling match, one that he's only engaged in as self-defence. The truly chilling scene is on the London, when he points out to the guard that they only need the hand. (Seriously, who came up with that idea of security in a barracks cell with a bunch of potentially dangerous people who really don't want to be there?) With that he doesn't need to be actually capable of carrying through the threat, whether emotionally or through the limiter's control; he just needs to convince the guard that he is. And very convincing he is.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 14

2026-05-15T21:26:18Z

Day 14: Character you relate to the most

I don't, really. Some overlap with Avon simply from being a scientist, but he is not someone I would want to live with, let alone be.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 13

2026-05-13T20:17:58Z

Day 13: Favourite guest character

So many to choose from in series 1 and 2, fewer but not non-existent in series 3 and 4. I'm going to go with the first choice as vilakins and for the same reason. Bellfriar and Gambrill from Killer are well-developed characters, who show that there are still decent people in the Federation. They're so well written and played that it hurts to see their fate.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 12

2026-05-13T18:42:27Z

Day 12: Favourite villain

Missed posting yesterday, so you'll get two today. Favourite villain is Servalan of course, although her Sleer incarnation managed to be both over and under-written as a result of Surprise! Fourth Series! Honorable mention to both editions of Travis.

Does Carnell qualify as a villain? I'm not entirely sure he's unambiguously one - he strikes me as closer to a neutral for hire, even if he's officially a Federation employee.

Single episode villain is actually a duo, in the form of Krantor/Toise. And yes, I typed it that way very deliberately. :-> And honourable mentions to Vargas, superbly played by Large Ham BRIAN BLESSED, and Bayban the Butcher, played by Colin Baker in Large Ham mode. Apparently I like Large Ham villains...

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 11

2026-05-11T20:46:41Z

Day 11: Best SFX / most woeful use of SFX

Best SFX: the Liberator. I love that ship. It is stunningly beautiful, especially that shot where it seems to be simply hanging in space. It was a genuinely alien concept, wonderfully brought to life. The team working on the new SFX that are an option on the Blu-ray did her proud with the new model work.

Most woeful use of SFX: There are a number of candidates. :-) Since we've been talking about Harvest of Kairos a lot, let's give an award to Brian the Spider for managing to not be the most awful thing about the episode. Unfortunately, the Liberator makes it into this category as well, at least in its "unconvincing cardboard cutout" incarnation. One of the nice things about the new SFX is that having built a new hero model, they also had the budget to film a lot more shots of the model than the original SFX team did.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 10

2026-05-10T12:12:13Z

Day 10: Least favourite episode

Oh Lord. So many to choose from, mostly in series 4, although all of them have some good moments. Probably Moloch (good moment - Vila involuntarily teaming up with Servalan). I know a lot of people hate Animals, but one of the reasons for doing so is a lot less icky when you know that the out-of-universe explanation is that the episode was written for Cally and hastily rewritten for Dayna after Jan Chappell left. So hastily that they didn't take into account the age gap between Dayna and Cally, and thus age gap between "replacement actress for Cally's role" and Justin.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 9

2026-05-09T17:11:20Z

Day 9: Least favourite series

As with "most favourite", I'm pairing two seasons, and for the same reason - the Blakeless series 3 and 4. Blake, and the interplay between Blake and the others, is what transfixed me about the show in the first place, and that's gone. Tarrant's constant sniping at and jockeying with Avon for control of the ship and crew doesn't work for me, and doesn't have the same dynamic, in the way Avon doing it to Blake does. Ditto Jenna's mild hero worship of Blake, and Dayna's (initially) of Avon.

There's also a lot of aimless drifting in series 3 and 4, and 4 suffers terribly from the change in producer and the incoherent characterisation from a parade of writers who knew nothing about the series (and also Ben Steed...). This doesn't mean there are no redeeming features, because there are some good to stunning episodes, including anything written by Chris Boucher. There's a reason why that man had his own fan following, not just the actors.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 8

2026-05-08T22:28:54Z

Day 8: Favourite romance

Taking the question as actually meaning romance and not just sex:

"What the writers intended" - well, they mostly didn't so it's a bit hard to have a favourite. There's clearly an emotional relationship between Avon and Cally, enough for Vila to believe Blake in Voice from the Past when Blake tells him that Avon and Cally have paired up, but one would think that if they really had taken it any further than just good friends Vila would have known about it. But of the ones where there's at least a hint, that one.

"What the actors apparently didn't realise they were opening up to wilful misinterpretation" - Blake and Avon. As I mentioned a few days ago, I did not see a romantic or sexual attraction there until I first encountered Watervole in a con dealer's room and she tried to sell me a slash zine. I noted that I had no objection to gay smut, I just didn't find it believable with those two. So she told me to go and watch a particular couple of episodes/scenes with the sound off and watch the body language. Um. Yes. I don't know whether those characters were in fact at it, but I do think Avon would have liked to have been. :-) (And resented like hell the fact that Blake had that effect on him in addition to the unwanted emotional attraction.)

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 7

2026-05-07T22:02:06Z

Day 7: Favourite friendship

Dithering between two here - Blake and Avon because of the fireworks, and Vila and Avon because of the lack of fireworks.

Blake and Avon *are* friends, at least by midway through series 1 - it's just that Avon is spiky even with people he likes, especially when he resents liking them. And Blake is very good at getting Avon to do what Blake wants, even if Avon bitches and digs his heels in all the way. (A plot bunny that's been gambolling through my brain for a few weeks now involves Jenna realising that Avon's hurt by "you really do hate me", even though he brought it on himself.)

Avon and Vila together are charming and silly and *fun*. They understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, and enjoy each other's company. Their escapade in Gambit is peak A-V, but there are plenty of other lovely moments, even early in series 4 as the years on the run are starting to take their toll on the mental health of both of them.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 6

2026-05-06T22:19:53Z

Day 6: Least favourite male character

Jarvik, because the poor soul was the creation of Ben Steed... Jarvik himself does have some good points, but dear God the misogyny dripping from the typewriter.

Of the regulars, Tarrant, partly because he is an entirely inadequate Blake-replacement for me, and partly because he's a bully in a way I find repellent even in a fictional character (there's a nastiness in his bullying of Vila that just isn't there from Avon before the aftermath of Orbit).

Vilakins mentions S4 Avon, and while I don't feel that way myself I can see where she's coming from. :->

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 5

2026-05-05T21:11:15Z

Day 5: Favourite male character

Blake.

He's the reason for the entire story. Nation created him as something more complex than just a gung-ho freedom fighter; and Boucher as script editor for the entire four year run plus writer of some of the key episodes put a lot of work into making him even more complex and, for want of a better word, real. He's not always likeable as a person, but it's very easy to understand why he's the way he is, why the others follow him, and why he believes (with good reason) that what he's doing is the least bad option. And he does know it's the least bad option, rather than the best option. He's a good man in a bad situation, who still stops to help individuals along the way.

I pre-ordered the Blu-ray boxes for series 1 and 2 as soon as they were announced, because I loved the idea of having remastered and restored episodes. It is not a coincidence that I am buying the series 3 and 4 Blu- ray editions more for the new extras that aren't on the DVDs than the remastering.

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30 days of Blake's 7 - Day 4

2026-05-04T16:35:27Z

Day 4: Least favourite female character

Cancer, not least because of the ridiculous costume change and "Bwa-ha-ha, my pretties". Pella in Power is probably next, because the episode was written by Ben Steed with all Ben Steed's interesting ideas about gender politics and there was only so much Mary Ridge could do about it.

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Blake's 7 - Star One - audio commentary

2026-05-03T20:16:29Z

Just rewatched Star One after watching it last night; this time with the audio commentary, which turns out to be a new one recorded for the Blu-ray release. Sally Knyvette, Brian Croucher and Mat Irvine. A couple of snippets I either didn't know or had forgotten - David A Hardy did a lot of the space backdrop paintings in the second series, and Brian Croucher did not like Paul Darrow. 🤣

Audio commentaries are supposed to be *commentaries*, but a lot of this one was them talking amongst themselves rather than saying anything about what was on screen. It turned out to be interesting anyway once they got going (and amusing when Croucher was getting catty about Darrow). Much better than a couple of the ones that were done for the original DVD release in the early 2000s, where they didn't really have anything interesting to say about what was on the screen, but also weren't really doing much with general reminiscing.

I need to go through the "extras" list for the DVD and Blu-ray boxsets and see whether there are other new commentaries, as I'd assumed the ones on the Blu-rays were just the ones done for the DVD release. Too late now for new ones from some of the people I'd really like to hear more from, but at least the Blu-ray remasters are being released while there are still some of the cast and crew around to do them.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 3

2026-05-03T18:36:09Z

Day 3: Favourite female character

I don't really have a strong bias towards a particular female character. I prefer Jenna and Cally to the later female crew members because I prefer the first two series in general, and I think there's better, more complex characterisation for them than there is for Dayna and Soolin. Dayna in particular I think is a bit one note; Soolin has an excuse both in having only one season and in being even more reserved about her past than Kerr "I do not need anyone at all" Avon, with good reason. Servalan is marvellous throughout, of course.

There quite a few good guest characters as well. The one at the top of my mind today is Lurena in Star One, since I watched that last night. Saying much more would be a spoiler, but she's stuck in a terrifying situation, she's almost fainting with horror and shock, and she still manages to hold herself together to fight back.

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 2

2026-05-02T16:14:08Z

Day 2: Favourite episode

Star One (which coincidentally I'm watching tonight with Kalypso as we work our way through the Blu-ray boxset). It's the culmination of the revolutionary story arc, where Blake has to confront what it's going to cost to take down the Federation, and the others have to confront it too. And then they find out the price is far higher then they could have imagined, and have to make a very different decision.

There are flaws, notably Cally getting cold feet even though she started as the most bloodthirsty of them, far more so than Blake was at that point in the storyline. They are greatly outweighed by the episode as a whole. A more plausible and interesting break in character, to me at least, is Servalan's immediate acceptance of the message from the Liberator. She knows who probably has the location of Star One, she presumably knows what Star One's other purpose is, and she knows a lot about the inside of Blake's head. She believes the warning and acts on it. You suddenly see that in spite of the ridiculous outfits and political plots she is a high ranking military officer who genuinely believes in protecting humanity and the Federation.

An interesting thing Chris Boucher said is that he wrote the "It's the only way I can be sure that I was right" line intending the emphasis to be on the word "right". Gareth Thomas spoke it with the emphasis on the word "I". As Boucher pointed out, that change in emphasis changes the meaning. (It happened again in Blake, with Paul Darrow shifting the emphasis from "Have you betrayed me" to "Have you betrayed me".) Regardless, Blake's influence over the others is such that they follow him (yes, even you, Avon) through the original plan, and then when things change drastically those with him on the surface follow his lead and those on the ship do what they think is right even though they think it betrays Blake - not knowing that it is exactly the decision Blake himself has made. It leads to one hell of a cliffhanger that would also have worked as a final episode.

And I will never, ever tire of Avon's "I want to be free of him." tantrum. :-)

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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 1

2026-05-02T15:22:53Z

Day 1: Favourite season

So what I get for my long-running failure to read DreamWidth more often than once a fortnight is finding out a day late that there is a Blake's 7 daily post thing going on. I estimate about five days before I fall into my usual lax posting habits...

Anyway, favourite series is 1 and 2 together. First and foremost this is because it's Blake's 7 that actually has Blake in it. That follows through to a couple of other things - there is an actual story arc, and very clear characterisations of people who don't necessarily want to be doing this, or at least doing it this way.

It also has Paul Darrow's scenery chewing tendencies more firmly controlled by the directors/producers than was the case in series 3 and 4, which in most episodes is A Good Thing. (The scenery chewing worked towards the end of series 4, when Darrow gave up on the inconsistent characterisation by different writers and decided to just play Avon as increasingly psychotic after years on the run being responsible for people he didn't want to be responsible for.)

And it has the Blake And Avon Show, which was not Terry Nation's original intention, but which everyone sensibly ran with when Avon became a breakout character. The interplay between a caring but utterly ruthless revolutionary and a cold, selfish, sharp-tongued character who just wants everyone to leave him in peace is fascinating. This is not just me looking at it through smut-coloured glasses, because I thought this long before Watervole told me to watch a couple of episodes with the sound off and look at the body language. This is, I think, the prime example, but when you look at the crew as a whole these characters, played by these actors, are very, very believable as a disparate group of people thrown together by circumstance and forced to rely on each other.

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julesjones @ 2026-03-08T15:23:00

2026-03-08T15:27:25Z

It's PicoWriMo time. :-)I missed the first couple of days, because the comm is on LiveJournal and the RSS feed to DreamWidth has broken at some point in the last few weeks, so I didn't know it was on this month until a friend mentioned it. It's a small comm for people who like the idea of NaNoWriMo (RIP), but can't do 50k in a month. People set their own target, and share their progress, so we get the community support for something that's manageable for us.

First week's progress for me:

( Read more... )

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Linux Reply Guys

2026-02-14T18:31:39Z

I got a little... peeved.. with Linux Reply Guys on Mastodon. Putting my rant from 1/2/2025 here so I have it to hand for the next time.
https://mendeddrum.org/@JulesJones/113928786877625625

******
( Read more... )

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Happy Gauda Prime Day!

2025-12-21T22:37:59Z

A happy Gauda Prime Day to all who celebrate. :-) Let us raise a glass to toast Chris Boucher, the man who made this day in 1981 one that many of us will never forget.

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VE Day 80

2025-05-08T22:20:10Z

80 years on, and the numbers of those who remember first hand are dwindling. I listened to the stories of those who were very young then, and thought of my own parents, born during the war. The effects ripple down the years, in things like the phrase "my parents were war babies" used by many in my age group to explain our dislike of food waste.

Lest we forget; for as the King reminded us in a very pointed speech this evening, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and the evidence of that is all too obvious around us.

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Fountain pens at Eastercon meet

2025-04-22T15:46:47Z

There was a fountain pen meet at Eastercon, at which assorted pens and inks got handed round for people to try out. A couple of mine proved popular, so putting here what I'd brought along with me. The Y1 was already inked, the others were inked at the meet with one of the Diamine samples. If I'd had any sense I'd have done a better job of recording which samples...
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Back from Eastercon.

2025-04-22T11:10:49Z

Had a great time, even if my assorted medical problems mean I have to pace myself. A con report may or may not be forthcoming - II finished writing up the Worldcon report months ago, and have yet to actually post it. That's one of the jobs for this week - I took the whole week off from work in case I came back with Covid and/or sundry other con cruds.

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