Continuing my thoughts on the classic BBC sci-fi series Blake’s 7, which ran from 1978-81. The first part was published two weeks ago today, and the second a week later.
If you read any of my Doctor Who megathread or its reprint on this blog, you already know that for me, characters are key in my enjoyment of a TV series. If the characters are interesting and well-developed, I can overlook some fairly silly story elements and a lot of terrible special effects. But if they aren’t, I will lose interest pretty quickly regardless of a show’s other virtues. It’s one of the main reasons I esteem both Doctor Who and (classic & middle-period) Star Trek so highly: both are very character-driven. And Blake’s 7 has well-developed characters, in spades. This doesn’t mean I actually like all of them, but most of them are very interesting. Take the title character, for example; I definitely do not like him because he’s arrogant, egotistical, pigheaded, and duplicitous. There’s no way I’d follow Blake on a road trip to Disneyland, much less a serious of dangerous missions against insurmountable odds. But unlike a lot of other shows which give us dislikeable characters and then pretend everyone likes them, this show fully admits Blake is a dick, and that people mostly follow him because he’s a symbol of resistance against their incredibly evil, oppressive government (and presumably, was a better leader, strategist, and person before the Federation subjected him to the brainwashing which we are clearly shown he has not fully overcome). Even after he leaves the show at the end of the second season, Blake’s symbolic presence continues to be so strongly felt that it doesn’t even seem particularly odd that his name remains attached to both the show and the team, despite his being missing and presumed dead.
The character who trusts Blake least is Avon, a sour-faced tech wizard without any scruples against embezzling from the wealthy, who yet displays a rather strict personal code of ethics which includes honest statement of his motives, keeping promises, and even defending those menaced by bullies and tyrants. He’s the character I enjoyed watching most, and would probably like best as a client, in part because of his wicked, arid sense of humor, which some may have noted is not entirely dissimilar to mine. The complexity of Avon’s character rivals that of Servalan, so it’s not surprising that the two develop a powerful love/hate relationship in which neither allows his or her admiration and lust for the other to get in the way of their frequent attempts to kill each other. After the loss of Blake, Avon at first seems reluctant to assume command of the team until eventually forced to by the arrival of Tarrant, a narcissistic hot-shot pilot who waltzes onto the ship and immediately starts ordering everyone else around. Tarrant was clearly intended as a replacement for Blake, but I like him even less because, while Blake had the redeeming feature of at least being anti-authoritarian, Tarrant’s whole demeanor has the reek of cop about it. If I were among the crew of the Liberator, I’d have moved into Avon’s camp by the end of the first adventure involving Tarrant, because at least Avon doesn’t assume everyone owes him obedience.
The only other original character to survive until the series finale is the cowardly master thief Vila, who never met a lock he couldn’t open. Vila is refreshingly honest about his shortcomings; while most cowardly characters attempt to hide their yellow streak from others, Vila is the first to make the Goldsmithian argument that “He who fights and runs away/May live to fight another day”. Not that it’s likely Vila ever read Goldsmith; while he’s clearly exceptionally intelligent, he’s certainly no intellectual. But that doesn’t mean he’s a flat or static character; his descent over the course of the series from a man who perhaps likes his drink a bit too much, to an alcoholic whose drinking becomes an actual source of danger to his shipmates, is both subtle and gradual, and by the time we see him openly gulping down the booze onscreen, we realize it has been going on less obviously for more than a season.
Look for much more about the series’ characters, characterization and writing next week.
My friends who’ve seen the show say that I remind them very strongly of Kerr Avon. I’ll have to see it sometime, if I can figure out just how.
It’s available on DVD (region 2). That’s how we watched it.
I recently started watching it on Britbox.
Where does “middle-period” Star Trek end? death of Roddenberry? launch of Voyager?
In my mind, end of Deep Space Nine. I’d call Voyager & Enterprise “late” and anything after those “modern”.