It wasn't about making the episode 'better' it's about broadening the context, that's all, world building.
Blake's 7 on Blu-ray!
- Thread starter Turbo
- Start date
Just watched Duel! Enjoyed it! I'll post my quick notes tomorrow...
Just one thing: that dress. In High Definition. On an 83 inch TV. I feel a little dirty
there's another dress that's almost as bad but it doesn't appear until season 3 and possibly saved by the actress not being as well endowed.
said epsiode would also benefit to with some new FX to replace some cringe inducing stock footage that was also used in a Doctor Who serial 6 years before.
I should be able to work out which episode you're talking about but nothing obvious springs to mind?
Well send me to Cygnus Alpha, cos I got the series wrong.
It's Deliverance (Series A, Ep 12) so Skipper could end up feeling dirty againt
I know of a wardrobe malfunction in Series Three.
Yeah, I was a little confused by the a-b-c-d thing too, considering that my blu-ray was clearly labeled "Series 1".
I was joking a little, but it was still distracting! I watched and thought "Didn't anyone on set notice anything?!? How cold was it?" I'm afraid I didn't understand much of the dialogue in the first scene, which was also a little mystical.It's Deliverance (Series A, Ep 12) so Skipper could end up feeling dirty againt
They did notice. Isla Blair was apparently fine with it, Patsy Smart (Giroc) was very shocked though.
Outfit aside Duel is a great example of B7 handling female characters well, with three memorable guest stars.
British TV in my experience is generally looser about nudity than American TV. When they do the standard detective-story trope of an interview in an artist's studio with a nude woman posing for the artist, they generally show substantially more than an American show (short of TV-MA) could get away with.
And speaker of Isla Bair, her husband appears a few episodes later.
And now... it's time for "Duel"'s notes!
Travis's behavior towards the Mutoid is interesting, treating him alternately as a machine and an incompetent subordinate. These seem like contradictory behaviors to me. In my head I imagined that there was something between him and the Mutoid before the conversion. Being who he is, he can't admit to having had feelings for something that is now little more than a robot. Just a theory, who knows if we'll find out something later!
Anyway I put it in the best 3 episodes so far!
- Wow, a new mysterious planet! With mysterious statues! I'm already liking it!!!
- A lady, um, all in blue? In a dress that leaves little to the imagination?
- Ok how cold is it on set? But no one says anything? Oh, now she's talking to someone, BUT I STILL GETTING DISTRACTED BY THE DRESS!!!
- I rewound and listened to the dialogue, but it seems like cryptic mumbo-jumbo, maybe it will make sense later.
- My favorite villain of the series! And finally we see the Mutoids! Who wear very, uh, unique hats.
- He's coming with the three ships he asked for, because he knows the Liberator is very powerful!!! Ok, serious question for everyone, how does he know that? The only time the Liberator has shot anything so far was at the space web and I don't think anyone from the Federation was there. Yes, it's big, but that doesn't automatically mean it has great firepower. For all they know it could have been a cargo ship.
- I have to say that the console in this position seems uncomfortable and not very ergonomic.
- Now they decide to play explorers and visit the mysterious planet. I have to say that the whole rebellion thing at this point seems more like a pastime than a full-time job.
- Mutuoids feed on a strange liquid that Travis compares to blood?
- OUR FIRST SPACE BATTLE!!! ...which seems pretty static to me... Ok correct me if I'm wrong: in the Blake-7 universe space battles are basically ships shooting each other while remaining stationary. The first one to run out of energy loses. Right?
- But the battle is stopped by a being with almost divine powers, who takes the enemy captains of the two ships to make them fight on the planet in a mortal duel!!! Where have I heard this before..?
- They have to fight to understand the value of death! Uh, okay?
- First fight between Travis and Blake, but the latter succumbs to the blows of the former! Now, like in a video game, Blake simply lost a life, respawns and starts over again!
- The divine beings for some reason decide that the two opponents need a companion: Jenna for Blake and the Mutuoid for Travis.
- Night falls and the contestants take refuge in a tree. Avon takes advantage of this to make the best joke of the episode: "With all what happening? Blake is sitting up in a tree, Travis is sitting up in another tree. Unless they're planning to throw nuts at one another, I don't see much of a fight developing before it gets light."
- During the night Travis tries to make conversation with the Mutuoid. It seems that he knows a lot about her past. Interesting. Maybe there was something between them..?
- Travis and the Mutoid set a trap and the latter goes to capture Jenna to use her as bait. I don't quite understand how the Mutoid manages to make her faint, a kind of double backhand?
- Now there is the mortal combat between Travis and Blake! But Blake decides to spare him!
- The god-like beings summon Blake, asking why he spared him. He throws out a few random reasons. Pick your favorite. Blake and Travis are sent off to their respective ships, for a new and exciting (?) adventure!
Travis's behavior towards the Mutoid is interesting, treating him alternately as a machine and an incompetent subordinate. These seem like contradictory behaviors to me. In my head I imagined that there was something between him and the Mutoid before the conversion. Being who he is, he can't admit to having had feelings for something that is now little more than a robot. Just a theory, who knows if we'll find out something later!
Anyway I put it in the best 3 episodes so far!
I describe them in my upcoming Patreon review as resembling black bell peppers.
There are many instances in this series of the bad guys knowing things there's no reason they should know. Some spoilery examples:
Servalan and Travis know that Blake is looking for Docholli in "Gambit," then know about the brain print in "The Keeper," when nobody except Blake and his crew should know about either. In "The Harvest of Kairos," Servalan is suggested to be afraid of Del Tarrant, even though at that point there's no clear reason why she should even know Tarrant exists or is part of the Liberator crew.
Sometimes it's implicit that there are incidents between episodes that we're not seeing, but sometimes the only explanation is that they're like the bad guys in Spaceballs and just read it in the script.
I feel that space battles in older shows like this and Star Trek are, if anything, more realistic than modern Star Wars-style space battles with ships acrobatically swooping around each other and firing at close range. Realistically, starships would be thousands or millions of kilometers apart, and moving so fast that they wouldn't be in visual range of each other for more than a fraction of a second, unless they were specifically matching course. And of course, even a fast-moving starship would appear to be stationary if the camera were matching its velocity, keeping relative station. All movement and position in space is relative.
The battle in "Duel" seems like it's written with naval battles in mind, in that the ships hold off and surround the Liberator as they bombard it, then move in closer for the kill, until the Liberator plays chicken with Travis's command ship and attempts to ram it. They do move, but it's the way battleships would move rather than the way fighter planes would. It's just that too many modern movies and shows copy Star Wars's entirely fanciful transposition of WWII fighter tactics to space, which gets cliched and repetitive, and even more nonsensical than usual when it's done with large capital ships.
Gotta have someone to have dialogue with.
So how is there a forest on this planet if it was rendered totally barren by radiation in the war that destroyed the civilization? Is the forest an illusion?
I doubt Travis has the capacity for a relationship like that. He's basically a sociopath. But he's also a driven, thorough military officer. Why wouldn't a commander know the records of his subordinates? It's not like Mutoids' pasts are secret; they're just irrelevant to the Mutoids themselves. Their human superiors can no doubt look them up easily.
The stunt fights on this show are rarely all that convincing. Back then, I doubt many actresses got much in the way of stage-fight training.
Sinofar told Giroc at the beginning that "We must dissipate the power by restoring the balance, then you and I can be at peace. But first we must atone." Their dialogue when they captured Blake and Travis and explained themselves suggested that they were trying to limit the bloodshed in someone else's conflict by restricting it only to the leaders (and one ally each), and thus were trying to atone for the mass death in their own war. I guess they succeeded in that, since I don't think anybody actually died at all in the space battle or afterward. But Sinofar suggests that Travis's failure to learn anything means that she and Giroc are still prisoners. I guess limiting the death toll in one battle doesn't count if the war continues unabated.
The staff fight between Blake and Travis resulted in several bruises between the two actors as the wet ground caused them to slip while swinging the poles, accidentally causing them to connect.
The two men agreed to do most of the fight without stunt men as they had prior experience with fight choreography going back to their Royal Academy days.
The two men agreed to do most of the fight without stunt men as they had prior experience with fight choreography going back to their Royal Academy days.
Thanks. I have to say that the fight itself was not bad (compared to the other show stunts!)
Yeah, at this point in the story the only things they should know about the Liberator are:
a) it's big
b) it's fast
c) it has teleportation capabilities
The only way they would know about its weapons capabilities is if the London had Star Trek-style sensors (but I don't think they exist in the B7 universe)
Out of curiosity (if anyone knows): was Nation literally the only one who wrote all the episodes? Wasn't there, I don't know, an editor or a script assistant or something? A lot of the little inconsistencies could have been solved with a line or two of dialogue, but if Nation really worked alone without ever consulting anyone I can see how he missed them.
Chris Boucher was the story editor, revising the scripts and sometimes adding material. (For instance, in episode 11, "Bounty," Boucher added some scenes and an important guest character when Nation's script came in too short.) Also, producer David Maloney no doubt had input or approval as well.
Thanks. Well, I doubt they thought people decades after it aired would dissect every word they wrote.
