The new year greeted me with a nasty bout of flu; as a result, between bouts of nausea, shivering and sweating, I found myself revisiting a childhood favourite through my iPad for the first time in maybe thirty years.
The Guardian described the show as "deeply silly", but that's clearly ignorant. Its premise, although not without precedent in British science fiction, is dark; not like the other, more hopeful shows—such as Star Trek, Space 1999 and Buck Rogers—I was watching at the time. It was variously The Dirty Dozen or Robin Hood in outer space.
Yes, it was done on the cheap and these faults are well-documented. But this leads inevitably to a character-driven show, which became its greatest strength. And I still think the inside of the Liberator looks pretty good.
Series one starts off very well. Veteran sci-fi writer Terry Nation wrote all of series one I think; Chris Boucher was script editor. It's clear early on that it's the Blake and Avon show; Blake the flawed freedom-fighter, Avon the deeply ambiguous—in terms of his motives—computer hacker.
It's the other characters who are underwritten. Vila's probably the most memorable, but veers from faintly amusing to really annoying. Jenna starts the series strongly, as an independent and self-confident female character, but later becomes eye-candy and a plot device; someone to be rescued (and tied up on several occasions). Cally's alien character is sometimes interesting, but Gan has no function to the show other than occasionally banging heads together. Peter Tuddenham's Zen is probably the best; a ship's computer whose motivations are also undefined.
And on the federation side? Jacqueline Pearce's Servalan is great—feminine, flirtatious and completely evil. Travis, at least Stephen Greif's portrayal, is physically imposing and increasingly demented. Of course, as the series go on, Servalan and Travis become like Dastardly & Muttley in Stop the Pigeon, raising the question of why their superiors still continue to employ them.
Series one does dip somewhat in the middle, before finding its feet again. It was series two when Chris Boucher was allowed to write episodes and it was him, more than anyone else, who understood the complex relationships among the Liberator crew. Plus the whole Star One narrative was a story arc before anyone ever talked about story arcs.
By series three, Blake and Jenna had gone (and Gan was bumped off midway through series two). In terms of the new characters, Tarrant was too simplistically alpha-male to make his rivalry with Avon interesting (although his first episode was pretty good). Dayna had more to do in the show than Jenna, but still underlined how weakly the female non-Servalan characters were written. Avon has become the de facto leader, but became more megalomaniacal as series three and four progressed.
Series four is mostly rubbish, really. New character Soolin serves no purpose at all, other than looking hot. The new ship's computer was very annoying indeed. But Christ, the final episode, where Blake reappears, is nothing short of brilliant. And has an ending worthy of Sam Peckinpah, especially for something's that basically a kid's show.
Actually, this is a series crying out to be remade, even if no one on earth is going to be as good an Avon as Paul Darrow. There was a rumour that the Syfy channel was going to do just that, but it sadly amounted to nothing. But the lead characters and the premise are simply too good to ignore.
The Guardian described the show as "deeply silly", but that's clearly ignorant. Its premise, although not without precedent in British science fiction, is dark; not like the other, more hopeful shows—such as Star Trek, Space 1999 and Buck Rogers—I was watching at the time. It was variously The Dirty Dozen or Robin Hood in outer space.
Yes, it was done on the cheap and these faults are well-documented. But this leads inevitably to a character-driven show, which became its greatest strength. And I still think the inside of the Liberator looks pretty good.
Series one starts off very well. Veteran sci-fi writer Terry Nation wrote all of series one I think; Chris Boucher was script editor. It's clear early on that it's the Blake and Avon show; Blake the flawed freedom-fighter, Avon the deeply ambiguous—in terms of his motives—computer hacker.
It's the other characters who are underwritten. Vila's probably the most memorable, but veers from faintly amusing to really annoying. Jenna starts the series strongly, as an independent and self-confident female character, but later becomes eye-candy and a plot device; someone to be rescued (and tied up on several occasions). Cally's alien character is sometimes interesting, but Gan has no function to the show other than occasionally banging heads together. Peter Tuddenham's Zen is probably the best; a ship's computer whose motivations are also undefined.
And on the federation side? Jacqueline Pearce's Servalan is great—feminine, flirtatious and completely evil. Travis, at least Stephen Greif's portrayal, is physically imposing and increasingly demented. Of course, as the series go on, Servalan and Travis become like Dastardly & Muttley in Stop the Pigeon, raising the question of why their superiors still continue to employ them.
Series one does dip somewhat in the middle, before finding its feet again. It was series two when Chris Boucher was allowed to write episodes and it was him, more than anyone else, who understood the complex relationships among the Liberator crew. Plus the whole Star One narrative was a story arc before anyone ever talked about story arcs.
By series three, Blake and Jenna had gone (and Gan was bumped off midway through series two). In terms of the new characters, Tarrant was too simplistically alpha-male to make his rivalry with Avon interesting (although his first episode was pretty good). Dayna had more to do in the show than Jenna, but still underlined how weakly the female non-Servalan characters were written. Avon has become the de facto leader, but became more megalomaniacal as series three and four progressed.
Series four is mostly rubbish, really. New character Soolin serves no purpose at all, other than looking hot. The new ship's computer was very annoying indeed. But Christ, the final episode, where Blake reappears, is nothing short of brilliant. And has an ending worthy of Sam Peckinpah, especially for something's that basically a kid's show.
Actually, this is a series crying out to be remade, even if no one on earth is going to be as good an Avon as Paul Darrow. There was a rumour that the Syfy channel was going to do just that, but it sadly amounted to nothing. But the lead characters and the premise are simply too good to ignore.
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