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Blake’s 7, second season (second half)

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These were all new stories to me, as far as I can recall, and I watched them with forty years of pent-up excitement for each next episode.

2.7: Killer, written by Robert Holmes, directed by Vere Lorrimer

Apart from the regulars (Michael Keating, Paul Darrow, Jacqueline Pearce), none of the guest cast this time has acted on Doctor Who. But, wow. Here is Robert Holmes, writer of some of the best Doctor Who stories, script editor for the first glorious half of Tom Baker's time in the TARDIS, applying his talents to a new situation. And Morris Barry, in front of the camera here as Dr Wiler, was of course the director of three Doctor Who stories, including the classic Tomb of the Cybermen (and the less classic The Moonbase and The Dominators).

Blake's 7 is at its best when balancing two related but different plot lines evenly in the same episode, and this is one of those: on the one hand, Avon is hoping to get a valuable decryption crystal from an old friend out of loyalty (and, when that fails, blackmail); on the other, there is a ZOMBIE. This is a tautly written episode, with excellent guest stars (Paul Daneman as the lead doctor on the base, Ronald Lacey as Avon's frenemy) that also shows what is to come – the girls are in the background, Avon gets some more character development, and the banter between him and Vila is great:

Avon: I told you, he's a friend of mine.
Vila: Yes, I always knew you had a friend. I used to say to people, "I bet Avon's got a friend, somewhere in the galaxy."
Avon: And you were right. That must be a novel experience for you.

2.8: Hostage, written by Allan Prior, directed by Vere Lorrimer

Sorry to keep being shallow about Doctor Who crossover appearances, but there are two absolute classics here (and one less famosu). The great Kevin Stoney makes an appearance as yet another senior Federation official, having previously been the two best villains of the black and white Doctor Who era, Mavic Chen of The Daleks' Master Plan and Tobias Vaughn in The Invasion. (He was also in Revenge of the Cybermen, but we can't all be perfect.)


And playing Blake's turncoat uncle Ushton is none other than John Abineri, who was in four Old Who stories, most notably as green alien Ranquin in The Power of Kroll (also by Robert Holmes), hapless Railton in Death to the Daleks!, General Carrington in The Ambassadors of Death, and Dutch oilman Lutyens in Fury from the Deep.



The one I didn't spot was Andrew Robertson, the Federation commander at the beginning, who was also Mr Fibuli in The Pirate Planet – utterly different!

Fandom seems to be generally negative about this episode, but I rather enjoyed it. OK, the Liberator crew completely stupidly walk into an obvious trap to keep the plot going, and almost nothing that Ushton does makes sense (why would he need to fake a limp, for instance?) but we have some entertaining chasing around, Travis is now marginalised by the Federation and trying to get back in with Servalan, and Blake has a cute cousin, played by Judy Buxton, who he used to bonk and who stays behind to bring wellness to her adopted planet.

And the Avon/Vila dynamic continues to develop:

Vila: What did I do to deserve this?
Avon: How long a list would you like?

2.9: Countdown, written by Terry Nation, directed by Vere Lorrimer

OK, Doctor Who crossovers here: most notably, Tom Chadbon, as the mercenary brother of Avon's former lover and accomplice, was Duggan in City of Death.(And also Merdeen in The Mysterious Planet. And he plays Harry Sullivan's brother in the Big Finish Sarah Jane audios.)


Paul Shelley plays the evil Major Provine here, with a terrible haircut, and was also the Minister for Persuasion in the Peter Davison story Four to Doomsday, with a much better haircut.

And the disposable rebel Arrian is played by Nigel Gregory, also the repentant Satanist policeman who dies horribly in K9 and Company.

This one is really brilliant. We are closing in on the story arc which will end the season, but we run up against another Avon frenemy who thinks Avon betrayed his sister. Also Avon and his frenemy have only a short time to defuse a planet-busting bomb. Meanwhile one of the Federation bad guys is hiding in the ducts (more or less). It's Terry Nation, doing what he does best. (Meanwhile the girls still haven't done anything much for several stories in a row.)

Avon: Hello, Del. It's been a long time.
Grant: I heard you were dead.
Avon: I heard the same about you. Wishful thinking perhaps.
Grant: I'm glad the stories were wrong. I felt cheated. We have some things to settle.
Blake: You two can talk about the old days some other time. Right now we have a problem that's just a little more pressing.

2.10: Voice from the Past, writen by Roger Parkes, directed by George Spenton-Foster

Just one Doctor Who crossover here, and it's a pretty minor one: Nagu, who is the most disposable of the pseudo-rebels, is played by Martin/Martyn Read, who was to be a security guard in Silver Nemesis.

Fandom generally doesn't like this episode, and neither did I. I worked out Travis's disguise quite early on by looking at the cast list and realising which character wasn't credited. (The one whose face is disguised.) The behaviour of the Liberator crew is very silly – Blake has clearly lost his faculties, and they should have relieved him of command; Vila is particularly weak here. Frieda Knorr as the defecting governor is just awful. Why doesn't Travis take the opportunity to kill Blake when he has him at his mercy. There isn't even a really decent bit of dialogue to quote. At least we are getting closer to Star One.

2.11: Gambit, written by Robert Holmes, directed by George Spenton-Foster

OMG. This is just extraordinary. Is there a more camp episode of Blake's 7 to come? (Please don't tell me.) Before I get into the detail, let's look at the Who crossover guest stars – plenty this time. Let's start with rogue surgeon Docholli, played by Denis Carey, who was Professor Chronotis in Shada and the title character of The Keeper of Traken. (Also in Timelash, but never mind.)


Aubrey Woods plays a commanding figure both here and in the Pertwee story Day of the Daleks. Here he is Krantor, seven years ago he was the Controller.

Krantor's sidekick Toise, unrecognisable under make-up, is John Leeson, the voice of K-9 (he was also in Mission to Destiny last year).

Paul Grist plays the sidekick Cevedic here, and was the unconvincingly accented American Bill Filer back in The Claws of Axos.

Sylvia Coleridge, at 70 years old, is an impressively svelte croupier, having been botanical expert Amelia Ducat in The Seeds of Doom a few years before.

And let's not forget Deep Roy as The Klute, having been Mr Sin in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (also one of the Decimas in The Web last season).

Look, this is just glorious, and if you don't think so, I refer you to the Onion's classic review of Mamma Mia II.

The idea of Avon and Vila overcoming their friction to go and use Orac to beat the house at a notorious gambling den – while they are supposed to be minding the Liberator for Blake and the girls (who get something to do for once, though apparently some of their best bits were cut) to locate Star One – it's just bonkers. The whole thing is hilariously good fun. This is one of my favourite episodes. It's made watching Series 2 worthwhile almost on its own. And Servalan's costume may be the best yet.

Dialogue – the Avon/Vila relationship continues to flourish.

Vila: There are times when I almost get to like you.
Avon: Yes, well, that makes it all worthwhile.

2.12: The Keeper, written by Allan Prior, directed by Derek Martinus

Just one significant Who crossover this time – and it's back to The Pirate Planet again, as Bruce Purchase's Captain is reincarnated as tribal leader Gola.

(Also Ron Tarr plays a patrol leader here and an uncredited prisoner in Destiny of the Daleks, but I'm not chasing down pictures of either.)

Another episode with good stuff from Jenna (just before she is written out) as the potential bride of the barbarian king, and also fun for Vila as the court jester. For such a small planet, Goth has got some jolly intricate dynastic politics. There are some crashing plot holes, but I think it's redemmed by the fact that Jenna and Vila are having fun, along with most of the guest cast – a particular shout-out to Cengiz Saner as the jester.

Dialogue:

Vila: I could be president.
Avon: Ah.
Vila: Or we can take it in turns.

2.13: Star One, written by Chris Boucher (directed, uncredited, by David Maloney)

Just two Doctor Who crossover appearances this week, neither of them massive. Chief evil alien Stot is played by David Webb, whose character Eric Leeson was killed off in the first episode of Colony in Space.

And deputy evil alien Parton is played by Gareth Armstrong, who had a bigger role as Giuliano in The Mask of Mandragora.

This is a really strong climax to the season. David Moloney directed some of the great Doctor Who stories (The War Games, Genesis of the Daleks, The Deadly Assassin, Talons of Weng-ChiangAvon: Stand by to fire.
Vila: Avon, this is stupid!
Avon: When did that ever stop us? Fire!

After watching this you really feel that you’ve seen twenty-six episodes of epic sf (and you forget the ones that were less epic); and having ended on the massive cliff-hanger of the Liberator alone defending humanity, you can’t wait for the next episode. Original viewers had to wait nine months, from April 1979 to January 1980, an interval in which Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister, the Iran hostage crisis erupted and the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten. Revolution was in the air; but which way would it go?

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Tuesday reading

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Current
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
The Highgate Horror, by Mark Wright, David A. Roach, Mike Collins, Jacqueline Rayner and Martin Geraghty
Two Brothers, by Ben Elton

Last books finished
The Calcutta Chromosome, by Amitav Ghosh
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
The Camelot Club, by Brian Killick
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

Next books
A Close Run Thing, by Allan Mallinson
"Catch That Zeppelin!", by Fritz Leiber

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The Camelot Club, by Brian Killick

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

No eyes were cast in the direction of Chile Gongaro to see what might be the effect on him of the implied aspersion upon his sub-continent. Chile Gongaro continued to grin broadly. The fact that his friends rarely displayed any con-sideration for his feelings might be taken as an indication of the extent to which they regarded him as one of themselves. The Grand Duke Ferdinando, whose sister was married to the President of Peru and who ordinarily took an insult to one of his family as an insult to himself, the head of the family, might have protested at the blanket condemnation of South American republics but decided to let it pass and not mar the happiness of the gathering.

The fourth and last novel by my distant cousin Brian Killick, published in 1977. This features a disparate group of friends united by the Camelot Club, “the premier gaming-club of London”. Almost of of them are rich men, but a key strand of the plot concerns the one mature woman of the group, who successfully makes money with a scheme for the part-time and short-term hire of richer people’s chauffeurs, while they are waiting for their main employers to get back from lunch – played for laughs, but perhaps a presentiment of the gig economy. Another member of the group is the chronically poor exiled Emperor of Byzantium, who I’m afraid is funny because of his poverty and dynastic aspirations.

Another strand includes the separate attempts of both the Govenment and the members of the Camelot Club to bail Britain out by throwing the country on the mercy of a visiting Arab sheikh and ruler of a very wealthy country. The team of chauffeurs is used to kidnap him, and the Camelot Clubbers then discover that the sheikh is in fact a British aristocrat by birth, so That’s All Right Then. I find it fascinating that in these early years of the UK’s European engagement, there was still a yearning to find a separate (preferably at least partially indigenous) source of stability.

The Grand Duke Ferdinando, exiled heir to an unspecified principality, invades Paraguay, but fails and is executed. Another clubber, an MP, disappears under a cloud of financial misdemeanour leaving his clothes folded on the beach (a topical reference). The lower classes (as opposed to impoverished gentility) get very little notice, other than the chauffeurs (identified by their employers). It is rather striking that in a novel named for a fictional gaming club, there is very little actual gambling.

Family is quite important here, a more secure basis than the pretensions of the state (government and police) or capitalism (the proto-Uber scheme is played for laughs). One of several incstances of the hereditary aristocracy has been mentioned. The Grand Duke wants to bestow one of his sisters on the exiled Emperor (who has been turned down by the Ethiopians, which is also interesting). The proto-Uber lady has a marriageable niece. Most of the main characters are referred to by their names rather than by their roles – unlike in the other three books.

I can’t claim that this is great literature. But it has the best integrated plot and most attractive characters of Brian Killick’s four novels, and it’s an interesting insight into an insecure moment of British history as well. If you like, you can get it here.

Another John Lawrence cover, featuring the proto-Uber lady, the sheikh and a chauffeur being anxiously watched by the other club members.

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Beneath The Dome, by Brian Killick

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Second paragraph of third chapter (a long one):

'Well, it's nice to know that the creature can smile,' continued Beatrice. 'I sometimes wonder whether Madame Balzac is human.' Sidney tittered again. The third occupant of the lift stretched her smile a little further as evidence of continued politeness. Beatrice and Sidney seemed to be forever talking of that Madame Balzac, who must be a very old and dear friend. So real had she become as a result of constant reference that she might have been in the lift with them. It seemed that almost as soon as her changing moods were known to Beatrice and Sidney they were communicated indirectly to the caretaker, who was the third person in the lift. The caretaker learnt by overhearing, which she could not but do, when Madame Balzac looked sour in the morning or surprisingly cheery in the evening. 'Perhaps Madame Balzac has won the football pools.' Sidney would giggle helplessly. The state of Madame Balzac's health was equally promptly and thoroughly known to the caretaker. 'I should keep well away from Madame Balzac if I were you, Sidney. I think she has a cold coming on.' The surprising thing was that the caretaker could not remember ever meeting the much talked of Frenchwoman. She knew by sight many of the visitors to the flat of Beatrice and Sidney and had never laid eyes on anyone who could be identified as the mysterious Madame Balzac. What was the Frenchwoman doing in London and how had she come to occupy such a large part in the lives of Beatrice and Sidney? The caretaker felt that she knew her almost as well as did Beatrice and Sidney and thought that she did not like her. She sounded a tiresome woman, preoccupied with her health and her moods and selfishly taking up a disproportionate amount of time in the lives of her long-suffering friends. Perhaps she was lonely, a foreigner on her own in London. Beatrice and Sidney were well-known for their adoption of lame ducks. So surely had Madame Balzac become part of the small change of daily life that in early days the caretaker had been moved to enquire after her when most unusually Beatrice and Sidney, sunk in their own thoughts, had not mentioned the name. The caretaker was hurt and offended by the wholly unpredictable response to her kindly-meant enquiry. Beatrice became quite hysterical with laughter and Sidney almost fell about the place. After a few such reactions the caretaker learnt to desist from introducing the name of Madame Balzac. She felt that she had been very obviously put in her place. It was one thing for Beatrice and Sidney to discuss their friend in her hearing, but it was another, and forbidden, thing for her, a servant of a sort, to presume to take an interest in that friend. The lift arrived at its destination. Beatrice, scooping up Camus from the floor and tucking him securely under one arm, stalked forth. Sidney trotted behind. 'How is Sir Charles?' the caretaker remembered to call after the retreating backs. Beatrice and Sidney paused and turned. 'Sinking,' said Beatrice portentously. 'Sinking,' echoed Sidney.

This is the third of the mid-1970s novels by my distant cousin Brian Killick, in this case about a fictional English version of the Academie Française, with the central characters being its secretary Sidney and his wife Beatrice (the allusion to the Webbs is lampshaded pretty early on). As with The Heralds, an opening comes up with the death of Sir Charles Mortlake, and most of the plot concerns itself with the intersection of Beatrice and Sidney's propensity to play practical jokes and the contest for the vacant seat, which is filled by vote of the surviving members of the Academy. Once again, I wondered when the book was meant to be set – there are references to the 1970s, but Sidney is said to have been appointed by Ramsay McDonald, whose last term as Prime Minister ended in 1935, and Sir Charles Mortlake's African research is implied to have been before the first world war.

My big problem with the plot is that the protagonists, Beatrice and Sidney, are just not very nice, although their marriage is sympathetically portrayed (the most sympathetically of any marriage in Brian Killick’s four novels). They mock the caretaker of their building by referring to her as Madame Balzac to her face (she never gets it); they also play practical jokes on the Academy members, which can lead to quite serious consequences. They themselves then suffer the (unexplained) killing of their dog. Having said that, there is some really well-written humour of misunderstanding, in particular centring on Pobjoy, a second-rate writer who is aiming for the vacant seat in the Academy, who is mistaken for a mental health worker, a travelling salesman and a spy at various points. There is also a particularly comic Field-Marshal (most of the members of the Academy are identified only by their current or former titles, which is true of a lot of the characters in Brian Killick's books). And the central theme, of a fading institution of the Establishment trying to get to grips with the spirit of the 1960s, never mind the 1970s, is similar to that of both The Nannies and The Heralds, but maybe done a little better here because the institution at the core of the story is wholly fictional.

Anyway, you can get it here. As with The Heralds, a nice cover by John Lawrence.

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The Heralds, by Brian Killick

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The race was begun. From an early stage the magnificent Clarenceux was clearly the front runner. He had been passed over once before. When he, whose impending retirement occupied the thoughts of the members to the virtual exclusion of all else, had been appointed Garter King of Arms at the end of the war no one was more surprised than Clarenceux. It was as one who was already second in rank at the College that Clarenceux had gone to the war. He had taken it for granted that he would automatically succeed to the first place. When another and lowlier member was preferred to him the blow was crushing. By the time that an election had come round again Clarenceux, who was basically fair-minded, would have been prepared to admit, if anyone had been found brave enough to ask him his opinion, that in the peculiar circumstances existing at the end of the war probably the best man had been chosen. Clarenceux recognized that he was impatient and blundering and not equipped to cope with the difficulties of those early post-war days, but all that had changed now. The ship had entered calm waters. There was no reason why Clarenceux should not aspire to the highest position.

This is my distant cousin Brian Killick’s second and best-known novel, published in 1973, which actually has a Wikipedia page (basically because it caught the attention of a Wikipedia editor who is a heraldry expert, back in 2006). It also has more owners than all his other books combined on both LibraryThing and Goodreads (this is not difficult).

The Heralds has a more coherent plot than The Nannies; unlike the other three, it’s pretty obviously derived from a particular source, the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets, whose protagonist serially murders nine of his relatives (all played by Alec Guinness) so that he can become the Duke of Chalfont. Here, Cecil Gascoigne, the Chester Herald, decides to eliminate all competitors from the race to become the Garter King of Arms, the UK’s Chief Herald – though unlike in Kind Hearts and Coronets, his plan is not murder but intimidation and blackmail. Nonetheless, several of his targeted rivals do indeed die in the process.

The fundamental weakness of the plot is that it gradually becomes clear that someone else apart from the protagonist is also plotting against the heralds, but SPOILER we do not find out who it is, and the ending therefore left me a bit unsatisfied when I read this as a teenager and left me unsatisfied again now. Still, the eccentricities of the Heralds are sketched humorously and also sympathetically, and Gascoigne’s plans to eliminate them from the race to become the next Garter King of Arms are intriguingly devious. I was also pleased to note minor characters named after my aunt Ursula and a favourite cousin known in the family as Bunty (neither sadly still with us). You can get it here.

The cover, like those of the other two books that I haven’t got to yet, is a striking image by John Lawrence. He is still alive, at 85, and also did fantastic illustrations for the 1979 Watership Down, Tales from Watership Down and Lyra’s Oxford. Here the heralds sullenly process through London, clearly not enjoying each others’ company.

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The Nannies, by Brian Killick

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Brian Killick is my second cousin once removed, born the same year (1928) and the same generation as my father. His mother, Muriel, was my grandfather's first cousin, one of the first women to graduate from UCD, born in 1884. Her first husband, Sydney Killick, was killed in the first world war, and she married his brother, Neil Killick, Brian's father, who died in a Japanese POW camp in the second world war. It is really bad luck to lose a husband in each World War. Muriel's father Edward Whyte was my great-grandfather's younger brother, born around 1830. (My great-grandfather, the oldest brother, was born in 1826, and there was a brother and maybe a sister or two between them. Muriel, like her son Brian and indeed like my grandfather, was the fruit of a second marriage.)

Brian spent most of his career as an accountant, but published four novels in the mid-1970s. I met him a couple of times and read most of the books when I was much younger. I was delighted to discover a few weeks ago that he is still vey much with it, and hope to catch up with him sooner rather than later (he is 91). Meanwhile it was not very difficult to get hold of the four novels and read them.

The Nannies was published in 1972 (and is dedicated to the author's mother). Internal evidence suggests that it was written earlier. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

‘Who is that dithering over there?’ she demanded sharply. ‘The girl’s got a uniform on.’

The Nannies sets the tone of the other four books, the slow disintegration of a traditional institution. In this case, the institution is a regular gathering of nannies in Kensington Gardens, women pledged to uphold the traditions of society and pass it to the next generation. The Bonham-Carters and Abel-Smiths are upstarts, orbiting around the periphery of the group. The first third of the book is spent building up the characters of the group; the rest of it tells how the group disintegrates through a variety of household disasters. The rot sets in when one of the nannies is kidnapped on a holiday in North Africa and ends up as a valued member of a harem, deciding that she will do better there than back at home; several others move on for one reason or another; the book begins and ends with Nanny Crumpet joining the group from her home in Ireland, and then returning once the group has disintegrated. It's gentle, establishment humour, based around people who are not very conscious of their own flaws.

I did wonder to what extent it drew from The Great Dinosaur Robbery, published in 1970, which features a group of British nannies (albeit in New York). But in fact I think that Brian Killick had finished this book before 1970, and it simply took a while to get published. One of the sub-plots is about a Tory MP who lost his seat in 1966 and is still struggling to find another in time for the 1970 election. One of the nannies has a certificate of her accomplishments signed by Princess Arthur of Connaught, who died in 1917; this is barely credible even in the late 1960s, and still less so for the 1970s. In general the mood is of a slightly older generation trying to get to grips with the Sixties.

The front cover is by Michael Foreman, who has done quite a lot of children's books over the years, but also illustrated the first, banned edition of J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition.

You can get The Nannies here.

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October Books

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Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 45)
Sheelagh Murnaghan, 1924-1993: Stormont’s Only Liberal MP, by Ruth Illingworth
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence
Is There Life Outside The Box? An Actor Despairs, by Peter Davison
Luck and the Irish, by Roy Foster

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Fiction (non-sf): 6 (YTD 31)
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
Sybil, by Benjamin Disraeli
The Nannies, by Brian Killick
The Heralds, by Brian Killick
The Bastard of Istanbul, by Eilif Shafak
Beneath The Dome, by Brian Killick

sf (non-Who): 4 (YTD 67)
Cloud and Ashes, by Greer Gilman
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
Be My Enemy, by Ian McDonald
The Computer Connection, by Alfred Bester

Doctor Who, etc: 1 (YTD 26)
The Triple Knife, and other Doctor Who stories, by Jenny T. Colgan

Comics 2 (YTD 27)
Frédégonde, la sanguinaire, Tome 1, by Virginie Greiner and Alessia de Vincenzi
Frédégonde, la sanguinaire, Tome 2, by Virginie Greiner and Alessia de Vincenzi

5,400 pages (YTD 54,400)
7/17 (YTD 79/197) by non-male writers (Illingworth, Shafak, Gilman, Russell, Colgan, Greiner/de Vincenzi x 2))
0/17 (YTD 29/197) by PoC (I don't think Peter Davison counts himself in this category)
4/17 (YTD 27/197) rereads (Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Heralds, Beneath the Dome, The Sparrow)

Reading now
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
The Calcutta Chromosome, by Amitav Ghosh
The Camelot Club, by Brian Killick
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

Coming soon (perhaps)
Two Brothers, by Ben Elton
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
A Close Run Thing, by Allan Mallinson
"Catch That Zeppelin!", by Fritz Leiber
One of the 28th: A tale of Waterloo, by G. A. Henty
Halo: The Thursday War, by Karen Traviss
The Last Days of New Paris, by China Miéville
My Century, by Günther Grass
The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells
Dragon’s Claw, by Steve Moore
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Les Survivants, vol 1, by Leo
Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution, by Stephen Zunes
She Was Good-She Was Funny, by David Marusek
Being Human: Bad Blood, by James Goss
Dragonworld, by Byron Preiss
Excession, by Iain M. Banks
Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson

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Blake’s 7, second season (first half)

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As promised, I have more or less stuck to the schedule of watching a Blake's 7 episode every two days, and will finish the second season with Star One later this evening. I have been much slower at writing the episodes up as I go, however, so here are the first six for now, with more hopefully to come.

I don't think I had seen any of the second series of Blake's 7 before, apart from one episode which we'll get to in due course. I first thought this might have been because we were living abroad in 1979-80, but actually the episodes were all shown between January and April 1979, and we did not leave until the summer. Maybe I had music lessons on Tuesday nights or something. Anyway, watching most of these for the first time, I was able to rediscover my inner eleven-year-old's sense of wonder without very much difficulty. I'm afraid I'm going to do a lot of Doctor Who crossover spotting here, because it is so much fun.

2.1: Redemption, by Terry Nation, directed by Vere Lorrimer

I found Redemption a really strong start to the series. Though we'll just snark for a moment about the fact that our heroes have acquired some snazzy new threads in the split second between the end of the last episode and the beginning of this.

It's always good to have some back-story, and it turns out that the Liberator is part of an alien civilisation that wants to reclaim it. The crew's loss of control of Zen is spooky and well done, and the episode makes the most of the nuclear power station setting. And of course it is the sister ship that fulfills Zen's prophecy of destruction.

All three of the identified guest cast (there are numerous uncredited guards etc) have Doctor Who credentials. Most notably Harriet Philpin, Alpha Two, was Bethan the Thal soldier in Genesis of the Daleks:

Sheila Ruskin, Alpha One, two years later was Kassia in The Keeper of Traken:

And the unnamed slave, Roy Evans, was one of the alien delegates in the Daleks Master Plan, as well as being two different doomed miners in late Pertwee stories. He was also the Baker in the episode of Here Come the Double Deckers! where Doughnut turns invisible.

The Avon/Blake dynamic is getting stronger here, and the girls and Gan are losing out. As ever the best line is an exchange between Avon and Vila:

‘I’ve got a shocking pain behind the eyes’
‘Have you considered amputation?’

2.2: Shadow, by Chris Boucher, directed by Jonathan Wright Miller

The first episode officially written by Chris Boucher, and it's by far the best characterisation so far: there's a real feeling of discomfort about having anything to do with drugs, and the extent to which this can be justified, Gan in particular showing more depth here than in all his other episodes combined. The moral dilemma is relieved by the disovery at the end that the Federation is Behind It All. I love also the groovy psychedelic moving rocks, and Cally, for once getting to be telepathic, is taken into a mental universe of her own which clearly was a source for the Who story Kinda. And Vila gets to have a good time.

Adrienne Burgess, a bit wet here as Hanna, was a more convincing revolutionary with Michael Keating in The Sun Makers a year or two back.

Vernon Dobtcheff, the big bad guy, was in The War Games of course:

Derek Smith, the ambiguous Largo, was not in Old Who but turned up in Human Nature as the doomed doorman at the village dance:

Dialogue:

Vila: Where are all the good guys?
Blake: You could be looking at them.
Avon: What a very depressing thought.

2.3: Weapon, written by Chris Boucher, directed by George Spenton-Foster

Well, well, we have a new Travis. I was not a fan of the character under Stephen Greif, but any fair observer must admit that Brian Croucher's interpretation is rather worse, and we get no explanation for the change in appearance. As you'd expect from Chris Boucher, there's some brilliant stuff here. We have yet another mystic priestess (the Clone Queen):

And isn't the clone Blake getting away with the girl a bit of a precursor to the duplicate Tenth Doctor getting away with Rose?

Is it true, I wonder, that Servalan (in her sexiest costume yet) has Romana's furs from The Ribos Operation,saved by George Spenton-Foster who directed both?

Though switching to costume disasters, it's difficult to know whether this or The Talons of Weng Chiang was John Bennett's career nadir:

Both Scott Fredericks as Carnell, and Graham Simpson as his liaison officer, were in Image of the Fendahl (also directed by Spenton-Foster), Fredericks in the lead role of Stael, Simpson as the hiker who gets killed at the beginning of the story.


Carnell is a great character, and Boucher reused him in the Leela novel Corpse Marker and the audio drama Kaldor City.

I thought everyone was on really good form here, including Candace Glendenning as Rashel (who gets the spare Blake); she was never on Who but did several 1970s horror films.

Dialogue:

Jenna: Maybe IMIPAK is another Orac. If we captured it, perhaps we could breed from them.
Blake: What a disgusting idea.

2.4: Horizon, written by Allan Prior, directed by Jonathan Wright Miller

Wow. This was unexpected – the script is pretty basic (this is the first story this season that could just as easily have been in Season One) but this is rather bravely a full-on totally direct parable about colonialism. Unfortunately, as with the similar Third Doctor story The Mutants, the delivery is slightly muffed, but the intention is there. Interesting to see the Liberator crew admitting that they are suffering from stress. Less impressive as they all teleport down in sequence, to land in the same trap. And total costume fail with Gareth Thomas and Michael Keating's manly chests. Brilliant Avon scenes as he decides whether or not to cut and run.

Here's another pair of guest stars who get reunited in the Whoniverse: Brian Miller (Deputy Commissar here, also of course Elisabeth Sladen's husband) and Souad Faress (Selma) are both in the second story of the third series of the Sarah Jane Adventures, The Mad Woman In The Attic, the Harry the caretaker and the eponymous woman (an older version of Rani) respectively. Unfortunately they don't appear in the same scene in Sarah Jane, but I did find one shot with them nicely framed in the background in Horizon. Brian Miller has otherwise been in both Old Who and New Who.


William Squire, in the foreground of the picture above as the Kommissar, was the Shadow in The Armageddon Factor, but as his face was completely hidden in that role, there's not much point in adding a photograph.

Dialogue:

Vila : Why don't you go?
Avon: You are expendable.
Vila: And you're not?
Avon: No, I am not. I am not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going.

2.5: Pressure Point, written by Terry Nation, directed by George Spenton-Foster

This is the one I do remember watching – because of course it is the one in which Gan is killed. Apparently the first idea was to kill off Vila, and what a good thing that they rethought that stupid idea. Gan, poor chap, never got much to do, and I remember being a bit surprised at myself, aged 11, at how little I was upset by his demise. But it does at least show that we are playing for high stakes here. Blake is getting more and more unrealiable, and here his hubris gets one of his friends killed.

It's one of those relatively few episodes with just one driving plot strand, and the concept of the entire Control Centre being a hoax is well delivered. There's also a good exchange about organised religion:

Gan: What is this place?
Blake: A church.
Gan: A church?
Blake: Place of religious assembly.
Gan: Must be ancient.
Blake: The Federation had them all destroyed at the beginning of the New Calendar.

Well, once again we have three Doctor Who cast crossovers, with revolutionary mother and daughter Kasabi and Veron, played by Jane Sherwin and Yolanda Palfrey, appearing as Lady Jennifer Buckingham in The War Games and Janet the stewardess in Terror of the Vervoids.


Not on quite the same level, Sue Bishop, this week's Mutoid, was also one of the Sisterhood of Karn in The Brain of Morbius (but I am not sure which).

Dialogue:

Blake: The others have decided to go with me.
Avon: [smiles] I thought they would. Not very bright, but loyal.

2.6: Trial, by Chris Boucher, directed by Derek Martinus

This is not one of the greater episodes. There are two plots: Travis is put on trial (which we all know is a show trial) for war crimes, and Blake seeks absolution for the death of Gan by visiting a planet that turns out to have a mind of its own.

The two sinister senators have both been on Doctor Who, Peter Miles three times, most notably as Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks, and John Bryans once, as Torvin in The Creature from the Pit.


Also John Savident, presiding over Travis's trial, would be the Squire killed off in the first episode of The Visitation.

John Bryans and John Savident will be back.

I have to say I was more impressed with Victoria Fairbrother as Travis' defense lawyer Thania (one of only two women Federation officers other than Servalan seen in the entire 52 episodes), and with Claire Lewis as the alien Zil, the most alien non-human we've had yet on the show.
:

Dialogue:

Thania: You served a full tour with Space Commander Travis, didn't you?
Trooper Par: Five years. He was hard.
Major Thania: But fair?
Trooper Par: No. Not often, anyway.

Anyway, I must say I enjoyed all of these, one way or another; and we still have Robert Holmes to come!

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Tuesday reading

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Current
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
The Calcutta Chromosome, by Amitav Ghosh
The Camelot Club, by Brian Killick

Last books finished
The Nannies, by Brian Killick
Luck and the Irish, by Roy Foster
The Heralds, by Brian Killick
The Bastard of Istanbul, by Eilif Shafak
The Computer Connection, by Alfred Bester
Beneath The Dome, by Brian Killick

Next books
Two Brothers, by Ben Elton
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

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  • Mon, 18:50: The Bastard of Istanbul, by Elif Shafak https://t.co/sWqQK5Ii68
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The Bastard of Istanbul, by Elif Shafak

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

"Please calm down and have a seat, Uncle," Auntie Surpun, the youngest of the Tchakhmakhchian sisters, muttered without directly looking at him. Being the only one in the family who had unreservedly supported Barsam's marriage to Rose, she now felt culpable. Such self-reproach was not something she was used to. A professor of humanities at the University of California at Berkeley, Surpun Tchakhmakhchian was a self-confident feminist scholar who believed that every problem in this world was negotiable by calm dialogue and reason. There were times this particular conviction had made her feel alone in a family as temperamental as hers.

A great book about Istanbul, seen through the eyes of two young women, Asya, who has been brought up in the city by her mother and her three sisters, and Armanoush, an Armenian-American whose Turkish stepfather is Asya's uncle, and who decides to come and experience Istanbul for herself to see where her ancestors lived before the genocide. It turns out, of course, that the two families are much more closely linked than either of the girls realises. I'm afraid I spotted the twist at the end several chapters off, and I felt the resolution was a little too pat, but I very much enjoyed the humour and empathy of the journey to get there; the characters are all deliciously well drawn, and the atmosphere of the different quarters of Istanbul seemed convincing to me, though I do not know the city as well as I would like. You can get it here.

The books dates from a few years ago, before Turkey had started to slide down the authoritarian road it has now taken. As it happens, Elif Shafak has writen today about the danger of this being repeated in the UK.

I was last in Istanbul in February 2018, and got this nice picture of Galata across the Golden Horn:

Also a less impressive selfie with the Hagia Sofia in the background:

This was my top unread book acquired this year, my top unread book by a woman, and my top unread non-genre fiction book. Next on the first of those piles is The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells; next on the other two is The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison.

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Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000, by Roy Foster

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

While the party fights within Fianna Fail since the departure of Sean Lemass in 1966 had focused on personal rivalries and hatreds, they also revolved around three enduring themes from past history: politics, nationalism and land. The way these continue to intertwine gives some pause for thought, especially in the era of the hegemony of Fianna Fail and the recent revelations by which that party in its post-de Valera persona will be judged. The party may have become increasingly 'constitutional' in the years when it monopolized power, but descriptions of the Fianna Fail ethos tend to rely upon some qualifying adverbs. 'We were', Charles Haughey remarked in one of his less guarded reminiscences, 'fairly sincere people."

This is a book based on five lectures given by Roy Foster in Belfast in 2004, published in 2007. It is sobering to realise just how different the world (and Ireland) looked before the crash of 2008. Brexit, of course, is the latest twist in the post-crash settling of world affairs as it affects Ireland (the Trump Presidency is more significant on a global scale, but affects Ireland less). In 2004 (or 2007) it was possible to write a book or set of lectures about the recent past, finish the final paragraph and think, job done. I don't think any historian could confidently do that in 2019.

And in fairness to Foster, he sort-of sees it coming – one of his warnings, particularly in the third chapter which concentrates on Fianna Fail, is that the relationship between property investors and politicians was far too close. The story of Charles Haughey's rampant and blatant corruption is always worth telling again, but this was enabled by a political system that saw no problem with linking property development and executive power. He doesn't completely see it coming, of course; in 2003, 2004 and 2005, Ireland's GNI per capita rose by 20%, 26% and 18%, and it was impossible at that point to envisage that the figures for 2009-12 would be -8% followed by three consecutive years of 4% decline. But historians are supposed to tell us about the past, not the future.

Foster's aim is to explain how Ireland modernised between 1970 and 2000. I don't think he quite manages to convey a grasp of the very big picture (he basically puts it down to luck and accident), but each of the chapters is a good scrutiny of important elements of the story. Chapter two is on the change in status of the Catholic Church; chapter three on Fianna Fail; chapter four on the Republic's attitude to Northern Ireland (where I think he is completely right to say that the South accepted Partition in 1926 and is still not seriously contemplating any other arrangement); and chapter five on the arts and literature. It's tremendously well written, and although some might feel that the critique of Charles Haughey is a bit over the top, the fact is that Haughey himself was well over the top. (Younger readers may need reminding that in the summer of 1982, during Haughey's first government, a nationwide hunt for a man who had killed two people in broad daylight with no apparent motive ended with the murderer's arrest in an apartment belonging to the Attorney-Generalget it here.

This was the last book acquired in 2011 that was still on my unread shelves! I finished the last unread book acquired in 2010 in January this year, and the last unread book acquired in 2009 three years ago.

On to 2012 books: the next on each pile are One of the 28th, by G.A. Henty (non-genre fiction, and also most popular unread book from 2012), Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution, by Stephen Zunes (non-fiction), She Was Good – She Was Funny and My Morning Glory, by David Marusek (shortest) and Being Human: Bad Blood, by James Goss (SF). I think it will take me longer to clear the 2012 stack than the 2011 stack.

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Why I decided to #backpack

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The Lib Dems’ internal elections have rolled around, and I still seem to have voting rights (am honestly not sure when I last paid a subscription). The biggest choice that’s up is the vote for party president, and as I have recorded my votes for that post before (Farron 2010, Scott 2008, Öpik 2004) I shall do so again.

I’m not sure how I know Mark Pack, but I think it was through student politics in the very early years of the Lib Dems (or SLD as they then were). He must be a couple of years younger than me and was at York when I was at Cambridge. We almost became professional colleagues a couple of years ago (our mutual employers came close to merging but called it off). I also reviewed his book on winning elections when it came out. He has a good sense of organisation and connecting aspirations with reality.

I don’t know CJ (as Christine Jardine, the other candidate is generally known), and have nothing against her personally; but she is an MP for a Scottish seat that was regained in 2017; I tend to think that other things being equal, MPs need to concentrate on retaining their seats for the imminent election and not rush to take on other responsibilities.

Often I’ve taken endorsements into consideration when making theses choices. The only endorser listed on either candidate’s website either candidate who I know is Catherine Bearder MEP, who is backing Mark. I also see an endorsement from my old friend Ed Fordham on Lib Dem Voice. So that confirms my general thinking: I’m voting for Mark Pack.

(I see that I voted for the winner on previous occasions.)

Ordinary members now seem to have votes in all the party’s committees, whose franchise was previously restricted to conference delegates. I’m not sure if this is an improvement, but I’m exercising my mandate. For the other committees, I basically chose the people who I knew and ranked them ahead of the people I didn’t know. I knew seven of the candidates for the two international committees, so put Hannah Bettsworth at the top (we need to encourage young activist women) and ranked the other six (yes, if you’re reading this, I did put you second), leaving the rest blank

The other four elections were more difficult. One candidate running in each of them claims to be involved with an organisation that I am also quite heavily involved with. I have never heard of this person, and all of our mutual contacts on social networks are Lib Dems rather than my contacts in that organisation. The candidate’s personal statement is also very badly written. So I felt I should submit a full slate of votes for the other elections, putting this person last in each case.

In three cases I did actually know one or two candidates, so I voted for Neil Fawcett for the Federal Board, Jon Ball and Liz Lynne for Federal Conference Committee and Duncan Brack and Robert Harrison for Federal Policy Committee. I ranked all the other candidates (other than the one mentioned in the previous paragraph) to boost representation from women and minorities, looking also at their number of Twitter followers and quality of presentation of the personal statement. That gave me Susan Juned as my top preference for the one other race where I had a vote.

As a not terribly well informed member with many other commitments, I can only spend a little time engaging. I am very distant from the action these days, but the Lib Dems are clearly on a roll, as well as facing some internal challenges (am very unimpressed with the recruitment of Philip Lee MP for instance). And I must say that in general I was impressed by the number of candidates – even though it makes the job of a conscientious voter much more difficult!

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Frédégonde, La sanguinaire, vols 1 and 2, by Virginie Greiner and Alessia de Vincenzi

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Second paragraph of third page of vol 1:


"I never bin asked for so many flowers!
Seems like the new queen's crazy about them."
"Anyone seen 'er?"
"I saw 'er, a real princess!"
 Second paragraph of third page of vol 2:


Frédégonde (very pregnant): "Come in!"

I got this because I had greatly enjoyed the six-volume series about Eleanor of Aquitaine (1+2, 3+4, 5+6) also published as part of Delcourt's Reines de Sang (Queens of Blood) range, looking at historical women rulers with reputations for ruthlessness, and I also wanted to educate myself about the Frankish kingdoms in this part of the world between the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. This is the story of Fredegund, subtitled "the Bloody", set between 560, when her royal lover Chilperic of Neustria marries the Visigothic princess Galswintha, and 584, when she finally kills him off, having killed off numerous others in the meantime (including Galswintha). I thought the characterisation was impressive: more often than I would like, I have problems telling characters apart in graphic novels, but Virginie Greiner's script and especially Alessia de Vincenzi's art was very good at giving the women characters in particular their own voice in the sixth-century urban and rural landscape. (A shout out to Brunhilda, who gets some good lines and action.)

Fredegund has a very bad press historically, mainly because the only primary source about her is Gregory of Tours, who makes no bones about his personal grudge against her. It would have been interesting to get a feminist reinterpretation of the historical record from Fredegund's point of view. That's not what we have here; Greiner's Fredegund is motivated purely by personal lust for power, and in due course for the succession of her children. The first volume is well-paced, dealing with the Chilperic / Fredegund / Galswintha triangle, but the end of the second book in particular feels rather rushed – Fredegund lived another 15 years, and Brunhilda another 29 until her gruesome execution in 613; but we end in 584, with Chilperic being murdered off-stage – why has he not spotted that people who annoy Fredegund keep winding up dead? It seems a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Still, if you want, you can get vol 1 here and vol 2 here.

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Is There Life Outside The Box? An Actor Despairs, by Peter Davison

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The following morning, we meet early to drive to a TV interview happening just up the road, and I'm thinking about making it back to the hotel in time for breakfast. I'm forgetting that this is Australia, a big country, and just up the road is actually a two-and-a-half-hour drive in the heat to the Pinnacles, admittedly a beautiful alien landscape, where they have put a three-quarter-size TARDIS which I can't stand too close to for fear of exposing its lack of stature. The next day I fly to Adelaide for more interviews, and then our first show in the Entertainment Centre. The production team are ahead of me, working hard, and I arrive only two days before the show, in time to meet with Paul Bullock who's directing the Spectacular, to see if he'll agree to my Adelaide 'jokes'. We did the Symphonic Spectacular tour last year, and I think we make a pretty good team.

I met Peter Davison and his wife Elizabeth Morton at Loncon in 2014, and was just a bit starstruck. This was at the pre-Hugo reception, where he was attending in case The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot won (I had voted for it, mainly because it is very enjoyable but partly because I am briefly visible in it at about 08:03, but it didn't win).

I chatted to them for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth's phone rang; it was David and Georgia, who had been dropped at the wrong end of the ExCel building, so I went off to get them.

I've read a lot of celebrity memoirs, including Doctor Who memoirs, by now, and this really is one of the most entertaining of them. There are some major surprises as well, of which the first is that his father was black – or anyway, mixed-race, from Guyana (then British Guiana). Obviously his English mother's genes won out in terms of skin and hair colour, but you can clearly see the resemblance from the pictures below.

The book is told as a series of flashbacks in chronological order, as seen from a tour in 2015-2016. Young Peter Moffett did appallingly badly at school – “Perhaps my greatest triumph was managing to fail CSE woodwork. As my teacher, Mr Bidgood, said in his state of shock: ‘All you have to do is recognise wood.’” He studied at Central, but it took a long time for his career to get going; a brief appearance in The Tomorrow People was followed by a dry spell, and then suddenly in 1978 he hit the big time as junior vet Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. The extent to which this was cult family viewing in the late 1970s and early 1980s cannot be exaggerated; as the world around us appeared to be going to hell, here was a lovely nostalgic visit to a gentler past, where young Tristan was frequently brought up short by his older brother Siegfried (as played by Robert hardy), genially observed by James Herriot (Christopher Timothy).

When he was named as the fifth Doctor in November 1980, it was the first item on the BBC news that evening, ahead of some bloke called Reagan being elected to something or other. It did not last; after Doctor Who, and the subsequent successes of A Very Peculiar Practice and Campion, he had a very slack decade and a second divorce, and his personal life and career only really picked up again around 2000. But now, particularly with the renewal of fannish interest in his earlier years, it sounds like things are on track again.

The anecdotes are great fun, told with a combination of acute observation (mostly sympathetic) of his fellow actors, and self-deprecation (sometimes brutal). When we met in 2014, I asked if he had written anything other than The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, and he said that the only other script he had done was for his video message to Gallifrey 22 in 2011:

I don't know if that was completely true then, or if it's still true now, but based on those dramas and this book, I hope he tries some more writing. It's good stuff, and you can get it here.

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Sybil, or the Two Nations, by Benjamin Disraeli

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Second paragraph of the third chapter:

The Greymount family having planted themselves in the land, faithful to the policy of the founder, avoided the public gaze during the troubled period that followed the reformation; and even during the more orderly reign of Elizabeth, rather sought their increase in alliances than in court favour. But at the commencement of the seventeenth century, their abbey lands infinitely advanced in value, and their rental swollen by the prudent accumulation of more than seventy years, a Greymount, who was then a county member, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Marney. The heralds furnished his pedigree, and assured the world that although the exalted rank and extensive possessions enjoyed at present by the Greymounts, had their origin immediately in great territorial revolutions of a recent reign, it was not for a moment to be supposed, that the remote ancestors of the Ecclesiastical Commissioner of 1530 were by any means obscure. On the contrary, it appeared that they were both Norman and baronial, their real name Egremont, which, in their patent of peerage the family now resumed.

This is one of the many novels of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), published in 1845, two years before he was elected to Parliament, seven years before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer for the first time and 23 years before the first of his two terms as Prime Minister of the UK. The only other British prime minister that I know published any novels was Churchill; I am fairly sure that the combined tally of all the others must be rather less than Disraeli’s 16 or so. The political sentiments of the novel are very interesting, and completely worn on its sleeve. Since the revolution of 1690, Britain has been run by the corrupt Whigs and their successors, out only to enrich themselves. The ancient and noble aristocrats, and the poor working classes, have both been exploited by the nouveaux riches and it’s jolly well time that they got their act together. The working respectable poor live in horrible conditions, exploited by the Whigs and their own local bigwigs. The Catholic church (rather to my surprise) is a strong potential unifying factor, partly because the Whigs hate it but mainly just because. Egremont, noble both in blood and spirit, dares to openly state in Parliament that maybe the Chartists have a point and pays a social price. Sybil, whose father is a leader of the misguided but well-intentioned Chartists, orbits around Egremont and then it turns out – spoiler! – that she too has noble blood as well as noble sentiments. The establishment defeats the Chartists; yet nothing can ever be the same again.

The characters are paper-thin, but there’s nice interplay within Egremont’s own family (his stuck-up elder brother, his manipulative mother) and the political fixers Tadpole and Taper are quite good fun – as is Mr Hatton, fixer of family trees. I was also surprised by the number of memorable one-liners:

On Ireland in the eighteenth century: “to govern Ireland was only to apportion the public plunder to a corrupt senate.”

About an MP with a bee in his bonnet about foreign policy: “he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”

An old-fashioned lord harumphs: “pretending that people can be better off than they are, is radicalism and nothing else.”

Advice to a trainee lobbyist: “be ‘frank and explicit;’ that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.”

Most surprisingly, on page 415: “Resistance is useless!” (Had Douglas Adams read this?)

Not everything stands the passage of time. “Slowly delivering himself of an ejaculation, Egremont leant back in his chair.” Errrr….

I picked this up (after a long time) mainly as a result of F.R. Leavis’ recommendation in The Great Tradition. My main conclusion is that I wonder what he was on, recommending this ahead of most other novels of the nineteenth century? It’s entertaining for a glimpse of the political atmosphere of 1845 (with the glaring absence of Ireland), but it really isn’t Great Literature. You can get it here.