3/1/2024 0 Comments Space punks classesThe Pull List: 9 September 2015, Part III.NES30 #13: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.The Pull List: 9 September 2015, Part IV.Doctor Who: "The Magician's Apprentice".Four episodes in, and Season 4's quality ratio is a worryingly low 25 per cent. Don't be fooled though: it really is unbelievably awful. "Stardrive" is one of those bad episodes of television that's paradoxically so awful it's entertaining. The result is a level-headed professional in a world of fairly camp, haphazard rebels. She's an oddly underwritten character, but Barber works what she's been given remarkably well. He's not simply callous any more he's becoming practically sociopathic. There's a genuine development in Avon's personality here, and it's one that sticks. His actions in the episode's final scene are just the cherry on top. Soolin (Glynis Barber) challenges him on it, but he's entirely unperturbed by her accusations. He then deliberately sends Dayna and Vila into a trap so as to divert from his own activity. Here he puts Scorpio in harms way and misjudges badly. Paul Darrow does a great job of playing an increasingly callous and manipulative Avon. It's not helped by Barbara Shelley's weirdly mannered performance as Dr Plaxton, the inventor of the photonic drive and the performer of the most unconvincing death scream in the history of British narrative television. They are utterly ridiculous and unconvincing, and their presence pretty much derails the entire episode. Space punks apparently means glam rock punks, replete with face paint, shimmering paster outfits and weird plastic fins glued to motorcycle helmets. Of course Follett's unfortunate script is compounded by some really bad costume and make-up work. I don't know what it was that made writer James Follett so despise the working classes or the youth of Britain, but his script drips with disdain for both. They’re obsessed with speed and violence, and speak with their own slang terms - one of which unfortunately duplicates a nasty racial epithet. Their leader Atlan, who makes a point of explaining that he’s not a Space Rat himself but simply leads them, speaks with a weirdly generic foreign accent. The Space Rats all speak with working class London accents, in sharp contrast to the received pronunciation of the regular cast. It's also presented several years too late, attempting to capitalise on the punk craze precisely when Britain's youth had moved on to becoming new romantics instead. They are essentially punks in space, except they’re punks as envisaged by someone who’s never been one, never met one, and never really had a clue about what they’re like. I don’t think there’s anything in all four seasons of Blake’s 7 that more wonderfully reveals such a middle-aged – and middle-class – fear of youth culture. Avon (Paul Darrow) believes he's found it on the planet Casper, where the noted Federation physicist Dr Plaxton (Barbara Shelley) is developing the galaxy's fastest new engine for the villainous Space Rats. It's 19 October 1981, and time for more Blake's 7.Ī disastrous attempt to sneak past a Federation border leaves Scorpio in dire need of a new stardrive.
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