Adventures with the Wife and Blake Book 2: The Avon Years

By Neil Perryman and Sue Perryman

"It'll be awfully crowded when Blake and Jenna get back..."

In January 2011, Neil Perryman convinced his wife, Sue, to watch 700 episodes of Doctor Who with him for a blog called Adventures with the Wife in Space. It was so successful, it spawned a sequel - Adventures with the Wife and Blake, in which Sue Perryman gamely watched every episode of Blake's 7, a series she'd studiously managed to avoid for 36 years.

This volume collects Sue's commentary for the final 26 episodes of that ground-breaking series ('Aftermath' to 'Blake'), when Avon went mad, Tarrant's perm reigned supreme, and the galaxy was staffed by snowmobilers with graduated bobs. What did Sue make of it? Did she miss Blake? Did she pine for Zen? How long did it take her to ask "Why is it Servalan?" PLUS: *that* episode (yes, 'Animals' *is* included).

The book includes a foreword by Una McCormack, a new Introduction, a new interview with Sue, plus exclusive episode annotations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Perryman
• Release date: Nov 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311071415

Neil Perryman

Author of the popular Wife and Space blog.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported our difficult second album, especially Glen Allen, John Williams, Mr Andy Miller, Simon Harries, Paul Jones, Gareth Roberts, Steven Schapansky, Royston Robertson, John Callaghan, Paul Smith, Dean Hill, Annie Worrall, Phil Ware, Will Joy, Daniel Blythe, Nicol Perryman, Gary Thompson and the one and only Paul Darrow.

We are also deeply indebted to all the Kickstarter backers who gave us their support (and hard cash) to make this project a reality, especially Richard Abela, Brad Ackland, David H Adler, Christian Ainscough, George Alabaster, Stephen Allport, Chaz Antonelli, Kelly and Chris Arthur, Luke Atkins, Jonathan Baldwin, Gordon Barr, Simon Barrett, Matt Bartley, Gary Bates, Jamie Baverstock, Mutt ‘n’ Bear, Henry Beaumont, Todd Beilby, Patrick Bellis, Chris Berry, Merric Blackman, Simon Booth, Nathan Bottomley, Jason Brooks, Huw Buchtmann, Stuart Ian Burns, Scott Burton, Graeme Caddies-Green, Beth Cameron, Paul Campbell, Tim Carter, Simon Castle, Cliff Chapman, Tom Charman, Chicanery, Edith Rogers and Stuart Christie, Ian Cockburn, Mark Cockram, Jon Cole, Frank Collins, Martin Collins, Louise Collins, Nathan Cooke, Tim Coward, Sue Cowley, Mike Crate, Ian Dack, Joe the Dalek, Simon Darnell, Mike Davey, Huw Davies, Robert Dick, Andy Dobson, Mat Dolphin, Dave Dorrell, Steve Duerden, Vivienne Dunstan, Larry and Eleanor Dyde, Paul Dykes, Barnaby Eaton-Jones, Simon Exton, Mary F, Richard Fairweather, Scott Fenton, Jonathan Finn, Brody Finney, Bradley Forssman, Dominic Francis, Victoria Free, Hannah G, George Ganat, JJ Gauthier, Gibbsy, David Gillespie, Jo Golding, Ian Greaves, Paul Greaves from the TimeVault podcast, John Paul Green, James Grime, Jonathan Grove, GtBFilms, Derek Handley, Claire J Hannon, Craig Hanson, Steven Harding, Richard Hardy, Pat Harrigan, Luke Harrison (TMDWP), Simon Hart, Jennifer Haston, Rod Hedrick, Patrick David Helm, Iain Hepburn, Sean Hewitt, Ben Heywood, Jarad Higgins, Jason Highfield, Matt Hills, Graham Holland (@itsafrogslife), Chris Hughes, Mark ‘Obscurest’ Hunter, Hurriyet, Liam Hutchinson, Judith Jackson, Elaine J Jackson, Robert Jewell, Richard Johnson, Mark Andrew Jones, Kevin Jordan, Jen Kain, Demian Katz, Martin Kay, Martin Kennaugh, Emma Kennedy, Nick Kirby, Ben Knaak, Matthew Kopelke, Hendryk Korzeniowski, Stephen La Riviere, Peter Lack, Nick Lawton, Richard Leadbetter, Gareth Lee-Thomas, Chris Limb, Lisa,Roderick T. Long, Austin Lugar, Tony Lyell, Richard Lyth, Stewart Macdonald, Maff, Grant Mainwaring, Alex Mallinson, la reine margot, Richard Marklew, Andrew Marsden, Gareth Martland, Thomas Marwede, Gary Mathewson, Liam McCauley, Una McCormack, Walter McIntosh, Joe McIntyre, Mendou, Amy Micklewright, Simon Middleton, Brian M Milton and Robin Milton, @mistylister, moonbug, Kirk Moore, Alan Mordey, Rob Morris, Paul Morris, Iain Morrison, Robbie Moubert, Paul Mudie, Stefan Mueller, Tony Murray, Marcia Franklin (Neowhovian), Chris Newman, Nightsky, Mark B Oliver, Chris Orton, Dave Owen, Jon Padgett, Adam Parker, Michael Patey, Charles M Paulsen, Rachel Pearce, Andrew Peregrine, Mike Pitt, Barry Platt, Mikhaila Pye, Neal Rafferty, Gareth Randall, Ratovan, Shaun Raven, James Armstrong, Adam Redman, Grant Reeves, Christopher Reynolds, Steve Roberts (from Tucson), Tansy Rayner Roberts, David Rolinson, Ian Sadler, Dave Sanders, Phil Sandifer, Dr Neil Scotchmer, Frank Shailes, Matt Sharp, Robert Shearman, Scott Sherritt, Paul Shields, Kate Short, Dave Shuttleworth, Brendan Jones,Drew Simchik, Simon Simmons, Stewart Smith, Giles Smith, Brandon Smith, Andrew T Smith, Neil Smith, Colin Speirs, Stappi, Tony Stevens, Jeroen te Strake, Matthew Sweet, Melissa Swenson, Steve T, Colin Tate, Mark Taylor, theMunted, Neil Thomas, Andrew Thompson, Matt Treml (aka Rabbi the Mage), Matthew Trulock, Peter Tye, Bryan Valko, Kat W, Gary Wales, Frank Wales, John-Paul Waterson, Philippa Watts, Andy Wellock, Kevin West, Adam Westwood, Mark Whiteman, David Whittam, Alex Wilcock, David Wilcox, Chris Williams, Russell Williams, Andy Wixon, Dave Wythe, Mark York (aka Ferrain at Project Dalek) and Josh Zimon.

I would also like to thank Graham Kibble-White for this book's amazing cover, and Sean Alexander for putting up with my Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia.

Author’s Note

This ebook collects the second four months of the Adventures with the Wife and Blake blog (‘Aftermath’ to ‘Blake’) into a single volume, but it isn’t a simple cut-and-paste job. I’ve removed several typos and errors, I’ve made minor adjustments to the text to accommodate the absence of screen grabs and audio/video clips, and I’ve even added the occasional note. Direct quotations from the television series have also been pared back, and are now only included when Sue comments on a specific line of dialogue. Finally, the book catalogues the episodes alphabetically, which the blog spectacularly failed to do because I relied on the numbers printed on the official DVD box sets. Because I’m an idiot.

In any event, this is our preferred version of the text.

Neil Perryman

November 2015

Foreword

In January 1978, I was five years old and the youngest of six children in a packed household of mostly teenagers who quarrelled constantly over who got to watch what on the telly. January 1978 brought the household to crisis point. On one side, the Coronation Street aficionados. On the other side, fighting the good but solitary fight against the forces of tyranny, sister number 3, who wanted to watch that new science fiction television programme on BBC1. To my eternal shame, I backed Team Coronation Street. They won.

The upshot of this is that I never saw the first two seasons of Blake’s 7 on transmission (I guess Charlie’s Angels won the following year’s smackdown). Two years later, when the title made even less sense than ever, I found myself watching the start of ‘Aftermath’. And something clicked. Perhaps it was the thrill of coming into a story partway through, or a childish delight in Vila’s bad jokes; perhaps it was the first faint sigh of puberty at the sight of a bruised Paul Darrow passing out in a life capsule… whatever it was, it worked. I was in love with Blake’s 7. There followed a lonely but intense adolescence: I imagined myself on the Liberator; I sat with my finger hovering over the pause button waiting for a promised clip on Telly Addicts; and, finally (and inevitably) I started writing – passionately felt and guilt-free Mary-Sues, and some extremely dodgy poetry in which I pondered at length why an old wall might wait, and what it might be waiting for.

Eventually, you get to leave your all-female convent school and enter a wider world that – gasp! – includes people who are broadly interested in the same things as you, and you learn to love as intensely but with more of a sense of humour about the whole thing. Even so, seeing your favourite TV show come under the scrutiny of an eye as sharp, clever, and honest as Sue Perryman’s is a nerve-wracking experience (as Neil must know better than any of us). I clicked onto the review of ‘Rumours of Death’ with a shaky finger and heart. Would Sue understand? Had I been fooling myself all these years? Was this to be the moment I reached my own old wall?

It’s therefore been a great delight (not to mention a massive relief), that Sue has ‘got’ Blake’s 7 – and, even better, gets the Avon Years. Between the Kairopan spiders, the Thaarns, the Molochs, and the Betafarlian wigs (all of which meet their deserved comeuppance in the pages that follow) Sue has glimpsed some of what I saw all those years ago – that when Blake’s 7 works, it really works. Its dialogue can snap, crackle, and pop; it can tell a great adventure story and then suddenly devastate; Paul Darrow Suffers Beautifully; and Avon and Cally were totally shagging.

Yes, Sue got it. I could move on happily to the review of my beloved ‘Sarcophagus’, and then onto the unique combination of tinsel and nihilism that is the fourth season (or Series D as I think we’re meant to say). I’ll naturally say nothing here to spoil the final episode, but speaking on behalf of the many female fans of my acquaintance, I’d like reassure Sue that most of us watched ‘Blake’ in our pyjamas, without make-up, and with our hair a right clip the first time round, and continue to do so to this day. And I’d like to say thank you, Sue, for watching Blake’s 7 with us, right the way through to the Christmas Special, for telling us new things about it, and for understanding why we love our mad old show.

In 1980, my father rented a VCR. It was a top-loading beast with big levers instead of buttons and no remote control (that came with the second VCR, and was attached to the machine with a cable). I assume my father (a frugal man feeding six children on a deputy head’s salary) did this in order to get some peace and quiet, although it didn’t solve the arguments over the rocketing phone bill. I still have in my possession some ancient video cassettes, containing selected episodes from the third season (Series C?) and the whole of season 4 (or is that Series D). I don’t have a VCR, but I’ll never part with that little box of tapes.

And that old wall? Your past crimes will always come back to haunt you. Whatever I do to prove my devotion to the Best TV Series Ever (Yes, Even Doctor Who), up to and including writing this foreword for this wonderful book, sister number 3 will always be there to remind me that way back in January 1978 I sold out the rebels. Sorry, everyone.

Una McCormack

October 2014

Introduction

In the introduction to the first volume, I teased you with the other reason I chose Blake’s 7 as the subject for our difficult second album. It’s simple, really: I wanted Sue to watch the final episode with me; I always have, from the first day I met her. Well, maybe not the first day, but it was definitely the first week. And I could have, too, because you know what it’s like during the honeymoon period: it’s the only time where the other person still fancies you enough to say, ‘Yeah, OK, let’s watch ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ together’ or ‘I’ve never seen a single episode of Blake’s 7, but I’ll watch the last one with you if you agree to sit down and shut up.’

But I resisted. I didn’t want Sue to watch that episode of Blake’s 7 with me out of context. I wanted her to watch it the same way I did in 1981. I wanted her to watch it after she’d fallen in love with the characters who were about to be massacred. I wanted her to feel it when the bullets tore through their spines. I wanted her to care, and I wanted it to hurt. Does that make me a bad person?

Christmas 1981. I’ll never forget it. I was 12 years old, and while I didn’t believe in Santa Claus any more (I discovered a pile of unwrapped presents in my parents’ wardrobe six years earlier), this was the year I lost what little innocence I had left. Because this was the year the good guys didn’t win.

Yes, The Empire Strikes Back, released the year before, ended on a bit of a downer, but Han Solo was still alive when the credits rolled; I certainly didn’t see his guts spilling onto the floor. And when Doctor Who died, well, he just got back up and carried on as if nothing had happened (which he’d do again in a couple of weeks time); his companions never met sticky ends, either. Not ever. Because things were simpler in 1981: good triumphed over evil and everybody lived happily ever after.

And then I visited Gauda Prime and everything changed. Without wishing to sound melodramatic, this was the moment where I not only experienced grief for the first time, it was also the moment where I instinctively knew that this was what real life was really like. Because people died, good didn’t always triumph over evil, and, when you boiled it all down, the universe was fundamentally unfair and a bit shit. Valuable lessons when you’re about to hit puberty.

It’s also responsible for my love affair with unhappy endings: Threads; Midnight Cowboy; Miracle Mile; Brazil; Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man; The Mist – the more nihilistic the ending, the better. And yet none of these denouements can hold a candle to ‘Blake’. Because I spent years with those characters. Vila was like a brother to me, Soolin was like a cousin to me (and you can fancy your cousin – Blake said so), and Avon was like my dad (only a bit more sophisticated and a lot less cruel). So when all three were gunned down in cold blood by a fascist regime, it felt personal. And it hurt. God, it hurt.

And that’s how I wanted Sue to experience the episode, which sounds cruel, but it also felt right. However, because this would only happen if Sue agreed to sit through 51 episodes of Blake’s 7 with me first – and no honeymoon period lasts that long - I instinctively knew it would never happen. Never in a million trillion years. And then, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I found myself in a position where asking my wife to watch every single episode of Blake’s 7 with me suddenly sounded like the most natural thing in the world, instead of the stupidest thing ever. Or maybe it was both.

So my dream came true: Sue watched that episode of Blake’s 7 with me, weighed down with baggage and expectations and hope, and, well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t read the blog yet, but let’s just say that the journey was worth it. Yes, even ‘Animals’.

Neil Perryman

October 2014

SERIES C

It’ll be awfully crowded when Blake and Jenna get back

Aftermath

Blogged: 1 May 2014

Sue: Ooh, there’s a new title sequence.

She doesn’t like it very much.

Sue: Is Blake’s 7 a cartoon, now? And who are these three supposed to be? They look like the Red Arrows. Why are the Red Arrows chasing the Liberator, Neil?

The third series begins with an explosive montage.

Sue: Is this a recap? I’ve seen that spaceship before - it’s got a face like a sad fish.

The war between the Federation and the shape-shifting aliens has reached Space City.

Sue: I’ve definitely seen that before. And that. And that… That still looks shit. I can’t believe they had the balls to show that again.

I explain that this epic space battle was cobbled together with recycled effects shots, to save money the BBC didn’t have.

Sue: So they’ve spent even less money on this series than the previous two? How is that even possible?

Star One has been destroyed!

Sue: That’s all the pineapples fucked, then. And that wasn’t Star One that just blew up - Star One is on a planet, and that was a spaceship. At least I think it was a spaceship. It could have been a light fitting.

Space City miraculously turns up again – even though it was destroyed only a few moments ago - and this time it peppers the Liberator with laser fire. Our heroes, meanwhile, are nowhere to be seen.

Sue: The direction is really weird. What the hell is going on?

Vila is the first familiar face we see, as an explosion on the Liberator almost sets his backside on fire.

Sue: Please kill him off. Yes! Do it! DO IT! Oh no, he’s OK. Never mind…

Avon, Cally and Orac join Vila in the Liberator’s life capsule bay. We learn that Jenna has evacuated with Blake.

Sue: Maybe they’ll finally cop-off with each other.

When Avon is knocked unconscious by another explosion, Vila places him in a life support capsule which is then ejected from the ship.

Sue: And suddenly there’s no sound in space. It’s a bit late for realism now!

When Avon comes round, he finds himself plummeting towards an alien planet.

Sue: So is that it for the Liberator? What about Zen? Who’s going to save him? They didn’t even say goodbye.

Avon’s capsule is going too fast – it’s going to burn up!

Sue: This is a great start. Just don’t kill him!

Two Federation troopers have crashed on the same planet.

Sue: Oh look, it’s the evil one from UNIT.

Me: There was a time when you wouldn’t have to narrow that down.

Sue: It’s the traitor, Yates. Yes, that’s who it is – it’s Mike Yates. Are you impressed, Neil?

Me: A bit. OK, so who’s his mate, then?

Sue: He is vaguely familiar. Did he play a policeman?

Me: It’s Eddie Royle. He used to run the Queen Vic. Played a Terileptil. No?

Sue: No.

Eddie and Mike don’t last very long.

Sue: Oh, I thought Yates was going to become a regular character. Did he do that scene as a favour for someone?

Avon is about to meet the same fate as Mike and Eddie – namely having his throat cut by the local medieval sci-fi bad guy (‘Just what we need - more medieval sci-fi!’) - when a beautiful woman swoops in and rescues him.

Sue: This is very James Bond all of a sudden.

Dayna takes Avon to a nearby cave to recover, and it isn’t long before they’re locking lips.

Sue: She doesn’t mess about.

Dayna’s kiss soothes Avon’s headache.

Sue: Avon!

Me: So much for Avon being asexual.

Sue: I’ve changed my mind; I think I prefer him like this.

Dayna leads Avon back to his crashed capsule.

Sue: I’m sure I recognise this beach.

Me: I think this was filmed at Bamburgh.

Sue: I knew it! I’ve been there. It’s very romantic.

Me: Is it? I haven’t.

And then something truly insane happens:

Sue: No way!

It’s Servalan, sprawled out on a sand dune.

Sue: No fucking way! How the hell did she get there?

Servalan struggles to operate a small hand-held device that won’t stop buzzing…

Sue: I’m saying nothing.

… while Avon lugs Orac across a beach.

Sue: Orac should shrink himself down so Avon can put him in his pocket, even if it is just for a few hours. Orac is a very selfish computer, sometimes.

When Dayna tells Avon that she lives beneath the sea, Avon admits that he isn’t very keen on water sports.

Sue: I’m saying nothing, again.

While Avon waits for Dayna to check that the Northumbrian coast is clear, Servalan manages to sneak up on him.

Sue: Of all the beaches in the universe that she could have landed on, she had to pick this one. What are the chances of that? Unless you’re Terry fucking Nation, in which case it’s fucking inevitable.

A tense standoff ensues.

Sue: It looks like they’re here for a beach wedding. All they need now is a priest.

Avon and Servalan put aside their differences so they can escape from a marauding horde of Sarrans.

Sue: That was a great scene. Very funny. I knew they’d end up working together eventually. I just didn’t think it would be quite so soon.

Dayna escorts the happy couple to her father’s underwater base.

Sue: This reminds me of James Bond as well. The set is really nice, actually. I love the lighting. Big Brother should model their next house on this underwater theme.

Dayna offers to find something for Servalan to wear.

Sue: Yeah, good luck with that.

Avon is introduced to Dayna’s father, Hal Mellanby. Or, if happen to be Sue:

Sue: The man from Boney M.

Hal tells Avon that the recent alien incursion has left the Federation in tatters. Avon hopes that Blake survived long enough to realise that he was winning.

Sue: Where the hell is Blake, anyway? Has he got the week off? Not that I’m complaining.

Servalan and Dayna spend some quality time together.

Sue: I’m beginning to think that Gareth was right (see Interlude B in Volume 1). Blake’s 7 has turned into