The Anorak Zone Forums

[Paul_R]

Tarrant. A bit too drama-school-ponce.

[Tone]

Tone, you're talking about two particular characters that were particularly bad. It's not as if people don't get upset when real favourites die.

Yeah? Name one?

I've been around, you know...

Blakes 7? The attitude is f*** Gan, I hated him anyway!

Dr.Who? Screw Adric, he was an annoying little shit!

Star Trek Next Gen: Not absolutely sure, but I think Trekkies think Denise Crosby was a right bitch for not liking being in the show so f*** her! At best they were pretty luke warm about it.

UFO? So Straker's wife walks out? The "screeeecher crreature" they called her in fandom! She can piss off too, apparently! Not many people wanted to sympathise with her character over the death of her child. That amazed me!

I don't know of any SF "tragedy" episode where the fans have the least bit of sympathy for the "victim". Maybe Joan Collins in City on the Edge of Forever, but she wasn't a regular. Even there, they seemed to pity Kirk more than her.

[Anorak]

By that token of logic then Straker's wife wasn't a regular either.

Gan - who cares? Let's not forget that the entire reason he was killed was that he was the least popular character.

Adric - I'm sure there have been worse actors on TV than Matthew Waterhouse. But right now I can't think of one.



Name me some favourites dying in other shows, I can't think of any. I'm sure if Rose died in Who then we'd hear the tears.

[Tone]

Yeah, well...I actually had no idea Gan was unpopular and always assumed his death was really sad.

But this takes us back to that thing I said initially...maybe they only kill off people who aren't that popular, assuming, wrongly, that it'll get a sympathy vote.

I don't think they'd dare kill Rose...too popular! Look at the decision to overturn Peri's death on Dr.Who. That was down to people actually liking her character, I gather.

[Anorak]

From what I recall, they thought there were too many characters in it and it wasn't quite working, so they thought they'd kill off someone to add suspense.

Terry Nation was like "Vila's a c***, let's do him."

But then the BBC showed him the audience research figures which had - guess who? - as the most popular character (not Vila, but he did well) and Gan the bottom.

[Tone]

Everyone loved Avon. And Vila was cool as Hell. That was obvious even in 1977. But I liked Gan...I thought people liked thick-headed blokes and gentle-giant stereotypes. He seemed to be two likeable types in one. I was shocked they killed anyone...but that was Blakes 7. Oddly enough, it's utter pessimism stops me really loving it.

Still...that last ever episode...one of the greatest things ever made by TV in the English speaking world?

[Apparatchik]

If you look at the crew, you can tell who were the true believers and who were simply following out of convenience. Gan was a true believer in Blake, perhaps the most childlike in a sense and it cost him. Cally's death, brought on by Jan Chappell's refusal to continue with the show, is even greater in impact. Both were believers in Blake and his crusade. Gan's last words were to Blake "I'm not worth dying for". Cally's last word was "Blake". The deaths of the three believers, Gan, Cally, and Blake to me were the most tragic. All the rest of the crew were really opportunists for the most part.

[Tone]

If you look at the crew, you can tell who were the true believers and who were simply following out of convenience. Gan was a true believer in Blake, perhaps the most childlike in a sense and it cost him. Cally's death, brought on by Jan Chappell's refusal to continue with the show, is even greater in impact. Both were believers in Blake and his crusade. Gan's last words were to Blake "I'm not worth dying for". Cally's last word was "Blake". The deaths of the three believers, Gan, Cally, and Blake to me were the most tragic. All the rest of the crew were really opportunists for the most part.

Yes...you make a good point...maybe it's the anithesis of Dr.Who where the optimist, the Doctor, is the one who always survives and wins in the end...I guess Blakes 7 was a show which swept me along in it's TV run, I got caught up in the spirit of it, the ongoing fight...and it all ended on such a shocking, powerful, haunting note. But everytime I've gone back to it, I've always felt...somehow dissatisfied. It gets me in, I enjoy it to a point and then...I don't know...it's so hard to define...somehow the show just seems to ultimately leave me with nothing to hold onto. Maybe I want TV heroes to never die. Maybe I want something optimistic to believe in. Maybe I want stories that have an ending. I can't pin it down. For some reason, love it though I did, I never pine for Blakes 7 the way I do for other shows, I never want it in my collection of old shows to rewatch on a rainy afternoon. Something is just not there. And I cannot say what it is.

[Apparatchik]

Tone,

You too make a good point. I am the opposite. I get tired of heroes who always cheat death and defeat, so Blake was a refreshing change of pace for me. I prefer it to most other shows.

All in all, I found all the major characters of Blake's 7 to be of interest. The pity was that some were not developed much or very well and so suffer. I don't know if its the writers or actors who are at fault, I am just observing.

[Tone]

You know, I totally relate to the idea of heroes who fail at times. My fave series is UFO, where the hero faces relentless losses...his marrirage ends, his son dies, he has to let a guy be murdered, he has to pull the plug on his mate's space suit coz he's under alien control, etc...and my fave Doctor Who is Davison, who's companions die, walk out, try to kill him and who gets mercilessly hounded and beaten in his final story before the final end...and when I wrote my own SF hero, I named him Damon Dark because I wanted to do stuff about a dark hero who has a lot of "demons", psychological and emotional torments.

I guess Blakes 7 lost me in two ways. First, Blake was the hero and he left...I always felt like Gareth Thomas leaving was like if Ed Bishop had left UFO...I never quite got over that. And secondly, Avon killing Blake...I just couldn't "like" Avon after that, he lost my respect and my sympathy. All the dark shit that happens to Doctor Five and to Ed Straker, I pitied those guys, they were sympathetic characters, I felt a deep sense of connection because I related to their pain and I wanted to write about my own loneliness and fear and pain of loss, growing up with a mentally-ill mother and coming out of it as a rather dysfunctional adult who struggled with relationships for a long time, I wanted to express that in my own writing. (I got some shit over the Damon Dark ep where he kills an alien in the shape of his Mother, I can tell you!)

But Avon is not sympathetic, to me. I find myself ultimately unable to relate to him. He's cool, but he's too damn weird and too damn nuts and too damn edgey to be relatable. In Straker, I can at least see the man sincerely loves his son and hates putting his life at risk. I can see he's hurt, devastated when his boy dies and his ex wife tells him to never show his face again. Similarly, in Dr.Who, I can see that the Doctor is shattered when Adric dies and Tegan walks out. I can relate to the pain of the hero who fails.

But Blakes 7...I feel like everyone dies and we're left with Avon who is grinning like a mad bastard and...it's frigging AWESOME television, don't get me wrong...but I don't relate, I don't FEEL for him, I don't feel what he feels, the audience participation is shattered by the power of what's on the screen. Audiences need a blank face they can read their own reactions into. Darrow's grin over-rides my feelings and I'm left with nothing. I'm an observer on the outside saying "Wow, he's finally snapped!" All the people I cared about are dead. The survivor is too bizarre for words.

So...it's a great show...yet it fails to stick with me.