“It’s downhill all the way”
It’s time to talk corridors. There was always a sense of threat and excitement whenever a scene was set in one. I have memories of the Doctor and his party running down a long passageway (it always needed to be long, so they were wide open to potential attack) and then at the far end would be a shadow, sometimes belonging to a sink plunger related to another Terry Nation creation. And other times I remember various companions pressed back against a side wall in the hope of not being seen by the enemy – Turlough was always good at this I recall.
Corridors were the place where it all happened; quick fire decision-making, extended exposition, high drama, death, discovery and running. Endless running. Running Through Corridors. That sounds like a nice title for a book. Oh look, it’s already been written!
I’m guessing from a production point of view, corridors were the perfect budgetary solution for a multitude of sins – a space which could be constructed cheaply, and reconfigured to make the perceived world much bigger, a chance to pad out scenes if the story was underrunning, and something architecturally interesting, allowing action to be shot in different and exciting ways in order to heighten the drama.
As I grew older and I started to take an interest in the creative aspects of television production, it occurred to me that environments such as control rooms, offices or planetary surfaces would hold the key to specific moments of drama, but it was the humble corridor that offered a more overarching statement about a situation, an episode, or even an entire series. When I watched Doctor Who, the barren corridors suggested that ‘The Armageddon Factor’ was war-torn and claustrophobic, the wood panelling of ‘Image of the Fendahl’ was gothic and not-quite-inert, and the sparsity of ‘The Sun Makers’ was desperately low-budget, both in the real world and in the fiction created from it.
The first time I noticed the corridor was during Peter Davison era Doctor Who. Tony Burrough designed some impressive sets for ‘Four to Doomsday’ (1982) and ‘Warriors of the Deep’ (1984). Once again these provided an overall feel to the situations – namely how the intricate circuits and the low lighting suggested a voyage of discovery aboard the hi-tech Urbankan ship, while the back lit panelling and sterile aesthetic gave a flavour of the power bloc industrialism on Sea Base 4. Burrough was noted for his interconnecting set designs, allowing various bits of scenery to be re-configured to create something new – the Tetris of set design. But I wouldn’t have known anything of that back then.
And then Blake’s 7 came along, allowing me to sit here and provide a potted history of what corridors people walked along. It’s clearly what the world needs. So here is my run down.
Watching that first season gives me an overall sense of a series that isn’t as concerned about trying to hide its frugal budget – an impossible task – but more focussed on how to use it creatively as possible. Take anything to do with the Federation, such as domes, bases and military bunkers – they all have a simple utilitarian concept, generally devoid of a decorative touches and intricate detail. The corridors always seem to favour straight columns and repeated uniform sections, with vertical flats allowing the studio lights to be obscured from the view of the camera. For me this is the default structure of any studio corridor from the 1970’s, let alone one with a sci-fi feel. From Saurian Major to depths of Control on Earth, the Federation is presented as a heavy-duty, functional and uniform administration, and generally colourless.
These early designs reminded me of some of the Dalek corridors of the 1960’s/70’s, matched with the overall design ethic of, say, ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956.). The result? An obsession with bold shapes, rather than intricate detail. (1)
This approach comes from a well established inspiration – the brave new world of Modernist design. The ‘K’ shaped columns, that debuted in ‘The Way Back’ is the signature design of that first season, one that also becomes Servalan’s headquarters, XK72, and others. It suggests that diagonal flats were symbolic of the ‘now’ as well as the future – take Ken Adam’s modernist designs seen in ‘Dr. Strangelove’ (1964.)
The low budget manifests itself through the necessity to re-dress the same designs across different episodes. The corridors (along with much else) that feature in ‘Space Fall’ are seen once again in ‘Mission to Destiny’. So any uniform style seen in that first season, is a much about the need to recycle the same designs to keep the budget in check, allowing the really signature designs such as the Liberator flight deck to have the resources required to construct it. But this also works in the series favour, allowing the crew to at one point run down a minimalist and functional corridor, and end up in the contrasting splendour of the Liberator.
Even the Liberator’s hexagonal corridors are based on this modernist aesthetic, but these corridors stand out on their own, because the Liberator has its own clear concept. The horizontal strips with the rounded ends are the equivalent of the TARDIS roundels, and make the two ships very much distinctive, and “conceptually alien.”
Whenever I see the corridors created for ‘Project Avalon’, I see another affectionate nod towards this obsession with shape and bold sections. It’s very much reminds me of ‘Power of the Daleks’ over a decade earlier.
‘Star Wars’ (1977) is undoubtedly a major turning point in the depiction of futuristic set design, certainly in terms of production values. Here, many of the film’s corridors retain the diagonal shapes or bolder forms, but it is the way the surfaces are dressed that is more noticeable.
On first glance, Blake’s 7 doesn’t feel like it was majorly influenced by this cinematic event on-screen, although I don’t doubt that there were a group of creative figures thinking long and hard about how the bar for set design has been raised forever.
Nonetheless season B of Blake’s 7 does feel different to its predecessor. There’s a bit more money to play with and a new confidence. The bold shapes are still there – take the corridors of Q-base or Star One – however the passageways feel a little more decorative in detail, and also use a wider range of shapes and curves. If anything, the corridors of Star One do feel closer to Star Wars than anything else in the series, although the budget always strikes back; where Star Wars is totally space age, there is still a sense of the modernist contemporary home in the Blake’s 7 corridor.
Perhaps the evolution of the corridor in season B is best summed up with the walkways of Albion. It’s a Federation stronghold, but the design is less minimal, with triangular motifs and more expressive lighting. But there is a bigger change around the corner…
As huge an event that ‘Star Wars’ was, it is Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ (1979), where things really start to shift. Concept designer Ron Cobb flips a future right on its head, moving from the fantastical to a ‘realistic’ approach, as Cobb himself described: “If I’m to arrive at a cinematic spacecraft design that seamlessly preserves, as in this case, the drama of the script, the audience has to experience it as something impressive and believable.” (2)
And with this approach, the atmosphere is paramount. Lighting isn’t from the top down, it is seen through what look like the truck palettes you might see in a warehouse. These act like gobo’s, allowing a range of highly atmospheric effects. The emphasis is now on engineering and grimy functionality, with art director Roger Christian using parts sought from aircrafts to create the environments. This approach would influence Blake’s 7 in its third season. Suddenly the palettes were starting to pop up again and again. The corridors of Keezarn is where we first see them, but it is the walkway on the convict carrier in ‘Moloch’ that perhaps is the most ‘Alien’ of all in set terms.
The bolder geometric style of old is still very much present in season C. A good example is Ken Ledsham’s designs for ‘Children of Auron’, which make use of his set design for ‘Star One’, but here is redressed further, creating a range of interesting perspectives, textures and decorative features.
Ledsham’s designs are very distinctive, using his familiar curved corners – something that reminds me of ‘Logan’s Run’ (1976). Ledsham would be one of the primary designers for season D, which for my money, seems to shift backwards, away from the highly atmospheric industry of ‘Alien’ and returning towards a more simplistic style. I’ve never been a huge fan of the visual aesthetic of season D. The irony is that if ever there was a season that would have benefited from the darker, more sombre and suspenseful feel of corridors that were emerging in the wake of the Nostromo, it is this final run of episodes, where our rebels experience the law of diminishing returns.
At the crossroads between season C and D is ‘Terminal’ – the pinnacle of the Blake’s 7 corridor. It is the perfect fusion of ‘Alien’ atmosphere, and modernist sensibilities. The creator of this set, Jim Clay, would later achieve great success as a production designer, working with the likes of Richard Curtis and Woody Allen. But ‘Terminal’ is at the start of his career. And it shows that great things lay ahead. The construction of the corridor allows for some effective lighting through the metallic surfaces. The shape of the corridor and the panels that are scattered around retain the modernist design that are the mainstay of the sci-fi corridor, with the pipes, beams and columns reflecting the influence that ‘Alien’ surely must have had on Clay.
But any design needs a good director to make good use of it, and Mary Ridge composes interesting shots, makes the camera actually move down the corridors, and uses angles that really do lose the viewer – the real trick in suggesting that the humble corridor is more than what is often an intersection of two bits of scenery in a TV studio.
From its humble beginnings as a minimal series of columns and flats, to the underground labyrinth on Terminal, the Blake’s 7 corridor says a lot about the evolution of the series. As a sci-fi component, I love it. Great moments often happen in corridors, and that is why I really enjoy having the chance to write a blog about how different shapes and truck palettes feature in a BBC drama of yesteryear. Oh yes the geek is strong today.
EPISODE DISCUSSION
I’ve been dreading this one. I really have.
We open with a model shot of the Liberator flying past the screen. Even with this first image I’m reminded that the days of library footage featuring the Liberator are numbered. No more will we see the Liberator turning on its axis and flying above the camera, or the yellow tinted Liberator passing the distant sun and orbiting planets, or the stationary Liberator in an expansive starscape. Yes, I’m going to miss these shots.
Avon is standing on a deserted flight deck. And he is displaying that rarest of traits – a physical expression of stress. Maybe it’s because he knows that no one is watching. And as for the flight deck itself – the lights are dimmed, and it’s like it’s evening in there. We’re nearing the end.
Based on how Avon is behaving and a hint or two in the dialogue, it sounds like there has been a fair amount of time passed between this episode, and the Teal/Vandor crisis.
The inertia that characterises season C continues to manifest itself, with the space Monopoly, and the agreed route to Calipheron still suggesting a crew with nothing pressing to do. I feel this inactivity is a nice theme for this series, even if goes against our instinct for what makes urgent, pressing drama. The feeling of a race to get things done belonged to the first two seasons, and I’m glad that this more leisurely feel was maintained throughout, allowing the stories come out the woodwork.
Nonetheless, something big needs to happen. And naturally Avon is providing it. As soon as he says “My reasons for changing course were sound. You can take my word for it” you know something is up. That’s weak, even by Avon’s standards. I’m sure he could handled this whole thing a little better, after all the rest of the crew were happy to help him in the plan to capture Shrinker.
With the less immediate threat of the Federation, I’ve always been more aware of the emptiness of space in this series. ‘Dawn of the Gods’, ‘Moloch’, and ‘Sarcophagus’ suggested it, but as Tarrant observes that “We must be light years away from any populated planet” we get a nice expression of this, thanks to the addition of reverberation on Tarrant’s voice, laid over the old school 2D image of the Liberator.
How many times have we seen a cluster of unknownness, usually red in colour, approaching on the main screen? It’s almost a part of the DNA of Blake’s 7. Time and time again they have passed through it. So perhaps Avon’s determination to fly through it isn’t 100% reckless. Maybe only 85-90%. But either way it’s going to be a bad, bad move on his part and – as it occurred to me later – a huge miscalculation by Servalan.
For Avon, his motivations for searching for Blake are spot on. “Wealth is the only reality” and this promise of untouchability is too great a lure. In that sense it is totally reasonable for Avon to ignore the crew. It happened in ‘Horizon’, and it is happening here. Consistent. That’s a hallmark of this script being written by the creator of Blake’s 7.
The crew do their best to convince Avon that it is better not to take the risk. With his more flamboyant season D performance on the horizon, it’s worth mentioning how controlled and brilliant Paul Darrow is, when expressing Avon’s tired and volatile determination as he sticks a gun in Tarrant’s gut. It’s all in the voice – breathy, hushed, nasal. It’s so dangerous. It’s so good. Steven Pacey’s shocked expression conveys the reality perfectly.
As the Liberator passes through the cloud of minute fluid particles, I was thinking back to the techniques used to convey flying through something bad. We have good old Mirrorlon – used in ‘Breakdown’ and ‘Dawn of the Gods’ and there’s some good red lighting and camera wobble, as seen in ‘Hostage’. But here Mary Ridge elects to go for the video effect approach, a la ‘Horizon’, and a build up of background sound effects.
And when we do return to normal, we are treated to a very effective and ominous shot of something bubbling on the outer hull, and a brief shot of the five control stations that suggests that behind some effective television lighting and careful camera angles, this brilliant studio set was looking very, very tired indeed.
Vila spots the final destination. Terminal – the planet. If I may disappear back to my 16-year-old self, it looks pretty cool.
The collaboration between the scientists of the united planets, sounds pretty intriguing, however we’re not going to hear much more about it, leaving the planet with a good description, but with a ton of mystery behind it.
On the teleport bay we get a sense of the unity of the crew, and talk of how they depend on each other. Avon is almost swayed.
Anyway, Avon wibble-wobbles off the Liberator for the final time – all studs and mean and moody black leather. A bridge to his attire in season D.
Tarrant and Cally prepare to follow Avon with a neat little line about ducking, should Avon see them. It’s a line so neat it’ll be used again in the following season.
I love how with one breath Avon can threaten to kill the crew, but once down on the surface his very next sentence is a subtle joke about manmade planets. Still the wind and the dank conditions are suitably bleak.
Let’s talk a little about how Mary Ridge is handling the location footage. It’s pretty good stuff, taking a fairly unremarkable space on-screen (I’m sure it’s beautiful in person) and finding some nice shot compositions; shooting through the grass, handheld work, and some nice low angled material.
Avon reaches some kind of mini obelisk, which opens up to reveal an oversized sat-nav using a voice pattern that sounds suitably bored and exasperated. This is exactly what sat-navs should sound like, rather than the chirpy positive enthusiasm that usually adds to our stress levels.
Oh dear. We cut to a very poorly looking Liberator in orbit. And inside we start to see the slime. Vila is the first to notice. The panic and concern that he shows following Zen’s initial report shows a really sharp mind, when he needs to show one. And when Vila and Dayna step into the teleport bay and witness the decay within, all I could think about is how Tom and Barbara must felt when they set foot into their vandalised living room at the end of ‘The Good Life’.
Even at this early stage, I don’t think there is any outcome that can be anything other than quite final.
Back on Terminal, the sat-nav does its job in giving Paul Darrow a chance to practice his Hamlet impression. And in we go. Or should I say down we go, with a nice range of reverberation effects to increase the sense of scale of whatever is at the bottom.
So lets talk about the ‘heartbeat’. It’s brilliant. It really is. It’s totally unexplained. There is nothing to suggest what it is. It’s a deep, phased menacing sound, and it’s pretty unsettling. If I was a child I think I would have found it terrifying.
But what the heartbeat does is suggest the tone of the episode. Bleak. Critical. Impending. I know I have said this before, but I don’t apologise for saying it again, the way Blake’s 7 approaches sound design is outstanding for its time. While we have the typical collection of doors, blasters and explosions, we also have a carefully selected range of variations of hums, oscillation and pitching to communicate the environments where the action takes place. But here we have a diegetic sound effect that is also conceptual in its approach, suggesting to the audience that we should be very wary of this episode. It’s a countdown to the end.
Dumm, dumm…
…dumm, dumm.
Dumm, dumm…
…dumm, dumm.
Toron and Reeval are a short-lived couple who will be at the mercy of the native life forms in a moment. But in the few scenes they occupy they almost appear like a couple, with Toron in particular sounding like a brilliant Oxbridge graduate who has suddenly found himself in the freezing cold on a manmade planet. Solve that one!
Mind you they can’t be that clever if they fail to spot Cally and Tarrant, whose hiding place consists of a couple of twigs.
Ah the Links! They looked naff when I first watched them. And they still do. I’m reminded of them all the time. When I attended my first ever meeting with fellow Blake’s 7 fans in a pub in Bristol, the obligatory birthday party crowd merrily made an entrance, with the usual gorilla suits on show. In my mind this makes Servalan’s later observation that they are what man will become all the more plausible.
No they are not convincing at all. I think this is where the money really must have run out for good. When Tarrant and Cally look away in horror, it not at the desperate plight of Toron and Reeval, but more that the execution of the costumes and make up as they munch away at the clothing with their eye holes fully visible.
Down below, Avon is skulking through some impressive corridors, as discussed earlier. He also makes a discovery – a publicity photograph of Gareth Thomas from ‘Redemption.’ So he is alive. Blake is alive.
Back in the corridor Avon is shot by a dart, and a mysterious voice says “let it begin“. In fact this line is unintentionally chilling as we immediately cut to the beginning of the disintegration of the Liberator flight deck. Once more Mary Ridge throws in some nice directorial touches as Vila’s desperation sounds over the footage of the goo.
Once again Vila shows some real instinct and clear thinking. It’s rare for Michael Keating to have to play Vila like this, but it’s well performed and refreshing at this stage of the series.
On the surface of Terminal, Ridge uses some more portable camera, which always feels strangely realistic on a series like this. She also displays a good eye for action through close up hand-held footage and a great low down shot of Cally picking up the ‘sonal key’ from the ground.
But as the door shuts on Tarrant and Cally, it is truly “downhill all the way”
And the man who recklessness is the centre of this is now in a drug induced state, causing him to see Blake. In fact this whole set up of pharmaceuticals and mind control feels very Federation in design and gives me a slight sense of full circle, echoing some of the themes of the very first episode.
What I’m also enjoying about this episode is the way Mary Ridge is controlling the pace. At this point there are tons of things happening in space, on the ground and underneath. But as Avon skulks around the corridors and sees Blake through the door, Ridge is holding her nerve – using footage which runs a couple of seconds longer than needed, and getting as many reaction shots as required rather than simply jumping into Blake’s treatment room.
And when we do see Blake, the first thing I think about is not his beard (as impressive as it is) but that voice. Yep, missed that voice.
The dialogue is great between the two, but it does leave me with a tinge of regret that time wasn’t on the side of the production team in securing the services of Gareth Thomas for anything longer than a handful of hours.
The guards on Terminal do look very 1960’s with their blond hair and silvery uniforms. And as the carefully timed procedure is played out by a very smug Kostos, Avon is led to the lair…
…Where Servalan awaits. It is only fitting that the final episode should feature the arch nemesis. But it’s also a nice touch to avoid any kind of Federation uniform, so when the camera does sweep across Jim Clay’s excellent set design, and she does appear, it is a bit more of a surprise than usual.
Zen is dying. Ouch. It’s a scene that stings after all these years. It’s a computer with a great voice, and an impressive appearance, but in many ways it’s not really done anything noteworthy since the end of season A, so why should its death leave me feeling a tad emotional? It’s more than just the fact that he referred to himself. I’ll talk about this at the end of the review.
But there is added emotion in the performances too. When discussing the life forms on the planet, there is a real sense from Jacqueline Pearce, that these final moments with Avon are significant, both in fiction, and perhaps in real life. Pearce is on record in saying that her experiences during season C were very happy, and perhaps this was a real sense of the end of an era. But look at her eyes, and hear a faint wobble in her voice as she talks to an Avon who for the first time looks worried and outmanoeuvred.
And then we have the final scenes on the flight deck. There’s a little acknowledgement from Servalan that all is not well on board the ship, but her drive for maximum power is too great.
And Vila gets once last moment of bravery and heroism. And there’s even a bit of humour at his line about Orac being a sculpture – no mean feat when everything else you love about the series is disintegrating in front of your eyes.
As Servalan rushes past her dim-witted goons and to the only place she could possibly escape, we see the set piece destruction of the Liberator. It’s a spectacular sequence, which uses lighting, explosions and detonations to good effect. The hydraulic floor and hammer horror scream from Kostos is also suitably grandiose. But amidst all these spectacular visuals, I once again was drawn to the sound design – hisses, explosions, and waves of crash cymbal from Dudley Simpson. It’s intense stuff.
And the final explosion? Forgive me here, but there is a compliment within this. I was actually slightly disappointed in the final explosion. Don’t get me wrong, it is impressive enough, and the final shimmering debris floating in space is very well done indeed, but the teenager in me compared it to first time the Liberator exploded at the end of ‘Orac’. I always through that was the most amazing explosion of all, even if it was lifted from the end of ‘Breakdown’. So I’m only disappointed based on the visual effect teams own high standards. It’s a testimony to the quality of the model work on a shoestring budget that I could be slightly underwhelmed by an impressive explosion!
But the crew cannot watch anymore, they have work to do – the days of space monopoly are at an end, much to Avon’s ironic amusement.
Terminal is one of those episodes that provides a generally – but not wholly satisfying finale to Blake’s 7. And I quite like that. Blake’s 7 will always be the show that doesn’t quite know how to kill itself off, in keeping with Terry Nation’s philosophy of never ending something completely. The working title of this episode was ‘Finale’, and while it is the most ‘final’ episode of the series – more so than ‘Blake’ – it still doesn’t cut off the life support completely. I was thinking about how the previous season ended, but ‘Star One’ isn’t a finale, it is a climax – a something that feels like an end point to an overarching plot, but is often the gateway to a new and exciting set of adventures. This episode feels like the reverse.
This is not an episode with sentimental farewells to regular (bipedal) characters, but it does manage something that I can’t think happens in any other drama – it makes me genuinely sentimental over a concept of a series – the Liberator. By this I’m not only talking about the ship inside and out – a brilliant design by Roger Murray-Leach – but I’m also talking about everything else it represents: a conceptually alien presence that is never fully unpeeled, a source of rescue, power and liberation, and the fact that it is home. This is the place where the best arguments happened, fastest quips, and the most urgent running through corridors. I’m going to talk about the interior in another post, but the terminal decline of the ship through the episode really is gut wrenching. And when there is a little lump in my throat as Zen finally loses the battle, it’s not sadness for Zen alone, it’s the loss of Zen and the Liberator. The best star ship in science fiction – bar none.
There are other endings too. Chappell, Nation, the Aquarius typeface.
I have read theories that this wasn’t a Federation operation, and that Servalan has been deposed, but I’m taking a more black and white approach, based on the idea that Servalan sees the Liberator as the pattern for a fleet. The fact that she is unable to achieve this goal, combined with the loss of ‘home’ for the crew is as close to an ending that Blake’s 7 is capable of. Everyone loses in this tough universe, although long-term, the Federation would probably re-grow once more.
But Nation’s canny knack of not ever switching off the life support button is a wise move. Avon talks of his and Blake’s death being connected in someway, and that line alone feels like a satisfying ending of sorts, but by the end of the episode we don’t have conclusive proof that Blake is dead, nor Servalan, and the rest of the Liberator crew and Orac are very much still alive, and Avon can afford a smile. It’s a great talent to make an episode feel like the end, without killing off anyone outside of the hardware.
Hats off to David Maloney who clearly turned ‘Death Watch’ and ‘Sarcophagus’ into stripped back efficient affairs, with minimal filming, reduced number of sets, and a smaller cast, allowing some reserve money to rightfully end Blake’s 7 with a bang. It’s important to recognise David Maloney’s contributions to the first three seasons but there is too much to say about him here. So I’ll wax lyrical about him in another blog post.
In an episode with such significant ramifications, the supporting cast are on the periphery. But there are notable little details to be had. Gillian McCutcheon has enjoyed a long career, as has Heather Wright, who has appeared in many culty things. Richard Clifford is the civil partner of Derek Jacobi, and both the face and voice of David Healy has appeared in a ton of things, but if I was to put his face to something I’ll go for his various appearances as a signature radar operator in various James Bond movies. Oh, and some actor called Gareth Thomas appears briefly, as one of the finest beard actors of his generation. And the smallest of small parts? Tony Christopher (the blond guard Avon sees as he comes to) can be seen in tribal headgear in the hospital on Chenga. The listings also mention a Nicholas Frankau, none other than Flying Officer Carstairs in ‘Allo Allo’. Alas I could not work out which one he was, but I love the idea that he would pop out of the medical room with aircraft goggles on and say “hell-air” to a deadpan Avon. (“Hello” for any readers not familiar with ‘Allo Allo’.)
SET DESIGN
Outside of the corridors, Jim Clay provides some excellent detail in the laboratory, medical bay and notably Servalan’s lair, which is dominated by an impressive triangular framework overhead. This might be the most elaborate studio set design in the entirety of the series, using design and lighting to excellent effect. Clay is a one-off wonder.
MUSIC SCORE
Plenty of brass, woodwind and crash cymbal as usual, but the there’s also a good dose of staccato synthesiser for the scenes of the goo, and a powerful chiming couplet riff as the Liberator passes through the cloud of particles. And as the Liberator blows up, Dudley brings out the big gongs.
HOW TO SELL THIS TO AN UNBELIEVER
You can’t. They have to know and love the Liberator in order to understand why the person they are watching this with is blubbing away into a handkerchief.
MY FAVOURITE MOMENT
Tricky to pin down a single moment. So I’m going for the heartbeat.
THE MOMENT I’D RATHER FORGET
Am I allowed the say the whole decomposition of the Liberator? But in terms of quality, it’s the Links.
VERDICT IN 10 WORDS EXACTLY
More ‘final’ than ‘Blake’, but not quite the full stop.
WATCHING BLAKE'S 7 