Blood & Earth, written by Ben Aaronovitch, is the fourth adventure in the Blake’s 7 – The Early Years series from b7media.  Like previous adventures in this range, it’s a small-cast adventure featuring a key character from Blake’s 7.

BLOOD & FIRE

Previously, this range has featured Vila and Gan in When Vila Met Gan, Travis in Point of No Return, and Avon in Eye of the Machine.  This time around we have our first introduction to Cally.

As a character, Cally wasn’t in the original Blake’s 7 – The Audio Adventures trio of stories in this Blake’s 7 – A Rebellion Reborn set (presumably because they hadn’t met her yet).  The result is that we’re honoured to have Jan Chappell reprising her character from the TV series in this new reimagined series, much as Michael Keating returned as Vila in When Vila met Gan.

Blood & Earth takes place on Auron, I think.  The name is mentioned once or twice but the environment (with aeroplanes, rescue helicopters, control towers, the job the primary Cally sister has, etc) has a distinct “contemporary Earth” feel about it.  It may as well be set on Earth.  It might even be so, except for the strange wild dogs that make an appearance.

The story opens in the middle of a telepathic conversation in which a group of “Cally sisters” are in communication with one of their sisters on an aeroplane.  The aeroplane is destined for a crash, with the sister on-board being the only survivor.

She awakens to her fellow passengers being eaten by wild dog-like animals.  In her panic, she calls out to her sisters in her mind, but is only contacted by an older Cally – one that she calls “Aunty”, rather than “sister”.

“Aunty” is one of the first of the “Cally” line, but is limited in her ability to telepathically communicate with the “sisters”.  The crash has made it possible for her to “talk” with this sister, while also cutting off lines of communication between the sister and her … other sisters.

“Aunty” has had survival training and is able to advise the sister of what to do to survive, such as starting a fire, fending off the dogs, making a shelter, etc.

Like the other stories in this range, it leads to a revelation prior to the end credits (I think – it’s difficult to tell because the voices sound very similar).

And that’s one of the main problems with this story – all the key characters are female, and none of them sound different or distinct from each other.  From all of the younger Cally sisters, to the sister leading the rescue operation, to the older “Aunty” Cally herself.  The problem is that you’re never too sure who’s doing the talking.  This is made worse by the telepathy angle, in which anyone not even in the scene could be doing the talking.  Worse still, when in “telepathy mode”, the sound is distorted thus making the voices sound even more identical.  It’s pretty confusing.  No explanation is made for why there are no men, or “Cally brothers” – surely an essential “blank” that an “Early Adventures” story should be filling in for us?

“Aunty” is our Cally from the TV series, but not one that’s particularly recognisable.  That’s probably to be expected as Cally was one of the more mysterious characters in the series, made all the more detached by virtue of this audio series not having a lot to do with the TV series.  The only familiarity is Jan Chappell’s voice which, as mentioned above, isn’t sufficiently different from the other female leads that you sometimes can’t tell who it is that’s doing the talking.

So far, the best story in this range has been the previous one with Avon.  Despite what should have been an action-packed drama of a crashed ‘plane survivor, Blood & Earth is a bit drawn-out and tedious.  Used to fill up the time whilst drawing out the infrequent, barely-relevant, back-story snippet about “our” Cally, it involves a character that we’re not particularly interested in, being rescued by a similar character we’re not interested in, supported by sister characters that we’re not interested in.  The focus is wrong and so it doesn’t really engage in the way the Avon story did, or entertain in the way the Vila story did, or provide the drama of the Travis story.

In short, even at 30-minutes long, this story is difficult to recommend.