BLAKES 7 : Scimitar

Having finished listening to the first season of Big Finish‘s full-cast audio Blakes 7 adventures, with Caged effectively tying up that series of adventures, the only other full-cast episode I have at the moment is the opening episode of season 2 : Scimitar.  Season 2 is set during the third TV series, as noted by the missing Blake & Jenna, and the inclusion of Del Tarrant (Steven Pacey), Dayna Mellanby, and Del Grant (Tom Chadbon).

Written by Trevor Baxendale, Scimitar sees one of the Blakes 7 crew leave the ship with warnings of not to follow her.  In her determination for this, Dayna prevents Zen from telling the crew where she’s gone, and even Orac isn’t open to helping them out.

At Avon’s insistence and Vila’s reluctance, however, they intend to go after her.  Following some clever outmanoeuvring of the Zen computer, they figure out the most likely place Dayna would have teleported away.

Dayna’s trail leads them to an asteroid belt of no significance and no reason for Dayna to have been there.  They detect an anomalous asteroid, but radiation prevents the Liberator’s scanners and visual processes from discovering what is anomalous about it.

Using the cameras of a life pod, they see that the asteroid isn’t an asteroid at all but a warship, destroyed in the battle with the alien invaders (brought to realisation in Warship).   Avon, Cally, and Grant teleport across to search for Dayna, but the wreck is disintegrating rapidly.

When Cally is trapped by collapsing bulkheads and with Avon distracted by an intriguing computer defence system, Grant attempts a rescue which doesn’t go well, and sees him falling to his apparent death.

Elsewhere in the asteroid field, a salvage vessel arrives, intending to retrieve an important prize from the Scimitar.  When they see the Liberator, they immediately alert the Federation.

There’s a lot going on in Scimitar and, although the “prize” reminds me of the TV episode Harvest of Kairos, there’s sufficient jeopardy and suspense for the full duration.  This could easily have been a TV episode of its own.  The writer Trevor Baxendale delivers the goods here.

The reluctance of Josette Simon to reprise her role as Dayna Mellanby leaves this season of Blakes 7 audios with a bit of a gap in the crew, which is doubtless the reason for the season-wide “search for Dayna” plot.

Although I’ve watched the TV series on VHS/DVD a couple of times, the character of Del Grant must have passed me by.  This first full-cast adventure set within the third TV season does nothing to introduce the character.  For a good third of the story, I felt myself far too preoccupied with trying to remember/figure out who Del Grant is to be able to enjoy the adventure.

The lack of any explanation of Del Grant’s presence makes for an incredibly distracting listen.  Eventually I could do nothing but just ignore who he was and just see him as “an unknown character” until such time as I could figure him out.

It’s not actually until the behind-the-scenes interviews that his character is explained.  Apparently he was in the final episode of the second TV series – and some other Big Finish audios (which is of no help if you haven’t already listened to them, which I haven’t).  Having some way of incorporating this information into the episode before the character is first heard would have gone a long way towards improving this episode, and his character, immeasurably.

What also doesn’t help is that this episode also sees the return of Steven Pacey as Del Tarrant.  Tarrant and Grant are in multiple scenes together early on in the episode, and in one major scene it is just Tarrant and Grant questioning a docker.  Steven Pacey, sadly, doesn’t sound anything like the Tarrant I remember.  He and Tom Chadbon sound, for the most part, identical.  Not knowing who Grant was, and having them both sound the same, made for an incredibly difficult listening experience.  It made it very difficult to work out who was doing the talking.  I didn’t enjoy that much at all.

The remainder of the cast, Avon, Vila, Cally, and Orac/Zen are as good as usual, with Avon in particular giving the reassurance to the listener that this is real Blakes 7.

I’m sure the remaining five adventures from this series will see the crew go from adventure to adventure in their attempts to locate Dayna (before she’s recast as Yasmin Bannerman later).  It will probably be some time before I pick up the next adventure, Fortuitas, however.