Stripping down... Blake's 7 (v)

Sorry about the delay...

Golden Book (2 episodes)
The first multi-part story and you can tell why with a glance. It's shockingly adult, especially compared to the shit the comic strip offered in the same issues with Prey! It starts off as some kind of French farce as, late one night on Scorpio, a drunken Vila overhears Soolin turning down sex with Tarrant and getting the (entirely understandable) impression that the blonde babe is after Delta boy himself. Vila then gets even more drunk to summon up the Dutch courage to talk to Soolin, but is now so paralytic his attempts at being romantic come across as attempted rape. What's really disturbing is it's written from Vila's POV, so he can't quite get why Soolin is crying, begging for him to let her go, and won't give him a kiss. Until someone punches his lights out.

OK, just to summarise here, Vila tries to rape Soolin.

In the comic with him on the cover and the words WIN AN ATARI GAME CONSOLE.

If my mind didn't keep blowing, I'd have to say this is clearly a Double-Full-Fist moment for Blake's 7 Magazine and how it spits on the competition... mind you, a nearby issue of Doctor Who Magazine had the Fifth Doctor try to kill himself in suicidal despair after Lunar Lagoon...

Anyway, not even Avon can make a witty barb about this development and the crew fall into a shellshocked silence (bar Vila who is locked in a room and regularly punched unconscious by Tarrant, not getting a chance to explain the horrible misunderstanding). The gang decide to ditch Vila, but first they've been invited to an anti-Federation alliance by the Invectas, a bunch of rather nasty dark age colonists that indulge in human sacrifice. Having seen one of these events as a child (yes, they give an explanation why a farmer girl like her would have been on the planet) Soolin has no intention of going, and is more upset by the Aztec-like Invectas than by Vila's Sydney Bulldogs impersonation. Deciding they'll just have to ditch both Vila and Soolin after this adventure, Avon confronts the Invectas... and they want him to rule the alliance and thus the universe when they defeat the Federation. Avon really likes this idea, and it seems the Invectas are entirely above board on this angle. GOOD THINGS ARE GONNA HAPPEN!

Oh, one problem. The Golden Book of the title, the one where names are randomly taken from to choose the next sacrifice, has Soolin's name on it. And guess who's name has been pulled out? Cue Cliffhanger Epic Bigness!

The next bit, beginning with Avon in an unaccountably good mood for some reason, decides to forgive Vila his trespasses, on the promise he never touches booze again. Unfortunately, this tentative good mood is ruined when Soolin's drink is spiked with a roofie and she's dragged off for sacrifice. The Invectas explain the situation, and that Avon could save Soolin... as long as he wanted to ruin the alliance and give up any chance of ruling the universe. Avon shrugs and decides to chalk it down to experience and lets the priests take Soolin away on the grounds it would be "stupid and selfish" to do otherwise. Then he shoots Tarrant. Does he need a reason? However, Vila doesn't intend to waste his newfound sobriety and gets Dayna to teleport him into suicidal rescue mission to save Soolin from being skewered which eventually works. Unfortunately, the botched sacrifice is live on TV and Avon's lack of control over the crew gets him shamed and humiliated across the entire planet. The Invectas dub Avon a no-fist loser and tell him to rack off. As they leave the planet, Avon rants that Vila has screwed up absolutely everything up to an including the global financial crisis, destroyed the alliance, ruined Avon's chances of becoming ruler of the entire universe and generally fucked up today. Vila, still buzzing on being sober, tells Avon to get off his fucking high horse and hanging around with very gullible death-worshipping pagans. I mean, Blake wouldn't approve, would he? Yeah, that shuts up the man in black pretty well.

Avon goes to sulk and Vila, having saved Soolin's life and stolen the Golden Book (thus ending the whole sacrifice tradition), is forgiven for his disturbing antics in the previous episode.


Quantum Jump (2 episodes)
You know, Scorpio is a complete piece of crap, isn't it? It's been needing repairs in pretty much every story and no matter how many amazing weapons Avon bolts onto it, it still manages to breakdown. In fact, it's gotten so bad that even when you're using a flight simulator Scorpio goes out of control and crashes into random planets - by now that planet hopper must have a better crash rate than Starbug! Deciding she is completely sick of this crap, Dayna takes an unauthorized stroll on the surface and bumps into two Robert Holmes style bounty hunters who are loitering around the planet on the off-chance the rebels might be there. Avon reacts to this... in fact, bugger it, he overreacts. Completely. Despite the fact Dayna has a teleport bracelet and can be effortlessly snatched from danger, Avon decides to fire a lethal surge of electricity through said bracelet and fry her to death before she can be interrogated. Presumably this is supposed to demonstrate what a ruthless asshole Avon can be... but just makes him look like a complete moron, especially when his execution zap kills a bounty hunter who takes the bracelet off Dayna's wrist at the last second... Idiot.

The second episode begins with the crew recovering from the twin revelations that Avon has a) apparently murdered Dayna and b) dared to "reverse the polarity" in this particular sci-fi franchise. A predictable argument breaks out, as via the wonder of internal narrative we find out that Avon isn't remotely interested in Dayna's fate (yeah... sure...) and the gang decide to hunt down the bounty hunters who, brace yourself, are working for a certain Commissioner. However, it turns out that the surviving hunter is not much of a feminist judging by the way he keeps attacking the tied-up Dayna screaming "YOU'RE ALL BITCHES!!!" at thin air. Just as Scorpio is about to attack, Dayna appears on the screen with a gun at her head and behaving with all the calm self-composition of Tim Brooke-Tayler in his "teapot" mode. Avon is understandably unimpressed at this so-called Dayna and challenges the bounty hunters to waste the harlot. Servalan then takes the video phone and then threatens to brain-drain Dayna for all her kinky secrets of Xenon base or else Avon surrenders. He refers her to his previous answer of "fuck off and die".

At this point time starts going backwards. Why? I dunno, and niether does the writer. Somehow Scorpio's engines have gone into a temporal orbit and by doing the titular quantum jump the entire adventure can conveniently be reset as they blow up the bounty hunters before they reach Xenon and Dayna isn't captured and so none of it ever happened. Presumably the past versions of Avon, Vila, Tarrant and Soolin vanished in a puff of light before the Reapers arrive to cleanse the universe, because COME ON! Not only is that a shithouse ending, it goes against the grain of B7 entirely! Why the hell doesn't Avon kick Scorpio until it rewinds the universe to the events of Terminal so they can rescue Cally and the Liberator, huh? This story is just crap, like someone had a vague idea and then got a complete stranger to write it out...

Plague (2 episodes)
Stumbling across a deserted spaceship that smells like Baldrick's arse, Avon generously teleports Vila and Tarrant across to find out what happened. Could the title be a clue, I wonder? But our dysfunctional heroes find something more interesting than rotting corpses, some generic crystals that will make them filthy, stinking rich! For once, Vila's greed outstrips his hypochondria and, despite Avon's very clear orders, steals every crystal he can before being teleported back. Hmm, crystals and plagues... didn't we just do that in Diamond Death? Alas, it turns out that some freaky laser ray is what's causing this reflux of bubonic plague and Tarrant's been fatally zapped by it! Cliffhanger!

In part two, Orac explains the laser ray was used on the crew of the ship when they tried to steal the cargo of Oven Crystals... sorry, of Nevo Crystals... that they were supposed to be delivering to the Federation. This is good, since all they have to do is destroy the laser thing and they've got all the plague-free crystals. One problem, Vila casually nicked the laser ray on the grounds it looks just like Orac (or, to be completely accurate, the thing that looks like Orac that the Daleks use in Destiny of the Daleks) and brought it aboard Scorpio, and it's just minutes till it zaps everyone aboard the ship. Oh, the gods do punish us for our hubris! Avon immediately steals the recycled prop and teleports it back onto the ship, but he is SO pissed off with Vila he considers letting the little thief die of the plague he was zapped with in part one... but I think he might just want to see Dayna and Soolin beg him to save the day, the magnificent asshole. Choking on his own testosterone, Avon decides it's time to tackle the Federation ships that have arrived to collect the crystals themselves... which is of course being lead by Servalan. Alas, since Tarrant forgot to fix the stardrive with his pathetic excuse of dying from the titular plague, it's time for a space battle chase scene for a few pages... whereupon Servalan's forces are "Avoned" (that's how the Bitch in White herself describes the latest dues ex machina, rather like a Jeremy Beadle stunt). Does it really matter how he did it? Oh all right, he teleported Vila's looted crystals into deep space to be hit by a plasma bolt that exploded, taking out the plague ship and all the approaching pursuit ships. At least Avon didn't blow up ANOTHER solar system like he's been oft to do in these stories...


Cipher
After recent events, you can't blame Vila for not being eager to visit ANOTHER ghost ship full of corpses and a suspicious cargo: in this case the cause of death was a meteor strike and the precious item a lovely landscape painting with a spaceship. Avon decides to nick it and find out why a painting would be on a Federation ship, and to no one's surprise it was actually being taken to Servalan (who is disturbingly un-fussed about Avon pinching her property). Turns out the painting was done by Ras Jarvic (presumably Ven's brother), an infamous and very successful thief, scientist and all round badass who hasn't been seen for ten years. Just then Orace notes that Servalan's latest mission is leaving her a moving target for them to blow away, and thus a very obvious trap. Nevertheless, Avon lets the others persuade him to check it out and nearly get killed... you wouldn't think padding was needed in a nine-pages-including-illustrations story, would you? Avon concludes the trap was laid specifically so Servalan could steal the painting back: it contains a vital clue as to where Jarvic stashed his treasure a decade ago. Being even more cryptic than that bloody painting, Avon waffles about crosswords, has a nap, orders Tarrant to fly them to Jarvic's abandoned home planet, because a very vague clue in the painting is an acronym for something or other. Never mind, it's obviously right because Servalan got there ahead of them, having cunningly captured Scorpio in a scene not written (cause then they might have had to cut the space battle, and we never get enough of those!). After a classic Avon/Servalan bitch fest, a few escapes and captures, Avon hands over the cash in return for going free - not letting Servie realize that the cash are forgeries and the box they were kept in were the treasure. Gloating over the use of solid gold and useless banknotes, the story ends before anyone can go "Hang on, isn't this just the ending of Gold only unusually positive?"

The Comet
One of Servalan's lesser-known duties is to give the green light to projects from mad scientists who keep changing their names (Varngas or Vargas or Vargnas?!), and the latest one has a truly demented idea of the Comet, a tiny spaceship that can travel faster than absolutely anything and make a round trip of the solar system in less time than it takes to read this sentence. And given the ability to travel near-as-dammit instanteously across the universe... Servalan orders a remote-controlled spaceship piloted to Xenon (she knows Avon's there, presumably because she occasionally gets invited around for tea and scones, as in Wanderlust). After eight tries, a test pilot called Kagrin lands the Comet in a spaceship graveyard on Xenon and pretends to be a wandering salvage mechanic. He tricks Avon and Vila into taking the Comet for a test flight, which immediately slingshots them across the universe towards Earth. Trapped in the out-of-control shuttle, Avon and Vila decide a suicide pact will be called for, and will hopefully dismiss any comparisons to Orbit. Luckily, Dayna has a working braincell and suggests they get Orac to sort out this mess, a feat of logic that leaves Tarrant and Soolin feeling rather faint. The Comet does a handbrake turn at ten times the speed of light, saving Avon from embarrassment as he couldn't suck it up enough to shoot Vila, even when the guy was going "Stop pissing about and get it over with you sadistic git!" at him. Kagrin gets the usual Servalan farewell gesture, exploding in such a way it looks like a real comet. But don't worry about both sides having access to super-speed technology, it'll all be forgotten by next week...


Takeover
This story was actually written by a reader, Pamela Wright, as a sequel to Headhunter (an episode her children adored). It turns out that getting a million volts of direct current is a tad too much even for a hard bastard like Avon, who faints and leaves the crew to fend for themselves and change all the lightbulbs that burnt out in Xenon Base after the power surge blew them all. Orac decides to become leader in Avon's absence, and everyone goes along with it mainly so they'll be able to shut Avon up the next time he goes on about him being "indispensible". While Vila is left trying to convince the dazed Avon this is NOT a Federation trapTM, the others are sent to make sure the base is silent running so a passing pursuit ship won't detect anything (Orac gives a fig leaf of an explanation for why Xenon is the arse-end of nowhere on TV and the middle of the universe in the magazine: apparently this part of the galaxy is only given cursory inspection by work experience mutoids, and is thus incredibly easy to hide in... ah, only in fan-fic!) Speaking of fanwank, while Soolin moons over Dorian and Dayna broods over Cally, Tarrant realizes Avon's having flashbacks to his torture in Rumors of Death! And so, while Orac scares off the pursuit ships, Dayna and Tarrant dump Avon in Dorian's bedroom with Soolin in the hope these, uh, relaxing surroundings will calm the madman down. Managing to seduce and sedate Avon simultaneously... Pam, you wrote this for your kids? - the computer genius is still up and about, but Orac decides not to give him the "hah, you suck" speech and let him think he's still the undisputed ruler. Guess, Orac's not stupid after all...


Stress Fracture
Another fan-written piece, this one by Mary Moulden. Picking up with the usual "scuffle with pursuit ship leaves Scorpio completely stuffed", Tarrant discovers an eponymous stress fracture in the hull, which could kill them all. Fixing it on Scorpio would take years with their limited resources, so Avon decides to head for the dockyards of Burnet, a planet currently at war with the Federation. To cut a long story short, Avon locates the resistance and pimps out Orac to the rebels like the gangsta bitch he is. Using Orac in a military fashion, the Federation are defeated in a few days (hmmm... and they don't do this more often because?!?). Avon asks in return a free refit at the dockyards. As everyone boggles at how easy and successful this trip has been, Vila wonders what Blake would say if he could see them now. "Probably that he could do better," Avon grumbles.


Hand of Fate (2 episodes)
Throwing aside any kind of continuity, the Federation are now conquering other galaxies now, and so Avon has decided to join a rebel uprising to protect the Mantobac galaxy from the evil empire, an action that pisses off Vila so much you'd think he was as annoyed by the continuity errors as I am. It turns out that Avon is old friends with Emperor Talon of the Mantobac galaxy (no doubt they were at Eton together) and with Orac they soon work out a strategy that will kick some serious intergalactic arse. Of course, someone on Talon's side is a traitor and the Federation is setting whacking great trap and Vila happens to overhear the evil Commander Findel twittering what an evil bastard he is and so on. After spending ages trying to tell Avon about this rather obvious plot twist, it turns out Avon already guessed and Talon confronts the traitor. Who runs away, switches off the battle-fleet's detector shield, and hijacks Scorpio as one freaking huge, and I mean HUGE space war begins. Tarrant manages to regain control of Scorpio and rushes to help out Avon and Talon as the battle fleet is blown to smithereens. In the confusion of battle, Avon accidently sends the flagship crashing into some planet or other, and Tarrant soon follows with the others in Scorpio. And, just when things couldn't get more predictable, it turns out that Servalan's joining events to see how the plot's been chugging alone without her.

Finally the first episode ends with Servalan promptly buggering off on the grounds Avon and his pals are on a planet of unspecified no escape and will all no doubt die in short order.

Onto part two. After several pages of well-characterized but generally uneventual banter (culminating with Soolin telling Vila to kill himself if he's so convinced they're doomed), Servalan decides to come back to make sure Avon's dead, snogging and stabbing main characters in that way what she does. It turns out this planet is lethal because it is contaminated with "incurable space leprosy", also known as "Galista Disease", and the leper inhabitants are really quite nice and helpful. This being Blake's 7, we only find it out after Tarrant has tried to kill them all in mindless paranoia. After discussing possible plans to get the lepers their freedom (they've found a cure to their infectiousness), Emperor Talon decides everything's lost and to hang out with the lepers while Avon, the others and the lepers' normal-looking children escape in Scorpio. Servalan arrives and gets a rather freaky "UNCLEAN!!!" welcome that almost, but not quite, keeps her on the planet long enough to be nuked. Talon and the lepers are all dead, but the innocent children survived and... ah, who cares?


Probe
After all the times Farscape rips-off Blake's 7, a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimy revenge is made and the definitive Farscape plot (the entire cast go batshit insane because of some passing alien and try to kill each other with even more hilarity than usual) is revealed to be done aboard Scorpio over a dozen years earlier! Yep, it seems like a usual afternoon aboard the freighter: Tarrant is bigging himself up like a messiah, Vila's getting drunk, Avon's brooding and Soolin is mastering icy put-downs. But then things get out of hand - Tarrant's ego begins to overshadow Tom Baker, Vila nearly dies of alcohol poisoning, Avon locks himself in his bedroom, and Soolin becomes the reincarnation of Whichever Bitch Runs The Local Weakest Link Franchise. Dayna realizes that something is exaggerating their behavior to dangerous levels, and Tarrant decides that he is God and thus will rule Scorpio forever, and Soolin takes his side for the sheer hell of it, while Avon's paranoia has been cranked up beyond 100 Lawrence Miles, and we ain't got a name for that one yet! Luckily, Avon's ruthless pragmatism is proportionally expanded, so Dayna is able to convince him to bury his homicidal urges and find out what's happening... and, hey, if Tarrant gets beaten to death in the middle, no one's going to complain. The truth is out: a funky missile, a "probe" if you will, has pierced Scorpio and is zapping all their brains - it's another Servalan trap and her fleet is closing in, expecting the crew to have killed each other by now. Avon cunningly fires the missile at Servalan's ship, damaging it and allowing Scorpio to escape. Furious, Servalan executes the scientist that came up with this plan, and then the technicians that built it, and the guards who happened to be passing... and it's only as she's killed her entire crew and is dumping them out the airlock that we twig the probe's worked its wicked magic on her too. The brilliant ending has a very bruised and humbled Tarrant thank Avon in admiration for sparing the asshole's life in such circumstances. Avon glares at him and says, "I didn't spare you, Tarrant. I just missed." Crowning Moment of Awesome.


Altered-Image
The story starts with what seems to be a disturbing slash fic alt-universe version of Blake: Vila, Soolin and Dayna teleport on Gauda Prime, find shelter in a hut and discover it full of food, drink and booze. After sating their appetites, they're about to have a three-way sex session (no, this time I'm not exaggerating for comedic effect) when a very battered, bitter and unhappy Tarrant arrives. It strikes Vila and the girls their memory of recent events is hazy and they're all suffering inexplicable aches and pains (Vila has a sore back, Soolin has stomach cramps and Dayna has hurt her throat) which seem to be inexplicably fading away. Everything becomes more dreamlike as Vila slides away from the hut... and wakes up on the tracking gallery on Gauda Prime, in agony after being shot in the back and watching as Avon guns away the troopers. Vila makes a choice and snaps back to the hut with the others, musing it will be a long time before Avon joins them. Oh well, given how brutal the magazine was over the shootout, I suppose this is the happiest ending we could have for the gang, sitting out eternity chilling out with pizza, music and orgiastic sex... Tarrant'd be a bit of a killjoy though...


A New Beginning
Another fan effort (this time by Harry Waller), and the first ever PGP story ever published which, ergo, makes it canon. Yep, Servalan was the one behind the operation on Gauda Prime but doesn't get to the tracking gallery to stop Avon getting shot to pieces. Ignoring the smutty inuendo from her troopers, she has the dying madman taken to her ship and, once she finds Orac and the key, tells the computer to heal her foe. Orac tells her to fuck off, laughs in her face and switches off, declaring Avon dead. Meanwhile, the troopers prepare to blow up Blake's base when someone kills the commander, steals his uniform and then nicks Servalan's ship while she pops out for a smoke, er, to compose herself after Avon's death. But who is this mysterious disguised figure? Why, it's Vila of course! Just because the previous story said he was dead, hah, that means nothing - but our little Delta Grade is in a mean mood and convinced Avon was somehow working with Servalan all along. Which is something Avon denies when he comes back from the dead. Ahah, you see, Avon wasn't dead, just knackered and Orac lied! No one bothered to check, so we have three of the gang alive and well in a spaceship and an evil empire to overthrow - as good a reset button as you could ask for. The story ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, with Vila wondering if he should team up with Avon again or just blow his head off.

We never do find out what he chose...