Eye of the Machine - Blake's 7

'Eye of the Machine' is one of two DVD's sold as a set, the other being 'Point of No Return'.  They are both prequels to the new Blake's 7 audio dramas.

'Eye of the Machine' is by Ben Aaronovitch and it's a well-written drama.  Colin Salmon plays Kerr Avon, Keeley Hawes is Anna Grant, and I greatly enjoyed Geoffrey Palmer as Professor Ensor.

I liked it a lot better on the second pass than on the first, and I suspect that may be the case for many fans of the original series.  When a series is rewritten, a lot of the back story inevitably changes with it.  The same characters walk the stage, and their key relationships remain, but all the details do not.  After all, if they remained identical, there would be no possibility of surprise or any real sense of dramatic tension.  The real questions then are whether the new series captures the spirit of the old and whether the stories work as dramas in their own right.

On my second listening, I was no longer thrown off balance by discovering that Avon, a relatively naive student from a provincial planet who has come to Oxford to study artificial intelligence under Professor Ensor.  Ensor, the leader in his field, is very dismissive of those below his own social level, but with the help of his new girlfriend, Anna Grant, Avon is able to get Ensor to listen to his ideas.

Anna is a political activist for the Freedom Party and Avon falls in love with her during an entertaining argument on how the heath service could reasonably reduce its budget (this is the future, so Avon's suggestion is one that seems counter-intuitive to our ears until he explains it).  Avon, a non-political animal, is persuaded by Anna to help out.  In some ways, he's more cynical about the government than she is, but far less interested in getting involved.  Anna starts to change that and infect him with her beliefs.

How does it all turn out?

Well, we know our Avon (in both series).  He's totally cynical and thinks getting involved is a bad idea - this is one version of what gave him those beliefs.

Oh yes, what is Anna studying?   Funny you should mention it.  She's a post-graduate in psycho-dynamics...


I'll be reviewing the second CD shortly, but I'd say the pair are good value for money.  The Vila/Gan back story, while reasonably well written, wasn't as good as this pair.

Point of No Return - Blake's 7 audio

'Point of No Return' is a pre-series story about Travis.  I don't feel this one stood up to a second listening as well as 'Eye of the Machine' did, although I was quite impressed on the first pass.

The basic difficulty in reviewing this CD is that the plot revolves around whether Carl Varon is innocent or guilty of the charges against him, and I really don't to give that away, yet the way Travis deals with that issue is central to the story.

Carl Varon is a leader of the Radical Party, more extreme in their views than Roj Blake's Freedom Party.    There are extremists in the Radical who believe in terrorist methods to overthrow the government and the key question is whether Varon is one of them, or whether he has been skillfully framed. Varon has specifically asked for Stefan Travis to be his defence at the trial, on the grounds that although part of a system Varon sees as corrupt, Travis is idealistic enough to consider the possibility of his innocence, rather than condemning him outright on the evidence of some suspect tapes.

The good part of the writing is that the listener can see factors that suggest both innocence and guilt, although a big annoyance was that a key recording with a piece of distorted text had it so distorted that I couldn't work out what was actually being said - which was frustrating as it was apparantly related to a terrorist plot.

The terrorist plot is important as it is intended to raise questions of what it is ethically acceptable to do to get information from a terrorist in order to save lives.  However, (and this is where I feel the story falls down), the bar at which a character might be expected to feel guilt over his actions has been set at the wrong level.  Or maybe I'm wrong... Perhaps each listener has to decide that one for themselves.

Before you listen to it, ask yourself which of the following is true:

Would you feel deep regret for your actions if you tortured a man:

To discover if he was innocent or guilty?
To find out what he knows, if you're convinced he's guilty? 
To find out if there's a bomb when you know he has terrorist connections and there's an event they want to disrupt?
To find the location of a bomb when you have good reason to believe there is one, even if you're not sure if he was involved in planting it?
To find the location of a bomb when you have good reason to believe there is one and that your prisoner knows where it is?
To fnd out who else was involved after a bomb has gone off and you know your prisoner was involved?
For any reason under any circumstances.

Craig Kelly was very convincing as Travis - I hear mental shades of both Stephen Greiff and Brian Croucher when I listen to him.  It's just the script that I feel reaches a trifle too far for idealism and thus ultimately fails to convince.  (If Travis had been portrayed as more naive, I'd have gone for it, but he's written as intelligent and perfectly willing to be cynical - I just don't quite buy the very end of the drama.)  I'd rate it three out of five, wheres Eye of the Machine is worth four or five out of five.