Maximum Power!

Last weekend I was cat-sitting for my middle brother and discovered he had three series of Blake's 7 hidden on his bookshelf. I had seen series 1 and 2 in the last five years, but hadn't seen series 3 since it was last repeated in the eighties, so I gave that a go. And I have to say, I still bloody loved it.

I wasn't so much of a fan of the original line-up. Flicky Jenna, boring Gan and vain thesp Blake were better off dead in my book. And one big criticism of series 3 by fans is that it had lost its sense of quest: Blake was always trying to ferment revolution in the first two, and Avon had gone Blake crazy by the 4th, but in the third our anti-heroes seemed happy to potter about playing board games and get tricked into handing the Liberator over to the federation every other story. The thing is, I always thought the quest was a bit boring. I prefered them when they were just arsing about being sneered at by Avon (Paul Darrow doing a similar trick to his peer Tom Baker of delivering his lines quickly and in a monotone so that you always felt you were watching someone a bit other-worldly).

The big treat this season was the arrival of Someone Who Could Really Act. Josette Simon's many glittering post-Blake credits attest to her versatility, but I'm glad the BBC got to her first. Dayna, introduced in the first story of the season, hiding out with her medallion-man dad on a rough old planet covered in horse-riding barbarians, is a deadly weapons expert. Well, she was in this and about two other of the stories this season when they remembered it. But no matter what she was given, Josette was as dignifed as it was possible to be when playing a harp in a dream sequence, arguing with Servalan about who looks best in an assymetric toga or snogging both Avon and Tarrant. Both Dayna and Josette's talents were squandered, but even so it was great having her being sarky and stunningly beautiful on the Liberator – especially when intelligent, strong black women characters were virtually unknown on British telly.

But the next story introduces us to Tarrant, Somone With A Silly Voice. That was Stephen Pacey's big problem, really. Introduced as an alpha-male Blake-a-like, seemingly a Federation trooper till revealed as a naughty bandit, Tarrant spoke like someone taking the piss out of macho men on television. But, unlike Dayna, he gets loads to do. He's always teleporting down and shooting stuff, or arguing with Avon. But he never does anything remotely interesting. Even when, in the penultimate episode of this season, he turns up in a wig as his own brother engaged in a duel to the death with an android, you end up caring more about the brother than you do about Tarrant.

Cally gets tons to do. Like Tarrant, haunted Jan Leeming-lookalike and telepath Cally gets to play her own sibling in a particularly dull story, and then gets possessed in a totally bonkers episode where she ends up dolled up like Florence and the Machine and gets the rest of the crew to do magic tricks and sing. And she also snogs Avon, who is doing rather well out of the ladies this series considering he looks like Blackadder II. Cally also seems to teleport down everywhere despite the fact she's rubbish while trained warrior Dayna is left behind to push buttons and invent bombs she hides in her own mouth (bizarrely).

Vila. Now there was a man after my own heart. Coward, joker, dreamer and utter failure, Vila didn't get to do much ths series other than moan at Orac and Zen, drink green liquid and - oh yes - become leader of the world in one of the best ever stories, City at the Edge of the World. That was the things about series 3 - there wasn't much point, but some of the stories were fantastic. It's tremendously good fun. Well, apart from Volcano, which makes absolutely no sense and has an overuse of terrible stock footage, and Moloch, which has such a spectacularly bad ending that you almost feel dirty for having watched it.

But Avon and Servalan really dominate the season. Avon is rather passive, considering the weakness of the Federation at the start of the season following the intergalactic war, so Servalan does all of the chasing. And she crops up in almost every story, slinking about in her ugly dead baby crocodile spaceship and trying to get her hands on the Liberator. And you can see why - it's bloody cool. Zen is up there with K9 for me as most lamented childhood loss. Considering she's so powerful, Servalan shows she's a very hands-on kinda manager. She's always hiding behind the next door or chained to the wall round the corner. But you get some sense of her importance in the brilliant Rumours of Death, set in a stately home on earth she's had reconstructed, where hoards of guards are protecting her from the rebels. Avon is understandably annoyed that the one woman he ever loved - Anna Grant - turned out to be the Federation's best agent. Still, they get to snog, and he also snogs Servalan twice, turning him into the unlikeliest sex object in the universe. Amazing what a bit of black leather will do.

The finale, Terminal, is bloody brilliant. Very subdued and atmospheric. Avon off on a mysterious mission, thinks he's found Blake, oops, no, it's Servalan again, natch. The Liberator takes a bath in some corrosive fungi which basically covers the whole ship with snot and kills it. And when Servalan finally gets her manicured nails on it the whole thing immediately blows up around her. What an ending! And what a fun series. I haven't even got round to the giant brain or the fetuses. This was made at the same time as Tom Baker was having a high old time with his Mrs, Lalla Ward, on the budget and strike-hit fag end of his residency in the Tardis, and it shows - there's the same degree of shambolic production values and plotting-by-numbers going on by both Douglas Adams at Doctor Who and Chris Boucher at Blake's 7. But in the end, both of them turned out some glorious stuff, hugely entertaining successes and failures that lit up my childhood and made me the nerdy telly addict I am today. Thank god my brother had the boxed set. Now I want season 4!