An Unexpected Return
When the third season of Blake’s 7 finished shooting, everyone involved believed it was the final end for the series. Terminal had been planned as the series finale and brought the series to a suitably downbeat conclusion. It came as a surprise to the cast and production team when it was announced during the end credits that the series would be returning. Paul Darrow initially believed he had been written out of the series without his knowledge. Apparently BBC Controller Bill Cotton had been so impressed with the third season finale that he spontaneously requested a fourth season. Producer David Maloney was unable to return as he was already committed to a fourth series of When the Boat Comes In as well as an adaptation of The Day of the Triffids. Terrence Dudley turned down the job, so Maloney suggested Vere Lorrimer instead as he was the most experienced director on the show. Lorrimer was initially reluctant but eventually decided it was too good a chance to pass up. “It was one of those decisions you had to say yes to, because if you didn’t, you would have never had the opportunity to do such a job again.” There was no handing over period as Maloney had already moved on to other productions.
Terry Nation
One of the first things Lorrimer did was visit Terry Nation in Hollywood. The series’ creator still had script approval and all major changes to the format had to be approved by him. They discussed the kind of progression they wanted for the series; one idea being to make things much tougher for the characters. Lorrimer recalled the meeting in an interview with TV Zone, “We talked at length about themes for the new series. We decided that the heroes could no longer retreat from the Federation, as they had lost both Blake and the Liberator, that attack was their only defence.” Nation and Lorrimer only had one day in Los Angeles and the show’s creator would ultimately have very little involvement in the fourth series. However he was impressed with Lorrimer’s enthusiasm as he related to TV Zone “We had a new producer, who came out to see me. He spoke with great enthusiasm, and again they talked about the kind of progression we wanted. It was one day in Hollywood, that’s all we had. I was already working for Columbia, and I had not been able to give it as much thought as I had wanted. I came up with some ideas about the way we wanted to progress, but I was six thousand miles away, and it was up to them.” Nation was later very critical of how the series turned out. Lorrimer was aware that the odds were stacked against this series as so many of the familiar elements had been lost. He discussed these concerns in an interview with Starburst shortly prior to broadcast, “Whatever happens, we will be criticised, of course. The fans loved the Liberator and the cast. But we hope they’ll like the new people too.”
Scripting
Chris Boucher was pleased to see the series return and was available to commence script-editing duties. However the late commissioning meant that he had to rush to get scripts together for the first block of filming. To make matters worse, he was informed by the Writer’s Guild that he could only write two episodes for the series. Boucher decided to use one of his allocated episodes immediately and commissioned himself to write the opening episode Rescue in Autumn 1980. The next episodes to be commissioned were Robert Holmes’ Traitor and Roger Parkes’ Headhunter. Stardrive, Power and Animals completed the first batch of episodes. For the purposes of continuity, Rescue had to pick up on events directly after the conclusion of Terminal, and establish a new format for the series. Although Terminal had been planned as the final episode, Terry Nation had left a few loose ends which indicated a potential way forward for the crew. This included Servalan leaving behind her old ship and underground base and Vila rescuing Orac from the Liberator. Boucher felt that this was a little too easy and decided to destroy Servalan’s ship in the opening scene along with the underground complex. The explosion would also temporarily put Orac out of the picture. This was part of the strategy to make things tougher for the crew in the fourth series.
Goodbye Cally
Of the cast, only Paul Darrow and Michael Keating were immediately keen to return for another series. Darrow was particularly keen to explore the darker sides of Avon’s character, “I wanted to dissect Avon’s personality, carry his moods to extremes, emphasise his faults and reveal the savagery required of such a man in such a hostile environment.” Boucher instructed the writers to keep the other characters loose as it wasn’t clear who else would be returning. Josette Simon and Steven Pacey agreed to return but both were keen to make this their final year with the series. Jan Chappell was tired of the show and indicated that she would not be returning. She had first expressed a desire to move on during filming of The Harvest of Kairos the previous year. “I was so adamant that I wouldn’t do anything, but then that was the only way I felt I could deal with leaving. I absolutely stuck by my guns and said “No, I’m not doing anything in a fourth series”. Despite such firm intentions, it was initially felt that the actress would return for at least part of the series and Cally was included in the first 6 scripts. Animals in particular would focus heavily on the character. The production team made every effort to persuade Chappell to return but she was determined to leave. Lorrimer and Boucher hoped that Cally could at least feature in one episode to explain the character’s fate. “The BBC did put an awful lot of pressure on me. They said “Well, all right will you do five episodes? Well all right, will you do two episodes? Will you do one? And I just kept thinking “No, no, no…”I should be so lucky to be wanted like that now.” Boucher’s script was quite far along when it became clear Chappell would not be returning at all. “Jan Chappell decided that she didn’t want to do the series, and she decided that at very short notice, I already had her in four scripts. As far as I remember, I had four scripts written, and she was supposed to be in six, and suddenly she decided she didn’t want to do it. I had to kill her off screen.” Darrow and Keating were particularly sad to see Chappell leave and Darrow tried to persuade the actress to return. “I liked Jan Chappell very much. I thought she was lovely. And she was a very good actress and a nice girl, a very nice girl. And we had a lot of fun. She was a good moral point and she was nice to work with and the scenes you could write for her were interesting. It was sad that she left. She decided that she didn’t want to do any more and I rang her up… and she said ‘No, I really don’t want to do it.’ She has a small child, and she wanted to spend more time with him, so that’s why she didn’t want to do it.”
A Violent Death
Boucher decided to use the explosion set by Servalan to explain Cally’s death and had hoped to have off-screen dialogue for the character to ensure dramatic impact but Chappell only agreed to provide a brief voiceover to clarify Cally’s fate. “She refused to do even lines off screen, except for the one word, so I had to write around that.” Chapell felt that a violent death was appropriate as the character had narrowly avoided such a fate on a number of occasions. “I suggested to Vere when I went to the voice recording that you see a bit of green leather go up in the air and an odd boot, and a bit of permed hair! It would be wonderful – why not? It would have to be a violent death. I can hardly imagine holding Paul’s hand and saying “Goodbye” – it would be too much!” Ultimately Chappell’s contribution was limited to just to just two words – “Vila” and “Blake”. Boucher explained Cally’s final words in an interview with Anorak Zone. “Blake was the reason everyone was where they were and where they ended up. Blake seemed the appropriate death cry.” Chappell has since expressed regret that she did not return for a final episode. “It was quite unnecessary really, I could at least have done a dying episode which would probably have been quite fun. But at that time I was very self-absorbed and I wanted to do something else, I was tired and fed up with it.”
Hello Soolin
Lorrimer and Boucher devised a replacement character, Soolin, who was a beautiful gunslinger from Darlon IV. The character would need to provide a contrast with Dayna and Lorrimer was keen to steer clear of another ‘alien’ character. “I didn’t want another one like Cally who could mysteriously read your mind. I was trying to move toward a reality because I believe in the year 30,000 the people who will be in space will be flesh and blood. They will be real people.” Lorrimer chose Glynis Barber to play Soolin having seen her in a production of Once in a Lifetime at the RSC and having auditioned her for When the Boat Comes In. Barber had played a Mutoid in the first series episode, Project Avalon, and found it easy to fit in with the regular cast and crew. Due to the hurried production schedule, very little time was available to tailor existing scripts for the new character. As Lorrimer recalled in an interview with Starlog, “At first we couldn’t find any character for Soolin – as there was no love interest in Blake’s 7, we couldn’t have her as a sexy siren, for example. I remember saying to Glynis, ‘Well, we haven’t quite got a character for Soolin, will you have a go?” Barber was less than pleased with her role in the initial script and was disappointed that elements from the character’s detailed background notes were not featured in the story. “It’s very difficult to establish a character – especially when you’re coming in as one of the regulars on so little. They gave me a little typed sheet which said she comes from this planet, her parents were murdered, she avenged their death and all that, but that was it. I mean how the audience will know all that I don’t know.” Barber was often handed scripts that had ‘Cally’ scored out and replaced with ‘Soolin’. Barber was particularly unhappy with the script for Rescue, “It was definitely underwritten – especially my introduction, which I thought was very poor, probably one of the smallest and most unexciting introductions you could give a character.” She related in an interview with Horizon that she felt the character of Dorian was far more interesting. “I had one of my first fan letters when they had shown that episode, one little boy wrote to me and said “I’m just writing to tell you, I like you, even though no-one else in my class did, and they all wanted Dorian to stay and not you”, Great! Mind you, I don’t blame them – he had a much better part in the first episode, didn’t he?”
The Rust-Bucket
With the Liberator destroyed, the series would need a new ship. Scorpio was intended to be a run-down mining ship and was designed by Jim Francis and Andy Lazell to provide a contrast with the sleek Liberator. The designers were influenced by the grimy technology of the Star Wars and Alien movies as Francis admitted in an interview with TV Zone, “When we came to design the Scorpio, we were very aware of the feature films around at the time, which made us want to do one better. The design came out of the script – it was built almost as it was described, a rusting old heap. Although I would never have admitted it at the time, there was a Star Wars influence creeping in.” Lorrimer was also keen to provide something different to other sci-fi TV shows of the time, “Battlestar Galactica have spaceships the size of the Queen Mary, so I thought I would take a leaf out of Alien’s book and have something that is more grotty, more metallic.” Several designs were drawn up as the original idea developed, as Francis recalled “Scorpio was originally supposed to be a sort of transporter that went around ripping other ships to pieces. Then, as scripts and ideas started evolving, instead of just lumbering through space as a transporter, it sometimes had to become a fast flying machine. So we had to redesign it and make it look more streamlined so it looked as if it could fly fast. It just kept changing and changing until eventually we came up with a shape that looked good on screen.”
Xenon Base
The crew would also be given a base of operations which was also designed by Lazell and Francis. Lorrimer was keen on the idea of a base as he felt it added another dose of realism for the series as well as providing directors with more options for interesting shots, “We’ll be able to sit around and genuinely eat, drink and presumably go to the loo. Nobody could ever do that on the Liberator. Now they can sit around in this crew room, relax and talk; they can go into the base operations and plan what they’re going to do; they can go up by jump-jet into the Scorpio and then up and away into the stars and do their action bits.” The Xenon Base model set was a twelve-foot cavern constructed at Ealing Studios. New weapons called clip guns were created to look more functional than the elaborate Liberator guns. They were intended to include different colour-coded clips which would change the function of the weapon. Ultimately this idea would only feature in Rescue and Sand. The guns were fitted with a flash charge to avoid any post production effects. The teleport bracelets were also given a makeover which reflected the more functional direction that Lorrimer was taking the series, “The old bracelets were pretty brown and mauve things but, every time they fell on the floor, they bounced because they were made of plastic. These new ones are made of titanium and fall with a loud clatter. I hope it will all go with the solid metal feel we have in this new ship.”
Slave
A new computer was introduced called Slave which would be voiced by Peter Tuddenham who decided to make him a cringing Uriah Heep character with a slight cockney accent. The original idea was to make Slave a character in his own right who would be plugged into the ship rather than simply being a box of flashing lights. During early discussions of the series, Lorrimer indicated that Slave would hang upside down from the ceiling and would have a head, neck and shoulders. Ultimately a more traditional route was taken. In the script Slave was described as “a console covered on all surfaces with a mosaic of small tightly-packed lights which flash in slow, random patterns.” The prop was constructed by a freelance FX firm called Unit 22. They would later provide the new look Cybermen for Doctor Who. The regular cast were given new uniforms designed by Nicky Rocker. It was decided to restrict the cast to two costumes each for the whole series. Again, this was to reflect the harsh conditions the crew were experiencing. For continuity purposes, Darrow, Simon and Pacey wore costumes from Terminal for the initial scenes in Rescue. The wrong costume was used for Michael Keating, who was mistakenly given the costume from Ultraworld. Certain members of the cast were apparently concerned about fitting into these costumes as there had been a longer gap than usual between filming!
Origins
When devising the central guest character for Rescue, Boucher took his inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s supernatural novel A Picture of Dorian Gray. Published in 1891, it tells the story of a hedonistic young man who retains his youthful looks while his increasingly dissolute ways causes his portrait, which is kept locked away in the attic, to age and become as twisted and ugly as his real personality. At the climax of the novel Dorian stabs the portrait causing all his corruption to be released resulting in his death while the portrait returns to its original state. Boucher felt that this concept would provide a solid central mystery to the episode while leaving room to establish the new format for the series. Mary Ridge was chosen to direct the episode; partly to retain continuity with Terminal but also because the cast and crew had been impressed by her abilities. She was keen to return as she felt she could improve on the work she did for the previous series.
Casting Dorian
For Rescue a crucial element would be the casting of Dorian and Ridge offered the part to 31 year old actor Geoffrey Burridge. He recalled his casting in an interview with Horizon “Mary Ridge saw me in Sons and Lovers and I got a call from my agent while I was up in Leicester saying that Mary wanted to meet me about a part in Blake’s 7 and I rushed down on a day return and met her. Sons and Lovers had been on the night before and she had seen it and gave me the script and said that I should read it and if I liked it she would very much like me to do it.” Burridge liked the script and was keen to make suggestions. He thought the initial look for Dorian was too clean-cut and suggested adding the old rag around his neck to scruff him up a bit. He also made a few slight changes to the script. Burridge wanted to make a clear distinction between the Dorian who was pretending to be a salvage man and the true lunatic at the end. This task was made more difficult for the actor as the episode was filmed out of sequence.
On Location
Filming began on Monday 23rd February, 1981 at Perton Hill where Ridge and her crew recreated the look of the planet Terminal. The underground complex set had been retained in storage as had a couple of Link costumes. Although two actors were present on location as Links, only one appeared in the finished edit. The script had originally featured a sequence with Dayna and Vila falling into a giant spider’s web but this was changed to a further sequence with the snake-like creature shown earlier in the episode. This creature was made by special effects technicians, Andy Lazell and Jim Francis. For the scene where Avon shoots the creature, too many explosives were placed in the prop which meant that Ridge could not get the scene she wanted.
In Studio
A small amount of filming was carried out at Ealing studios in March for the sequences on the staircase leading down to Dorian’s mysterious chamber. After filming was completed, rehearsals commenced on Monday 30th March. Taping took place on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th April in TC6. The first session covered scenes set in the chamber entrance, sequences in the crew room, the silo entrance, most of the scenes in the ops room on Xenon Base and the subterranean transfer chamber. Nicky Rocker used a Sea Devil costume from Doctor Who to represent the creature in Dorian’s room. This resulted in a complaint from Doctor Who producer John Nathan Turner. Mary Ridge was alarmed when she saw the creature as it did not reflect the description in the script. “The thing that came out of the smoke was supposed to be a nothing: some sort of globule with only a shaped head, so all that was need was a drape-like thing on a frame that would be able to flow out of the smoke. I think Nicky ran out of money or whatever, and he produced this strange, serpent-like, scaly thing, and there was not time to do anything about it, except to put more smoke in there. Vere thought it was alright, but I was very alarmed by it, because I’d just seen it as some sort of moving mass, a sort of jelly-fish like thing. Anyway, that was one of the compromises, but not long after Vere came into the office in a dreadful state, and said, “I’ve just had John Nathan-Turner onto me, saying why have we used one of his creatures for our creature?” I said, “There’s no good looking at me”. There was a row about it, and quite rightly.” Lorrimer managed to appease Turner by pointing out that the creature would be enshrouded in fog and no-one would recognise it. The second recording session included the first use of the Scorpio set, the later crew room scenes and the concluding scenes in the ops room. The Scorpio set was designed by Roger Cann with input from Mary Ridge. The set was designed to allow varied camera angles and would be much more robust and easier to light than the Liberator. Monitors were built into the consoles which included computer graphics. There were a number of short sequences edited from the original script including Vila bemoaning the destruction of Liberator and Cally’s death. A lengthy sequence was also deleted from the end of the episode which would have shown Avon destroying Dorian’s room.
New Titles
Dudley Simpson composed a revised version of the theme tune which was used for the closing credit sequence. Vere Lorrimer wrote lyrics for the theme tune and had planned to have Steven Pacey sing them. Pacey’s agent was not too keen on the idea and it never came to pass. A new title sequence was required as the Liberator no longer featured in the series. The new credit sequence was shot as if the viewer was in a spaceship flying at great speed over the surface of a moonscape and then into deep space. An instrument panel was included with constantly changing visual displays. Lorrimer described this as a ‘fascinator’, the idea being that the viewer sees a little more each time they watch it. The series logo was also redesigned as a further indication that the series had evolved. The logo and title sequence were designed by BBC graphics designer Doug Burd. Sadly Burd was killed in a flying accident shortly after completing his work on the series. He was only 29 years old.
Publicity
A 90 second trailer was broadcast the week prior to screening including scenes of Dorian rescuing the crew, the flight to Xenon and Scorpio on the launch pad. The episode was also promoted with a 2 page colour feature in the Radio Times which focussed on fans of the series particularly the Liberator Popular Front. Rescue was broadcast on 28/9/1981 and had a viewing figure of 7.8m with a UK Chart Position of 75. It was well received by the fans, coming second in the Horizon season poll, after Blake. The episode was novelised in Scorpio Attack! (published in 1981) along with Traitor and Stardrive. The novel included scenes and dialogue deleted before transmission. It was also novelised alongside Terminal in the fan publication To Lose: To Win by Patrick Chapman. Rescue was released on video in a slightly edited format on 7th June 1993 along with Terminal. The edited scenes included Dorian walking away after Avon says “No problem”, the beginning of Scorpio’s descent on the launch pad, Soolin setting out the glasses on the tray and Soolin climbing up the stairs at the end. The same version was re-released on 7th June 1999 with a photographic cover and as part of a VHS box set on 29th March 2004. It is due for a DVD release in 2006.
Credits
Main Cast
Paul Darrow – Avon
Michael Keating – Vila
Steven Pacey – Tarrant
Josette Simon – Dayna
Peter Tuddenham – Orac & Slave
Guest Cast
Glynis Barber – Soolin
Geoffrey Burridge – Dorian
Rob Middleton – The Creature
Jan Chappell – Cally (voice only)
Crew
Stuart Fell- Stunt Co-ordinator
Ralph Wilton – Production Manager
Frank Pendlebury – Production Associate
Valerie Turner – Production Assistant
Josephine Ward – Assistant Floor Manager
Fintan Sheehan – Film Cameraman
John Tellick – Film Sound
Sheila S. Tomlinson – Film Editor
Jim Francis/Andy Lazell – Visual Effects Designers
Francis Smith – Properties Buyer
Robin Lobb – Video Effects
Sam Upton – Videotape Editor
Doug Burd – Graphic Designer
Dave Hare – Technical Manager
Dave White – Senior Cameraman
Nigel Finnis – Vision Mixer
Warwick Fielding – Studio Lighting
Malcolm Johnson – Studio Sound,
Elizabeth Parker – Special Sound
Nicholas Rocker – Costume Designer
Suzanne Jansen – Make-Up Artist
Dudley Simpson – Music
Terry Nation – Series Deviser
Chris Boucher -Script Editor
Roger Cann – Designer
and Vere Lorrimer – Producer
