Scripting
Co-ordinating ongoing story arcs during Season 2 had proved to be an arduous task and this led to the production team focussing more on stand-alone stories during Season 3. There was also a deliberate effort to shine the spotlight on different characters in specific episodes. Chris Boucher was particularly keen to write stories geared towards the individual actors. Production Secretary Judith Smith recalled the reasons behind this in an interview with Joe Nazzaro in 1990, “The major impetus of fighting the Federation had kind of died out with Star One, and you had to come up with something to engage the interest in the third series. That was one way of doing it, introducing elements of the past or characters which you could hang an episode on. Chris did Rumours, City and Death-Watch; Tanith Lee did Sarcophagus.” This looser format was something that Paul Darrow was quite happy about as he revealed to Starburst in 1980. “Getting away from the Federation gives us much more scope and more baddies to come up against.”
The looser format for the season also allowed a more experimental approach to the scripting process. For City at the Edge of the World, Boucher stretched the comedic potential of the series. He was also keen to write a script that built up the character of Vila and challenged the clichés surrounding the character. He also enjoyed writing for Keating. “Michael Keating did the lines I wrote for him, but he did have a tendency to look at the script and suggest different ways of delivering them. It’s not something that I can blame or criticise, though, and he did do the lines pretty much as they’d been intended.” He was also spurred on by comments from Michael Keating’s daughter who felt that Vila was too silly. Keating recalled the chain of events in an interview with Graeme Wood for TV Zone in 1992. “That story was written for me. I told the script editor that my daughter, who was about five or six at the time, thought Vila was stupid, and Chris Boucher said, ‘I’ll write you a story where you get the girl’. The girl turned out to be Carol Hawkins, and I worked with Colin Baker too – he’s a lovely man.” Boucher’s script explored the nature of criminality and the main villain of the piece was an over-the-top character called Bayban. The rehearsal script stated ‘although he looks very slightly ludicrous, it would be a reckless man who laughed at him.’
The script was originally developed as Episode 4 of the season but was later pushed back to sixth place. There were very few changes between the original script and the transmitted version. Vila’s line ‘I don’t have to take any crap about it from you’ was toned down to ‘I don’t have to take any rubbish about it from you’. A short sequence of Cally knocking out the guards with tranquiliser pads was removed. The script also described a beetle-like explosive used by Dayna that would creep around the corner and kill a number of Bayban’s men. This was dropped for cost reasons. The first scene of the story had served as one of the audition pieces for the actors testing for the role of Tarrant and presented the character in a rather negative light. In an interview with Horizon in 1980, Steven Pacey revealed that he wasn’t happy with the aggressive aspects of the character. “It can get a bit boring. The constant struggle between Avon and Tarrant, Tarrant and Vila, Vila and Avon and Tarrant and everybody else, because you tend to go over old ground”. The script also makes several mentions of Blake, most notably when Bayban expresses his outrage at being usurped from his position at the top of the Federation’s most wanted list. The production team were keen to show that Blake was still out there somewhere in the universe, even though he was absent from the episodes. In 1980 David Maloney told Starburst, “Blake is still around. The series is wide open in terms of the crew and what happens to them. Blake is a legend that will never die.”
Guest Cast
Director Vere Lorrimer chose Colin Baker to play the main guest role of Bayban. Colin Baker was born in London and originally studied to become a solicitor. At the age of 23, he decided on a major career change and enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he studied alongside David Suchet and Brian Croucher. Early acting jobs included The Adventures of Don Quick, The Roads to Freedom and War and Peace. He became a household name after playing the villainous Paul Merroney in The Brothers from 1974 to 1976. It was on this series that he first worked with Vere Lorrimer. Baker was pleased to take the part on Blake’s 7 as he had struggled with typecasting after leaving The Brothers and hadn’t appeared on television for 3 years. “Blake’s 7 was fun. We had a director who I’d worked with on The Brothers, Vere Lorrimer, one of the nicest men that I’ve ever met in television. Paul Darrow played Avon, who was the man in black, he was the evil one – but I dressed in black leather, with skull and cross bones, and I was even more evil than him! And I ate the scenery!”
4 years later Baker went on to play the sixth incarnation of Doctor Who where he worked with Paul Darrow, Jacqueline Pearce, Brian Blessed, Lynda Bellingham and many other Blake’s 7 veterans. Playing the love interest for Vila was Carol Hawkins as Kerrill. After training at the Corona Stage School, Hawkins worked extensively on the London stage in shows such as Sextet, Wife Begins at Forty and Run for Your Wife. She appeared in a number of popular TV sitcoms in the 1970’s including Please Sir! and Bless this House. Hawkins also appeared in a number of Carry On films. The other major guest artist for this episode was Valentine Dyall playing the role of Norl. Dyall was known for many years as “The Man in Black” because he narrated the BBC Radio horror series Appointment with Fear. Film work included The Haunting and Casino Royale. He also appeared in the radio version and television versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy playing Gargravarr and the voice of the computer Deep Thought. In 1978 he portrayed the Black Guardian in the Doctor Who story The Armageddon Factor and he returned to this role in 3 stories in 1983. Sadly he died in 1986.
Costume
The costume designer for the first half of Series 3 was Dee Robson. For the main cast, the costumes were a mixture of Robson’s ideas combined with suggestions from the actors. “Steven Pacey asked if he could swashbuckle a bit, so his costumes have a buccaneer feel about them. Josette Simon’s costumes accentuate her long legs. With Paul Darrow I was thinking of the Black Prince. He was the anti-hero, and more or less always wore black. Vila was not a snappy dresser. He was easily led and had no personality, so his colours were neutral.” For the guest characters Robson liaised closely with Vere Lorrimer. “You basically start with the script, and you read what’s there, and what type of character you’re going to portray. From there, you work out exactly what its look should be, and having got your ideas on paper, you talk to the director and the actor and see what ideas they’ve got. Eventually by mixing a lot together you get the actual ideas.” Robson particularly enjoyed working with
Vere Lorrimer. “He was the sort of director who would sit down and read through the scripts, because we used to have meetings where we would read through them, and Vere would actually give you the sound effects. He would say that the rocket was taking off, and then he’d make the noise of a rocket taking off. He’s a terribly enthusiastic man, and also very sweet and gentle. Also, when we were filming, he would show the stunts to the stuntmen and we would sit there praying that he wouldn’t break anything, because he was a small man, not a big heavy man at all. He always had a smile and he was always pleasant to everyone.”
There was a lot of discussion regarding the look of Bayban and his minions. “Vere would say if he wanted a particular thing. For example, we had some sort of space villains and he said that they were a sort of space pirate, so we made them a studded leather mob, and Colin Baker was the leader of them, who later became Doctor Who.” Colin Baker recalled his costume in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine. “I was dressed in black leather, with a ring through my ear and a skull and crossbones around my neck. The costume lady went berserk! We thought we’d get away with it. Vere didn’t notice until the third or fourth scene: ‘You can’t have that earring!’ he said. ‘Too late!’ I said, so it stayed.”
On Location
The key location for the episode was moorland near Pately Bridge, North Yorkshire, which was used to depict the surface of Keezarn. Filming took place from Monday 13th to Wednesday 15th August. Also filmed at this time were some brief sequences from Aftermath featuring Cy Grant who had been unavailable for the previous week’s filming. Only Paul Darrow, Jan Chappell and Michael Keating were required from the main cast. The production crew were hampered by extremely bad weather on location. A glass matte shot of Vila looking at the city in the distance had to be abandoned due to high winds. The wigs worn by the extras playing the natives of Keezarn also had a tendency to be blown off. Lorrimer soon realised that they wouldn’t be able to complete the planned filming schedule and he had to edit down certain sections of the script. Michael Keating recalled the experience in an interview with Joe Nazzaro. “I was meant to be working for three days on that and they filmed the whole thing in an hour because of the gale. Originally, Vere was going to have a great, long tracking shot of us walking along, but instead, it had to be done in a ditch to keep out of the wind.” Paul Darrow also recalled the last minute changes caused by the adverse weather conditions. “Because of these high winds Vere couldn’t shoot as much as he wanted, and he came bursting into the caravan saying, ‘I’ve decided to cut the comedy and go for the drama!’” Jan Chappell was particularly upset because a number of her lines were cut.
Special Effects
Special effects were handled by Jim Francis and Steve Drewett. A special filming session took place for the model city and its subsequent destruction. The model of the city was very impressive but there was a slight discrepancy as it had a night-time backdrop which conflicted with the daylight location scenes. A small model landscape was also built to represent the planet visited by Vila and Kerril. The script also required a number of detailed props including handguns for Bayban and his crew, the probe used by Vila and the laser cannon used at the climax of the episode. Francis spoke to Starburst in 1980 regarding the design aesthetic for Series 3. “We’ve tired to stamp our own identity on it just by the way we treat our materials. We’ve really gone out to be as real as possible. One of the things we’ve tried to do is make things look used. If we’ve got weapons, we try to make them look as though they’ve been used and not as though they’ve come straight from a factory. We always try to give them plenty of weight, to the point of deliberately weighting them so they don’t fly about. Just to make them look functional. They’ve got to look as though the parts on them aren’t just stuck on, they’re there for a reason.”
In The Studio
The scenes in the teleport bay were recorded in TC3 on the evening of Wednesday 3rd October, alongside sequences from Aftermath. Lorrimer had elected to mix up material from both his episodes in this production block which led to a certain amount of confusion. Boucher recalled the turmoil in an interview with Horizon in 1996. “Vere and I did once have – not exactly a falling out, but just a complete lack of communication. I had spent an hour with him, explaining the script and the plot, and he just kept saying, ‘I don’t understand, dear boy!’ The whole production team were wondering why he didn’t understand, and so I would explain it again, X-Y-Z, and he still didn’t understand. It was exasperating! Then about a week later he collared me and said, ‘Dear boy, I’m terribly sorry. We were talking about two entirely different scripts!’” A major publicity session was held during this time which resulted in many publicity shots of the full cast in their costumes from City at the Edge of the World on the set of the underwater base from Aftermath.
A basic set was constructed using a small pond and pot plants for the scene on Vila World. This sequence was originally to have been filmed on location but the extreme weather had ruled this out. A CSO backdrop was used to save money on constructing a detailed set and a model background would be superimposed later. There was some concern during recording over the sequence where Dayna was required to produce the heat-seeking device. The script had specified that she took the device from a pouch in her costume but Josette Simon’s costume didn’t have the pouch. In the end Lorrimer elected to leave it to the viewers’ imaginations as to where the bomb came from!
Rehearsals for the episode commenced on Thursday 4th leading up to the main recording block which took place from Thursday 11th to Saturday 13th October. During recording, Ralph Scott from Starburst magazine was invited to the studios to interview the main cast. Paul Darrow revealed that viewers could expect to see more relationships between the crew in the new series. “There hasn’t been any form of shall we say sexual relationships in the past. You’re now getting a little of that creeping in. The relationships that developed between the crew basically remain the same. But there are other characters who come in from episode to episode and indeed in this story we are doing now, Vila falls in love, which is all rather charming. Avon wouldn’t approve but still…”. Scott also spoke to Michael Keating on set regarding the development of Vila’s character in Series 3. “Underneath it all he really is quite brave, he expresses a lot of fears and worries, but comes through in the end. Vila represents a side of me I think. In the fact we are both very careful, indeed you could say that Michael Keating is Vila, I’m sure Paul would agree! This series is going to expand Vila’s character, the episode we’re filming now is very important for me – I fall in love and, well…wait and see!”
Reception
Although a popular episode, City received the lowest viewing figures of the season with 8.8 million viewers tuning in. However this was still an improvement on the previous season’s highest figure (8.2m for Star One).
