vivdunstan

Fun article in the Guardian today.

Oooooh! Blake’s 7 is coming to Blu-ray, with digitally remastered episodes and new bonus content. In the same style as the Classic Doctor Who series Collection Blu-ray boxes. Series 1 is released in November. I’ve just preordered it.

Was just musing over this. I think I have 3. Servalan isn't in the list. Though she's deliciously evil. And for the record I vastly prefer Travis I to Travis II.

First up has to be Avon. An anti-hero in every sense, and also a computer/hacking expert, which young me who was rapidly falling in love with computers could relate to. I'm not convinced by his depiction in the later series, though he's well acted. But yup, best one.

Next for me Cally, though she's frustratingly underwritten for, along with Jenna. But among the female characters she was easily my favourite. Even if we didn't always know too much about her. Brill in Sarcophagus of course. I loved both Tanith Lee episodes.

Then although young me really liked the attitude of Soolin I'm going to go with Vila. Always funny, consistent in everything he did. And a great foil for Avon. Under appreciated by his crew mates.

Pondering all this reminds me of last year when I was playing a text adventure / parser interactive fiction game version of Blake's 7. That did an *excellent* job of capturing some of the characters' personalities. Not least Avon and Vila. Though Cally was barely represented. Pretty much like in much of the TV show sadly! To read more about my playing experience with this game see my writeup on the intfiction forum.

Belatedly following up a previous post about this to say I've resumed watching Bergerac. Though not helped by Britbox removing the programme recently (Britbox are in a bit of a transitional mess, with the part-way-through transfer to ITVX), alongside many other programmes (including Blake's 7), before realising that was a mistake and reinstating them. Though losing the records of where viewers like me had got to, including how far through individual episodes.

I'm not sure how long Bergerac will stay up on Britbox so am currently rewatching the many Philippa Vale episodes at priority speed. Also reminded by that blog post that I need to rewatch the Louise Jameson introduction episode, and also her character's final episode. And right now I've just started rewatching the episode with Michael Gambon and Connie Booth, which at the start has the most over the top introduction of a "computer conference" ever. Martin's mouth was on the floor when he came into the room at that bit. This episode was the last TV credit by renowned Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes, who died before it aired.

I am constantly being distracted by familiar faces. Also so many from Doctor Who. Eg apart from the very obvious in my limited rewatch I've already seen Richard Hurndall, Ian Marter (a glimpse and you'll miss it bit), Elizabeth Spriggs, and Michael Gambon in the current one. Plus many other familiar faces from the past.

I just hope I can get through enough, in case Britbox (or ITVX ultimately) do finally stop streaming it!

Lining up my next old IF game to play and write on the intfiction forum. This one's a Blake's 7 game, a traditional parser text adventure. I think it's incomplete, but what's there looks really promising. And amusingly it's been compiled with the built in Inform debugging commands on. So I may be able to explore more than I can play through. I was just trying e.g. "PURLOIN VILA. DROP VILA. EXAMINE VILA." Then getting mentally muddled with some of my extra wizard commands (built in LPMUD and from my personal wiztool) and wondering why they're not working too! This will be fun. Fitted in around continuing IFComp playing.