Blake's 7 - The Early Years 1.2 & 1.3
Nov. 27th, 2008 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fenCourtesy of a work colleague, I've been able to listen to the latest 'officially licenced' Blake's 7 plays a couple of days before release. No spoilers, just general comments. I'm not au fait with the timeline of the rebooted audio series, but both are set in 2230, and in theory Avon, Travis and Anna Grant are in their early to mid 20s.
First up is a prisoner interrogation drama from James Swallow ~ why has an arrested dissident asked for his case to be handled by Stefan Travis, a career officer who already has a reputation as an uncompromising servant of the state? Peter Guinness is the main attraction here as the dissident, and the raspy vocal timbre he hits from time to time sounds like Paul Darrow on one of his best days. I got the impression that Craig Kelly wasn't quite on top of the techno-bafflegab (of which there is far too much, inelegantly plonked down halfway through to initiate the climax) but he sounds comfortable as a pragmatic authoritarian.
...or, Young Avon and Anna in Oxford! Actually, this very good, with an elegant plot, a superb performance from Geoffrey Palmer as Ensor, and a clever, bittersweet script from Ben Aaronovitch. Something I really appreciated was the reverse temporal engineering so to speak ~ if ten years on from 2230 = 1978's Federation, then 2230 = 1968 and the summer of les evenements, Vietnam etc. Keeley Hawes is much, much better on audio than I thought she was in "Ashes to Ashes", and if B7Media want my unsolicited advice then I hope they'll bring her back for another story or three.
First up is a prisoner interrogation drama from James Swallow ~ why has an arrested dissident asked for his case to be handled by Stefan Travis, a career officer who already has a reputation as an uncompromising servant of the state? Peter Guinness is the main attraction here as the dissident, and the raspy vocal timbre he hits from time to time sounds like Paul Darrow on one of his best days. I got the impression that Craig Kelly wasn't quite on top of the techno-bafflegab (of which there is far too much, inelegantly plonked down halfway through to initiate the climax) but he sounds comfortable as a pragmatic authoritarian.
...or, Young Avon and Anna in Oxford! Actually, this very good, with an elegant plot, a superb performance from Geoffrey Palmer as Ensor, and a clever, bittersweet script from Ben Aaronovitch. Something I really appreciated was the reverse temporal engineering so to speak ~ if ten years on from 2230 = 1978's Federation, then 2230 = 1968 and the summer of les evenements, Vietnam etc. Keeley Hawes is much, much better on audio than I thought she was in "Ashes to Ashes", and if B7Media want my unsolicited advice then I hope they'll bring her back for another story or three.
