Sunday 28 March 2010

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Headhunter

There's a robot monster on the loose and it wants to do naughty things with Orac. It's up to Avon and his friends to stop it.

Headhunter, by Roger Parkes, is an episode from near the middle of season 4. This is probably my least favourite season overall, but it still has some good bits along the way.

It starts with Scorpio! Tarrant and Vila are on a mission to rescue Muller. Avon is back at base with Mrs. Muller and Orac.

Avon smiles when he thinks of something rude.

Cocky Tarrant teleports down and rescues Muller and a box. Muller goes crazy at the box and attacks Tarrant until Vila boshes him dead. Vila wants to know what's in the box, but then Scorpio! begins to go wrong and Slave rebels.

Orac and Avon quarantine Scorpio! but it goes even more wrong. Orac still wants to leave Tarrant and Vila in space but Avon doesn't want to leave his friends behind. He says "Oh you'll have to do better than that Orac, if you want me to kill them."
Orac begins talking very strangely. "There is nothing very original about domination, as you will discover." He is a funny box.

They rescue Tarrant and Vila. Orac warns Soolin about an intruder, she follows his good advice and hides him in a cupboard. Muller is not as dead as they thought, he escapes onto the base and kills Mrs. Muller, then he destroys Tarrant and Avon's guns somehow.

Avon's hair gets messed up too.

This is a very exciting bit because there is a mystery about what is going on, and everyone has something to do in trying to solve it. Avon and Vila try to open the mysterious box, while Tarrant and Dayna try to blow Muller up with a bomb. He gets up without a head - he is now a scary monster!

Vila opens the box and they find a robot head. Now the mystery is solved - it's a robot monster that was wearing Muller's head as a disguise. The robot wants to have robot sex with Orac, even though he is just a box. They all run away from the robot.

Avon has a plan.

They set a trap for the robot. It is powerful but there are things it can't do and Avon works out how to use the robot's weaknesses against it, clever Avon. Everyone has a part in Avon's plan, and Orac is the bait for the trap. They all work together and ZAP! the robot.

Avon puts the robot head on the robot body to stop it being a monster but he gets zapped himself. Dayna blows the robot up while it is helpless. Avon wanted to keep it and he ends up being angry. Poor Avon.

This is a great episode with a mystery to begin with (sorry if I have given it away for anyone, but it is still worth watching to see Avon being handsome and clever) and then an exciting ending with a scary robot monster. It is one of my favourites from season 4, but not my best of all.

That is the end of my review of Headhunter, I hope you liked it. I am going to go and have sleeps now. Bye bye. Zzzzz

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

What comes after Star Trek 4: Voyage Home? I found out there is a next film. I thought it would be Star Trek V, because Henry V came after Henry IV and Henry VI was after Henry V. But Duncan says the next film is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I was on best behaviour again so Duncan would let me see it and now I have seen it.

"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

This was a very good film. The baddy was a Klingon with an eyepatch like Travis and he liked Shakespeare and wanted to make him into a Klingon (or something, I got a bit confused). Mr. Spock was very clever and found out who the baddys were. Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy got captured by the Klingons but they were brave and escaped. Captain Kirk kissed a girl but she turned into another Captain Kirk and had a fight. Ooooo, that gives me an idea for a story...


I didn't understand the bits about Shakespeare though. The Klingons liked Shakespeare, but they though the undiscover'd country was the future and it's not, it is death. I think the baddy just liked the way the words sound. Silly Klingon manny. And he looks like Travis.

Spot the difference! Hint: one is Travis.

I have now seen all of the Star Trek films with Captain Kirk in them. I have seen Star Trek 1: Motion Picture (long film is looooong), Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan (my favourite, "Khaaaaan!"), Star Trek 3: Search for Mr. Spock, Star Trek 4: Voyage Home, and Star Trek VI is the last one.

It is a happy ending for Captain Kirk who is my best hero except for Avon, and it is a happy ending for me, I am a happy cat. I still have lots of the original series to watch if I want to see Captain Kirk again.

Sunday 21 March 2010

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Aftermath

Avon is marooned on a planet with Dayna and Servalan. It’s up to him to get off with them.

The fabulous season 3 begins with Aftermath, by Terry Nation. Blake and Jenna have left the series, so this episode introduces two new characters to replace them, as well as thrusting forward Avon as the main character from now on.

It starts with the space battle that was about to begin at the end of season 2’s Star One. Star One is destroyed (Servalan calls it “space debris”) and the Liberator is badly damaged. Vila and Cally put unconscious Avon with Orac into an escape pod.

On a planet, mannys with horses want to kill strangers who come from space. They kill two Federation soldiers. When Avon is on the planet he meets the hostile mannys but is saved by Dayna. She takes him home and kiffs him better.


Servalan is also on the planet. She finds Avon. Avon says:
“It has a perverse kind of logic to it. Our meeting is the most unlikely happening I could imagine. Therefore we meet. Surprise seems inappropriate somehow.”
lol

Avon, Servalan and Dayna all run away from the mannys to Dayna’s base under the sea. The base is very fabulous with its lights that are green and purple and white.

Avon meets Hal Mellanby and Lauren, Dayna’s daddy and adopted sister. Servalan and Dayna are polite to each other in what they say to each other, but very catty underneath in the way they are saying it. Mew. Servalan is cleverer and finds out about Dayna and her daddy.

The key scene of the episode is when Servalan tries to seduce Avon. They kiff, but then Avon rejects her.
“Imagination my only limit? I’d be dead in a week.”
There are lots of kiffs in season 3 of Blakes 7, mostly Avon or Servalan or Avon and Servalan, and this is where it starts. They are enemies but they still kiff each other. Avon also kissed Dayna earlier (and he liked it more than he liked kiffing Servalan), and he kiffs Cally in another episode, but we never see him kiff Tarrant or Blake, even though they are his best friends. I don’t understand.

It is very camp though.


Hal catches Servalan trying to steal Orac. She remembers he was a rebel, then she kills him and escapes. Avon and Dayna go after Servalan and find out Lauren has been killed by the native mannys. Poor Dayna has only got Avon left now.

Servalan gets caught by the natives and Avon has to rescue her because she knows where Orac is. Dayna is about to shoot Servalan when Avon and Dayna and Orac get teleported up to the Liberator. There is a many there who asks them “What are you doing on my ship?”


It’s Tarrant! Avon meets Tarrant and that is the end of the episode! It is a cliffhanger because they don’t know who Tarrant is and are not friends yet. This is a brilliant ending and makes me want to see the next episode straight away to find out what happens. I am left feeling a happy and excited cat.

This is a great story, with lots of action and kiffing and sad bits as well. It is Dayna’s best episode and it has lots of Avon as well. The best season of Blakes 7 starts here.

Thursday 18 March 2010

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Harvest of Kairos

Servalan has a new manny working for her - Jarvik - and he has a plan to take over the Liberator. Only Avon has the brain to stop him.

This is Duncan's worst episode of Blakes 7, so I had to be on my best behaviour to get to watch it again. No touching the buttons on the remote control, and no showing my red bum to anyone (hee hee, I am a naughty cat sometimes). But because I was a good cat I got to watch season 3's The Harvest of Kairos, by Ben Steed.

It starts in the middle of the action - Avon and Vila are already on a planet, and Tarrant has realised there are Federation ships after the Liberator. Avon comes back with Sopron rock, and Zen thinks it is a brain.

Servalan meets Jarvik. He is a manly manny. He kisses her then steals her guard's gun. Servalan hears the Liberator has escaped her trap. Jarvik then laughs and tells her Tarrant knew where her computers would set the trap.

Jarvik reveals to Servalan that he knew Tarrant when he was a captain and Tarrant was his lieutenant (long word is long). Servalan puts Jarvik in charge of capturing the Liberator and then says she wants him to kiff her again. In this scene she is a naughty Servalan who just wants kiffs from a manly man.

In the next scene she is back to being evil Servalan when she is more concerned with getting valuable kairopan than workers off the planet Kairos, leaving mannys behind to get killed by something mysterious. Woo-oo, it's a mystery! This is exciting, what could it be?

Tarrant wants to pirate the harvest of Kairos and get rich. Vila approves of this but Avon is more concerned with his Sopron. He gets Cally and Orac involved, even when there is a battle going on. It is hard to take the battle seriously because Avon is not interested in it and it is not exciting like most battles in Blakes 7.

The best bit of the battle is when Tarrant blows a kiff after he has destroyed a Federation spaceship. He goes "Mwah!"



Tarrant teleports on to the ship with the kairopan (is it like marzipan?) and he lets Vila, Cally and Dayna on as well. They get captured by Federation guards but Avon rescues them straight away. Avon was the only one clever enough to think there might be guards, but even he doesn't think there might be even more guards.

The Liberator gets captured off-screen between scenes - we see Jarvik's captain teleport on to Servalan's ship to show success. Servalan goes on to the Liberator and takes over, forcing Avon to let her command Zen. Avon outsmarts her and gets to make a condition that they get put down on the nearest habitable planet first. But the nearest planet is Kairos, which is deadly!

Servalan sends Jarvik down after them to kill Tarrant and the others. It is always Tarrant that they are interested in, not Avon or Vila or Cally or Dayna. I like Tarrant but I don't understand this bit, maybe it's because I'm only a cat. If I wasn't a cat, I might think that it was meant to be Blake instead of Tarrant, but Blake is gone now and Tarrant is here instead.

Jarvik finds a scary monster! It must be the monster that killed all the mannys that Servalan left behind. Dayna is menaced by the monster but Jarvik saves her, then when Tarrant sees his teleport bracelet he realises Servalan sent him. They fight. Jarvik wins and teleports back to the Liberator with Dayna.

Avon finds an old spaceship. He has a plan to escape using the Sopron but the others don't believe him. They take off in the old spaceship and Avon makes it work like Sopron to fool Zen, who thinks their ship is more powerful than the Liberator. Jarvik sees through their bluff but Servalan still runs away. Jarvik is then killed when a soldier is going to shoot Dayna but shoots him instead.

This is a very silly episode. It is all about Jarvik and his plan to capture the Liberator, which is supposed to be very clever. Jarvik is a manly manny but I don't think he is very clever. His plan only works because Avon and Tarrant are not being as clever as they usually are.

Jarvik isn't cleverer or more of a manly manny than Avon or Tarrant (nobody is more of a manly manny than Avon!) but the story makes everybody act as if he is, and that is why I think it is very silly.

Although it is a silly story there are some good bits to it - my best bit is the mystery of what kills all the mannys on Kairos. Everybody is scared but they don't know what about. Then it turns out to be a monster!



The monster doesn't do much except be scary (woo-oo, scary!) to Dayna and the audience, because everybody gets away from it. But if it hadn't appeared when it did then Dayna would not have been teleported up to the Liberator with Jarvik at the end.

This is not my worst episode of Blakes 7, as it still has Avon in it being clever (just not as clever as usual), but it is not one of the best and is definitely not up to the fabulous standard of the rest of season 3. Maybe I should have stuck to being a naughty cat...

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Blakes 7 Video - The Story of Avon & Blake

I like this. Don't watch it if you don't know the ending of Blakes 7 though!

Saturday 13 March 2010

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Star One

Aliens are going to take over the galaxy. It's up to Blake and Cally and Avon to save it.

Star One is the last story of season 2. It was written by Chris Boucher and it is Duncan's favourite episode of Blakes 7.

It starts with spaceships crashing because of computers going wrong. Supreme Commander Servalan wants to know why it is happening and is told the computer "Star One" is to blame. But the Federation cannot fix it because nobody knows where Star One is.

Blake knows where Star One is - he found out in the last episode before this one after he had been looking for it since Countdown - and he is taking the Liberator there to destroy it. This is clever because it shows the only mannys who could fix Star One are mannys that don't want to.

Avon realises Star One is the nearest planet in their galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy and there is a minefield between them. Blake doesn't know if it is to keep mannys in or to keep aliens out. Avon, Blake and Cally teleport down to the planet.

There are mannys on Star One but most of them are really aliens. The aliens are baddys. Blake and Cally get captured by them but Cally warns Avon so he doesn't. Blake pretends to be the manny the aliens are expecting - he realises it is Travis when the alien questions him about his fake hand and eye. Having fooled the aliens, Blake and Cally start putting bombs in Star One.

Avon captures Travis, but he gets away when Avon is attacked by Lurena, the last real manny on Star One. Avon finds out about the aliens. He kills one and it turns into green slime. This is very scary because we don't know what the aliens really look like, but it seems horrible.

Blake gets shot by Travis, but he's not dead. It looks like Travis and the aliens are going to win because the alien invasion fleet of spaceships is on its way and Travis starts to turn off the minefield that is the only thing stopping them.
Oh noes!

Blake shoots Travis and the aliens. Avon then shoots Travis again and kills him. But some of the minefield has been turned off by Travis and that means the aliens can get through, so Blake realises they can't blow up Star One after all. Avon and Cally get rid of most of the bombs, but the last one blows up Lurena and the rest of the aliens on Star One.

Back on the Liberator, Blake is injured so Avon is now in charge. They warn the Federation about the aliens, even though the Federation have been the baddys up until now, they are still mannys and not aliens so now they are on the same side. Until the Federation spaceships can help them, they go to fight the aliens by themselves.

Avon thinks Blake doesn't trust him. Blake tells Avon he has always trusted him "from the very beginning" so they make up and are friends again. Now the Liberator is about to fight with the aliens. It is very tense and the lighting is down low. Then Avon says "Fire!"



That is the end of the episode!

It is an amazing ending for the episode and the season, because we don't know what will happen next. Will the Liberator win the fight? That is for another story to tell. This story is only about how they were brave in not blowing up Star One after all, then teaming up with the Federation and going to fight the aliens by themselves.

This is not my favourite episode, but it is very good and has clever bits and builds up and up to the ending. It is also the last episode with Blake and Jenna in it, so it is special for that reason too. Today is a good Caturday for me because I have seen such a good episode of Blakes 7. But now it is over and it is time for sleeps. Bye bye. Zzzzz

Thursday 4 March 2010

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Countdown

There's a bomb that's going to blow a whole planet up, and it's up to Blake and Vila and Avon to stop it.
This story, written by Terry Nation, comes in the middle of season 2, and reveals some of the backstory of Avon for the first time.

It starts with lots of mannys fighting each other. I don't know why they're fighting yet, but some of them are Federation so they must be the baddys. The other side appears to be winning, and one of them is CHAAAAADBON!


CHAAAAADBON!

His name is Del Grant, but he is played by CHAAAAADBON! I have seen him before in Doctor Who and Rumpole of the Bailey. He has a voice that makes me go CHAAAAADBON! when I hear it.
Avon appears after almost 7 minutes, along with Blake and the rest. Avon, Blake and Vila teleport down. They find a space rocket that has fuel to last 100 space-hours.

Blake gets caught, but it is by the goodys so they team up straight away and soon Avon knows what's going on. Space Major Provine is the baddy. He has a bomb to blow up the planet unless Avon can stop him. The Federation put the bomb in so people would do what they say, but now it is going to go off.
Blake and Vila try to find the bomb so Avon can turn it off, then Avon meets Del Grant, played by CHAAAAADBON, who wants to kill him.

Blake finds out about Provine while Avon and Del Grant teleport to where the bomb is. Blake says if anything happens to Avon then he'll come looking for Grant, because Avon is his best friend and Blake would be sad without him.

Avon finds the bomb inside some ice and he tries to axe his way into it, but it would take too long so he gets Grant to use the space-heaters. While they turn the bomb off, Avon tells Grant about his sad story of how he got arrested and Anna got killed. Anna was Del Grant's sister - he blamed Avon for Anna dying, but now he sees that Avon is sad about it.

Avon is in danger from three different things here: the bomb is still counting down (that's why the story is called Countdown!), and the roof is in danger of falling on his head any minute, and Grant wants to kill him. This is very clever writing by Terry Nation to have so many dangers at once for Avon. And it shows how brave Avon is that he and Grant take their teleport bracelets off so they can't be rescued until they have saved the planet. And then the roof does fall on them so Avon can only stop the bomb in the nick of time.

Avon and Del Grant finish as friends, and Blake finds out about Docholli and "Star One" from Provine. But that's another story...

This is an amazing episode. It is fast-paced and tense with a countdown going all the way through. Avon saves the day again because he is brave, and it is a whole planet he saves. Blake and Vila are also good in this, though there's not much of Jenna, Cally or the Liberator in this episode - there isn't time!
When it finished I was feeling excited and happy because it was so good. It is another one of my favourites. Now my excitement is going away and I am feeling sleepy, but still a happy cat! It is time for sleeps now. Bye bye. Zzzzz