"Decepticons: to Earth!"
Pressure Point changes the rules of Blakes 7, or at least demonstrates that the rules it plays by are not the sames as the rules that viewers have seen so far. Killing off main characters is not, whatever certain modern TV series would want viewers to think, a recent innovation. The Sandbaggers, which also began in 1978, killed off multiple main characters over its three seasons, and now it is the turn of Blakes 7 to do the same.
At the end of The Way Back, Blake vowed he would return to Earth one day. Pressure Point is the episode in which he does so. That's Blake and Avon looking at Earth on the main screen there, with suitably awestruck expressions on their faces.
Well Blake looks impressed. Avon is more likely thinking about all the Federation baddys who will be waiting on Earth to try and kill them.
Travis would like a hat like that.
Avon is right to be concerned, because it is a trap set by Servalan and Travis.
Blake and Avon (and Gan and Vila) get captured but escape onto location to try and break into Control.
Control (who wants her freeness) is the main base of the Federation. I think it must be where they keep their internets, because it is something to do with computers. It is definitely important, because all rebels against the Federation want to break into it to steal it or destroy it, and Blake's group are the first ones to succeed.
"We've done it! We've done it! I've done it!"
But Control is an empty room.
Blake realises he has failed, and desperately needs a hug from Avon to make him feel better.
Travis comes in to capture them, and he probably wants in on the hugs as well. But before Travis can get any hugs, Jenna rescues them and they run away.
Travis has a grenade and throws it at them, and when it explodes it brings the roof down on Blake and Gan.
"I'm not worth dying for..."
Blake gets away, but Gan goes
This is a downbeat ending to an amazing episode. Pressure Point is a story where a lot happens, and it is always moving on relentlessly to the big climax. In the empty Control room you can feel Blake's victory slipping from his hands and then, well...
Blake's group haven't won every battle so far, but up until now they have always all escaped with their lives. Gan's death is not just dramatically important for this story - and it is significant that, of all places to die, it happens on Earth, on their most important mission ever - but it raises the stakes on all subsequent episodes of Blakes 7 through to the very end of the series.
Anyone can die.
Well, that is anyone except for Avon. Mew.
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