1. Nine Dozen Heroes and One Wicked Man
Kao Chiu is the "one wicked man" who is the main baddy for the series. We may be promised "nine dozen heroes" but the first episode is the origin story for maybe three of them at most, including the main character Lin Chung. Or at least it makes a start on his origin story - like Monkey, it seems it will need more than one episode to fully establish the premise of the series. Whether it then settles down into a formula, as Monkey did, remains to be seen. This makes it tough to assess the first episode in isolation, but it is certainly an intriguing and promising beginning.
The parallels with Monkey are many - made by the same Japanese TV studio, with very similar production values (although much less overtly magical than Monkey) that scream "1970s" at you, a broadly similar Ancient China setting, actor overlap, the English adaptations/translations both done by David Weir in his eccentric, pseudo-Oriental style, and, of course, considerable voice actor overlap. Burt Kwouk is the narrator. Peter "Pigsy" Woodthorpe's distinctive voice is also instantly recognisable as one of Kao Chiu's henchmannys.
The theme music is nowhere near as memorable as the incomparable Monkey theme, despite sounding like a weird mix of James Bond (but threatening to go Austin Powers at times) and Eurovision, with the Japanese lyrics giving it the feel of an anime series theme on top.
2. None Ever Escape Alive
Monkey had a few characters, not least Pigsy, chasing the ladies in a strictly pre-watershed way, but this show isn't Monkey, as can be seen here, in only the second episode, where the main character's wife is raped by the villain - in a non-explicit, fade-to-black kind of a way, but the meaning is clear. And the one other recurring female character, the swordswoman Hu Sanniang, is threatened with rape when captured by, er... some of the other 'heroes.' When they find out she is also an ally of Lin Chung they almost instantly befriend her, their earlier menace immediately glossed over.
At the end of the first episode the main character was on his way to an inescapable prison. But enough about Blakes 7...
At the end of the first episode the main character was on his way to an inescapable prison. Lin Chung almost immediately befriends the prison governor, a comedically egotistical character voiced by Peter Woodthorpe, and who may yet turn out to be the closest thing to Pigsy in this series.
Villainous Kao Chiu sends assassins to silence Lin Chung, but they make the mistake of telling him about Kao Chiu raping his wife, which causes him to flip out and kill the assassins and escape the prison really easily. Dramatically it's a great scene, but the action is almost comically inept, with the result of two of the assassins getting decapitated being the fakest-looking severed heads I've seen in something that's not a deliberate parody.
The episode ends with Lin Chung still separate from the other 'heroes' so I don't think we're quite done with the origin story yet.
3. Both At Last Will Reach the Sea
Still introducing new characters, including Dai Zong, voiced by David "Monkey" Collings, and Yang Zhi (a.k.a. Blue Face, thank the Hoff, because character nicknames are so much easier for me to remember). The latter begins as an honourable government official, just as Lin Chung did. Sent to capture Lin Chung, they fight a duel which is a highlight of the series so far, owing more to the sort of classic Japanese samurai duel (of the sort seen in Seven Samurai) than a Chinese-style kung fu fight - after staring at each other for two days and two nights with their swords poised in readiness, the duel is over with a single stroke.
Blue Face survives the duel, and comes to side with and assist Lin Chung by the end of the episode, becoming another outlaw in the process, though too late to save Lin Chung's wife, who kills herself to save Lin Chung from falling into a trap. Still, she lasted about two episodes longer than it looked like she would when first introduced.
The episode ends with Lin Chung on his way at last to the Liang Shan marsh, the "water margin" of the title, so maybe it will start to settle down into a more episodic form from next time? We shall see...
4. Ever Busy are the Gods of Love
This has the feel of being our first stand alone episode, although the choice to have another regular character's love interest get kidnapped, raped and then killed by the villain so soon after Lin Chung's wife suffered the same fate is either a poor decision on the part of whoever put them in this order, or else it bodes ill for any other love interests of main characters...
We now have a substantial cast of regular heroes, and it is already getting hard to remember all of their names, so I'm remembering them all by their most significant physical feature or character trait: manny who runs fast (Dai Zong, who we met in episode 3), strong manny who has a tigerskin costume (Wu Sung), tattooed manny (Shih Chin), and tattooed manny's bandit friend (Chu Wu). It was tattooed manny's turn to be the main character this week.
There was also a B-plot involving Hu Sanniang, who I can't call "the girl one" any more because we're introduced to her sister, who is also a kung fu swordswoman. Their plot sort of fizzles out once Hu Sanniang is required to help out the other heroes with their plot, which could mean that it will be continued in a future episode, but you can't tell with this series - for all I know it might never be referred to again.
5. A Treasure of Gold and Jade
By now the series is really growing on me. This episode starts with a recap of the story so far, provided to us by narrator Burt Kwouk, although I'm not sure it was needed as this is pretty much a standalone story.
Two groups of heroes separately plan to steal a shipment of treasure headed for main baddy Kao Chiu and guarded by Blue Face, returning from episode 3. One group is led by Lin Chung , of course, while the other is a mixture of Lu Ta (a.k.a. "the Flower Priest" who is the Pigsy-esque, Peter Woodthorpe-voiced character we first met in episode 2), Hu Sanniang, and some new characters.
Lin Chung's direct approach ends up foiling the other group's plan by accident, and the episode ends in another duel with Blue Face before the two groups of heroes have to decide between themselves what to do with the treasure.
6. Bandits Who Steal Are Executed
I think the episode titles are all said verbatim by Burt Kwouk as part of his introductory narration. Certainly that has happened in all six parts so far.
This episode follows on directly from the end of the previous one. The new characters introduced there get more screentime here, and seem likely to be regular, possibly even major, characters. The character known as "the Good Judge" has been recurring ever since he sentenced Lin Chung to prison (instead of execution) in the first episode, but is now definitely established as the outlaws' manny on the inside of the corrupt establishment.
A major turn in the series plot is taken when the chief of the outlaws is corrupted by Kao Chiu to betray his own group. The three brothers we met last week assisting with the treasure heist discover his duplicity and warn the other outlaws, leading to the chief's death in a fight against Lin Chung. His replacement is to be Chao Kai, an "honest squire" who was also introduced in part 5 as part of the heist, but only after Lin Chung is offered the position and declines it.
I think this might be the first episode not to bring any new significant characters into the series.
7. How Easy To Die, How Hard To Live
Here we are at the midpoint of the first season and oh noes, more new characters! I know there are supposed to be 108 heroes, but even so there are a lot of them to keep track of for a TV show (and I say this as someone who sat through 94 episodes of Mahabharat). This episode has superimposed captions appear on screen the first time we see certain characters, which I think is supposed to help remind us of who's who, but they're in Japanese so they don't.
We're introduced to the Good Judge's good friend Lord Chai Chin, as well as Li Kwei "the Black Whirlwind." Also, on the baddys' side, this episode brings back the chief of police and his two henchmannys, and so confirms them as recurring characters - the chief of police seems to fill the same role in the story as the Sheriff of Nottingham does in Robin Hood, which I suppose makes his henchmannys the equivalents of Gary and Graham. They're certainly just as lazy, cowardly and incompetent.
The fight scenes in this episode were filmed in an eccentric way. I'm pretty sure they were meant to be different locations each time, but there were three fight scenes all filmed in shallow, ankle-deep water. And the fight scenes all used slow-motion for close-ups, but sped up when in long shot (accompanied by comedic, almost Benny Hill-like sound effects). This proved unfortunate when one of the bad guys got killed, and the face he made was hilarious in slo-mo.
Lin Chung is hardly in this episode. He has a scene where he eats some berries that give him a dream sequence/flashback to when he was a prisoner in the first couple of episodes, and then he turns up to save the day at the end, like some kind of simius ex machina.
8. A Man's Only Happiness
This was one of the weaker episodes so far, being insufficiently different from plots we've seen already and so feeling quite like filler as a result. Once again the focus is on the Good Judge Sun Chiang, still on the run, and we are introduced to yet another new character, Sun Chiang's friend Hua Yung. On the other hand, a character I previously thought likely to be a regular was killed off in this episode (I won't say which one for the benefit of any readers who may decide to give the series a go) so the number of characters isn't simply growing and growing unchecked.
The ending saw the group of heroes standing around laughing at one of their number embarrassing himself, which felt a bit Star Trek-y.
9. A Dutiful Son and the Love of a Brother
The Good Judge Sun Chiang is definitely the Tripitaka of this series, as he gets himself captured yet again, this time by falling for the old 'your dad's dying, come and visit him quick' ruse. He's then sent to the same prison Lin Chung was sent to back in part two.
The episode then gets a lot more fun, when Dai Zong (the manny who can run fast, voiced by David Collings) and Wu Sung (the strong manny who fights tigers off-screen) turn up to rescue him, and they both get involved in wacky hijinks. This inevitably includes at least one fight where they make friends with their opponent at the end. This might not be to everyone's liking, but it works for me here because Dai Zong and Wu Sung are two of the more unpredictable heroes, being a bit less straight-laced and serious than Lin Chung.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger when Sun Chiang is framed for the attempted murder of the governor, meaning he will need to be rescued (again) next time.
10. Escape is not Freedom
This is a great episode, a definite step in the right direction after three so-so ones, even if the basic plot is all too familiar to anyone who has seen a Robin Hood adaptation where the Merry Mannys have to rescue prisoners about to be executed by the Sheriff of Nottingham, which is really a trap to catch Robin, or in this case Lin Chung.
Most (though by no means all) of the regular characters are brought together for the rescue attempt, a sign that this is the series really coming together. The stakes get raised further when evil Kao Chiu attends the execution in person, and things look bleak for our heroes after their cunning-but-needlessly-complicated plan goes wrong almost immediately.
11. The Girl Who Loved the Flower Priest
Another good episode, largely due to the focus this week being on the chalk-and-cheese pairing of Lu Ta (the "Flower Priest"), the Pigsy of this series with his love of drinking and women, with "Blue Face" the emo swordsmanny who is now on the run from Evil Kao Chiu as well. They team up to fight some genuinely villainous bandits, not to be mistaken for the good kind of bandit that our heroes are.
With so many regular characters in the cast the series works well when, as seen here and in episode 9, it picks a few of them at a time to combine in a way we haven't seen before, rather than it being about Lin Chung or the Good Judge Sun Chiang every week. Lin Chung is again only a minor player in the plot - not for the first time he serves as the cavalry, arriving at the end to help out the other heroes when they need him most.
Lu Ta's love interest, "the girl" of the episode title, even survives to the end credits, which is a rarity for this series.
12. Kao Chiu Loses His Heart
An odd name for the episode, since it in no way reflects the events contained therein. This picks up the unresolved subplot from episode 8 between two brothers-in-law, one an outlaw, the other an officer working for Kao Chiu who has been assigned to capture his brother-in-law. They get involved with a travelling "circus" (though travelling troupe of actors would be a more accurate description) whose lead actress has sworn to kill a friend of Kao Chiu's who killed her father.
It all gets a bit "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," when they come face-to-face, and the multiple plot strands do come together quite neatly at the climax, but other than that this is one of the lesser episodes, especially following on from a couple of good ones.
13. When Liang Shan Po Robbed the Poor
This episode, which finishes the first season, is a mixture of interesting political machinations, as Evil Kao Chiu plots the downfall of the Prime Minister of China so that he can take his place, with that most clichéd of plots, as Kao Chiu's henchmannys-of-the-week attempt to discredit our heroes by killing and robbing and then putting the blame on them. At least when Monkey did that plot it had the villains in absolutely ridiculous costumes, so that there was something to enjoy there.
Hu Sanniang's sister returns, last seen in episode four, proving once again that this is a series which does benefit from being watched in sequence, due to the way the characters come and go and you are expected to remember who's who, even if the plots of most episodes are stand-alone. That said, this episode (and therefore the season as a whole) ends on a cliffhanger.
14. A Death for Love, More Deaths from Greed
I wonder how much of an influence this '70s TV series was on Blakes 7? Not in terms of the basic premise, which is more obviously Robin Hood than it is this, but in some of the details. For example, in this episode the plots of Evil Kao Chiu from the first season finally pay off for him and he achieves elevation from Supreme Commander of China's army to Prime Minister.
This episode, continuing straight on from where the last one left off, is one of the best yet, with almost non-stop action throughout. The deaths referred to in the episode title are main characters on both heroes and villains' side. I won't say who because they are fairly major spoilers, but suffice to say that the series has decided that one main female character is plenty enough for it.
15. The Bravest Tiger is First Killed
We're back to one-off stories, and yet another instance of a main character being lured away from the safety of Liang Shan Po and into a trap by false news of a dying mother. This is at least the third time it has been used, and I hope (but don't expect) it will be the last.
Some oddly extended scenes suggest that this episode was badly in need of padding out to fill the required duration. A scene where Lu Ta's mother is being held hostage at swordpoint seemed to go on forever, and it wasn't the only one like that.
Not the best of episodes, and also not the most essential.
16. Heaven Aims the Master's Arrow
Another really good episode with several plot strands that come together neatly by the end.
I'm getting increasingly convinced that Servalan was inspired (at least in part) by Evil Kao Chiu, and here we see him attempt to steal a fortune in jade from the Emperor for himself, even though he is already the Prime Minister, which is a level of greed that I could easily believe Servalan would display.
17. The Traps of Love and Hate
It feels like the series is ramping up a gear as Lin Chung sets out to assassinate Kao Chiu to end his reign of evil. He comes pretty close by the end of the episode, having fought his way through hordes of guards, but is stopped as much by his own conscience as by Kao's minions. I'm sure they must be saving the final showdown between them for the last episode of the series.
Lin Chung is normally the one who does the rescuing of other, less competent heroes, but here he has to get rescued on no fewer than three separate occasions when he tries to take on Kao Chiu's innumerable guards. Each time he says something like "no, I must do this alone" and then as soon as he's gone the other heroes follow him ready to save him when he gets back in over his head.
The blood spatters from some of the many massacred soldiers are hilarious in this one, real Pythonesque spurts.
Some even getting on the camera at one point, lol.
18. A Foolish Sage Who Got Involved
Carrying on from the end of the previous episode, Kao Chiu has employed an evil magician from Mongolia, called simply "the Mongol," and with his black magic he is a threat to our heroes. Realising they need to fight magic with magic, they go looking for Kun Sung Sheng, the good magician who they haven't seen since season one. He has returned to his Taoist master to learn more magic, leading to a mystical plot more akin to something out of Monkey than the usual plots for The Water Margin.
Which is odd in a way, because in Monkey the Taoists were usually presented as evil magicians, with the Buddhists being the good ones. Either way, it leads on to a magic-off between good magician and evil magician, which makes for a good conclusion to the story even if it is a tad predictable.
19. Mourn the Slaughter of So Many
A character returns after having not been seen since the first episode. Fortunately this isn't Mahabharat so there is a flashback scene to remind us who he is, which is good because he ends up being the focus of this story and Lin Chung and Hu Sanniang again make only guest appearances in their own show.
The incidental music is very repetitive in this episode, for some reason. There's also a scene where horsemannys are galloping towards the camera, and the camera is also travelling in the same direction as them so they don't catch up with it, but whatever they were using to move the camera (another horse?) was incredibly shaky, so the picture was bouncing up and down like crazy. Both very odd directorial choices.
20. The War To End All Wars
What starts off looking like it's going to be another clichéd plot of 'heroes rescue the guest character from bandits and then it turns out they're actually connected to the villains somehow' takes a much more interesting turn when it is revealed that the manny Liang Shan Po have rescued is "Gunpowder" Hong, the only manny in China who knows how to use gunpowder for weapons.
Both our heroes and Evil Kao Chiu want this secret for themselves, and Hong makes bombs and even a primitive cannon for Liang Shan Po. Then the episode becomes an allegory for nuclear weapons as Lin Chung realises that, sooner or later, Evil Kao Chiu is bound to get the secret too and so it would be better if nobody had it.
This isn't the most essential episode, seeing as the status quo is restored by the end of it, and I suspect (though I could be wrong) that Gunpowder Hong and his son won't be recurring characters, but it is one of the more thought-provoking stories, with something to say beyond the usual pseudo-philosophical nonsense served up by the opening and closing narrations.
21. Death of a Great Man
Six new Mongolian villains (a father and his five sons) enter the scene with a plan to kill the leader of Liang Shan Po, Chao Kai, which yet again involves luring him back to his home village. With the whole village (and also Lin Chung, captured earlier in the episode) hostage, Chao Kai is forced to enter their trap, while several main characters look on.
This illustrates one of the weaknesses of the series (also evident in many episodes of Monkey), which is the heroes have with them their magician and strategic genius Kung Sun Sheng, but he sits back and lets the trap be sprung - seemingly he can only help them with magic powers or a brilliant plan if explicitly asked for one by one of the other characters, i.e. if the plot requires it. Like with Monkey, if he used his powers as soon as they would be useful then the stories would be over in half the time, and be pretty free of jeopardy.
Speaking of Monkey, David Collings voices one of the villainous brothers, and does an even more exaggerated faux-Chinese accent than his Monkey voice.
22. Lin Chung is Beaten
This was a really good episode. Following on directly from where the previous one left off - essentially the second half of a two-parter - it featured quite a few of our Liang Shan Po heroes (rather than concentrate only on Lin Chung plus one or two others, as is more usually the case) enacting a convoluted plan to rescue Lin Chung. This plan* gave all of them their own roles, so each had a turn in the 'spotlight,' and it was just really enjoyable to watch them turn the tables on the band of villains over the course of the plan - sort of The Water Margin does Mission: Impossible.
* Devised, eventually, by strategic genius Kung Sun Sheng - see my complaint about the previous episode.
23. A Concubines Diary (no apostrophe, just like with Blakes 7)
Four episode from the end and we are finally introduced to the Emperor of China. He's in love with the concubine of the title, and Evil Kao Chiu has an evil scheme that involves her. Our heroes - this week focusing on Shih Chin and Lu Ta (the latter of whom we haven't seen in a while) - foil the scheme, but then end up facing both the Emperor and Kao Chiu.
The episode then goes completely nuts, and I defy anyone to predict the ending. Sure, it ends in a big fight, like most of them do, but I mean the specific circumstances of the fight.
There's a B-plot that doesn't seem to add much to the story (except for maybe giving our heroes one more person to rescue at the end) involving the daughter of a "millionaire" being held hostage by Kao Chiu to secure her father's good behaviour. This may be explained by the next episode being titled Liang Shan Po and the Millionaire...
24. Liang Shan Po and the Millionaire
It seemed last time that things were escalating towards the finish, but this episode is much more like a standard second half of a two-parter. The villains-of-the-week are vanquished before the end credits roll, though not before they get in three separate bouts of maniacal laughter at their evil scheme - not quite Mordred level, but nearly.
Another scene of note is one in which a character is carrying an explosive device (a primitive - and almost certainly not true to the source material - mine intended to blow up our heroes), slips and blows herself up. It's unintentionally hilarious.
25. Knight of the Long Sword
It's the penultimate episode and we're still getting origin stories - I guess that's the problem of adapting a book with "nine dozen" heroes in it. Evil Kao Chiu has yet another plan to capture or kill Lin Chung, and it involves getting yet another of China's greatest fighters - in this case the great General Kuang Sheng - to fight Lin Chung for him.
Burt Kwouk's narration is doing most of the heavy lifting in setting this episode in the context of the story, telling us how Kao Chiu's government is now struggling against the dual threats of our heroes of Liang Shan Po and invading Mongols, and is consequently on the verge of collapse, with Kao having to impose martial law in the cities and pass laws without the approval of the Emperor. While there is some dialogue from the characters to back this up, there's little of it shown on screen and this plot could otherwise have easily come much earlier in the series without changing very much at all.
This changes somewhat at the climax of the episode, when Kao's plan inevitably backfires and Kuang Sheng ends up joining with Liang Shan Po. It's not the first time Kao has ended up in a swordfight himself, but this is the first time it feels like he is properly threatened, and so suggests that the end of the story cannot be far away.
26. The Dynasty of Kao
I'll try and include no more spoilers for this, the series finale, than the episode title itself contains.
That was a properly epic, satisfying conclusion. Unlike with Monkey, here they actually reached the end of the story. The two main plots of the second season finally come together, as our heroes of Liang Shan Po have assembled their army to take on Evil Kao Chiu, while at the same time Kao makes his move in his palace coup against the Emperor of China.
If there is a flaw it is that there are some main characters who miss out on being present at the climax, but when there are supposed to be "nine dozen" heroes (and there was obviously nothing like that many, even if they were still introducing new ones right up to the very end) I think this was inevitable.
The heroes we do see all get a fair amount of screen time, especially the magician Kung Sun Sheng, one of my favourite characters, and naturally Lin Chung is at the centre of things.
The annoyingly repetitive incidental music makes an unwelcome return, but fortunately Burt Kwouk mostly narrates pseudo-philosophy over it.
At one episode a week, this has taken me six months to watch through. It has definitely been worth it. For the most part, episodes don't tend to stand alone the way they do with the likes of Monkey, it is a continuous developing narrative (not really surprising since it is based on a famous book... but then again, so is Monkey), and as such feels quite modern.
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