Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Games

Games is the eighth episode of the fourth season of Blakes 7. It was written by Bill Lyons, a writer who more usually wrote for soap operas or, if he was feeling adventurous, police dramas. This was his only script for Blakes 7, but it could have been worse - Ben Steed wrote three, after all!

It starts with our heroes watching some explosions on their TV on Scorpio! This week something called "Feldon" is the most valuable substance in the universe, even though it is mainly only used to make canes. Avon has a plan to steal all the Feldon from the Federation. Vila likes this plan, but is worried about how safe Feldon is when it caused the explosions they were watching.

Avon overcomes Vila's doubts when he says it is worth £900,000,000. Even though all he is doing is delivering exposition to the others, Avon is still hamming up every single one of his lines. That's why we love him so much. That and he's being handsome while doing it, purr.

Everyone agrees to go along with Avon's plan, obviously. Then Avon tells them the Feldon has already been stolen from the Federation, so they need to steal it from the thief. He says

"It is protected by a security system which is supposed to be impassable."

to which Vila replies

"They're all supposed to be impassable."

We are introduced to Belkov, played by Stratford "Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso" Johns, an actor who is best known for his standout appearance in a single episode of I Claudius in 1976, but at the time was probably still most famous for having played the police detective Charles Barlow (in Z Cars and several of its spinoff series) from 1962 until 1976.

After so many years in a single role it is hardly surprising that Johns wanted to escape from typecasting, so he made appearances in historical dramas and sci-fi series playing parts very different from Barlow. His turn as Belkov is one of the highlights of this episode. After being in Blakes 7 he would go on to be in Doctor Who's Four to Doomsday as the baddy Monarch, with - it has to be said - less success.

Belkov is playing a game against his computer, Gambit - doubtless named after Mike Gambit (purr) from The New Avengers. No, lol, I'm only pulling your tail - Gambit is probably actually named after the season two episode of the same name. It seems likely that Bill Lyons may have wanted to call this episode Gambit too... until somebody else on the production team pointed out that fans of BBC sci-fi have, historically, not reacted well when two stories in the same series share the same name.

Avon's allies of the week are already trying to steal the Feldon, which for reasons that aren't yet clear involves playing a computer game where the player gets pewpewpewed at by another manny that looks just like them. All three of them get pewed and only one of them, Gerren, manages to get away. Gerren is played by David Neal, probably best known for playing the President of Androzani in Doctor Who's Caves of Androzani - so he got a better deal than Stratford Johns in that, at least. He gets teleported onto Scorpio!

Servalan, who is still pretending to be Commissioner Sleer, visits Belkov to arrest him. She says

"This isn't a game Belkov. We want those crystals and we want them now."

Belkov replies that "it is a game" - it is already clear that he sees everything as a game, or at the very least something that can be turned into a game - hence the episode title.

In this picture of Avon and Gerren, Avon is indicating which one of them will survive to the end of the episode. Gerren describes the games protecting the Feldon as "booby traps."

Belkov space telephones Scorpio! to request them to rescue him from Servalan. He offers to pay them "half the Feldon crystals" if they do, but it is obviously a trap.

Vila, Tarrant and Dayna teleport to the planet with Gerren. The dialogue in this episode is full of references to sports and games. Belkov started it, but soon everyone is at it (and not in a way that would have improved this episode tremendously, mew). First Tarrant says

"Sorry, disqualified on a technicality."

after Dayna pews a Federation manny who was already ded, then back on Scorio! Avon says

"I don't mind playing games, but I do object when the opposition makes up the rules and decides to be the referee as well."

A scene in which Vila, Tarrant and Gerren get captured by some Federation mannys and then immediately afterwards get rescued by Dayna is purest padding.

Servalan and her mannys are searching for the missing Feldon crystals. Belkov offers to tell Servalan where she can find

"Avon... Vila... Tarrant... I understand the Federation would like them out of circulation."

He has done his homew-word, hasn't he? Belkov knows very well that Servalan doesn't care about Dayna or Soolin.

Vila, Tarrant, Dayna and Gerren break into Belkov's base. This scene includes a classic example of Federation helmets doing nothing to protect their soldiers, when Tarrant hits one right on the helmet (mew!) and still knocks him out.

Tarrant makes Vila stay outside while the rest of them go into the base to get captured. Considering how useless Vila is with guns, and that Dayna is right there, it is obvious that Vila was only left behind so that Tarrant could have a threesome with Dayna and Gerren because the plot required it.

Avon hasn't had much to do so far in this episode, and he is still on Scorpio! with Soolin and Orac, but what he does do he does in the hammiest way imaginable - in this respect it is the quality of his screentime that matters, not quantity. Although, when it comes to Avon, both would always be better.

Orac gives Avon some exposition about how advanced Belkov's computer Gambit is, which makes it difficult for even Orac to hack into for information about Belkov's security. The dialogue emphasises how much Belkov has upgraded Gambit, and Avon describes Gambit as

"It is his bodyguard, his companion, his playmate... his friend, Orac."

If Avon is implying that Gambit is Belkov's friend just like Orac is his friend, Orac has other ideas:

"That implies an emotional tie, which is no part of a computer's function."

Oh well, Avon will have to make do with Tarrant. And Blake. And every cat in the galaxy, of course. Purr.

Occasionally there are guest actors in Blakes 7 who try to take on Paul Darrow at his own game. Colin Baker in City at the Edge of the World may be the most obvious example of an actor daring to think they could out-ham the master. Stratford Johns doesn't make that mistake - the hammier Darrow gets, the more he goes the other way. When Belkov meets Tarrant and Dayna (oh, and Gerren's still here too) he downplays a little throat-cutting gesture and noise when explaining what will happen if they kill him:

"Gambit is programmed to raise the alarm. Wouldn't help me, I know, but it would ensure that you were captured and - erk - executed."

Vila sees a lot of explosions, caused by Belkov blowing up the Feldon mines for the lols. Avon sends Vila into Belkov's base to steal one of Gambit's circuits that they need for their plan.

Belkov sends Servalan and her mannys into a trap where they get into a fight with the planet's natives - that's the old sci-fi cliché of a primitive but dangerous people who don't like intruders in their sacred places. Belkov then lures Tarrant and Dayna (and Gerren) into a trap underneath his escape ship - stealing ideas from Moonraker, now that's a touch of class.

Vila meets Gambit and he starts talking to it and makes a couple of moves in the game that Gambit had been playing with Belkov, but then he has to hide when Belkov comes in. Belkov is preparing to leave and orders Gambit to "self-destruct" once all his other orders and plans have been carried out. Even though Vila is hiding right there, Gambit doesn't give him away to Belkov.

After Belkov has gone, Vila talks to Gambit some more and tries to persuade it to not self-destruct. It opens the door to release Tarrant and Dayna (and Gerren) and even gives Vila the circuit he wants. Although it took some out-of-character actions for Vila to end up in this situation, he was the perfect character to choose, and the only one of our heroes who could have won Gambit over in this way. These scenes alone make this the best episode for Vila, as a character (as distinct from being the best episode with Vila in it, which this decidedly isn't), since City at the Edge of the World back in season three.

While escaping, Tarrant and Dayna (and Gerren) get into a shootout with some Federation mannys. While the regular characters get teleported to safety on Scorpio! Gerren gets pewed and captured by Servalan. That's the last we'll see of him - you didn't need to be Orac to predict that Gerren wouldn't make it safely to the end credits.

Avon, Tarrant, Vila, Orac and Soolin go to Belkov's "orbiter" where the stolen crystals are, but they have to get past the "booby traps" first (rather than, say, teleporting straight to where the crystals are, because that just wouldn't be playing the game). The game that defeated Gerren and his friends at the start of the episode is beaten by Soolin, because she is good at shooting. The next game is a "flight simulator" which gets beaten by Tarrant because he is a pilot. You can see where the episode is going with this - there is one game to match each of our heroes' special skills. (Except for Dayna, since Belkov neglected to make a game about getting captured offscreen between scenes.)

Vila uses his thief skill to open the next door, then it is Avon's turn. Avon realises that the only winning move in this final game is not to play it, since it is designed to be unwinnable:

"There aren't any damned crystals. There never were any damned crystals. They're like everything else on this ship: a game. That's why the last one has to be impassable. We have got to get out of here!"

Belkov contacts Gambit from his escape ship and asks for it to paw over control of the ship to him, but Gambit refuses since it has been ordered to self-destruct afterwards. Realising that he's going to die either way, Belkov asks Gambit to draw power into the Feldon crystals from a black hole, to blow as much up as possible. Gambit agrees, and Belkov starts to laugh. 

He has liked the occasional low-key maniacal laugh throughout the episode, but hasn't gone the full Mordred until now.

Scorpio! pewpewpews the orbiter to allow our heroes to escape. Vila reveals that he took Belkov's necklace of crystals from the base, so at least they have some of the Feldon they came for.

"I'd say the last game was mine, wouldn't you?"

he says. Sadly for Vila (and in a reversal of the otherwise similar ending to City at the Edge of the World) they turn out to be fakes, so Avon gets the last line of the episode:

"End game to Belkov."

Games is the most average episode of season 4, being neither great like Headhunter, Sand or Orbit, nor awful like Power, Animals or Assassin. It has two points of interest that help it to stand out from other episodes, these being a rare increased role for Vila, and the noteworthy performance from guest actor Stratford Johns.

Sadly, many of the other aspects to this story have been done better elsewhere - we could look at Headhunter to see a better rival computer to Orac, or Gold to see a better heist episode. Even when Vila gets the chance to be centre stage and to put his thieving skills to use, this is still not done so well as had already been seen in City at the Edge of the World.

Still, at least the production doesn't stand out for all of the wrong reasons - better to be a Games than a Power any day. So I think we'll call this one a draw.

Cleopatra (1963)

Long film is long.

That's because everything in this epic film is done on an epic scale, and that means everything is big, or long, or both. It's great.

At almost four hours in length, this could have been two films, or even a mini-series. Supposedly it nearly was two films, the first about Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, the second about Cleopatra and Mark Antony. This is noticeable in the finished film, with Caesar's assassination coming roughly halfway through.

The events depicted run from Casear's defeat of Pompey through to the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, and as such almost precisely coincide with the events depicted in the 2005 TV series Rome, only without the additional adventures of Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. This film was obviously an inspiration on that series, with it contrasting itself against the relatively cleaner and more sanitised version of history depicted here, and with Cleopatra as an incidental character rather than absolutely central.

This film also very clearly influenced a couple of BBC historical dramas, most obviously the final few episodes of The Cleopatras, which covered the same territory, but also I Claudius, where the events of this film are recent history at the point that series begins (and are poetically recapped for the audience's benefit by Aristarchus near the start of episode one). With only 13 years between the film's release and the TV series being shown, Cleopatra would doubtless have been in the minds of the makers and much of the audience at the time.

As a Hollywood epic of the classic era, the real star is the cinematography - the exotic locations and the enormous sets. The grandeur of Rome and the opulence of Egypt are both conveyed through these, and of course there was no CGI in those days so they either had to build them for real or else use camera trickery, paintings or models - the number of real ships involved in filming the battle of Actium being disguised about as well as the number of real Daleks involved in Dave the Daleks.

These great big sets needed equally big performances to fill them, which might explain some of the casting choices. In these terms the film is dominated by Richard Burton as Antony and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, with a lot of the film's most dramatic scenes not being the battles but the romantic scenes - which mostly consist of those two shouting at each other.

The secondary cast is equally up to the challenge of filling the scenery, mostly by chewing on it so outrageously that even the likes of William Shatner might have struggled to keep up. Foremost among these is Roddy McDowell as Octavian, who makes season four Paul Darrow look positively restrained by comparison.

Other noteworthy cast members include Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar, failing to talk to any animals as far as I could see; George "Arfur Daley" Cole as Caesar's mute servant; Andrew "Quatermass" Keir as Agrippa; Martin Landau as Rufio, a Roman general - a significant role only three years before he would begin repeatedly guest-starring in Mission: Impossible. Michael "Gandalf" Hordern was Cicero and Robert "Aragorn" Stephens was Germanicus (not that one), both senators, leading me to assume that the rest of the Roman Senate was filled with other Lord of the Rings radio actors. A very young Richard O'Sullivan played Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy, but perhaps the most surprising appearance of all to me was Jean "Morgaine" Marsh as Octavian's sister Octavia - a small but pivotal role since she is the wife who Antony abandons to be with Cleopatra.

Anthony Hopkins does not appear in the film, but if you close your eyes you could swear it was him playing Mark Antony. Richard Burton doesn't always sound like Hopkins, such as in his War of the Worlds narration, but here he sounds nigh identical, it's uncanny.

Five TV shows Patrick Stewart was in before Star Trek: The Next Generation

So synonymous has Patrick Stewart become with his baldy-headed English-French captain of the Starship Enterprise, who he played from 1987 until 2002 (and then recently brought out of retirement again for one last job), that it is easy to forget that he already had a long and distinguished list of film and TV credits to his name before he ever made it so.

Here are five of my personal favourites from British TV shows.

#1. Civilisation (1969)

 

Civilisation, if you’re unfamiliar with it, was Kenneth Clark (Not That One)’s 13-part BBC documentary series about the history of western civilisation from the Dark Ages to the 20th century, as seen through the lens of its art. It recently got a sequel series, almost 50 years after the original, but is probably best known today for inspiring the long-running series of computer strategy games of the same name… if not the same spelling.

By episode six, Protest and Communication, Clark’s chronological approach has reached the time of Shakespeare, and he illustrates the Swan of Avon (Not That One)’s contribution to civilisation with three scenes from his plays: King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, with actors brought in specially to perform the scenes.

In the excerpt from Hamlet (act 5 scene 1), Patrick Stewart is Horatio to Ian “House of Cards” Richardson’s Hamlet and Ronald “Avon’s friend” Lacey as the Gravedigger. Horatio has by far the least lines of the three, and with the benefit of hindsight it seems a waste to get Patrick Stewart in just to say lines like

“E’en so, my lord.”

but nevertheless it is umistaikably him, and it is amazing to see how little he has physically changed over the years from how he looks in this very early TV appearance.

#2. Fall of Eagles (1974)

 

I have already discussed Fall of Eagles extensively on this blog. Here Patrick Stewart is playing Lenin, and as such is in one of the five(ish) most important roles in the series. For all that, he’s only in three of the 13 episodes, with the second of these, Absolute Beginners being one of the very best of the series largely thanks to Stewart’s amazing, powerful performance.

#3. I Claudius (1976)

 

The next time Patrick Stewart would turn up in a BBC historical costume drama it would be in a bad wig as Lucius Sejanus, the ruthlessly ambitious captain of Tiberius’s praetorian guards, in four episodes of I Claudius. He makes his first appearance in the scene after the one where Augustus dies, and helps to fill the hole left by the departure of BRIAN BLESSED’s larger-than-life character. In the following episodes we see Sejanus’s scheming gradually come to the fore, as he plans to marry his way into the imperial family and remove all those standing in the way of his rise to absolute power.

Even acting alongside the likes of George Baker, Derek “Shakespeare-denier” Jacobi, and of course Sian Phillips as Livia, Stewart makes his portrayal memorable as we see his two-faced machiavel rise and rise and then, eventually, fall. It is with Caligula’s help that Sejanus is finally brought down, paving the way for the unforgettable performance by John Hurt to dominate the next phase of the series.

#4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982)

When the BBC adapted the first and last parts of John le Carré’s ‘Karla trilogy’ they were obviously going to need somebody to play Karla, head of the Soviet Union’s “13th Directorate” and the hidden antagonist behind Gerald the mole and all the plots against George Smiley’s secret service “Circus.” Well, I wouldn’t be mentioning it in this article if they hadn’t chosen Patrick Stewart for the part.

Because Karla is seldom encountered directly, for all that his long shadow is cast over everything that occurs in both stories, the part is much smaller than you might expect for what is essentially the main baddy. (Exactly how small? Well, if you’ve seen it you’ll already know what I mean. And if you haven’t…) But that just makes it all the more remarkable how much Stewart does with so little. Alec Guinness is rarely challenged in the acting stakes throughout either series, but when he’s on screen with Patrick Stewart, it is Stewart that you have to watch – partly that’s because we see so little of Karla that his scenes stand out the more, but it’s also because Patrick Stewart steals those scenes out from under him.

#5. Playing Shakespeare (1982)

Well I began with Shakespeare, and this final entry brings us full circle. In 1982 a nine-part documentary series was shown on ITV about theatre director John Barton, with help from a bunch of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, giving a ‘masterclass’ with examples of how they go about preparing to put on Shakespeare plays. The list of actors involved include some very well known names, including Ben Kingsley, David Suchet, Donald Sinden, Jane Lapotaire, Judi Dench, Serena McKellen, and (of course) Patrick Stewart.

Patrick Stewart appears in five of the nine parts, but he is mainly featured in one episode in particular, Exploring a Character, which sees Barton discussing with him and David “Purrot” Suchet the similarities and differences in how they each played Shylock in The Mov. Now you might think that 50 minutes of that would be boring but, on the contrary, I found it anything but, and could happily have watched them continue for twice as long or more. Especially interesting were the bits where Stewart and Suchet would perform a scene together, then afterwards swap roles and do the same scene again in a different – sometimes only subtly different – way.

The series has moments of pretentiousness and can slip into jargon at times – it was deservedly mocked for such by Nigel Planer in his Nicholas Craig The Naked Actor series – but Barton is aware of this and so does not take himself too seriously (at one point referencing an early sketch by Fry & Laurie in which they sent up exactly this type of luvvie pretentiousness), which helps make the series fun. Shakespearean language has a reputation of being dull and difficult among mannys who were bored rigid when taught it badly in their schools, but this series makes the subject not only fascinating, but approachable and comprehensible.

The Devil's Crown

I've said it before and I'll say it again: 1978 was a good year for BBC television. Here is another series from then, which I've known about for a while now, but have only recently been able to see thanks to it being posted in the Yousual place - sadly a poor quality copy with sound that frequently drops or goes out of sync with the picture, the wrong aspect ratio, and with the titles and end credits in French. Despite this, it was a gripping series where I watched through all 13 episodes in quick succession. Hopefully it will get a proper DVD release one day, if not from the BBC itself then maybe from Good Old Network?

The Devil's Crown is a historical drama set over a period of time where characters, even main characters, come and go, grow old and die (or get murdered) as time passes. It is very much in the same mould as Fall of Eagles or I Claudius, both from earlier in the '70s, and would appear to be an attempt to get more lightning out of the same bottle.

This time the setting is England and France in the High Middle Ages, more specifically the years 1150 to 1216, and the drama centres on the lives of the Plantagenet kings of England, Henry ii (Brian "Great Commanders" Cox), his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Jane Lapotaire) and their sons Richard i (Michael "not Jayston" Byrne) and John (John Duttine). They are locked in constant struggle against the French kings, first Louis vii (Charles "Pendleton" Kay) and then his son Philip ii (Christopher "Sharaz Jek" Gable), who are the principal antagonists of the series.

The supporting cast is packed full of familiar British character actors such as Patrick Troughton, Christopher Benjamin, and Ian "Josiah Smith" Hogg as knights, and Jack Shepherd, Clifford "Rorvik" Rose and Anthony "heh heh heh" Ainley as senior churchmannys. These latter are significant because of the omnipresence of Christianity in the period, and the king's relationship with the church and the Pope (or his representatives) almost always being crucial in determining the course of events.

The main characters frequently talk to God in the form of soliloquies, letting us know their innermost thoughts, especially Richard who continually wrestles with his conscience - not over wars and killing (which he has no problems with at all, and neither really does the church) but over his homosexuality, which the church tells him is sinful and his family blames for his lack of an heir. This allows for a nuanced and even somewhat progressive portrayal of homosexuality, surprisingly so for a TV series made in 1978.

As with I Claudius before it, this series combines historical accuracy in the events depicted with the most sensational interpretation of the main characters involved. First there is Henry ii, who is portrayed as a manny of extreme passion and anger - easily the most famous thing about him is his outburst when in a rage that led to the murder of Thomas Becket (as seen in the third episode). Then there is Richard i, who is unabashedly and very gay, despite this being a disputed trait of the historical Richard. Finally there is king John, who is cowardly, treacherous, hypocritical and useless, and like every portrayal of him in a Robin Hood story turned up to 11.

With regards to these characterisations, the series appears to me to have been heavily influenced by The Lion in Winter (the 1968 film of which is a favourite of Gamma Longcat), the plot of which directly overlaps with one episode. Then, when only John is left, the final episodes cover a lot of the same ground as Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John. And when king Richard is on crusade I could easily imagine Sir Ian of Jaffa appearing in the background of events that feature in Doctor Who's The Crusades, lol.

Another way in which the series resembles I Claudius is that it is almost entirely studio bound, with a stylised, theatrical way of representing events beyond the series budget such as battles or the grandeur of Rome or Jerusalem. At times this series steps even further away from realism than I Claudius (which leant heavily on old Claudius acting as narrator when it needed to convey things it couldn't show), and I was reminded of the device used by Terry Jones's 1995 documentary series Crusades of depicting the historical characters as though they were in tapestries or mosaics.

The other thing I was frequently reminded of when watching was the computer game Crusader Kings 2. If you were to make a TV series out of the game then it would end up almost exactly like The Devil's Crown - everything is here except for the most meme-tier levels of incest or horse popes: the problems of gavelkind succession, the need for kings to have heirs and to make marriage alliances, the crusades themselves of course, the aforementioned homosexuality, and a moderate amount of incest.

You could even go so far as to map Character Focuses onto most of the main characters: lustful Henry's is Seduction while pious Louis's is Theology. Richard the crusader specialises in War. Both Philip and John took Intrigue, although even with the +3 bonus John was still shit at it.

If he makes Dilyn a Lord...

...then we'll know that Johnson has gone full Caligula.

The I Claudius Challenge: 12 episodes in 12 weeks - Part Three

Mon 7 Dec: 10. Fool’s Luck

With help from his friend King Herod, Claudius persuades the senate to accept him as Emperor. But after that the real plot begins - Messalina, Claudius’s wife, whom he loves unquestioningly, tries to become “the Livia to his Augustus” (if he has a moment’s pause this episode, it’s when she uses that very phrase to him - he knows the truth about Livia; she - presumably - doesn’t). Messalina begains to maneuver the man she wants to become her lover, Appius Silanus, into a position where she can gain access to sleep with him, and pretty skilfully at that, but when he refuses her she loses her grip - Silanus tries to kill Claudius and ends up getting executed.

The Messalina story is something of a return to the subtleties of the early Augustus and Livia episodes, after the OTT Caligula parts. It draws me in as it twists and turns; I want to know what happens next. These are wonderful episodes.

…and there’s a great comic scene with John Bennett as a Greek doctor, giving Claudius medical advice.

Notable characters that die this episode: Cassius Chaerea and Appius Silanus.

Mon 14 Dec: 11. A God in Colchester

“Anything?”

The second half of the Messalina story.

Messalina manipulates events to the point of overthrowing Claudius to set up with a new lover/husband, but his advisors Pallas and Narcissus, fearing for their own lives if the coup comes off, out-play her and she finally gets her comeuppance.

It shows Messalina’s skill at manipulation that they have to ensure she never gets a chance to speak to Claudius or else she would talk her way out.

It’s difficult for me to think of anything more to say about this one - it’s all in the writing and the magnificent (as ever for this series) performances.

Notable characters that die this episode: Quintus Justus, King Herod, Messalina.

Sun 20 Dec: 12. Old King Log

“Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”

The final episode.

Before Claudius dies he tries one final scheme to restore the Roman Republic. He marries his niece Agrippinilla (Caligula’s sister) and makes her son Nero his adopted son and heir - the idea being that Nero will be a tyrant as bad as Caligula and be overthrown, as Caligula was, but with no Claudius around to succeed him, the Republic will be restored instead.

Agrippinilla is no Livia or Messalina, Claudius is always ahead of her, and her attempts at manipulating him only play into his own plans. And between her and Nero, she’s the brains.

“Farwell Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus.”

(It reads like a list of five characters from the series, but it’s actually Claudius’s full name.)

Notable characters that die this episode: Claudius. Britannicus, Narcissus, Agrippinilla and Nero’s deaths are foretold by the Sibyl.

Guest-star of the week: Christopher Biggins (Nero).

“What a pretty thing a fire is.”

The I Claudius Challenge: 12 episodes in 12 weeks - Part Two

Some thoughts at the halfway point

I haven’t bothered to give the individual episodes ratings (out-of-five or otherwise), partly because that’s not my style but mainly because I’d just be giving every episode top marks. They really are that good.

They’re not flawless productions - if I wanted to nit-pick I could say that they’re not first-rate production values, with the studio-bound sets shot on videotape, or that the aging make-up isn’t always perfect on, for instance, Tiberius, Livia, and especially Claudius himself. But it is so easy to forget about these things when watching the episodes because the acting is utterly brilliant from pretty much everyone. It’s a play performed by some of the finest actors of that era - as such, the sets and make-up are adequate to the task of letting the actors do their job.

If I Claudius were made today, it would be like Rome. Almost exactly like Rome, in fact, given that Rome’s second season leaves off in almost the perfect place for the events of I Claudius to start. Rome’s a bit like the Star Wars prequel films in that respect - also it has all the modern production values that one would expect of a present-day TV series that they could only dream of in the ‘70s, but the script and the performances aren’t up to the standard of the original. Though, that said, I do like Rome in its own way.

Sun 15 Nov: 7. Reign of Terror

This is the story of the downfall of Sejanus. At the moment of his triumph, thinking he is to be named Tiberius’s successor, he is undone.

First he is shown still rising towards his ambition in scenes that illustrate how ruthless he is - torturing confessions out of senators and arranging to marry Livilla’s daughter when Tiberius refuses him permission to marry Livilla herself.

The downfall itself - organised by Tiberius and Caligula with help from John Rhys-Davies’s Macro, Sejanus’s ambitious second-in-command (and therefore his replacement) - is equally ruthless; it’s not just Sejanus that dies, there’s a purge in Rome and the episode ends with the streets full of bodies, including Sejanus himself. I like the way Sejanus’s murder is shown from his point-of-view, with Macro and two guards advancing towards him - the camera - with swords out.

His death scene is followed by Livilla’s, locked in a room and starved to death by her own mother, who had uncovered her poisoning of her husband and attempted poisoning of her daughter.

Claudius again plays a small but significant role in the plot - he is the one that brings the news of Sejanus’s treachery to Tiberius since, in spite of the fact that Sejanus controls access to the Emperor, he doesn’t consider that Claudius could be a threat. It’s a nice touch that keeps the title character from being merely an observer of events.

Mon 23 Nov: 8. Zeus, by Jove!

This is my favourite episode. For all the brilliance of BRIAN BLESSED, Sian Phillips, and the other actors in previous episodes, at this point John Hurt totally steals the show.

Caligula becomes Emperor. He started mad, and gets madder; thinking he is a living god. His madness, and the episode, builds up to the stunning final scene.

“Don’t go in there. Don’t go in there.”

Mon 30 Nov: 9. Hail Who?

“You set the standard of sanity for the whole world.”

Caligula, backed by German guards loyal to him alone, is all-powerful, and reaches new heights (depths?)* of insanity:

- Claudius saves two senators from death by quoting Homer to amuse Caligula.

- Caligula thinks the Jew’s prophecy about the coming Messiah refers to him.

- Thinking he is the god Jove, Caligula makes war on Neptune and his armies take seashells as plunder.

- After a campaign against the Germans (and Neptune), Caligula orders no Triumphs upon his return, and then rages at the lack of them awarded to him.

- He also reprimands the Romans for celebrating the victory of the battle of Actium, when his ancestor Mark Antony was defeated, but later admits he would have done so if they hadn’t - because Augustus, who won, was also his ancestor.

- And then there’s the most utterly crazy and unforgettably insane scene of the series - the dance. If you’ve seen the episode, you’ll know the bit I mean. If not, words cannot describe. As evidenced by the following exchange between Caligula and Claudius:

“Did you like it?”

“It was… indescribable.” 

- Caligula forces the beautiful Messalina to marry old, crippled Claudius as a joke, though it backfires somewhat as they are happy together… for a time, but more on that in episodes to come.

- “The noble senator Incitatus.”

Eventually a conspiracy gets underway to kill him, and finally, he’s dead.

Then the Praetorian Guard force Claudius - virtually on pain of death - to be the next Emperor so they can keep their cushy jobs guarding him. The final shot of the episode is Claudius wearing a golden laurel wreath - less than gracefully.

With Caligula, and the fabulous John Hurt, gone, the series will never be the same again. But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to the remaining three episodes. Far from it.

* Yes, I know I’ve used this before, for episode 6, but the point remains.

The I Claudius Challenge: 12 episodes in 12 weeks - Part One

Sun 4 Oct: 1. A Touch of Murder

A double-length episode that seems to have been two episodes edited together, as evidenced by the two halves having separate plots* - the first half is the power struggle between Marcus Agrippa and Marcellus for who should be Augustus’s successor. Although Marcellus dies first, neither of them wins because Livia poisons them both. The second half is about Claudius’s father Drusus and his relationship with his brother Tiberius, so we understand that when Drusus dies there is nothing keeping Tiberius ‘good’ any more.

The episode is utterly dominated (in both plot and acting stakes) by Livia and her subtle manipulation of everyone to maneuver Tiberius, her son, into position as Augustus’s heir. It’s not long into the series before she poisons Marcellus and claims her first victim, with the audience her only co-conspirator. It’s wonderful to watch, and I especially love the sly asides that only the audience can appreciate the meaning of.

The other great performance in this episode is BRIAN BLESSED as Augustus Caesar, for one scene in particular, where he subtly hints to Drusus that he would make a very dangerous enemy, while otherwise acting like an affable father-figure to him.

*Wikipedia tells me that it was made as 2 episodes and then edited together for the original BBC broadcast.

Guest-star of the week: Ian Ogilvy (Drusus), who went on to play Simon Templar in Return of the Saint.

If we were counting the first half of the episode separately, then I guess either of the actors who played Marcellus and Marcus Agrippa could count. But as I have also recently been watching John Silver's Return to Treasure Island, I'll nominate Christopher Guard (Marcellus), who went on to play Jim Hawkins.

Sun 11 Oct: 2. Waiting in the Wings

Probably the most memorable of the BRIAN BLESSED episodes, for the scene where, having just discovered his daughter is the town bicycle, Augustus goes down the long line of Romans daring any of them to deny it, and then he yells at the top of his lungs-

“IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!!”

Livia is once again behind all the intrigues, and I noticed this episode how a couple of her key moves are illustrated for the audience by nice directorial flourishes - the first is when the camera zooms in on Lucius as he falls into her trap. The other is when she makes a rare miscalculation, and the camera pans steadily - without cutting - from her face to Augustus, his face showing he is not going along with her before he speaks to confirm it. Still, one more murder and she gets her way in the end.

Guest-star of the week: Nobody very well known, but I certainly recognised Darien Angadi (Plautius) from Blakes 7, where he was Ro in season two’s Horizon.

Sun 18 Oct: 3. What shall we do about Claudius?

This is the first episode with an adult Claudius taking part in the plot, and it's only in his second scene being played by Derek Jacobi that he first receives the advice that will keep him alive - play up his disabilities so he is not perceived as a threat. This time it is given to him by Pollio, a leading historian/scholar of the day, and it is paralleled by a later scene where Posthumous Agrippa - whose downfall forms the main plot of the episode - gives him the same advice.

The other plot for this episode concerns the historical event where three entire Roman Legions were wiped out in an ambush by German barbarians. We don't see any of that, of course, just the report of the events from a messenger and, crucially, the reactions of the main characters to it - they just can't believe such a disaster was possible. I think the episode implies that Augustus, already old and going senile, is just about finished off by this event.

“QUINTILLIUS VARUS, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?!!”

Livia still has all her wits about her, and it shows in every scene she’s in, with the possible exception of the scene where she and Augustus argue like any old married couple, not the Emperor and Empress of Rome, about their family affairs. It’s a very funny scene because of that contrast.

The scene where Livilla (for those keeping track: Claudius’s sister, married to Castor, who is Tiberius’s son) lures Posthumous to destruction - by accusing him of attempting to rape her - is very, very nasty. Livia puts Livilla up to it because removing Posthumous will put Tiberius (and thus Castor) as Augustus’s only heir. But unlike Livia’s previous schemes, which she carried out in a cool, calculating way with all the considerable charisma Sian Phillips could put into it, Livilla is a shrieking harpy so the scene is brutal.

The episode ends with everyone laughing at Claudius at his wedding, because his bride is revealed to be about a foot (or more, perhaps) taller than him. This shows nobody takes him seriously, so nobody perceives him as a threat - not even Livia, who seems to enjoy laughing at him the most. He’s safe. We know this because the final shot goes back to him as an old man, and it shows this is how he survived to become the old man.

Guest-star of the week: John Castle (Posthumous).

Sun 25 Oct: 4. Poison is Queen

An early scene confirms a thread begun in the last episode, that Livia, who seems to know everything that goes on in Rome, is incapable of suspecting someone she considers to be a fool. Livia doesn’t suspect Claudius of having the wit to guess her schemes when even Livilla suspects him of causing the truth behind the rape accusation to reach Augustus.

It is established that Livia has been driven to poison her husband before he can undo her work of the last episode by pardoning Posthumous and reinstating him as heir. Livia is seen drunk in a couple of scenes, indicating the inner turmoil she feels about her actions, even though in her speech to Tiberius she remains resolute.

The stand-out moment in this episode is Augustus’s death scene: Livia talks (about herself and Tiberius, and how her actions have been for the greater good of Rome) and BRIAN BLESSED says nothing, but acts like the death like nothing else I’ve ever seen him do - you can see him die as the camera stays on his face, in extreme close-up, until Livia comes over and her hand closes his eyes. Then we see Tiberius come into the room, and there are tears in Livia’s eyes.

“By the way… don’t touch the figs.”

So we have reached the end of the section with BRIAN BLESSED in it. The very next scene Sejanus (Patrick Stewart) arrives, and is sent by Livia to execute Posthumous and remove the last couple of people who might stand in the way of Tiberius becoming Emperor.

Guest-star of the week: Virtually all the significant characters of this episode appear in other episodes. I guess I’ll nominate Jonathan Burn as Fabius, who knew Augustus’s true Will and so died for it.

Sun 1 Nov: 5. Some Justice

Tiberius is now Emperor and immediately things go wrong for him, because Germanicus (Claudius’s brother) is more popular than he is. But even when Germanicus dies it is not entirely good news for him, because there is a republican faction, headed by Aggripina (Germanicus’s wife) and Castor (Tiberius’s own son), that seeks to put governor Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso and his wife on trial for the murder of Germanicus and treason against Rome - they have evidence Piso arranged for Germanicus to be poisoned, including the alleged poisoner as a star witness. What makes this bad for Tiberius is that Piso was his agent and has letters to prove it.

Most of the episode is about the trial - in the senate - of Piso and the manipulation of it by the interested parties. The republican faction, of which Claudius is a member and actively involved, want justice. Piso, naturally enough, wants to get off. It gets complicated when Tiberius and Livia get involved. Piso was acting under orders from Tiberius, so thinks the Emperor will side with him, but an acquittal would be incredibly unpopular in Rome so Tiberius withdraws his support. Livia, not trusting her son to handle the affair himself, steps in to ensure that Piso doesn’t damage Tiberius by revealing any embarrassing letters as he goes down.

Once again it is Livia who comes out on top in the end. She also gets the best scene in the episode, having a gossip with Martina - the poisoner, whom Livia had arranged to have disappeared - about poisoning methods. Over the course of the conversation Martina realises that Livia’s knowledge is not just academic…

This episode also sees the first appearance of Caligula (not yet being played by John Hurt). Here he is a creepy child, already showing signs of the monster he will become.

Guest-star of the week: Stratford Johns (Piso).

Sun 8 Nov: 6. Queen of Heaven

“You must have a very long reach.”

“The empire is very large - I need one.”

-- Claudius and Livia

This gets going immediately, skipping the usual lead-in with elderly Claudius, with a very dark tale about Tiberius, told by the woman Lollia who then kills herself because of what she has experienced at the hands of the Emperor. This is shortly followed by the first appearance of John Hurt as the adult Caligula, giving a gift of p*rn to Tiberius. The scene establishes their relationship perfectly.

The key scene of the episode is where Livia reveals all to Claudius - her ultimate ambition to be made a goddess after her death (wonderful roman logic behind this - she’ll go to hell for all the bad things she has done, unless she becomes a god and therefore immune to any punishments), and in exchange for Claudius’s promise to fulfil this for her when he becomes Emperor (which has by now been foretold more than once) she shares with him all her plots - previously only shared with the audience.

This builds up to Livia’s death scene at the end of the episode - Caligula reaches new heights (depths?) of monstrousness, explaining gleefully to the dying Livia how he will not make her a goddess because it has been foretold that he will be the greatest god of all (though, cleverly, the audience can recognise the prophecy as referring to Jesus, not Caligula).

Claudius arrives and restates his own promise to her, then Livia finally dies. Only at the end, when she needs Claudius, does Livia recognise he’s not such a fool.

So farewell to Sian Phillips's fantastic performance as Livia, which has utterly dominated the series up to now. But this episode sees her passing the baton on to John Hurt, whom I know will give a very different, but at least as show-stealing, performance in the episodes still to come.

Meanwhile the other plot of the episode is Sejanus’s rise to power. He uses Claudius to get one step closer to his goal by arranging Claudius to divorce his first wife and re-marry Sejanus’s sister - so Sejanus’s family is now connected to the Imperial family. This shocks Claudius’s mother and sister, but his friend Herod recognises Claudius has made the smart move - not antagonising Sejanus by a refusal.

Guest-star of the week: Kevin McNally (Castor). Although Castor had appeared in previous episodes, he was only in a few scenes. This, his most significant appearance, is the run up to his death at the hands of his wife and her lover, another stepping-stone in Sejanus’s rise to power.