The B7 Xmas Special (ii)

Marooned is certainly not the greatest of episodes. Avon and his friends don't appear for the first fifteen minutes, which is an extended prologue for Rescue. Dorian pilots Scorpio, trying to chase down the Liberator which - thanks to a never-mentioned-again detector shield Scorpio possesses - is unaware it is being followed.

Dorian's bewildered why the Liberator keeps changing direction if it's not trying to elude him, and Slave works out they're following a series of coded signals. Just Soolin then rings up the ship for a bit of bitchy exposition, coming across as a more human long-suffering girlfriend than the stoic sharpshooter we saw on TV. Dorian's "meticulously-detailed plan" was to head the planet Califeron in the justifiable-hope Avon's gang would turn up then, somehow, invite them back to Xenon for some reason. Yeah, Soolin's not convinced the plan will work either.

"I have no interest in becoming a freedom fighter!" she huffs at the idea of allying themselves with Avon to get access to the teleport. And when Dorian hangs up on her she mutters, "I really could get quite annoyed with you, Dorian, and that won't end well... for you." Given she's not even wearing a gun for this scene, you'd be forgiven for thinking the worst Soolin could do would be to urinate into the cappuccino machine.

As she storms off, the cameraman idly wanders around the Xenon Base set as though the director's forgotten to say "cut" as we hear a disembodied voice say "soon" a lot, which is like the start of The Web and just about as interesting. Certainly anyone creeped out by this development will be more likely to wonder why Soolin can't hear the voice of legion under the floorboards, and by the end of the episode we're none the wiser.

Nor is there any clue why Dorian, having dozed off chasing the Liberator, is now infected with blue-green algae.

Slave awakes Dorian from his lava-lamp nightmare and back to normal. When the computer apologizes for disturbing him, Dorian dryly comments he "was already disturbed" which doesn't seem much like his angry insistence he's completely sane in the next episode. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

Anyway, Slave reveals they've reached Delta 714 which has no planets on chart - Dorian knows better, saying "I know exactly where they're going, I just don't know why!" - but is a prohibited zone of unacceptable danger! You see, Scorpio has followed the Liberator to the edge of a glowing hell-mouth of space enzymes.

Slave and Dorian agree it's too dangerous to travel through the cloud, and are equally astonished when the Liberator does just that. They'll just have to take the long way round, adding four hours to their journey to the "charming little planet" of Terminal, and that's it for new material for a while.

Then we get the destruction of the Liberator sequence. Cutting to a shot of the rotting ship orbiting Terminal, repeating everything from "Maximum power!" to the final bang, before we catch a slightly-different view of the explosion in the closest to new material for a while.

If you're expecting to see Avon and co down on that planet, continue to be disappointed. In fact, it's the first Dorian scene from Rescue as he and Slave approach Terminal and detect the radiation from the explosion. Despite having seen the Liberator double-dip into space acid, Dorian seems surprised at the idea it might have exploded and bullies Slave to find out what happened as we get past that hastily-ended version. Dorian tells Slave to investigate the wreckage and ponders a plan to rescue any survivors of the ship.

Just then, a bit of the wreckage side-swipes Scorpio...


...which knocks Dorian over. Slave reveals they're in the radiation shadow of the explosion and his Yiddish accent goes all Olympian detachment as - somehow - Zen inexplicably takes over the computer and refers to the Liberator as DSV2 and says "Confirmed". Then he goes back to normal and this is never mentioned again.

Dorian's more concerned as the non-functional teleport suddenly functions and everyone's favorite Bitch in White (well, wearing black nowadays) vogues into existence...

Pulling out a gun from who-knows-where, Servalan demands to know what the hell's happening - she's as bewildered to her escape as Dorian is to her arrival, but he puts on the charming blue-collar worker act explaining they are on the salvage ship Scorpio heading for Terminal. To salvage "the valuable gear waiting to be stripped out" of Terminal, identical lines used better in Rescue. Certainly Servalan's unimpressed.

Servalan demands Dorian turn the ship around or she'll shoot him, but Dorian points out Servalan can't fly Scorpio without the help of his "quaint computer" who won't respond to her voice. Dorian offers to drop her off after he's salvaged Terminal, explaining " I'm working to a schedule, my associates won't be pleased if I'm late."

However, Dorian decided that a two-day delay to take Servalan to the nearest Federation is worth it to get this trigger-happy psycho-bitch off his hands and he tells Slave to change course. He then neatly denies having any idea his ship has a teleport, and changes the subject by asking Servalan who she is. He seems to know she's damn well lying when she claims to be Commissioner Sleer.

So, what sick and depraved sex games will they play to pass the next eighteen hours to Carthenis?

We never know, and maybe that's for the best as Dorian, Servalan, Slave, Soolin and Scorpio (what a lot of "S"s!) vanish from the episode never to return and we focus on the bleak surface of Terminal as snow starts to fall, symbolically calming down the libidos of anyone still watching at this point.

Downstairs - following the same down, down, down motif of Xenon Base earlier - Avon, Dayna, Vila and Tarrant are standing around while Orac bitches that he leaves these idiots alone for five minutes and this is what happens. There aren't any ships nearby since "this artificial monstrosity" Avon has recklessly marooned them all on is the only planet in the whole solar system, so Orac's not going to be able to carjack anything anytime soon. Worse, the radiation from the Liberator's explosion means Orac can't even send a distress call to lure in a ship.

Vila, who's in a bit of a mood, thinks the distress signal is a bad idea even though he says "Great idea! Let’s alert any bounty hunter, Space Rat or any other passing megalomaniac to our presence here! There’s still a price on our heads, remember?" but Avon thinks that'll improve the odds of someone coming to get them. "What could possibly go wrong?" the thief retorts.

Dayna and Tarrant agree that maybe they should focus on fixing the spaceship they have instead of trying to steal another one, but Avon reminds them that conducting repairs being attacked by Morlock-gorilla-grams isn't feasible. "We can't just wait to be rescued!" shouts Dayna, breaking the fourth wall a bit since we all will have to... wait... to see Rescue... no? Nothing?

Avon notes the underground complex they're in is huge and full of food and drink to keep them going for years, which they could probably enjoy if Vila got off his arse and opened the locked doors.

"Still giving the orders, eh? Why should I listen to you?" Vila demands.

"Presumably because you want to continue breathing," Avon retorts.

Tarrant ends up playing peacemaker - and being inevitable crap at it - as the blame game starts. Vila is angry Avon stupidly flew through the cloud, and talks about how he had to watch Zen die. Avon dismisses the heartbreaking "I have failed" stuff as corrupted circuitry. Vila notes Zen, unlike Avon, could say sorry and gets told:

"I am sorry Vila. I'm sorry I have to listen to your inane ramblings! I'm sorry you all disobeyed my orders by following me down here. And I'm sorry that my survival may now depend on you!"

Tarrant reminds everyone that if the gang had stayed on the ship, they'd probably all be dead now. Dayna wants to know why Avon was keeping Blake's survival a secret, and Tarrant is as convinced of his answer as Servalan was. Avon takes a moment to notice yet even more dialogue is being recycled, and it looks like Paul Darrow finds it more amusing than I do.

Again Tarrant tries to cut through the arguing and tries to be the boss. Given he was the one who outsmarted Servalan and Avon was the one who screwed up, it looks like he's actually got their support. Vila agrees to start unlocking doors, Dayna agrees to look for weapons and... hang on, where's Cally?

Turns out she's taking the news of Blake's death rather badly, and as the only other person who genuinely thought the Curly-Haired One still lived, Avon guesses she's in the medical office reading Blake's treatment notes. More repetition, we needed to hear Cally read out those lines. Even down to the ominous pause mentioning Blake.

Avon thankfully enters and reminds the audience this is all fake, Blake was never here and he's dead. Although Servalan might have lied, she has no reason to so he's probably gone for good. Cally admits she needs to see Blake again for some closure and so wants to try the hologram-dream machine thing. Avon, not unreasonably, notes this is a waste of time and they are needed in the real world.

Cally unleashes one final Auron saying - "If you are brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello" - which is so utterly trite Avon accuses her of making this shit up as no species is so weak and pathetic to use such language. Cally admits with a smirk she might be talking crap about all these Auron sayings, which feels very poignant given this is her last episode.

Avon agrees to let Cally talk to holo-Blake for some closure but tells her, "Don’t believe anything you see or hear in there. That isn’t Blake."

"I know," she replies quietly. "But it is all I have."

"I always thought you knew better than most how dangerous sentimentality can be," Avon says, walking out without looking at her again, in what will be their final scene together.

Shut up! I'm not crying! You're crying!

Ahem. Cally gets comfortable under that Freudian microphone and enters the dreamworld... she wakes up in the corridor outside the office, amazed at how realistic it all feels, and peers through the window to see... FILM! Entering Blake's bedroom, our hirsuit heroic hologram admits he's surprised to see her.

But just when events take a fascinating and intellectual turn, we cut back to the others in Servalan's lounge room. Vila wanders in with a Federation rifle and he's changed his clothes into the outfit he was wearing during Moloch. With some overdubbed stock footage, we recall Servalan nicked the teleport bracelet from Vila in that episode (said bracelet now in the medical office to prove Blake was there) and also his clothes since he was wearing a uniform.

But why?

"Perhaps she wanted to harvest Vila's DNA," shrugs Tarrant.

"What a revolting thought," says Dayna, who should be used to those. Is that her catchphrase now?

"Well now, we know Servalan had a penchant for cloning," Avon notes with a wicked grin.

"Why would she want to clone me?"

"Why would anyone want to clone you? One of you is one too many."

But as Vila tries to put the moves onto Dayna with predictably lame results, Avon reminds everyone that now Servalan is missing-presumed-dead her allies will no doubt come to investigate Terminal and not be happy to find our heroes there. So... isn't that what you wanted, so you could steal their ships?

Announcing that Tarrant was right and they need to try and fix the ship, Avon asks for the gun to defend himself from Links. A very tense moment passes which, until I remembered the last time Avon had a gun he threatened to ventilate Tarrant's internal organs, is utterly bewildering. In fact, maybe I'm wrong and it's just everyone unable to remember their lines for five minutes.

Avon heads up to the surface with Dayna to defend him - "my hero," Avon says when Vila refuses to leave the base, because this script seems compiled of old soundbites.

In the illusion world, fake Blake admits he can't tell what's real and isn't even sure if he spoke to Avon or not. Cally is unhelpful, pointing out that he isn't real anyway. Fake Blake apologizes for being part of the trap and also for deliberately hiding from the Liberator so they couldn't find him no matter how hard they looked. Servalan was lying and he's still alive - or is he just saying what Cally wants to hear?

"Maybe I’m more than just a computer program," fake Blake muses.

Again, we're dragged back to reality for Avon and Dayna to climb out into the snow where Avon finds the viewfinder thing that Servalan's Thal-mutoid stooges dropped in the previous episode, helpfully explaining the corpses have been dragged away by Links so there's no need to write in and complain. Dayna also helpfully adds the whole thing was told to them by Cally, so that's how they know this. Jeez. Thanks.

Just then, one of the Links - looking particularly crap against the white snow - funky-gibbon their way towards our heroes. Avon does not mow the bastards down, presumably to help pad out the episode or maybe because Darrow was finding it hard enough not to laugh at them. When Dayna asks why he's waiting for them to get so close, he replies, "I want to take a closer look at Man's supposed future."

Then, presumably out of genetic embarrassment, he shoots it and justifies this as scientific curiosity.

Dayna isn't convinced and so getting out the viewfinder, Avon easily spots Servalan tacky-plastic looking spaceship apparently dead ahead of them.

"How does it look?" asks Dayna.

"Unpromising," says Avon, echoing the thoughts of anyone who saw that laughable model.

Anyway, back underground we get some comfortingly-generic bitchy banter as Tarrant tries to bully Vila into opening doors. The door is a swing-open version instead of slide-open and a more cynical mind than mine might think they ran out of set and used the spaceship from Moloch. Except this one with bombs behind it.

Vila and Tarrant immediately crap themselves with terror. Apparently they've spent an hour trying to open that door but in the dreamworld, fake Blake's only just said his last line. Apparently fake Blake is so utterly convincing he even wants to rebel against Servalan's programming and tells Cally to get the hell out of here, unable to communicate in original dialogue (though more down to poor writing than any deeper meaning). He explains Servalan's ship is primed to blow and so is the base.

Cally agrees to leave but with no one to switch off the machine is trapped in the dreamworld. Plus she's not sure if Blake's in her head or if she's in his - deep, huh? Fake Blake urges her to wake up and their efforts to break free make everything go red and blue like you need 3D glasses to appreciate the effect...

Finally Cally's eyes open and...

Time for the first scene of Rescue. In fairness, this isn't recycled footage. The same scene is recorded with some glass shots and false perspective of varying quality, and some slightly-different line readings. Anyway, a Link chooses this precise moment to sneak into the spaceship.

...and it blows up.

Avon notes that the base is probably blowing up to and, as ever, he's right. Vila and Tarrant are already running to the ladder when an alarm goes off and the explosion. Tarrant wants to stay and rescue Cally when the roof comes down on him. Vila tries to drag Tarrant to the ladder, alternately considering ditching him when Cally arrives.

Using telepathy, Cally manages to wake up the unconscious oaf and get him climbing the ladder. "Haven't I done enough?" Vila grumbles when he's told to help, but chivalrously offers to let Cally go first. She remembers Orac's still in the lounge room and heads to get it while the others climb.

"I will be right behind you," she promises.

"You'd better be!" Vila says, following Tarrant up.

The explosions destroy the illusion equipment in the medical office - and the screen showing Blake symbolically explodes as the fake Blake dissolves into pixels. Cally manages to reach the living room and Orac just as the ceiling comes down on top of her, pinning her down.

Back to existing footage as Vila drags the unconscious Tarrant out of the hatch but this time we see Cally's hand twitching under the rubble as she telepathically links to the little thief. The everything blows up and Cally's face is engulfed in SFX as Avon and Dayna arrive to see everything that has yet to blow up, blow up.

Avon wants to know where Orac is, but Dayna is more interested in Cally and is stunned when the sobbing Vila points at the burning wreckage. Avon rounds on Vila for leaving her down there, "Well done, Vila, you've surpassed yourself! You had three choices who to save - and you chose Tarrant?!"

Avon heads down a blown-open air vent to find Orac and confirm if Cally is alive. Vila is left by the unconscious Tarrant, convinced Avon blames him for Cally's fate and sadly muttering, "She'll be alright. They'll find her. Won't they, Tarrant? Tell me she'll be alright..."

Yeah, spoiler alert, she ain't all right.

Avon climbs down into the "destroyed" base that looks rather undestroyed with a smoke machine superimposed over the set and lights turned down. Heading into the ruined living room (which does look trashed) he finds Orac who doesn't work properly. And then he slowly acknowledges the corpse in the room.

"I am sorry, Cally," says Avon quietly, then collects his computer and buggers off without another word leaving her alone and silent. I AM NOT CRYING, YOU ASSHOLES!

Anyway, another scene from Rescue, also extended. Tarrant wakes up by the fire and learns that the base exploded, Vila rescued him, Cally's dead and both Orac and the ship are "a bit dented."

"We're stuck on this miserable planet for the rest of our lives," Vila complains when what sounds like a Drashig climaxes off-screen. "Not that that's likely to be very long," he adds.

"First light tomorrow we'll make for the high ground to the south," declares Avon.


"Is it worth the effort?" wonders Tarrant, his gung-ho take charge attitude of twenty minutes ago well-and-truly gone. He's been in charge for less than that and they're worst off than ever before.


"Are you ready to lay down and die?" asks Avon pointedly.

Tarrant groans and rubs his head. "I think I already have."

"Liberator destroyed, Cally dead, no way off this armpit of a planet," Vila whines. "He may have the right idea."


"Well, you must please yourselves of course," Avon replies. "But tomorrow morning I head south, and I'm taking the gun with me."

"You talked me into it," Vila mutters as more demonic orgasms are heard.

Then we fade from one campfire to another.

The echo of Cally's death scream makes the man by the fire look up, haunted.


Is it Blake? Is it his clone? Whoever it is, he looks very, very stoned.

And the episode ends.

I think it's fair to say B7 lasted four decades without this episode, so it's not exactly revelatory. It's basically some missing scenes sewn together, and while there are a couple of good lines and a better farewell for Cally (Chappell makes the most of her last scenes with Darrow, Keating and Thomas and even Tuddenham gets a moment with her) it doesn't add much else. You can see why they weren't fussed about using Servalan's nifty escape - her knowing about Dorian and Scorpio before our heroes could have gone somewhere interesting - and outright contradict it in Sand. There's virtually no plot, no surprises bar the scene where we find Servalan keeps Vila's pants for a mysterious unexplained reason and when you think about it, they could have kept things on Terminal if they wanted an obscure underground base with a dodgy spaceship. Blowing it all up means Dorian has to turn up to give them all another set to milk for thirteen episodes before blowing them up as well.

Still, it's some new material with actors sadly lost to us now (or as good as, in Simon's case) but the fact is it wasn't considered worthy enough to broadcast at the time. Are we better off with this semi-extra episode?

As they say in Kaldor City, you tell me.

The B7 Xmas Special (i)

Although arguably Doctor Who's sister show, Blake's 7 has had nowhere near the same level of research into its production history which in turn leads to surprising revelations that take even hardcore fans by surprise - from the original idea of Dayna being raised by dog-people to the unheralded cross-promotion with the Wimpy's food chain with Avon and Scorpio. Often the case is unless it was properly publicized by the BBC, the general public had no idea of its existence and that includes the almost totally-forgotten Christmas special.

Dubbed Marooned for clarity, the episode's origin came from mid-1980. Bill Cotton, Head of BBC Television, had been so impressed by the quality of Terminal that he wanted a further series commissioned. Although legend has it he rang up the BBC during the episode's broadcast to demand a last-minute announcement to the effect, it happened months earlier and was by no means as easy as it appeared. With no Liberator or Zen, Blake and Servalan killed off and the cast looking for work elsewhere, it seemed nigh-impossible to revive the show.

Obscure contractual clauses did offer an alternative. Blake's 7 had the option of a further hour-long Christmas special, as many BBC series had in case they were forced to end prematurely - the yuletide episode would act as an epilogue to provide closure for any plot-threads and act as proper farewell. This meant it would be possible for another episode post-Terminal featuring the main cast plus Gareth Thomas and Jacqueline Pearce who were also under contract. With Terry Nation unavailable and Chris Boucher working with Vere Lorrimer to try and structure a fourth season, Cotton had ended up commissioning an episode with no one to write it.

Hastily-drafted in to fill the gap were writers Norman Ashby and David Agnew who often acted as "damage control" in such circumstances, with a fast return on writing easily-recorded and produced scripts. They also had extensive experience on Doctor Who and other sci-fi credentials. Cotton gave them a list of elements to include, including an order to "revive" Blake, Servalan and Zen and provide conventional Christmas motifs to the episode suggesting a snow planet, the crew getting presents to play with, and even a cameo by Father Christmas.

Ashby, having little to no knowledge of Blake's 7, happily worked out a plot which was did not fit the series at all - clearly inspired by Star Trek, Blake and Servalan were alive and part of a military-based star crew on a team-building exercise. Agnew worked to synch the script more in line with events in Terminal. Here, the crew tried to cheer themselves up after the loss of the Liberator by opening presents found in Servalan's base and going to play with them in the snowy surface. After Tarrant accidentally destroyed the ship Servalan left behind, Santa Claus arrived complete with reindeer to rescue the crew.

Boucher found the ideas ridiculous though he admitted he liked Agnew's suggestion that, upon meeting Santa, Avon would shoot him and steal the reindeer. Boucher offered some input into the script to reduce the whimsy and suggested Santa be replaced by a character - dubbed "Noel" - who traveled in a freighter delivering supplies who would fulfill the idea. He then married this idea to a Doctor Who script he was reworking for B7, a sci-fi version of The Picture of Dorian Grey with the titular immortal now a serial killer kept alive with alien technology.

Boucher's script - initially entitled Recovery, then Rescue - kept the idea of the crew being saved from the snowy Terminal by a benefactor who gave them all gifts and took them home for a feast, but ran into trouble at learning Jan Chappell was not interested in returning to the show. She missed Sally Knyvette and had found the scripts in the last series disappointing, as well as wanting to spend more time with the family. Although contracted to return for the Christmas episode, she wanted her character killed off dramatically. As such, Rescue had to be restructured to introduce Cally's replacement and other scripts likewise rewritten.

Ashby and Agnew resumed work on Marooned, taking Boucher's notes for the character of Dorian and naming his ship Scorpio (Agnew mistakenly believed that was the star-sign for those born during Christmas) and the flight computer Slave (evoking the "sleigh" Santa used). Tying in closely with the written material, the pair expanded on the Dorian sequences and added a "Mrs. Claus" character which would ultimately turn into Soolin. They also came up with Servalan surviving the destruction of the Liberator by teleporting aboard Scorpio and added lines to hint Zen also endured within Slave.

With the Scorpio scenes set to be filmed as part of Rescue, the writers decided to add as much stock footage from previous episodes as possible - most specifically Terminal, Moloch and Underworld - which totaled up to ten minutes of run-time. However, only two Terminal-based sequences of Rescue (the destruction of Servalan's ship and the crew discussing their options around a campfire) were available and the writers had only vague ideas for the rest of the plot as it would follow character-based drama around characters they were unfamiliar with.

Although the studio sequences were planned out, the location shoot was still undecided even when the cast and crew arrived at Perton Hill to start shooting. The lack of "Christmas snow" delayed filming for another day, while Thomas was angry to learn that he wasn't actually required to film any scenes. Chappell, likewise dissatisfied with the sloppy production and the fact the script had not been changed to kill Cally off, left without filming her only requirement - a sequence where she climbed out of, and then back into, the underground complex set. Michael Keating had to improvise the explosive scene and won a bet with Steven Pacey so Tarrant would be unconscious and get no lines or heroic action. Similarly, the sequence where Avon and Dayna encounter the links and then find the base has exploded was worked out entirely between the actors on location. Lines were also added to the campfire scene that Cally had perished.

Agnew and Ashby had not progressed any further on the script, finding it hard to utilize the "Christmas present" idea - though traces remained in Vila's new outfit, Avon's "telescope" rangefinder and the "family argument" over how to spend the day. The writers were reluctant to do any further work without clarity over whether Chappell would actually be willing to film material, and believed her behavior was unacceptable. By this time, Boucher and Lorrimer were too busy to help but strongly advised Cotton fire "the AA" and hire another writer. Robert Holmes, working on two scripts for the new series, was put forward to take over but instead recommended his good friend Robin Bland who had done wonders with the Doctor Who story The Brain of Morbius.

Bland set to work, using the scripts of Terminal and Rescue, to work out a proper character arc for the main characters. Aware of Cotton's desire to resurrect Blake but the production team's certainty the character was dead, Bland compromised by re-using the illusionary Blake from the previous episode. He also tied in the script to Boucher's Weapon with the acknowledgement that there was a clone of Blake out there somewhere, suggesting a final sequence to show the clone alive and well. As this would be Cally's last episode, Bland decided to focus on her and give her as heroic a send-off as possible with her bravely sending Vila and Tarrant to safety while she braved the explosion. She would also be vindicated in her belief that Blake was alive with the clone "hearing" her dying telepathic cry in the closing scene.

Chappell was reluctant to return to the "shambles" but agreed to two days filming, one in studio and one at the Perton village hall with the illusionary Blake (as per Terminal's production). Due to this, Chappell did not work with Josette Simon on this last episode, which both actors regretted. For the redressed underground base post explosions, inserts were added of Chappell in burnt, bloody-makeup and an extra in a wig was let for Avon to find.

Although filming was completed just inside the deadline, work continued as Mary Ridge returned for the filming of Rescue and was dissatisfied with the already-recorded footage. Several scenes on Terminal were refilmed, with the destroyed ship replaced with stock footage and a new sequence of Dayna being threatened by a giant snake as the link scene was considered too poor. The remounted campfire scene was truncated, and the scene where Avon agrees to find if Cally survived was dropped. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Burridge and Glynis Barber were on the new Scorpio and Xenon sets with Jacqueline Pearce for her survival and dispatch to Carthensis (a planet named in Boucher's Star One), none of which would appear in Rescue.

Finally a new, Liberator-free title sequence was developed using a heads-up display of a flight computer over the previous animated material of pursuit ships. This version was only used on Marooned, being reworked to show the launch from an alien planet with model work that better showed off the graphics and a new logo - with a sniper-rifle's cross-hairs rather than the Federation insignia - being used from Rescue onwards.

 

Lorrimer and Cotton disliked Marooned's disjointed plot which mainly showed things exploding and acted little more than a prologue for Rescue. The Christmas elements were barely noticeable and the long stretches of silent inaction - particularly the establishing shots of Terminal and Xenon Base's basement - were tedious. It was also felt the dialogue was functional and repetitious with only Avon's scenes with Vila and Cally having any spark. The last straw was discovering that the fourth series of Blake's 7 was scheduled for the end of 1981 and while having Marooned at the end would ensure it came out at Christmas, the plot would be incoherent after the previous thirteen episodes set after it. Since Rescue was clearly the better season opener, Marooned was ultimately not shown in 1981 at all. It would ultimately be screened after the repeat season the next year for the Christmas 1982 lineup with little fanfare, following the statement it would not resolve the cliffhanger of Blake. The reused scenes lead several reviewers to believe it was actually just a repeat of Rescue without any new material.

Marooned's unusual status meant it was not syndicated with the rest of the fourth season and thus never seen outside of Britain. Nor was it released on video - though there were plans for a fifth compilation special after The Beginning, Duel, Orac and The Aftermath for Scorpio Attack, an edit of Terminal, Marooned, Rescue, Power and Traitor that never came to fruition. Both DVD releases failed to include it and it was discovered by accident during the archive cataloguing of 2018 where its description of "Season 4 ep 1" meant it was only seen by chance.

And now, at last, it can be told...

Double Vision

The sixties ended with Doctor Who showing one of its longest stories as the Doctor finds a rogue Time Lord teaming up with a bespectacled megalomaniac and his drones to conquer the universe using mankind as unwilling fuel for their cosmic invasion climaxing with a tragic visit to the Doctor's own planet.

The twenty-twenties began with Doctor Who showing one of its longest stories as the Doctor finds a rogue Time Lord teaming up with a bespectacled megalomaniac and his drones to conquer the universe using mankind as unwilling fuel for their cosmic invasion climaxing with a tragic visit to the Doctor's own planet.

Quite.

If Orphan 55 were a Target Novelisation ...

Shughie McPherson woke up that morning with a pounding headache and spent a full thirty minutes lying on his untidy bunk staring at a crack in his iPad while it tried and failed to connect with the local wifi. His twitter feed was a reminder of the thirty-seven years he'd muddled through with more hashtags than he'd had hot dinners, and more hot dinners than he'd been employed. He was married once but that hadn't lasted long as it had been for a reality TV show.

One day - or, to be more accurate, the first day - his wife had said to him, ‘Shughie, you’re a waste of semen!’ Then she’d taken the netflix subscription and gone back to the bachelorette mansion and the camera crew had followed her.

He had never tried to find her, but they were still facebook friends.

Of course, that was ages ago and his tweets were no more about recent events. About a week ago some of his Glasgow snapchat pals had said, ‘Shughie, we’re going to Soviet Russia to get a week's work at the nuclear reactors so we can be bit-part extras in the next series of Chernobyl! Why not come along?’

‘I’ve nae screen presence,’ he explained. ‘My youtube series 'SM Drinks Whatever's Under The Kitchen Sink And Tries Not To Die!' nae got a single subscriber! You’ll ha’ to do without me this time. Hashtag mope.'

‘We’re going in wee Jamie’s entourage,’ they replied. ‘It’ll give you background to draw upon as a background character, ya spineless goon!'

Eight of them got into the van, two in front and six mixing crystal meth in the back and by the time they reached Moscow nine hours later, Shughie had forgotten where they were going or why and was now insisting he was a Greek sponge fisherman called Spiros and that Neil Peart was the greatest drummer in human history.

He remembered waking up in this reactor the next morning. JR Ewing, a ship’s riveter from Clydeside whose mother was really in Dallas, was shaking his shoulders. ‘Shughie, rouse yoursel! We’re awa’ back to the SS Erewhon! We're gonna leave the Earth to its fiery demise and nae mistake, it's each survival ark for their selves!’

Shughie’s sleepy brain tried to make sense of the situation. ‘But I'm a sponge fisherman in Crete. I need none of this,' he said through his left nostril.

‘Och, this was nae funny the first three time!' shouted JR. He was already dressed in full radiation armor and had a pump action shotgun. He'd used metal polish instead of toothpaste and was screaming 'The end times are upon us! Climate change was real! It was nae just an excuse to shove corks up the arses of gurnsey studs!'

Jamie, the non-binary hipster who identified as a strip of turquoise wallpaper, came to the hatch of the reactor and yelled down, ‘Will you no come and get in the planetary shuttle, JR? It's heading for Proxima Centauri and waiting for nae one!‘

JR Ewing protested. ‘There’s wee Shughie here, still in bed.’

'Tch, he's nae a viable specimen for rebuilding humanity! Now if you don’t get yoursel into my colony ship double quick, you can stay here and die! Ah'm off!’

The two men scrambled up the ladder.

Shughie thought they’d both farted at him as he left. Or was that the atmosphere turning poisonous? He turned over and went back to sleep, dreaming of a much better ending to Game of Thrones.

When he woke up later the reactor was completely silent. Pangs of hunger drove him out of bed. Standing on the landing, he called out: ‘JR? Jamie? Third person whose name starts with J?’

No answer.

He went down the stairs into the hall and called again. Still no answer. He stumbled into the supply cupboard and found the words LET IT END scrawled in blood and feces on the wall and the deputy supervisor hanging from a light fitting.

However, there was a packet of Tim-Tams and as everyone knew, they were everlasting. It was only after he ate the last one he remembered that was actually just in an advert where a genie gave a wish of an everlasting Tim-Tam packet and not actually something in real life and he was probably going to starve to death.

So, with no food, no light, no electricity, rising radiation levels and dwindling oxygen supplies Shughie did the only logical thing and recorded a self-pitying reaction video until his camera battery failed. Then he found a sixpack of wicked-strength Leopard-issue vodka and spent the next four days unconscious in a pool of human waste.

After half an hour staring at the crack in the iPad and thinking about his life, Shughie McPherson got up and decided that everything he remembered was fake news and actually he was really great and popular and all his friends would come back and the world hadn't ended. Or, if it had, it was now a reality TV show and he could appear in it as a star and gain the adulation he'd neither worked for nor deserved.

He stretched and yawned, pulled on his trousers and shirt on top of his head, did a few chicken impressions and went down the ladder for a bracing cup of that glow-in-the-dark gloop dripping from the canister with that radiation logo on it. He dimly remembered someone saying this was unhealthy but screw them. He felt calmer, better rested and his teeth were now big they extended out of his jaw. He was also burping and farting pure oxygen, but his body probably knew what it was doing.

Scratching his throbbing elongated head and pulling out tufts of hair, and decided the time had come for action.

It was then he realized his genitals had dropped off during the night, so that was action off the menu for the foreseeable future.

He climbed out of the reactor core and into the shattered ruins of Russia. Not a building was still standing, no pane of glass was intact. The clouds had been ripped from a sky that burnt with a blistering ultraviolet purple. There were tumors growing on trees and dead birds lay everywhere.

Shughie's huge muscular arms got him to the surface and the refreshing lack of air and he went about looking for other survivors or ideally a TV camera crew. On the way he ate all the dead birds, which tasted better than KFC. Idly Shughie began to wish he was back in Glasgow, in the friendly district where he had always lived until Brexit had forced them to film Eastenders in Scotland and all the natives had been deported.

A sudden panic gripped him. Where was everyone? Were they all dead?

He started running and shouting. Street after street was deserted, front doors of houses gaping open, roasted corpses sizzling in the open air.

Shughie stopped dead, fell to his knees, clasped his hands together, and realized that if he was the only living thing left on Earth than that meant he was the best-dressed man in the world and the target demographic for every possible media outlet. He was famous. He was vital. He was important.

He was a snarling toothy nuclear-blooded mutant on an orphan planet.

Hashtag Feeling The Same Energy!

Chapter 1 - Unwanted Tranquility

It was a beautiful summer’s day. From a clear blue sky, the sun shone down on the perfect leisure resort in the perfect paradise planet. It was a place to dream of: the ideal holiday destination, a long-awaited haven for retirement and relaxation.

It was also the home of an unseen menace that threatened all life.

Soon, it was to be the scene of the Doctor’s most grotesque and terrifying adventure.

Yeah, that's official. It's canon now. It's written down.

***

Through the vortex, that mysterious region where time and space are one, sped an extraordinary police box that was not a police box at all. It was, in fact, a highly sophisticated space/time ship called the TARDIS, a name taken from its initials, Time and Relative Dimension in Space.

The TARDIS was dimensionally-transcendental and inside was an impossibly large control room, dominated by a many-sided central control console. In the centre of
the console was a giant rude-looking yellow crystal called the time rotor that thrust purposefully up and down when the TARDIS was in flight.

Right now, a strange ill-sorted group were trying to tidy up a giant suckered tentacle that been severed off a gigantic space-squid and left twitching in an evil-smelling goop on the control room floor.

Busy with a scrubbing broom was that mysterious traveller in space and time the Doctor herself, a blonde-haired young woman with an elfin face and eyes that twinkled with a whimsical intelligence. She wore a long lilac overcoat, a rainbow-striped T-shirt with suspenders holding up petrol-coloured culottes.

Helping her was a younger girl of about twenty in slacks and a blouse, trying not to inhale too much of the ichor dripping off the severed tentacle. Her name was Yasmin Khan and no one would have been surprised to learn she was, or rather had been, a probationary police officer. Especially as she never shut up about it.

Next to her was a cheerful-looking young man in a jacket and jeans. He too was a native of 2018 Sheffield and his name was Ryan Sinclair and no one would have been surprised to learn he had dyspraxia and was, or rather had been, estranged from his father. Especially as he never shut up about it.

The fourth member of the group appeared to be the eldest, a man of about sixty with short grey hair and a big smile that showed off his laughter lines. His name was Graham O'Brien and he called Ryan 'grandson', and no one would have been surprised to learn he was, or rather had been, a married to his chemotherapy nurse. Especially as he never shut up about it.

The odd company had been carried off through time and space in an extraordinary series of adventures. Ricocheting between Earth and a variety of alien planets they had encountered the Stenza, the Remnants of Desolation, racists in the Deep South, giant spiders chasing someone who wasn't Donald Trump, racists in the Punjab, creepy delivery bots in Space Amazon, mud-witches during the reign of King "Ducky" James, a sentient universe shaped like an unconvincing rubber frog and even Daleks. Who were also racist.

In many ways, their most recent adventure had been the most unsettling of all. Once again they had returned to Earth only to encounter a deadly danger with an invasion from another universe by glowing energy beings intending to turn humanity into organic harddrives for a nefarious reason never truly explained. They had also encountered a regenerated version of the Doctor's former friend and worst enemy, the Master, who had also dragged the Doctor to 1940s Paris under the jackboot heel of the Nazis because they hadn't met racists for at least five minutes.

Luckily, the Master looked like he'd had a lick of the tar brush about him so the Nazis, being racists, turned on him. And probably sent him to concentration camp. Or maybe not. Either way, the Master had tried to kill everyone and then left the Doctor a voicemail message explaining that everything she knew was a lie, her entire life had been based on a conspiracy, and that he'd also destroyed their home planet Gallifrey in a massive off-screen massacre that was too expensive to feel.

Somehow the fact that this terrifying adventure was a two parter had eroded some of the faith the Doctor's companions had in her made things seem worse, as was the knowledge she would undoubtedly encounter the Master and his ominous and incredibly vague and unhelpful mentions of a Timeless Child - who was probably called Michelle, Timeless Children are always called Michelle. After dealing with the secret of the vault, the prophecy of the Hybrid, the mystery of the Promised Land, the Fields of Trenzalore, the Impossible Girl, the Murderer of Lake Silencio, the legend of the Pandorica, the riddle of the four knocks at the gate of immortality, the disappearance of the bees, the dying words of the Face of Boe, the rise of Torchwood and the coming warnings of the Bad Wolf, she was absolutely sick to death of story arcs.

Couldn't they just have a day off? Was that too much to ask?

Deciding the first thing to do was have a holiday, the Doctor resumed scrubbing the giant rubber tentacle off her floor. Typical, she'd just been about to suggest some fried calamari for supper and now this...