The Incredible Robert Baldick - Never Come Night

Originally screened in 1972 as part of the BBCs Drama Playhouse series 'The Incredible Robert Baldick' marked the return to the BBC of Dalek creator Terry Nation after some 7 years working for the rival ITV network. Drama Playhouse was a series of one off pilots created to test the water for a possible series, it didn't happen here which is a real shame.

Robert Hardy plays the eponymous hero, an occult detective who travels around in a lavish, bulletproof locomotive called 'The Tsar'.  He, along with his assistants Thomas and Caleb (Julian Holloway and a magnificently bewhiskered John Rhys-Davies) is called in by the local bigwigs (James Cossins & Reginald Marsh) to investigate the latest in a series of brutal deaths at a desolate abbey.

There are definite shades of Nigel Kneale in the story, of ancient horror inhabiting the stones of a place and the gothic glory of Hammer Studios is definitely brought to mind.  Hardy and the rest of the cast are all in fine form and the script is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable slice of gothic sci-fi of the sort that Doctor Who would explore to great effect a few years later under Philip Hinchcliffe's guidance, indeed Hardy's character is called Doctor by his assistants throughout.  As I said, a real shame this never made it to series but it's a great little taste of what might have been.

Enjoy.



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Survivors (1975)

In 1975 Terry Nation, already renowned as the creator of the Daleks and soon to add Blake's 7 to his resume, destroyed the world - it's something every British sci-fi writer does at some point.

In Nation's case he did this via the BBC and a plague known rather wonderfully as 'The Death'.  The show was called 'Survivors' and followed a group of people trying to make their way in a world changed beyond all recognition and the trials they face as they go about relearning the skills needed in order to, well, survive.

From the off Survivors was always, to an extent, an ensemble piece although one with a changing triumvirate at it's head with only Lucy Fleming's Jenny Richards remaining as a lead for all three series.

Survivors first series concentrates on the aforementioned Jenny, Abby Grant (Carolyn Seymour) a middle class mum in search of her son  and engineer Greg Preston (Ian McCulloch) as the three slowly find each other and more in a world suddenly bereft of people.  Of the three only the overbearing Greg seems to have the slightest idea about how to survive with Abby entirely fixated on her search for her son and the as wet as water Jenny left entirely at odds with the world.

The life the group build in a handy mansion  is beset by problems from both outside influences and of their own making with one particularly harrowing episode - 'Law and Order' - where Greg shows just how unsuitable he is to have any sort of power.

By the time we arrive at series two our group has, by necessity, joined forces with one we had met briefly in the earlier series.  Abby has left to continue her search for her elusive son and has been replaced by Denis Lill as Charles Vaughan.  Cowed by the deaths of many of the group he led in series one Charles is a more sympathetic character than the single minded and driven Abby.  Joining them in this new community is Charles' saintly partner Pet (Lorna Lewis) and the lazy, smelly, miserable and deeply unpleasant farm hand Hubert Goss (John Abineri).

This second series is a more domestic affair as the group meet various other groups and struggle with establishing their crops and livestock. Interpersonal strife is still the hallmark of the series - mostly with Hubert as the catalyst - but the series isn't afraid to cast it's nets wider with the highlight of the series being the two part 'Lights of London' storyline that gives us a much deeper understanding of how the world has changed with our first look at how the city has coped since The Death.  The series ends with Greg abandoning his wife, son and community in order to fly off and tinker with some technology.

To my mind the third series which sees Jenny, Charles and Hubert hit the road in search of Greg is the least successful of the three.  After the relative inaction of the second it's good to see the cast back on the road but the reason behind it is weak - Jenny's constant, whining, neediness for the husband that has deserted her and their baby son to go adventuring with a young Norwegian girl essentially also pretty much abandons her baby in order to try and track Greg down - but it does result in some excellent episodes as we and they are exposed to the wider post-Death world.

Since I was a little kid I've had a love for this very British sort of post-apocalypse TV and literature; I just find it irresistible.  It's one of those genres where it's easy to point out flaws, inconsistencies and errors and here it's no exception - the obvious 'Where are all the bodies?' question is easily avoided given the TV restrictions of the time - but Survivors real strength is that for the most part they try to treat the apocalypse in as realistic a way as possible.  The actual survivors are woefully ill equipped to deal with the situation they find themselves in and make some spectacularly bad decisions.  They are temperamental, selfish, gossipy, insecure, angry, unpleasant, helpful, loving and entirely human.

Buy it here - Survivors - Series 1-3 Box Set [DVD] [1975] - or watch it below

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain 

 

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Blake's 7

Created by the (non Davros) creator of the Daleks Blake's 7 ran for 4 series (52 episodes) on the BBC between 1978 and 1981.  It tells the story of a small group of escaped convicts (some wrongly convicted, others not so) who find themselves in possession of a super powerful alien spaceship (Liberator) which they use to attack and harass the ruthless and totalitarian Terran Federation.

The crew (at first) consists of ex resistance leader Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) who has been brainwashed and then framed for child molestation and becomes the nominal captain of the Liberator, Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow), a cold and conceited electronics genius, thief and coward Vila Restal (Michael Keating), pilot Jenna Stannis (Sally Knyvette), telepathic freedom fighter Cally (Jan Chappell), gentle giant Olag Gan (David Jackson) and Zen (Peter Tuddenham) the Liberator's computer.  As the series progressed various cast members left (including Blake himself) and were replaced by newer characters but it is this core crew that is most keenly remembered alongside the main villain the Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce).

Blake's 7 was hugely popular in it's day and presented a more adult take on sci-fi than it's main sf competitor on the channel, Doctor Who, which was working it's way through the back half of Tom Baker's time in the TARDIS during the same period.  It wasn't without it's faults though.  In typical BBC style it's ambition far outweighed it's budget and so corners were inevitably cut leaving many of the sets and effects looking decidedly dodgy but the things it got right it did so with aplomb.  The cast are, for the most part, excellent and the characters display traits and behave in such ways that make them feel more real than is often the case with TV sci-fi. The writing is tight and the, for the most part, self contained episodes are satisfying to watch.  Most of all there is a moral ambiguity to the show.  The Federation is a deeply unpleasant and flawed system and the crew are right to oppose it but the manner in which they do so is always in question within the show.  There is rarely consensus amongst the crew and the relationship between them is always fraught.

As the series' progressed the show hemorrhaged both viewers and it's main cast with only Avon, Villa and the perspex computer Orac (also Peter Tuddenham - who also voiced a third computer in the series - Slave) making it through to the end.  The series did however bring back one of it's main characters for the series 4 finale and ended the show in a powerful and enigmatic fashion.

For many it seems the flaws of Blake's 7 have taken precedence in their recollections of the series but for me it remains one of my most fondly remembered sci-fi serials.

The full series one has been playlisted below.

Buy it here: UK / US


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Survivors

Terry Nation
(Orion)

A virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the world's population in just a few weeks, leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities - electricity, transport and medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live and re-establish some semblance of law and order. Abby Grant, widowed by the plague, moves through this new dark age with determination, sustained by hope that her son, who fled his boarding school at the onset, has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others, she founds a commune and the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby, there's a chance for a new life and love when she encounters James Garland, the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse, who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important, she must find her son.

This is the novel that sparked the 1970s TV show and the terrible remake from a couple of years ago. It’s good too.

I’ve read lot’s of these immediate aftermath post-apocalypse things over the years. They’ve become a sort of SAS survival guide for me; John Christopher’s ‘Death of Grass’, ‘The Earth Abides’ by George R. Stewart and ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy are the most recent. I know for certain that I’d be terrible in such circumstances. I’ve no useful practical skills whatsoever.

The book concerns the life of one small group of people as they band together and attempt to survive the aftermath of a pandemic. The plot here almost exclusively deals with the practicalities of life. There are some perfunctory nods towards some sort of conflict with a newly formed autocratic society nearby but they are sparsely featured.

I picked this book up early today out of curiosity and finished it late this afternoon so a light read yes but still enjoyable.