The episode that cemented the legend.
I really don't think Blake's 7 would be what it is, in people's minds, without this piece of the puzzle.
But. sad to say, to my mind, the whole 52 episode saga has been, ultimately, for nothing.
Who actually benefited from Blake and his rebellion?
Not many.
All of Blake's plans had ineffectual or short lived results. Let's steal a cypher machine! Oh, look, they've changed the code now. And lots of people died. Good people. Allies.
Even after an alien fleet - not Blake - destroyed Star One, the Federation merely regrouped and came back with Pylene 50. The drugged citizens of Warlord, being in an even worse state than in Episode 1!
Also, Avon and his crew have been gradually dehumanised by their experiences. They enter the Gauda Prime base, killing unarmed people such as Klyn. Yes, I know that that guy was having a tussle with Tarrant, but did they need to kill him? Why not wound him, then ask questions?
,Then one final, horrible misunderstanding between Blake and Avon. Blake brings it on himself because he now finds it "difficult to trust", just as Avon does. His games are, indeed, stupid as Deva says. And he shows himself to be a crap judge of character, as he cannot see through Arlen's masquerade.
One nice touch on the audio commentary is when Chris Boucher points out that the final filmed moment of Blake's 7 ever was the line "It's getting light. Shall we go?"
As a kid I denied that this could be finale. Surely in a year, or two years, or three years, the Beeb would see sense and make that fifth season that would put everything right. Blake wouldn't be dead and he and Avon would be friends again and the crew would get another ship and they would overthrow the Federation and Servalan would lose.
I thought that this massacre on Gauda Prime was the wrong ending.
But now I am happy that that never happened. I now feel that this ending of this murderous bunch that had once been sincere freedom fighters, was entirely appropriate. They had come to live by the gun and were now dying by the gun. It was poetic justice.
I am also glad that fans never got hold of it. at any point, to continue the saga on television, with badly written, smart arse scripts. Although they tried to recast and remake it on audio, which was about as effective as Gan in a karate tournament. Utter rubbish.
All attempts to revive it post Gauda Prime have failed.
Even Big Finish have wisely kept their audios set before this finale.
Only one surviving man has had the right to say what happened next and he did so in his trilogy of novels, based on what he discussed with Terry Nation.
So, if one must see what happened next, I would recommend the Lucifer Trilogy by Paul Darrow. No franchise building in these books though. It is very much a conclusion.
And those three books, should one even choose to read them, should, I think, be the final word on Blake's 7.
No revival can ever, in my opinion, match the original.
A classic show and a television legend.
