Review Rumours of Death: Episode 34

[Doctor Omega]

Your thoughts on this story....

Avon sets out on a personal vendetta to avenge the murder of his lover Anna Grant, killed by the Federation torturer Shrinker. But Avon is deceived, when he learns Anna is alive and she along with a resistance group have taken Servalan captive.

On to the next episode.....

SARCOPHAGUS

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/sarcophagus-episode-35.3469/


Back to the previous episode.....

THE CHILDREN OF AURON

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-children-of-auron-episode-33.3466/

 

[Doctor Omega]

A great episode....

Shrinker is played by a brilliant actor, as is Shura.

Poor Avon. Broken by the end of the episode, he has little choice but to carry on.

Jaqueline Pierce is wonderful in this too.

Chris Boucher shows why he was probably the best writer of the entire run.

Once again Servalan is spared for no entirely convincing reason.

And did she intend to spare Avon at the end and help him escape?

We will never know.

 

[johnnybear]

The best episode of series three I'm sure and an absolute cracker of a story by Chris Boucher! John Bryans returns to the show this time as torturer Shrinker instead of Servalan's senator Bercol! The secret that Anna Grant was still alive and had betrayed Avon was a big shock as her brother Del thought Avon had deserted her and he wanted to kill Avon in revenge but here we learn that she was Bartholemew, the agent who was running Avon!
JB

 

[Doctor Omega]

Despite visual clues galore I never cottoned on that Sula and Anna Grant were the same person until the revelation which is testament to the actresses ability or my stupidity.

I remember one time when I showed the whole series to a Not We friend. (I had to sit through the entirety of Lexx as a trade off.) He never cottoned on to the fact that Sula was Anna either and did a double take.

And Blake's 7 was, imo, far superior to Lexx (which seemed to have paid "homage"/nicked ideas from our beloved show: a stolen organic spaceship,mobile computer brain(head) that was usually more trouble than help, tyrannical empire, rebels on the run etc.)

 

[johnnybear]

What I always wanted to know was why Shrinker looked like Senator Bercol?
JB

 

[Doctor Omega]

Putting my tongue firmly in my cheek, I believe and maintain that BLAKE'S 7 was a total immersion video game.

Different players sometimes played more than one role. (Or it was a computer glitch, giving computer generated characters in the game the same face now and again.)

See also the Mutoid who looked like Soolin. Two faces for Travis. The jud.ge in TRIAL and Egrorian in ORBIT

Like Season 6B for WHO, I think this theory cuts through all seeming continuity errors.


But it just leaves the question of who Tarrant, Dayna, Soolin and particularly Avon actually were when they woke up after four years?






(The only thing I can't explain is why Piri was so crap in ASSASSIN, nor why the game couldn’t come up with a more convincing giant ant thing in HARVEST OF KAIROS.)

 

[michaellevenson]

What I always wanted to know was why Shrinker looked like Senator Bercol?
JB

After losing both Bercol and Samor at the trial of Travis when the Liberator attacked, Servalan didn't want to lose two sympathetic men, so went to the clonemasters with DNA of both and had clones made.
Unfortunately the clones were unstable, both a bit potty. One became Shrinker, the other Egrorian......simples.

 

[johnnybear]

I wonder if the technology to alter your face like in Logan's Run and other shows was available to the citizens of the Federation? Might explain why Travis looked so different in the second series but why oh why didn't he repair his eye socket?
JB