Welcome to the fifteenth episode of Down and Safe, where Michael, Liz, Scott, and Amal embark on a discussion of the third episode of season two, Weapon, wherein Amal is…well…you’ll see. Or hear, more likely.
This is a useful reminder that this podcast is very probably not safe for work, and may contain mild spoilers for the rest of the Blake’s 7 series throughout the episode (we keep major spoilers to a spoiler section of the podcast that we give warning is going to be particularly spoilery.)
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Download Episode 15 or listen now:
Down and Safe 
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Waiting for this episode, I was actually worried about how sad Amal was going to be afterwards. Like, would she be sad enough to quit the podcast? Oh, Amal. 😦 With new Travis, it was never going to go well.
Years of rewatching, plus evangelism from T2 fans, has made me warm to Brian Croucher’s performance. And watching the T2 episodes makes me a little sad, now, after being told that George Spenton-Foster didn’t like Brian Croucher and was nasty to him on the set. So I’ve displaced most of my T2 Travis dislike into director dislike — it must really suck to have to replace another actor in an established show, in a madly rushed film schedule, with a director who refuses to help. Point to note — the script for ‘Weapon’ was written before Stephen Greif left, including the change in his personality. With the same actor, it would’ve shown the effects of the Federation mental retraining. Shooting Blake, grabbing Servalan, etc, were all supposed to be pointing up how Travis had been changed. Obviously, the change in actor smothered all of that.
Amal was right that the filming of this episode was hugely rushed, which prevented retakes, etc. You guys mentioned wanting to know more about the production, and there’s more about the various problems behind the episode’s production here (http://scorpioattack.wix.com/scorpio-attack#!b3-weapon/cg88 – I did check it and I don’t *think* it has any major spoilers for later episodes).
Elsewhere…the Clonemasters could’ve been so cool, but they just weren’t. If they’d just had the time and budget to make a nice, organic set. Ah, well. Carnell pretty much makes up for it in terms of NCPs, though. He probably gives the best return per lines on screen for anyone in the series. I actually kinda like the episode over all, There *is* a lot in it, but as Liz pointed out, you never get confused about who anyone is or what’s going on. And as far as introducing ideas for fanfic, it’s one of the best episodes of the series.
Great podcast, looking forwards to the next one!
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There actually IS a major spoiler in that link so hopefully Amal didn’t read it…
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I didn’t, I asked Michael to check it for me first & he warned me away. ❤
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Yikes! I’m so, so sorry. I looked through again, and I can’t believe I missed that! Exile to Cygnus Alpha for me.
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What Liz could be thinking of is a weapon that not only allows you to dispatch your enemies at your leisure, it leaves your legs so smooth you want to show them off.
No wonder Servalan made it her top priority.
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