By Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore
By Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore
The writers have gone back to the original scripts in many cases and in the process have cleared up some points that have always bugged me. There's a point in 'Games' where Stratford Johns (Belkov) says something that I could never make sense of no matter hard I tried. Turns out that he said the line wrong, and this explains why Belkov appears to be locking the controls of his craft (rather than the orbiter) onto the black hole.
There's lots of stuff here for you to agree or disagree with when (the discussion on Gan is well argued where you agree or not with the writers' conclusion). The plot discussions are well thought out. Where there is a tangled plot, they disentangle it with explanations. Where there are genuine plot holes, these are picked out and commented on. (This is Blake's 7 <grin> there's plenty of plot holes)
This is a book I can highly recommend.
It's available in hardback or paperback. I think the hardback is for serious collectors only as it costs nearly three times as much. The hardback cover has a block image of a man teleporting, but the inside of the book is exactly the same. There's no dustjacket on the hardback, but I do prefer the cover image to the paperback. (copyright issues mean that they couldn't use a picture from the series.) The book has only a few small pictures internally, but this doesn't detract at all as far as I'm concerned. The appeal is in the information and at a time when it's possible to feel that you've read everything it's possible to read about Blake's 7, it's a pleasure to find a book that can still say something new.
Judith Proctor