Episode 44: Showing People This Episode is Against the Geneva Conventions (Animals)

But do it anyway.

Hold on to your butts, this is about to get weird. Everyone else seems to hate Animals. Then again, everyone else seems to love Orac. That’s not to say we loved Animals. No far from it. Just. Well just listen for yourself. It’s Animals, written by Allan Prior and aired on October 26, 1981.


Show-notes:


19:54 Creme de menthe recipe.
24:14 Here’s a picture of the Raza from Dark Matter.
29:35 Kevin Stoney was in tons of other stuff. Here’s the full list according to imdb.
38:23 Bla bla bla, Doctor Who podcast, bla bla bla
47:16 Ultraforce is currently owned by Marvel. Ultraforce movie when.
1:06:16 Argy, who discussed Sarcophagus with us, was on our Doctor Who podcast Trust Your Doctor to discuss The Doctor’s Wife.


Blake’s 7 © The BBC
Any other references belong to their respective owners, no copyright infringement is intended by this podcast.
The Blake’s 7 title music was originally composed by Dudley Simpson.

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5 comments

Jurgen van de Sanden

I can watch Josette Simon until the cows come home. Her make up does look great. You made me laugh again when you were discussing the relationship between Dayna and Avon. Infectious laughter. Thank you, guys.
At least Soolin is allowed to make sarcastic remarks just like in Stardrive, she also shows that she cares about Dayna again and gets to shoot some characters. Love how she blasts the last Mutoid mid-jump.
Interesting suggestion about it all being Dayna’s master plan. Come to think of it, her ‘weeping’ as you describe it might have been repeated for ‘impact’ or because they it didn’t actually last that long.
This episode was the only one that my brother and I had to wait to watch for a very long time. All we saw was Dayna teleporting down and meeting the animals. When our uncle recorded it in the 80s when it was shown on Belgian (Flemish) TV, his cat walked across the Betamax recorder and the recording was disrupted.
One thing about the legendary Jacqueline Pearce, she wasn’t too well during the making of the final series, poor her. I think she ended up being hospitalised afterwards. She also didn’t like being called Sleer as it reminded her of sneer. You discussed how Jacqueline seemed to not like this script and Josette was doing the heavy lifting. What was happening behind the scenes was that the actor was very motherly towards Josette, though, and I think it sort of shows. Sorry, I’m waffling.
Happy Halloween! Which Blake’s 7 characters make the best Halloween characters? Avon, Servalan, Og or Saymon, the head with the shriveled body in the tank from ‘The Web’? I’ll try to think about a Halloween and fantasy version of B7.

Jurgen van de Sanden

Correction: …because *it* didn’t actually last that long (see my discussion re Dayna’s (crocodile?) tears at the end. Also, maybe I should’ve used ‘was’ less in one of my sentences

Justin explains that to create the animals he started off with deserters and traitors and normal animals to get hybrid animal human creatures. The project was abandoned towards the end of the intergalactic war but Justin stayed behind to continue the work on his own. The rest of his team left in a ship that was destroyed by the aliens shortly after take off.

This is a terrible episode. Makes you wonder how bad the scripts were that were rejected or abandoned doesn’t it?

As to a fantasy reimaging of Blake’s 7 that is a tough one.

I think I would have the following actors for these roles:

Sevalan would be played by Morena Baccarin who played Anna in the 2009 version of V. She would be perfect as a villain.
Avon played by Philip Glenister. He played Gene Hunt in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Though he may be a bit too old for the role now.
Vila would be played by Martin Freeman who played Arthur Dent in the movie version of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Cally played by Keeley Hawes from the series Ashes to Ashes.

I can’t think of who I would want to play Blake, Jenna, Gan and Travis though.

Gan played by Adrian Rawlins
Blake played by Benedict Cumberbatch

Will have to think about who I would want the other roles played by.

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