Blake’s 7 “Rumours Of Death”

Avon’s time before he boarded the Liberator has probably been fleshed out more than any other character on this series save for perhaps Blake himself, and he isn’t around anymore.

That past just got a little more complicated and perhaps even tragic.  How much it is “perhaps” tragic may depend on whether or not Avon allows himself to feel bad about it.

The previous episode showed Avon wanted to go to find the Federation torture specialist who killed the woman he loved.  A past episode showed the woman’s brother held it against Avon but found a way to forgive him.  Avon has always prided himself on his cold logic, so this Anna must have meant something to him, enough to allow himself to be captured long enough to get the attention of Shrinker, the torturer who allegedly killed Anna.  That allows Tarrant and Dayna to capture Shrinker, and Avon wants answers.

Cally, it should be noted, wants nothing to do with this.

Meanwhile, a woman named Sula assassinated her counselor husband in order to lead some men into the presidential palace to take Servalan hostage.

Oh, and given we see murals of Anna and see flashbacks of Anna from Avon’s perspective, the show is doing a lousy job of hiding the fact that Sula is Anna, and she is obviously not all that dead.

Now, if this were any other show, I might think there’s some way for Avon and Anna to meet up again, only to be separated later by plot circumstances.  But this is Blake’s 7, so it’s never all that simple.  Shrinker claims he never killed Anna.  There was a mole in the group, codenamed Batholomew.  That person, whoever that was, took note of everyone and that person killed Anna.

Servalan should know who that is.

And, it turns out, Anna was Batholomew, something only she knew all along.  Even that counselor husband she murdered didn’t know that much.  Servalan knew, but this episode shows something the show hasn’t done before:  Servalan scared out of her mind.  Before Avon, Tarrant, Dayna, and Cally teleport down to her palace to interrogate her, she’d been captured and chained to a wall in her palace’s basement.  That was more than she ever appeared to think possible, something Avon correctly guesses was rattling since it was supposed to be the most secure place for her to be in the galaxy.

Ultimately, Avon has to decide if he will keep his promise:  will he kill Batholomew?

Well, yeah.

It was her or him.

That’s the sort of cold decision we might expect from someone like Avon, something where the big surprise may be the others, even Vila, care enough about Avon to help him through this.  Yes, he needed a little more help escaping for sci-fi reasons, and Servalan recovered her composure pretty damn fast once Anna was dealt with and Federation reinforcements were on the way.  But this is Avon.  If this sort of thing bothers him, where the woman he loved not only faked her own death but led to his own capture, then he probably won’t be showing it any time soon.

Because that is how Blake’s 7 rolls.