Putting the Critical Analysis into Muir's
'History and Critical Analysis'
by Una McCormack

CS Lewis once described his dismay whenever he realized he was trapped with
someone whose 'conversational style was purely narrative'. This was
precisely how I felt after an hour in the company of this book. Muir gives
us much in the way of description (how the programme was pitched and
developed, what happens in particular episodes), which presumably constitute
the 'History' of the title. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of
'Critical Analysis' to complement this.

The introduction summarizes Muir's main theme: that 'Blake's 7' is a 'video
novel' which was innovative in television science fiction in presenting its
narrative as a story arc. There are flaws with this argument which I will
discuss below; moreover, and in the spirit of self-citation, Muir's
representation of the show in these terms bears a striking resemblance to
one of the factors which emerged from the Q-study.

Part 1 of the book describes the familiar story of the programme's genesis:
we get a potted bio of Terry Nation, the well-known pitch of the show as
'the Dirty Dozen in Space', and then a run-through of production history,
and the show's reception in the US. This is all decently done, if familiar,
and the writing style is rather awkward. Muir very quickly runs out of
synonyms for 'wrote': his thesaurus has come up with some rather odd
alternatives in 'penned', 'scribed', and 'formulated'. He also insists on
using the word 'lensed' as a shorthand for 'filmed' or 'recorded', which I
found rather jarring.

Other sections of the book include a whistle-stop tour of the tapes, books,
and websites out there. It was pleasing to see Judith's site mentioned (and
a particular nod to Neil's article 'Let's Hear it for Dayna'), but there was
no listing of URLs for the sites, which is simply sloppy. There was a
similar slapdash approach to listing the books, some of which were given
ISBNs and others not. I don't mind either way, but I would prefer
consistency. As it's a relatively simple task to reference your sources in
this way, this sort of carelessness makes the book feel amateurish. There
are also several irritating mistakes which should have been picked up:
Harlan Ellison is both 'Ellison' and 'Elison' on a single page; a discussion
of sexism in 'Power' consistently refers to the episode as 'Rescue'; a DS9
episode is mistitled 'In the Shadow of Purgatory' (this is a key Garak
episode, so I'm being particularly unforgiving here). But these errors could
be easily corrected, and they leave you with the impression that Muir either
doesn't know his subject as well as he should, or doesn't really care enough
to check.

One little section which is interesting is an appendix called 'Genre
Conventions in B7', which runs through eight story conventions common to B7
and other series. These include 'The Great Escape', in which main characters
are imprisoned and must breakout; 'The "Arena" Template', in which
ideological differences are settled by personal combat; and 'The
Doppelganger', in which it is found that the galaxy is littered with doubles
of series regulars. But this little section stays at nothing more than a
thumbnail sketch of the conventions and a list of episodes which fit into
them. There's an entire chapter to be written on this, particularly if one
brought into the analysis Henry Jenkins' brilliant list of 'Ten Ways to
Rewrite a Television Show' and discussed the ways in which fan writing
breaks from or conforms to series' norms. But there's nothing like this,
which is a shame, because that seems to be what critical analysis is all
about.

The bulk of the book is an episode guide with season overviews and
commentary on individual episodes. Most of these commentaries consist of
making connections between actors and their appearances in other well-known
television science-fiction shows but, just occasionally, they rise above
this. The analysis of the way shots are used in 'The Way Back' to reinforce
a sense of entrapment is fascinating; for example, I had not realized that
in our first glimpse of Blake, he is shown framed within the arms of a piece
of sculpture. These are the kinds of details I invariably miss, and I found
them very interesting. I just wish there were more.

A rather brief section entitled 'Essays' should contain much more than it
does. There is a facile comparison with 'Star Trek' on the lines of 'they
both have a Federation, but in 'Blake's 7' it's *bad*!' and a truly
atrocious section called 'Sex on the Liberator' in which Muir reduces the
entire literature on gender representations in popular culture to the level
of 'you can see Sinofar's nipples in 'Duel', you know!' Shortly after
berating 'Power' (or 'Rescue') for its sexism, he produces, without any
apparent irony, the sentence 'Paul Darrow can spin any line to be sexy, as
can the lovely Glynis Barber'. Actresses in this book are invariably
'lovely'; actors are apparently in need of no adjectives to justify their
presence.

At the heart of the book is an essay in which Muir attempts to justify his
claim that 'Blake's 7' is a 'video novel' and that its narrative constitutes
the first use of a story arc in TVSF. Notwithstanding the fact that 'Dr Who'
had a story arc way back in the 1960s, and used and reused the format
repeatedly throughout its lifetime, Muir is simply making claims for
'Blake's 7' that can't be substantiated in terms of its production history.

Part of the problem is Muir's bizarre attempt to deny the existence of a
story arc in 'Babylon 5' by redefining what is meant by a 'story arc'. He
quotes 'Babylon 5' creator J. Michael Straczynski:

'A true arc has to know where it's going, and commit itself in earlier
episodes, setting up and paying off threads. Many series use a retroactive
arc - they don't know where they're going, but they try to be consistent as
they go with what went before - but that ain't the same thing.'

This strikes me as a pretty good definition - and the last sentence also
neatly sums up what happens in 'Blake's 7'. This is not to deny that there
is progression in the storyline in 'Blake's 7', or that links between
episodes are maintained (characters die and there are repercussions, there
is the search for Star One in season 2 and the hunt for scientists in season
4). But 'Blake's 7' notoriously didn't know where it was going to end up -
the announcement of a fourth season over the closing credits of 'Terminal'
was a surprise to all concerned, and something of a production headache!

To counter all this, Muir introduces the odd notion that a real story arc
should form a perfect circle; in fact, he uses the two words
interchangeably. Now, I don't know much geometry, but I'm pretty sure an arc
and a circle are not quite the same. The argument then goes down rather
different lines: where Straczynski is describing a story arc in terms of its
preplanning and the tight control of plotting in the production process,
Muir's argument derives from his own interpretation of the 'Blake's 7'
narrative when the series is viewed as a whole. The two views are ultimately
irreconcilable: one is concerned with production, the other with
interpretation.

Moreover, as the Q-study demonstrates, Muir's interpretation is one among
many. To summarize account 4, 'Universal Constancy':

'Internal consistency of episodes within this universe is essential, and an
overarching structure, a 'story arc' is seen in the narrative of the show
(although no story arc was plotted into the programme by the writers and
script editor of 'Blake's 7' comparable to that written explicitly into
programmes such as 'Babylon 5' and 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine')'
(McCormack, 2000).

(Incidentally, those sharing this account have a preference for the first
two seasons, which Muir also expresses on several occasions.)

It is, of course, perfectly valid to 'read' 'Blake's 7' as a continuous
narrative which forms a coherent whole. It is also perfectly valid to read
it as the story of Avon and Blake and their conflicting personalities and
ideologies. Muir's mistake is to see his own interpretation as the only one,
and to fail to see that 'Blake's 7' was *not conceived by its production
team* as having a continuous narrative from 'The Way Back' to 'Blake' in any
way comparable to 'Babylon 5'. The section eventually degenerates into a
rant about 'Babylon 5' which is neither critical nor analytical, merely
tedious.

Ultimately, then, the book disappoints on two counts. It is only a passable
piece of documentation, derived from better production histories in 'The
Inside Story', or in many articles in magazines such as 'Starburst' or
'Timescreen'. As a piece of cultural scholarship, however, the book fails
dismally. Its analyses are trite and uninformed, and there are only brief
flickers that anything more than superficial thought has gone into them. It
captures only a tiny fraction of the context in which the show was produced
(the unique environment of the BBC in the 1970s), it fails to engage with
cultural theory on genre, or social studies on fan activity, and there is no
attempt to place the show in a broader context of dystopic literature or
representations of resistance in popular culture (one would never know, for
instance, that the word 'resistance' presses particular buttons in cultural
studies, and a popular TV show *about* resistance is particularly
interesting).

A 'History and Critical Analysis' of 'Blake's 7' *could* be written - this
book isn't it.

References

Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers. London: Routledge.

McCormack, U. (2000) 'Reality is a dangerous concept: Accounts of
appreciation amongst an online fan community.' Diegesis, forthcoming.

Muir, J. K. (2000) A History and Critical Analysis of Blake's 7, the
1978-1981 British Television Space Adventure. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Nazzaro, J. and Wells, S. (1997) Blake's 7: The Inside Story. London:
Virgin.