Gold (1981) Review

 

Gold is a bit all over the place, but it's an entertaining heist yarn. 

WRITTEN BY

Colin Davis, a writer with an incredibly meagre amount of credits to his name. Aside from Blake's 7, he only wrote three other episodes of television in the 80s and then disappeared to whence he came.

PLOT

The Scorpio crew are contacted by Avon's old acquaintance Keiller, who wants their help to pull off a daring gold robbery from his own pleasure cruiser/cargo supplier, the Space Princess. Despite knowing that it's a trap, Avon goes forward with the scheme, intent on getting the riches as well as their opponent...

ANALYSIS

Gold is something of a second-rate Games to me - once again, the crew try to get a 'great. Deal. Of. Moneyyyyy' with the help of a rotund, slimy Federation associate(Belkov/Keiller), overcome planted obstacles and ultimately lose it all in the end. The episodes are in close proximity, both feature Servalan, both take place in a setting managed by the associate. 

Which isn't to say that Gold is a straight copycat or anything, but there's enough similarities to where, if I wanted to watch an episode like this, I could just put on Games over Gold every time. There's not much unique about Gold for me to want to see it again and again, which is a real drawback.

Some episodes of Blake's 7 can be very slow and plodding and take forever to get going(try anything written by Allan Prior), but Gold suffers from the opposite problem - it has an almost frenetic pace for its time, as if it's trying to squeeze in an entire movie into 45 minutes. We've barely started the episode when already the heist is underway(without so much as a transitional shot), then there's a strange interlude where Avon and Soolin investigate Keiller, then the heist is suddenly going again. Avon and Keiller have a discussion in the purser's office, then a scene later Tarrant and Dayna walk in and they've already disappeared to get the gold. It was as if entire script pages were being skipped to squeeze the story into a certain timeframe. 

That it should happen with this episode is particularly unfortunate, because like Games, Gold is rather complicated in its plotting and there's a lot of scheming and details to keep track of, and not a lot of exposition to help you do that. It's quite easy to just 'go with it' and not think about it too hard, but I don't really like episodes that encourage that. 

That being said, Gold is fun in a shallow sort of way. The production looks great - I love the gaudiness of the Space Princess and the smoky haze on Beta V at the end. We get another industrial complex to run around in for old times' sake. Dudley Simpson's lullaby music is brilliant. The speedy pace, the good acting and the occasional zinger in the script ensure that the audience is never bored. 

It's also unashamedly crooked - I was really pleased by Avon's definition of Servalan as nothing more than 'some greedy gangster'. If you just want to enjoy the cynical, morally ambiguous world of Blake's 7 in the cowboy trappings of Series D, then Gold has that in spades. So I can't really be mad at it, because it's a decent 45 minutes of fluff. 

CHARACTERS

As you can imagine, Paul Darrow thrives in an episode that lets him play up his keenly developed sense of irony and love of gunslinging. This is the last time that he and Jacqueline Pearce would get to share the screen, and it puts a nice period onto the Avon/Servalan relationship. Her character has been somewhat aimless this season, but as I said above, I really like the notion of her becoming a crime boss using the Federation's resources to build an independent power base. The writers could've definitely developed that more. 

I found Vila's role to be really interesting. His absence from the heist is noted by several characters. It doesn't seem to lead anywhere, but it's a nice example of Vila's good instincts as a thief being used as a plot point(to telegraph Keiller's duplicity). Vila been portrayed as much more competent and worldweary this season, which is fitting given that he's become a veteran of the series. 

But what captivated me was Keating's performance, mainly in the scene in which Keiller is interrogated by the crew after Avon and Soolin's supposed death. Tarrant and Dayna stand behind Keiller, as guards. The only person facing the man is Vila, the lead interrogator. Keiller knows Vila by his absence, and the fact that he was the one to correctly assume that Keiller was double-crossing them. For Keiller, Vila is the most unknown and potentially dangerous part of the crew. And Keating does play him that way. Vila in that scene is as aloof and unnerving as Avon ever was. It plays out almost like a glimpse into an alternate series in which he becomes the star of the show. 

But speaking of Keiller... I'm not entirely sure if I was supposed to like or dislike him. Roy Kinnear plays him as an irritating sycophant. The way he kept eyeing up Soolin and constantly referring to her and Avon respectively as "pretty one" and "old friend" put me off. Like Belkov, he's got a jolly demeanour, but it's so much more obviously a veneer. I certainly never rooted for him. 

NOTES

*Something appears to be written on Scorpio's hull next to the transfer tube. I can't quite make it out.

*I always love how Avon is willing to praise Vila in his absence if it means proving a point.

*Shame that they didn't give us a grisly shot of the decayed guards in the Zerok mine. Dayna's "The radiation hasn't left much" line is a bit clunky.

*I'm surprised that Avon didn't look up Keiller's record with Orac's help beforehand. The whole sequence of him and Soolin sneaking aboard the Space Princess whilst pretending to be dead was rather odd. Given the threat of radiation, you'd think they'd have teleported off instantly.

*Once again, poor Darrow has to pretend to be reading gibberish. I get that it's cheaper than making an actual display, but given that English has been confirmed to be the in-universe language, it's silly. 

*"I dislike greedy men, Keiller." Soolin says, after hooking up with Dorian and now hanging around Avon. Clearly she has no self-awareness.

*Steven Pacey's drugged acting is hilarious.

*One of the passengers on the Space Princess is cosplaying as Jarvik from The Harvest Of Kairos.

*The shock that Tarrant and Soolin display at the doctor's murder is a helpful reminder of why we should care about these characters.

*Avon's decision to hand the gold over at a remote mining complex reminded me of how Breaking Bad made it clear the best place to do shady transactions is in the middle of the crowd(so you can avoid being shot at). 

*I wish Keiller had survived. I liked the threat of him being stranded a lot more than a boring death.

*What exactly was Servalan's original plan? I know that she expected Keiller to double-cross her and try to attack the processor on Zerok, but what did she tell him to do? Make the Scorpio crew deal with his mysterious associates and just hope they don't come armed so she could catch them? Because if that's the case, then Keiller 100% fulfilled his end of the bargain even with the brief double-cross earlier on. 

*If the Federation uses trucks, how come Blake didn't know what a car was?

*I love that Servalan's gang make an effort to dress up in dark cloaks and hoods, but still have the Federation logo emblazoned on their chests. 

INFORMATION!

*Keiller was once on the personal security staff for Servalan(during Series C, then). I imagine he got fired after Rumours Of Death happened. He's also met Avon at some point in the past, presumably prior to the events of the series.

*Gold is being used in fringe deals with planets that have no computer link-up(presumably a consequence of Star One's destruction). 

*Avon is 'getting to be big news on the grapevine', the first indication that his fame is starting to dwarf Blake's. 

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE

"They're not my gang, Keiller. We are together for mutual convenience. I imagine that if I double-crossed them, they would try and kill me. Just as they will kill you, if you let them down."

CONCLUSION