Defector is not exactly lacking in substance, but it's more about doing groundwork for future stories, rather than telling one of its own.
WRITTEN BY
Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, the minds between classics like The Armageddon Storm and Blake's Story. In my opinion, they have the best understanding of the show in Big Finish.
PLOT
Avon tasks Grant and Tarrant with assassinating a rebel who is leaking valuable intel to the Federation. When they are spotted by Servalan, however, the two must make a daring escape from the heart of enemy territory...
ANALYSIS
I must admit, I wasn't initially thrilled with this setup. Though it's competently written, the idea of pairing up Tarrant and Grant seemed a little lackluster to me. I found myself wishing it was another Avon/Grant story, to build on the new relationship they'd established back in Armageddon Storm. I would have even preferred Vila or Cally, as they would have allowed Grant to take the center stage and really show what he's made of. But Tarrant?
Who is Tarrant? It's quite astounding that after so many years, I'm still not quite sure. Is he a buccaneer? A rebel? A hothead? A Romeo? What drove Tarrant to leave the Federation and what keeps him on the Liberator? There's a lot of mystery surrounding his character, and yet I don't find him to be a very mysterious person either. He's generally quite straightforward, so this lack of explanation just feels frustratingly vague, particularly as the character naturally evolved into an honest everyman as time went on. But at this point in the timeline, we haven't got there yet. Tarrant is still a force to be reckoned with, for whatever reason. Defector doesn't provide any concrete answers for it, but we do get some nice hints to hold us over, until an audio comes along that delves deeper (please!).
To get back to my point, though, I was not overly pleased with this duo and I almost thought I'd be calling this story pedestrian when all was said and done. This, fortunately, is not the case. Not getting any clue as to what's really going on until the last few scenes was frustrating by design. Tarrant's isolation from the rest of the crew is also by design (at least in this drama). The purpose of that design is to set up the new Series C dynamics.
Defector is the first episode of an era of Blake's 7 the actual series barely touched on, in which Avon gets off the fence and fully embraces his role as the new rebel leader. And that's really exciting. There's an atmosphere of danger and uncertainty around the crew now, with nobody sure what Avon will do next or where they stand with him. It reminds me of the early days in Series A, where one of the main draws of the show was that the crew were all independent and any one of them could do something unpredictable at any time. We see that Avon uses Tarrant and Grant as his pawns, a ruthlessly pragmatic choice that heavily foreshadows episodes like Games and Orbit, where he is perfectly willing to put his crew in danger without them knowing, so as to achieve his goals from a safe distance. I look forward to more of this, hopefully in a more engaging storyline now that they've established this new darker direction.
CHARACTERS
Avon has no dialogue, but his presence looms over the story like a shadow. I liked how Grant and Tarrant bond (or at least arrive at mutual respect) over their experiences with him, and the way Avon uses his vastly different relationships with both men to manipulate them into doing what he wants done. The way everything revolves around him gives Avon a mythical, Blake-like quality, which is entirely appropriate. And it's also a wonderful example of his intelligence and insight into what makes people tick. He knew just what to tell both of them. It's also great for the audience, as we're used to seeing Avon keep Tarrant in the dark, but don't expect the same to happen to Grant. So when it's revealed that Grant's secrets are just another layer of lies, it's a really cool moment.
Boy, Steven Pacey is old! Not that they all haven't vocally aged, but it is genuinely difficult to connect Pacey's intimidating bass growl with the princely Tarrant. I have to pretend it's some kind of alternate reality, where he is at least middle-aged (ironic, since the character was originally conceived as an older man). But that aside, I'm glad to see the writers have continued to write Tarrant with much more empathy than he was given in Series C. There's none of that tiresome posturing and smugness he was burdened back in the day. Instead, Tarrant's wariness of Avon is entirely a result of well-justified paranoia and insecurity about his position on the ship. This makes much more sense to me, and it's easier to see why Tarrant would conflict with his comrades rather than just writing him to be a boring dick to drum up forced drama.
I was interested to hear that Grant and Avon have apparently become very close since the events of The Armageddon Storm, and I'm very excited to hear more details of that from Avon's perspective. Aside from Blake, Grant is the only crewmember on the Liberator who can really push Avon's buttons and challenge him, both intellectually and emotionally. The conflict between the pragmatic and passionate responses to the Federation's tyranny (the head vs the heart, if you will) has always been the single most interesting thing about Blake's 7 to me, and Grant is certainly Blake's successor in keeping it going.
For now, however, Grant is paired with Tarrant. They have a few similarities: both are highly trained and with a revolutionary spirit, both have a sense of honor deep down and both are named Del. But most importantly, both are following a man they don't entirely understand and so we get some nice bonding between the two over that. Tarrant initially seems like the outlier who is just jealous that Grant has Avon's ear. But it's cleverly revealed that he might be much more aware of Avon's fallibilities, and that in turn plants the seeds for Grant to mistrust Avon in the future, which I would definitely like as I felt that he was a bit too forgiving when they reunited in Storm. Surely there's still some trauma to explore over Anna. Speaking of Anna, I absolutely loved getting to hear more about the Grants' childhood, as the show never really made it clear what kind of relationship the siblings had (Anna's personality is never once brought up in Countdown, and Del only gets an obligatory mention in Rumours).
NOTES
- Servalan is mentioned as being dressed in white, even though this is after the death of her children. Admittedly, part of her dress in Rumours was white too, but I would have preferred more consistency with this detail.
- Grant has abandoned the mercenary side of his rebel career entirely, thus setting up his role as the Quartet's main opponent in Lucifer: Revelation.
- The description of how Avon decides on the assassination was so thrilling to read: 'cutting the group dead!' 'A foolhardy mission!' It was very Series D in its grimness and emotional undertones, and if you've read this blog for a while, you should know that I adore Series D.
- A detail I enjoyed was Tarrant showing a lack of faith in Dayna's judgment of Grant. This is something we never see in the show, but it adds to his loneliness.
- We're suddenly introduced to an insectoid race called the Chitinoids, which would seem to contradict the prevailing assertion that "everyone came from Earth originally!". Not that Blake's 7 hasn't featured aliens in the Milky Way before (Breakdown explicitly mentioned human-hating inhabitants on the planet Epinel), but it's rare enough to where most writers seem to ignore the idea of there being anyone but humans. I do hope the Chitinoids appear again, as the junk trader we met here was amusingly witty.
- In perhaps a nod to the famous grammatical error in the Doctor Who serial 'The Green Death', the Chitinoids' name is pronounced with "ch" as in "crunch" rather than "ch" as in "character".
- Why would the Chitinoid be sexually interested in Dayna? How does that even work?
- The Federation guns are called "paracarbines".
- Tarrant leaving the Federation because he felt small and insignificant in it is a great bit of backstory. Very fitting.
- Tarrant seems to be afraid of Servalan recognising him "from his files". But they've already met in Harvest of Kairos, Children of Auron and Rumours of Death? My best guess is that he's afraid Servalan recognised that he would be attending the conference under a false identity, but if that's the case, he should be wondering why he's not already under arrest.
- It's funny that although this takes place a mere two weeks after Avon officially joined the rebellion, he apparently is already enough of a big deal to where undercover agents send him their maydays and requests. I guess maybe Grant made an announcement on the rebel radio lol.
- This story is set two weeks after The Armageddon Storm, which is set after original series episode Rumours of Death. There's several references to both.
- The conference of Federation leaders is in response to the continued issues from the Intergalactic War.
- Tarrant thinks back to his days at the Academy.
- Grant claims that unlike the Liberator crew, he is not famous.
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