Shock Troops (2018) Review

 

Shock Troops is a slow burner, but is elevated by a terrific ending.

WRITTEN BY

Cavan Scott, one half of my favourite Blake's 7 writing duo. I am interested to see how their separate attempts at writing go. So far, Mark seems to lean much more heavily on continuity while Cavan is doing experimental stuff. 

PLOT

Dayna finds herself inexplicably recruited into the Federation military, assisting in taking down an insurgent population. Yet the voice of Avon echoes incessantly in her mind, driving her to madness with talk of rebellion... 

ANALYSIS

Having done national service, I have a slight familiarity with the soldier life, so the idea of following troopers during a military campaign held a special appeal to me. In the army, you're surrounded by people from all walks of life and have to work with what you have. There's a lot of room there to tell interesting stories. I think Shock Troops succeeds, but only partially. Its main flaw is relying too much on the final twist to carry things. It's a pretty creepy reveal that fits in well with the Federation's Orwellian logic. But everything else feels like treading water. 

Perhaps the best comparison I can make is with Logic. That was another audio drama with a magnificent twist, but the rest of it was filled up with heartbreak, red herrings, tense interactions. By comparison, most of Shock Troops is mundane. The few dynamics we have aren't developed enough to be more than vaguely interesting (they certainly had enough time to add more character depth... and yes, I realise that the troopers having distinct personalities somewhat contradicts the premise, but I'd argue that would only make the end more heartbreaking), and the details of the campaign itself are left somewhat vague. That's not necessarily a problem - grunt troopers wouldn't know much about the big picture, and they wouldn't be constantly in battle either - but it would've been cool to know what the stakes are. Oh well. Most of war is just waiting around. The thing is that this can also be done in a dramatic or humorous way, but Shock Troops does not go for either. Scott is absolutely counting on the viewers being interested enough to find out what's going on purely on the merit of there being a mystery in the first place. He's not entirely wrong to do so. It is a decent mystery. I just wish there was more meat on the bones. 

CHARACTERS

Imogen Church is a likable enough lead as the everyman Niner. Her dynamic with irreverent trooper Jay was a major highlight of the story, and I strongly feel that Jay was written out too soon. There's a good reason for why it happens, but I don't think it was quite good enough to sacrifice the banter, which helped boost the early scenes. There was a lot unspoken in the dialogue between Jay and Niner, and that's the kind of stuff that Blake's 7 does best. After Jay is gone, he's replaced with Dayna, but she doesn't really develop a consistent bond with Niner. Either Dayna is busy losing her mind, or Niner is busy irrationally disliking her. I'm not saying they could be friends, but their scenes felt like the concept behind their dynamic was constantly being switched around. It was only thanks to those early scenes with Jay that I really cared about Niner's fate. 

The captain - an antagonistic figure - had some potential to be interesting, but is pretty much just a boring Federation sadist without anything else to her. 

Yasmin Bannerman is pretty much the only regular in this (Paul Darrow has two scenes). I don't have any complaints about her performance, but Dayna being out of character is a major aspect of the story so there's not really much I can talk about. Any issue I have with Dayna is related more to the plot than to Bannerman. She does fine with what she's given.

Paul Darrow's acting is still mostly on autopilot, and likely to stay there (that's not really a criticism, he was developing health issues). Avon's hope to lead his own brainwashed army was very amusing though. It's the sort of insane idea you'd see in the 90s expanded universe. I'm not really sure it fits into the Series C time period, although at this late point in the audios, Series C is becoming a very loose umbrella term. It's starting to feel as if the writers are taking cues from the actors' aging, and depicting a version of the crew that never really existed, a version where they really did grow old. Nobody seems surprised by each other's behaviour anymore. 

By the way, this is a very nice way for me to say that I think the range has just run out of steam. They've done all that's possible to develop these characters within reason, and now they're in a sort of limbo. Avon's permanently nuts (how is he still in charge?), Cally gives sage advice like an old shaman lady, Vila is Vila, Tarrant just wants to go back to bed. It's all too familiar. The more adventures they pile on, the more it feels like purgatory. 

NOTES

• The word 'bullshit' has now entered the Blake's 7 lexicon.
• I thought the R2-D2 wannabe robots were kinda cute. Are they meant to be like the ones from Series A?
• Avon is apparently the galaxy's most wanted these days. Bayban and Blake must be very jealous. 
• I want to say it's cool that Avon would go so far as to torture a seemingly innocent trooper, but even his iconic moral ambiguity feels played out. I really don't know what it is. It's been entire months since I've listened/watched Blake's 7, but there's such a suffocating atmosphere of exhaustion around it.
• Dayna finding a command to burn out every single implant on every brainwashed trooper at once is far too convenient for my tastes. 
• The fact that Niner was actually loyal to the Federation underneath her brainwashing was actually pretty funny. 
• Weird that Avon is surprised to be Dayna's conscience when he spent two seasons yelling at Blake to not put the crew at risk. 
• Maybe I missed an explanation, but I have no idea how Avon was able to talk to Dayna telepathically. 
  
  

INFORMATION!

• The Federation troopers have a concept of burying the dead out of respect, which would seem to contradict the previous story Funeral on Kalion, where none of the crew did.
• Servalan is brainwashing the troopers to have an army capable of combating the Old President (continuing the Crossfire arc).
• Avon wakes Dayna up by mentioning Hal Mellanby, who died in Aftermath.

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE

AVON: "An army of Servalan's, ours to command!"

DAYNA: "What?"

AVON: "Think about it. With access to that console, Orac can seize control of every trooper factory, of every trooper! Servalan will be at our mercy!"

CONCLUSION

I almost really liked it. But entropy has taken hold of either me or the show.