Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Gareth Thomas, Paul Darrow.
A story that didn’t involve the commanding tones of Gareth Thomas as the Captain of The Liberator, Rog Blake, would seem to be as surprising as leaving out the main character of the television series for virtually all of its final series. Thankfully the people behind Big Finish audio dramas are the best in the business when it comes to getting old favourites to reprise their renowned and celebrated roles and in the episode Counterfeit, audiences once again get the chance to sample the delights of Gareth Thomas as the determined rogue turned freedom fighter in the final story in the box set of Season One of Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles.
Counterfeit though also brings Paul Darrow to the performance as Avon, the man who makes the bitter winds of the chilly Artic winter feel like a summer’s day in paradise. Aside from The Doctor and The Master or Davros, it is hard to think of two more differing characters of 20th Century British Science Fiction that vie so much for the screen’s attention. Both absolute powerhouses of their profession, Paul Darrow and Gareth Thomas can bring an audience to their knees just by the brooding, antagonising bickering that passes between them. In the audio version of the show that brooding presence is still brilliantly there, it gives Peter Anghelides’ script that extra zip, the extra towering authority that is needed to round off a great series, a fantastic re-introduction to what was a great British television staple.
It is the nature of the two men to be right, to stamp their authority onto the mission that even when Blake makes it his personal business to check out the odd goings on inside a Federation run mine, he invariably has to be rescued by Avon, even if it just to be able to say in Paul Darrow’s exquisite voice that he told Blake so.
Outside of Colin Baker and Terry Malloy playing The Doctor and the creator of The Daleks, Davros, these two men can hold the attention like no other, to have both Paul Darrow and Gareth Thomas together on the one C.D. again is like finding that the rainbow that finishes at the very end of the garden does actually hold a pot of gold and the creature supposed to be guarding the overflowing treasure has left a note saying help yourself, you deserve it all.
Counterfeit is the real deal, not a bogus sham performed by two actors who have no affinity with the role or with each other, this is a genuine match of verbal skill and matchless cunning, just a true reproduction of a winning formula that saw Blake’s 7, one of the best Science Fiction programmes to ever air on British Television.
Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles are available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall