B7 blog: Adventures with the Wife and Blake

[vilakins]

Neil Perryman, whose blog Adventures with the Wife in Space followed his wife Sue's reaction to Doctor Who, has started a new blog. This time he's getting Sue to watch Blake's 7 with him.

Adventures with the Wife and Blake is only up to Space Fall, so now's a good time to follow. Their pets are already named after B7 characters, which I'm surprised Sue allowed before she knew their namesakes. :)

Check it out: Sue's comments are so funny and interesting - and the posts look longer than they are because of readers' comments. And the cartoon of them watching (with a B7 cat) is brilliant.

Comments

[corvuscornix]

Oh, good, something to fill the gap after the rewatch...

"Flappy hands!"

&

"If you want to guess what’s going to happen in Blake’s 7, just think of the bleakest thing possible. It’s as easy as that."


I love hearing people's first reactions.

[vilakins]

I'd already noticed the flappy hands! Maybe GT did it to denote utter panic? Or he's as bad at running as PD.

She sussed the bleakness very early on, but there's also the humour and she appreciated Avon's. She's yet to warm to Vila though.

[pebblerocker]

I noticed that. How can you not like Vila? He's lovely.

[vilakins]

I know! He does say a couple of dicey things in the first couple of eps though. I do hope she eventually sees just how lovable he is.

[corvuscornix]

I love the silly running! Makes them seem more like normal people rather than choreographed action-heroes. (And of course it's really entertaining to watch - the running around in the Liberator corridors in The Web never fails to make me laugh.)

To be fair, I'd be surprised if Vila would be a favourite with very many people after only watching the first couple of eps, and knowing nothing else about the show. I'm sure she'll come round eventually!

[pebblerocker]

A very fun way of watching along! I want to get back to my B7 posts one day, but extreme never having time put a stop to it and now I'm on a Due South binge.

[vilakins]

It's great, and you can always comment! I only noticed one woman doing so, and almost all the fans on LJ are female. If I can think of something I need to say, I will.

Where are you up to? I'd love to see your posts too.

[pebblerocker]

I watched one episode beyond the last one I posted about. I THINK MY REVIEW OF IT WILL BE IN ALL CAPS!! And there are teleport bracelets! Yes, I'll have to start posting again.

[vilakins]

Aha, so you can watch along with the blog! :-D

[feng_shui_house]

Sue is marvelous. :^)

[vilakins]

And she's a carpenter: she built the feral cats (i.e. all but Cally) a house!

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for the heads-up on that! I love The Wife in Space. :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I see there's a book. Do you have the book? I haven't read it, but man, that's a huge canon to watch through, and I wouldn't know a lot of the eps. Maybe I'll look at Nine onwards.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I do not have the book, although I've vaguely considered picking it up.

Sadly, they have not done New Who, just the classic series. But you could maybe read the blog posts for the eps you've seen. It's highly entertaining.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I will! I've watched a few fairly recently and would remember enough to find it fun.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

New for me, thank you very much!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I love seeing other people's reactions to shows, especially B7.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

thanks for linking to this! i knew it was coming up, but i had forgotten when it was actually starting. read it, and really enjoyed it :D also, so pleased that she's enjoying it! i am too invested.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

She's actually pretty perceptive after just two eps; did you see her comment about Blake and Avon?

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i've read both the episode summaries, so i must have done, but also i have to ask - which one? love triangle? what are they going to do for four months? (IT IS FIVE SECONDS, not four months.)

as far as perceptive, i do definitely agree :D particularly what she says about predicting what will happen in blake's 7 (although i expect she will still be surprised by the ending and how bleak it can get). my other favourite serious comment is 'i think it will be like red dwarf but not as funny'/'it is like red dwarf only much funnier'. now - i think red dwarf is the funniest sitcom ever, so i wouldn't say blake's 7 is funnIER, but it is plenty funny, and i like that that's acknowledged. and it's like red dwarf in some other ways also.

the one that had me wiping tears of laughter from my eyes is about the cats on the intro page. that piece of news was like gasoline on a flame

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Five seconds? I think she's right that the London will take 4 months but I generally go with Jenna's turbo-drive button giving them really fast FTL travel with huge time-distort.

You mean that Blake-cat and Avon-cat couldn't stop shagging? Yeah, very funny, but really they should get the feral cats neutered or they'll end up having to use up all the character names including one-off guests for the huge mob of kittens. And unwanted kittens are sad.

Ha! I just noticed the cartoon features a green drink (on Orac)! A&S!

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i agree the text explicitly says 4 months, but the way it's shot and acted, and the way the character relationships develop (i.e. they don't, whereas they would later develop very rapidly from episode to episode) makes me find it impossible to believe that that bit where blake goes to talk to avon and avon says 'don't try to manipulate me, blake' happened 4 months after the first time they chatted, even if blake says 'you've had four months to think of that'. it looks like blake thought up a plan in about an hour, and then got avon to do it, after avon re-thought his position (over the hour in question)...

similarly jenna and avon haven't found the wardrobe room or the jewel-cache in four months. i love space fall - it is one of my top 5 or something, but that really bugs me.

unwanted kittens are sad, indeed. maybe they can give them away to some blake's 7 fans, though.

our cat is neutered. i think it just makes sense, really.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Then let's go with the time-distort theory! I agree it wasn't well thought out, esp if they were planning to have all their interstellar trips take months. They'd go spare from cabin fever.

Absolutely; my cats are always neutered.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

agreed! good.

i was going to say - interesting that the very boring b7 productions version puts them in suspended animation. i suppose it is grittier... or more realistic or something. because i'd just have commander raiker say 'as you all know, it takes 24 hours to get to cygnus alpha'...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Or, knowing Raiker, "For the 24 hours it takes to get to Cygnus Alpha, you bastards will jump at my every command or you don't get there."

But yeah, having space travel take ages makes for very boring or restricted story lines. How long would it take them to get to Star One, and would they even bother?

[nautile26.livejournal.com]

Wonderful. I'm going to try to follow along. Thanks for the link. :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's a pity there's not a feed, but I'll be checking every weekend.

Nice hexagons!

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

What feedreader do you use? A lot of them will let you subscribe to blogs with the URL. I was able to get it to work on Feedly.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i've tried to force them to give me one... i used teh series 1 category tab and fed it into dreamwidth.

http://wifeandblake1-feed.dreamwidth.org/

it's difficult to know if it will work at this early stage, but it's picked up all the posts that were already on the page and despoited them on my f-list. and i guess we will know about cygnus alpha in a few days.

[pebblerocker]

Thank you, the feed will be handy!

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

That's definitely one to follow.

Thanks!

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up. Sue's comments are very entertaining but oh the intro post that mentions Blake and Avon....

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

And the resulting kittens, yes!

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, thanks for the link! I'd followed quite a bit of The Wife in Space - it was very entertaining - and hadn't realised they were going to follow it up with B7.

Time to invest in some popcorn, probably...

:-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've now had a look at some of the DW eps I've seen recently enough to remember, but I only heard about the blogs this week.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Oh, this should be fun :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It is! They've done Cygnus Alpha now.