38 - Ultraworld

Look, I went into this one knowing that it was not one of my favourites.

In fact, I considered it a quite weak episode of Blake 7.

And look, I'll be up front watching it again.

I also continue to think that it's quite a weak episode of Blake 7.

That's not to say that there's no good stuff in there.

And certainly, as is our policy on the podcast, we're not here to kick it.

I'm certainly not here to kick it.

But we will be having a discussion, I think, about...

Certainly why I didn't think it was very good and what didn't work.

And I think there's some really interesting stuff to talk about in there.

I did get the feeling, and this happens in a lot of television, particularly British television at the time, where we're getting towards the end of the season, some energy and some money is being pushed back to make sure the finale is going to be good.

And in a couple of cases, I think we'll talk about there's some stuff where Chris Boucher has sort of seen the ending and put it together.

The stuff before the end of the season does struggle.

I think that's where we are here.

You can sort of see the money is being pushed forward and backward and Ultra World is perhaps the victim of that.

The big thing that I noted here is it's not so much that the ideas are bad, but that the ideas are old.

This is stuff that I think would have been quite new in 1960s sci-fi.

But by the time we got to 1980, it's just been done.

So there are a couple of my big thoughts.

But look, there are some good moments.

There are certainly some interesting ideas.

And I think there's a bit to talk about here.

Richard, do you have a different view or feel the same?

Broadly similar.

My initial note here is, yeah, look, it's not great.