Gauda Prime Day

[altariel]

kalypso_v remembers that it is Gauda Prime Day - the twenty-third anniversary of the screening of the last episode of Blake's 7.

At the time, I was a bright-eyed nine-year-old, with a hope-filled heart and faith in human nature. Fifty minutes of television changed all that. When the credits rolled at the end of the episode, I sat gawping at the screen for a bit, and then ran upstairs and had a big cry. Hurrah for the Christmas spirit!

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I sat gawping at the screen for a bit, and then ran upstairs and had a big cry.

Me too! *snf*

(I was 14. I wrote pages about it in my journal. Thank God we didn't have online journals then!)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wrote pages about it in my journal.

:-) I have a strong suspicion that almost everything I've written since has been to come to terms with it at some level!

[gfk88.livejournal.com]

I was thirteen. I did that gawping thing too, but when I went upstairs I ran into my dad.

"Finished, has it ? Did they all get killed ?"

"Yes."

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Sharp chap!

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Fifty minutes of television changed all that

So that was what turned you in the bitter and twisted soul that we know today? Chris Boucher has a lot to answer for.

I was perhaps already slightly more cynical, because I didn't believe it. I was convinced that they were somehow going to come back. It took a long time for me to believe that no, they really weren't.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

So that was what turned you in the bitter and twisted soul that we know today?

It all goes back to that critical fifty minutes. Imagine what the world might have been like if I had never seen 'Blake'.

[kathyh]

I was a lot older than you but remember feeling pretty much the same. How I'd have felt at 9 I don't even want to imagine!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It made me the person I am today! ;-D

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Traumatized comes close! It was certainly the talk of the playground for ages afterwards.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Awww! Never underestimate the power of television.

My hope-filled heart and faith in human nature were destroyed several years earlier, but also at the age of nine. The ending of 'Blake' just confirmed it. That, and being at secondary school by then.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, secondary school really put the final nail in, I think. And then I found fandom.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

And then I found fandom.

Ooooh, the ambiguity.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Well spotted! ;-D

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I too ran upstairs and cried, though I think my sense of faith in human nature had been challenged some years earlier.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

At least there was the magazine. I had a picture of Avon stuck up over my bed, much to the annoyance of the teenage sister with whom I shared a room.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

What? They all died?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It's OK - Father Christmas arrived just in time and took them away on his magic sleigh.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I should think so too

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Some of the elves didn't make it though.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

*sob* now you've ruined Christmas

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Boucher did it first.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons that 'Galaxy Quest' is so wonderful. Not only do we get that scene, but we get a solution, too.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I was relatively ancient but still shocked. I don't think any series that was even vaguely good vs bad (and it was, though the good guys were by then fairly tarnished) had ever ended so bleakly, let alone 4 days before Christmas.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

No, I can't think of anything like it.

The end of the second season of Robin of Sherwood, and Robin's subsequent (implied) resurrection, was transmitted around Easter. I think there was a flurry of indignation about that.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha!

I hadn't heard about that. What brilliant timing.

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

I think my equivalent, at about the same age, was Michael Moorcock's History of the Runestaff series. All of the second-string good guys get gruesomely killed off in the final battle, after having followed their adventures through three or four volumes. That was just not the way fantasy was meant to work :)

[hafren.livejournal.com]

There was of course C S Lewis's grotesque The Last Battle, which wanted me to believe that a train crash constituted a happy ending because all the parties concerned had gone to heaven. But even at nine, I could see through that one!

[communicator.livejournal.com]

'Blake' cast retrospective glory on the whole of Season 4, but The Last Battle ruined Narnia for me.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I had been so thoroughly catholicized even by the age of 9 so that the ending of The Last Battle seemed a happy one. (A long slow process of de-catholicization came later.)

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Urgh, do not like that book. All the parties went to heaven except Susan. Can you imagine how devastated she must have been to have her entire family killed at one go? Pretty severe punishment for being interested in lipsticks and nylons.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The good are meant to end happily! (That's what fiction's all about...)

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

It was definitely a blow to the three-volume-novel view of the world. The villains are all English, for a start :)

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

I first saw that episode in (very considerably delayed) reruns in the States, and had absolutely no idea it was going to be the last episode. There I was, studying for my fields exams, Samuel Johnson all over my bed, taking my one precious break of the week, and . . . they were all killed. I didn't have the excuse of being thirteen, but my jaw remained dropped for about a week I think. Good God.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

There's nothing like it. When you watch it again there's all this foreshadowing throughout the episode, but of course I didn't see any of that at the time. All my heroes, gunned down, four days before Christmas.

[kerravonsen]

i cant remember when they showed it, but because of the way there had been a large gap between third and fourth season, i had previously been watching -the omega factor- which chris boucher had also been heavily involved in, so my thoughts on seeing -blake- were more along the lines of "Bloody typical!"

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've never seen 'The Omega Factor'. Any good?

[kerravonsen]

If you aren't bothered by the occult then it's really good; good characters, drama, evil conspiracies, mysterious things happening. Me, I found myself torn, because, unlike Buffy or the Tomorrow People, the psi stuff was too close to real magic practices for me to happily put it in the "pure make-believe" box (e.g. using Ouiji boards etc); I watched it but then I came to think later when I managed to get tapes from someone that I shouldn't have done that.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with occult themes. Sounds like something I should try to track down. Wonder if it's made it to DVD yet.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I remember watching that when it was on. I hadn't realised that Boucher was involved. It was Good Stuff.

[raspberryfool.livejournal.com]

I was thirteen, and it was my first term at Upper School which i hated! I hated the world - or was beginning to - back then, and B7 was the last Good Thing i had. Then they took it away from me, and i hated the world completely.

The... *sad wimper* ...B*****ST*RDS!!!

I'm gonna cry now...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It was bad enough watching it aged nine, but thank god it didn't hit me in my teenage years.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's just me being typically strange, but I was hit harder by the end of the 3rd Season. I had to go and lie down in a dark room for a while after that. I think it was a combination of the 4th Season as a whole being largely shite, and the fact that I knew the final episode was destined to be the last ever, that I was expecting them all to get killed so the only surprise was how it would happen.

Mind you, many years later, I introduced a friend to B7, and when it came to 'Blake' I got to see her jaw well and truly drop. Served her right for being a Star Trek junkie, I thought.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The death of Zen and the Liberator really hit me hard too. I was still young and trusting enough not to expect the end to 'Blake'. I remember mildly traumatizing some friends at uni with a screening of 'Blake'.