He fancies himself the leader of this gang. The way he treats Vila is sometimes so annoying. On the other hand that makes it for good television, I mean, the constant bickering of Blake and Avon, is icing on the cake. The humor of Vila is the reason why he’s my second favorite character, he often is the one who doesn’t want to go on these missions, rather wants to stay on the ship, or more so, not be on that ship. His concerns are almost never taken seriously, but they do order him around and he does this, but always with some complaining, in a very funny way.

As I said, on the whole a strong season, like the first one, but I only graded five episodes higher than an 8 out of 10. This season mostly is about the Federation, which is a good thing if you ask me, perhaps only the first episode strayed away a bit from their struggle with the Federation. The crew of Blake finds out where the Liberator is coming from, the original owners, aliens, want to retake the Liberator. Every other episode it about trying to incapacitate the Federation. It is Blake’s main goal, the others follow his orders but it is his driving force. I must admit, I had expected that Avon would become more active against Blake’s leadership, not only vocal because he does that on almost every possible occasion. Another highlight is Servalan, every scene she is in I enjoy thoroughly, she is so devious, always hungry for power, but also making sure that if something goes wrong, she casts the blame on someone else. Jacqueline Pearce did a wonderful job, such a great actress. She and Travis, the banter, at least a strong dislike towards each other, was great television. Although they really dislike each other, they agree upon one thing, catching, or rather killing Blake.

In episode five, I must admit, I didn’t remember, Olag Gan (David Jackson) dies. I’ve read that the reason why left was because of conflicting scheduling, he also had a serious injury and he also felt a lack of Gan’s character development.

My favorite episodes:

Episode 3, “Weapon”: After a researcher named Coser kills his superiors at the Federation's weapons development base, he escapes to a deserted planet with a new secret weapon called IMIPAK. Soon, both the Liberator's crew and Servalan are searching for him. Federation is back, better still, Servalan, she steals every scene she’s in. Also liked that other devious character, Carnell, he knows when to be gone. The weapon is not in Federations hands but Blake’s clone and Rashel, who outsmarted Servalan.

Episode 5, “Pressure Point”: The Liberator returns to Earth where Blake plans to attack the Federation Central Control computer complex. The one where Gan dies, Servalan stealing every scene she is in again. And I got annoyed by Blake’s character traits.

Episode 6, “Trial”: Blake holds himself responsible for Gan's death at the Central Control computer complex and decides to desert the crew. 2 parts of the episode I really liked, what happened on the ship and Travis’ trial. Wasn’t really a fan of what happened on the planet. Travis escapes, goes after Blake and Servalan pursuits them both.

Episode 7, “Killer”: Avon and Vila teleport to a Federation installation on the planet Fosforon to meet an old friend of Avon's in hopes of stealing a key component of the Federation's cipher coding system. Nice to see Avon on a mission without Blake but with Villa, two of my favorite characters. This was a good story, no Servalan or Travis but still a Federation story.

Episode 9, “Countdown”: Best episode till then, The Liberator heads to the Federation controlled planet Albian, where the crew search for Federation officer Space Major Provine whom they believe can lead them to the location of Central Control. It had everything! Again, lots of Villa humor, Federation, the despicable, but cunning Space Major Provine, action paced but perhaps most important to me was the Avon story, we get some more Avon back story I was really looking out for. It all combined into a fantastic episode to me. Blake usually is not my favorite character but in this episode he was more than okay. I did like how he took it up for Avon, that if anything would happen to him, he would find Del Grant, brother of Avon's former lover Anna.

Fun Quotes - Episode 9

Episode 13, “Star One”: Even better than “Countdown”, Blake leads the apprehensive crew of the Liberator out into intergalactic space to find and destroy Star One and cripple the Federation. Beginning of the episode Avon lets Blake know that he really dislikes him. He wants to do this op, but after that he wants the ship and be free. In a final moment, to Avon’s surprise, Blake tells him that he trusted Avon from the very beginning. Travis working together with an alien force, wants to destroy the Federation and all human kind. A fleet behind Star One is waiting to come to humankind space. Travis gets killed by Avon in the final moment. Servalan was great as usual, what a woman! As said, definitely best episode this season, a space battle is coming! “Countdown” is a close second.

In the word document below you can see how I graded the rest, with some comments and such.

Blu-ray:

Well, if you’ve read my first series blog of Blake’s 7, you’ll know that I wasn’t really that impressed with the PQ. It definitely was better that the DVD counterpart, but especially in the first half of the series, the picture quality sometimes degraded to DVD quality, sometimes vertical stripes and such. I am happy to tell you that series two is much better! Perhaps on one or two occasions I noticed a picture quality dip but overall it really does look good. It really looks way better than the series two DVD counterpart. What we do have to realize is that the resolution is 1080i upconverted.

Final Word:

I know that in series three Blake’s character won’t be there anymore except for the series three finale. I don’t think I really have a problem with that, but I am curious to see how the crew continues without Blake’s leadership. I assume Avon will take the leadership (sorry, it has been 45 years since I last saw it, just don’t remember much of it), he seems to me the natural choice, but we’ll see, I am not going to look it up online, I will see it when series 3 becomes available, most likely in the summer in the UK and a month or so later in North America.

Screencaps taken from: Blake's 7 Image Library