Starring Gareth Thomas, Paul Darrow, Richard Beale, Michael Keating, Sally Knyvette, David Jackson, Jan Chappell & Peter Tuddenham
Written by Terry Nation
Directed by Michael E Briant
After being sabotaged by Cally, the Liberator becomes trapped - in the phenomena known as the Web!
With the ship grounded and the Federation's pursuit ships closing in, Blake must go down to the surface of a nearby planet and barter with it's inhabitants to provide them with a means of escape. But the inhabitants that Blake finds are determined to destroy a new species of biological test subjects...
But what does this have to do with 'The Lost'?
I'm sorry to say, but The Web is the first really bad story that Blake's 7 has put out. Certainly, some interesting themes are banded about, and the direction and acting is wonderfully, but the story itself is woefully slow and sadly not very involving, which isn't a cristism that can often be levelled at Blake's 7.
The first half may not be dynamic, but there is a certain degree of tension. The episode builds towards the half-way point, with a wonderfully tense set up and a gripping opening premise. However, after that, it desends into formulaic plotting and dull, repetitive action. There are some really deep ideas and philosophies that run throughout the episode, but these become lost under predictable twists and poor plotting. In the end, the whole script just suffers from a inability to tell a story, instead it seems single mindedly focused upon the moral implications of the situation. Now, that's wonderful, however with no real plot that the story hangs on, it just ends up feeling limp and poor by comparison to the previous epsiodes of Blake's 7, which felt very plot driven. The idea that this is a microcosm for what would happen if Blake overthrows the Federation is an interesting idea, however it's not really exploted to it's full potential here. It's more concerned with trying to deal with the moral implications of the situation. There's no plot at all, aside from the superfluous ideas.
The characters in this story are completly one dimensional, with base ideas and nothing new or original. The two scientists are completely unmemorable, with nothing new or different about them. And as for 'the Lost', there simply unoriginal and underdeveloped. That really leaves only the main characters, and they are herded simply through a formulaic plot. It's a shame, because the past four episodes (even Cygnus Alpha!) really developed the characters in interesting ways, however, here they are simply bog standard characters. Not one of them are developed beyond there bases instincts and show little development beyond what we've seen already. It's a shame, because there was so much potential there.
The Web ends up as a bit of a waste and becomes a poor example of Blake's 7. It's wasted potential and it's just a sad example of when Blake's 7 just tries to fill in time by creating a story that shows how cheap and dated the show actually is.
Liberator Rating - 5/10
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