I really must remember to thank him - with sincere apologies to Chris Boucher

I'll tell you something for nothing, mes amis.

Studying for an MA in Television and Radio Scriptwriting at Salford University really helps to take all the fangirl fun out of of the various guilty pleasures offered by television, radio, film and theatre.

Now most people might think that I spent most of Tuesday opting out of reality by camping out on the sofa in my comfy old tracky bottoms and trainers while I scorched the roof of my mouth on copious quantities of boiling hot lentil dhaal and naan bread to the accompaniment of the box set of Series 2 of Blake's Seven.

Er yes, I admit it probably looked like that on the surface, so there are good grounds for saying that. (At least it wasn't Jeremy Kyle - today, anyway.)

But in fact my brain was working hard, feverishly applying all the principles that we have learnt to start analysing the scripts from a more professional point of view.  This way I can learn so much more to help me keep progressing and improving in my own efforts.

Chris Boucher remains a great scriptwriter, it goes without saying.  Indeed, it is abundantly apparent from all this televisual debauchery I indulged in on Tuesday that he must be one of the great formative influences on my own work.

However, I'm older, I'm tougher, I'm better educated now.

And Chris, I'm sorry, but I have been left with some serious reservations about certain aspects of Blake's Seven series 2.

Let me now share a few of them with you all:  

Fen the Clonemaster

Sorry, but Fen the Clonemaster in Weapon seriously gets on my knackers.

Such a silly pretentious woman floating around in a miasma of dry ice left over from Top Of The Pops that week, draped in cobwebs and a neo-Elizabethan ruff effort as part of a feeble plan to appear both 'dramatic' and 'significant', and posing like a vampire contestant on Strictly Come Dancing every time she walked down the stairs to the strains of the big Wurlitzer from the Blackpool Tower.

And she talks such arse-wincingly hippy-trippy bollocks.

Who on earth ever decided that a gaudy self-important intergalactic maypole like this should stand as the ideal exemplar of the reverence for life, love and liberty?

I was practically begging Travis to recharge his laseron and take her out once he'd finished with the Blakes.  Come on, Commander, you know it makes sense!

Zil

Can I also say I've never been terribly fond of Zil in Trial, either.

Yes, yes, I KNOW she's a symbolic character designed to teach Blake a stirring moral lesson in direct and cruelly ironic counterpoint to the one that Travis is learning at the same time in the courtroom, blah, blah, blah - but philosophical lizards really don't need to poke their tongues out so much while they're at it.

Nor is it a wise idea to go prancing round in a rubber chicken bodysuit on a planet that's in the process of digesting itself.

I realise that the Zil Chris Boucher saw in his head when he was actually writing this script must have been an altogether more polished and utterly alien proposition than the one that eventually reached the screen. 

But as someone with previous experience of the BBC and its production methods during the late Seventies and early Eighties, surely he should have scented danger much earlier and tried to avert it.  

The crimos

Ever since I watched that film Delicatessen, I can't stop wondering whether they got the idea for the barmy frogmen in that from the crimos in Hostage.

I suppose the crimos were meant to be wearing the diving suits because they needed protection against the cold, thin atmosphere of the planet. But being on the run like Travis, they couldn't just drop in at the nearest space expedition outfitting shop and buy the proper gear like any normal person in the Federation.

No - they were forced to nick clapped out second hand stuff from some unsuspecting soul's back shed.

That's the theory.

In practice, they resembled not so much the faceless figures of Inga's worst nightmares as a misdirected team of police frogmen from Z Cars.

And how come Blake,Travis and Avon had no problems breathing when all the crimos apart from Moloch needed the frogmen outfits - and poor Vila ended up half-choking to death?  Does this imply that only the nasty bastards are tough enough to survive on that world?  If so, then what does that tell us about Blake?  Not to mention Moloch's faceless, nameless colleagues.