Book 19 - A Luciferian Tragedy

Hmm.

Book 19. Oh dear ...

Blake's 7 was a series I was hooked on as a kiddie. It was about a band of intergalactic freedom fighters ... well ok, a bunch of criminals who were on the run from the all powerful and totally evil Federation who wanted to take them down.

There was a lot of nonsense in Blake's 7 with the storylines, as is typical for 70s/80s scifi but you had excellent characters, a classic ship and a couple of remarkable computers. It lost a bit in series 4 (spoilers) but it was still a massive highlight when it came on. I must watch the dvds again at some point.

The theme tune was magic too.

This book is about one character in particular, Kerr Avon and is written by the actor, Paul Darrow. It's published by Big Finish Productions and I'm now incredibly wary about reading any more of their books. The only thing consistent with the series here are the names of the characters Avon and Servalan. Servalan is consistent ... but then it doesn't take much to portray true, ruthless and vicious evil. Avon is a bit different. The series Avon could handle himself in a fight but preferred to avoid fights ... This Avon is a one man unstoppable army.

The setting is different, almost nothing of the technology and universe of the series is carried through to the book. Instead, we have technology that doesn't make sense. A galactic current that carries ships. Helijets going between planets. And other daft stuff that's just .... rubbish.

So if Big Finish have allowed this book to come out ... and it's part of a series, what are they doing with their other books ? Are their Doctor Who books actually Doctor Who ?

At the moment, I'm not too interested in checking them out. You could say that the disastrously bad novelisation here is the fault of the author. But I'd prefer to point the finger at the quality control. This particular book shouldn't have been released with the Blake's 7 label on it.

The story is actually fairly reasonable ... but it doesn't belong in the Blake's 7 universe. I seem to remember saying that about another film/series too quite recently ! Wish I could remember what :-).

On a better note ....

Book 20 is Blake's 7 Afterlife by Tony Attwood who compiled the B7 Programme Guide. When the characters were introduced, they were instantly recognisable. I haven't seen B7 in years but when ... characternameredacted ... spoke, I pictured him in my mind saying the words with the character's mannerisms.

More about Afterlife later. Gotta read it first ! :-).

Boaty Exhausted

I had an unscheduled and a bit spur of the moment visit to Cardiff yesterday ...

Whales in Wales ! And boats too. The Volvo Ocean Race is in town at the moment for the Cardiff stopover. Just two more legs to go in this race and it's been good to be able to follow it closer than previous editions. Things like twitter and Facebook help out a lot there.

One comment before I go any further - if you're interested in going to see the Race Village, go now. They'll be gone on Monday.

Don't miss the boat ! So to speak.

The village is a fair distance by foot from the car parks though so be prepared for that. (Don't do what I do and neglect your fluids and calories, I was impaired and close to flaking out)

A nice view out over the bay.

An odd looking building. Knowing Cardiff's Doctor Who heritage, has it been inspired by the aliens ?

Remember the fallen. This is a WW2 merchant sailors memorial, click for bigger and hopefully legibility on the writing.

I passed by more bones and relics of things long gone. These must have been crane anchor points ? The shore side seemed a bit too shallow to support ships and boats getting in close enough to offload.

There was a decent bit more walking to go from here. This is a different boat shed with a Volvo Ocean Race sign on it.

The most interesting thing in the village for me was a cutaway yacht, showing how the boats are designed. It was a bit of a revelation for me as it corrected errors in the mental map I had for where things were on board. I never realized that the interior would double back underneath where the crew stand and control the rigging and rudder.

Hopefully these will never need to be used, although it was sad to hear of the tragic loss of one of the sailors in the Southern Oceans this year.

The compartment above the engine is where they sleep and forward (right of pic) is the storage and the loo. Aft (left of pic) is the hatch to the outdoors. Bit ickle !

A view of the deck, plus a little bit of the detailing involved. Keep the design neat, understandable and it'll be easier to keep it in good condition and to fix it if it breaks. The domes aft are for the communications, safety and global navigation systems, with the compartment below the deck being where the navigator lives.

A view from the inside. I didn't explore too much because it was a shoes-off area and the carbon fibre floor was very slippy.

Engine ! Not to be used for moving the boat, although that's possible if they lose the sails. This gives power for the systems on board, both electrical and hydraulic. The modern ocean racing yachts use a canting keel. A conventional yacht keel is a big mass that's suspended directly below the boat. It acts as a counterweight when the boat heels over to stop it from capsizing. A canting keel can change the angle, swaying to port or starboard (left or right!) to gain more weight advantage from the mass.

Translation - it swings left and right and makes the boat faster ... but needs hydraulic power to make it work.

A view from the helm. The pillars and levers in the centre are where the grinders operate the winches that trim the boat and raise and lower the sails. You can see the little void in the centreline where the ropes run to the rigging.

But where are the boats ? They said there would be boats !

I've been following Turn The Tide On Plastic most of all, here is their stern. There were lovely sounds coming from the water lapping at the boats.

That's Scallywag,

A few more of the boats,

Vesta's 11th Hour,

A better look at TTOP,

There's AkzoNobel, a company which provided most of the high technology materials, knowledge and design that goes into these boats,

Mapfre,

Dongfeng and ...

Turning back for a better look at Team Brunel's boat. We could get reasonably close access to the boats but the general public was kept away from the jetty where they were moored up.

This looked incredibly tempting and my brain was trying to get me to partake. I should have listened ! :-D.

Back to the old. I wonder how long it has been since these gates were opened. They serve no purpose now, except for tide barriers, as they have filled in the channel behind the bridge I took the picture from.

Merchwise, the village is quite poor. They have bags, waterproofs, hats, more hats, beanies, shirts and the rest but it's very expensive. I'm not paying £30 for a hat. I didn't come away empty handed though :

Think he needs a booster seat. I then disappeared off to the Happy Place :

Which had the desired result :

They're a friendly bunch in there and the girl who was on the till was very keen to talk about Star Wars things.

Fun afternoon/evening out, although I was a bit too late to raid the music shops of Cardiff for a few things I'd like to get hold of. My legs hate me at the moment though. Too much unaccustomed :

They'll get over it and I could do with having more exercise. :-D

Nostalgia themes

A surprise late post !

A surprise to me too ... (I should really be heading off to bed now).

Reading the Blake's 7 book made me think back to some of the themes that heralded those great ... and not so great shows. The ones you still vaguely remember now, even years after the programme finished airing.

What themes ? Here's the Blake's 7 theme. A great opening and a well crafted finish. Check out those state of the art BBC special drama budget graphics. This programme was never about the graphics though, it was about the interplay between the characters. Would Vila run ? Would Avon turn on everybody ? How irascible would Zen and Orac get ? How much trouble would the idealistic Blake get ? Great show. I was glued to this one as a kiddie.

I was also glued to Battle of the Planets. Yep. Nostalgia - check. A great show for after school. Oh and then there's Dogtanian (It's awful isn't it ...) for when we moved back to England. I'd rush back from school for that pup. I never got back in time for Mysterious Cities Of Gold, although I have the dvds which I haven't managed to watch yet. Ulysses 31 was a highlight too.

I hear Thundercats is coming back too. Hey look ! It's a Dungeons and Dragons ride. Classic comics.

And this one was pretty bad but spawned it's own legends. It's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

This was from the days when the programme makers would quite happily dedicate a minute or two of their 25 minutes to an intro theme to show you all the characters again.

Back to the more adult stuff .... I adored Battlestar Galactica, the original movies. It took a while before I could catch up on the series though. It didn't matter that the space effects sequences were used, reused and recycled thousands of times, it felt and looked great.

And then there's Knight Rider, the unmistakeable Woo Woo and futuristic music of its intro launching the Hoff on his career.

Yep. We had some very silly telly on every week in the 80s.

Not quite so silly in set up but extremely silly in its episodic plotlines was Space 1999. Sadly didn't have the scripts to back up Moonbase Alpha's setting. I loved the Eagle spacecraft. Very utilitarian, very flexible. It was a while before I got to watch this on reruns though.

Talking of silly .... Captain William "Buck" Rogers had a freak mishap, freezing him so that he would reappear ... to save Earth in the 25th Century with faithful sidekick robot Twiki.

There were many more too, like Sapphire and Steel which I really need to try and watch again.

One that I have enjoyed coming back is Macgyver. The new remake series has been an excellent update.

Right - I think it's getting too late for me to think of more to post. But if you need them and if you can find them, maybe you can hire ... The A Team.

And a late add on. How could I forget to include Doctor Who ? Here's the Tom Baker intro.

Book 18 - Babylon's Ashes ... and a holiday

Feels weird to be going back to work tomorrow !

Also hot. It feels a bit too warm at the moment.

Book first. I'm up to Book 6 in the Expanse series. I'll slow down now though because 2 books haven't been written yet and the 7th is still more expensive than I want to pay. (Handy tip - don't rush to spend cash if you don't have to).

I'm always a bit wary about doing the book reviews because of the spoiler potential. Nobody wants the spoilers. That reminds me ! Must check what someone thought of the Solo movie. I was underwhelmed, although that could have been due to being in the low side of my particular mental cycle. It felt like a movie that was out to tick as many lore boxes as it felt it had to, without any particularly good inspiration of its own. Rogue One was a far better movie for me, I must watch it again soon.

Anyway ! The Expanse.

Book 6 moves on the story with more in the tale of the Free Navy. It feels like these books are going to be in a series of 3 acts, with each act being 3 books. This book and the previous one massively redraw the map of the Expanse universe and this one wraps up a few threads from before ... including a death of a major character. That's one thing about the Expanse novels, you never really can tell if people are going to be safe although I get the feeling that the core 4 characters will survive all the way through to the 9th book which may owe a lot to the series origins as a role playing game.

I felt that Book 6 was a better book than number 5, which had a particular job to do ... and I'll be looking forward to when book 7 goes a little cheaper.

I need to figure out which book is next actually ... as I suspect that I'll finish my current book tonight if I get to the reading of it. More on that another day.

Holiday stuff :

Should have done some work around the house - didn't. (This is probably what generates the low mood - guilt).
Healing up - to an extent, although I really need to leave my legs alone so they have a chance to heal.
Games - Battletech is still awesome and ... I have reactivated Warcraft.
Addiction - Warcraft is very addictive. I'm almost at level 110 already and somehow managed to find a Legendary item. That's two for my characters !
Video watching - I've caught up on the youtube watching ... Well, at least as far as I take it. I avoid watching multiple series of the same game at the same time. It gets confusing.

And general me - I feel a bit more rested, although heat tends to beat rested feelings out of me quite quickly.

Anyway - Expanse Book 6. A worthy continuation of a very good series of books so far. It evolves its situation and its world but doesn't break it like some series of novels I know.

Recommended !

Comic Con Expedition 2018

Comic Con again !

This one felt better somehow. Whereas we'd normally have finished up before the show was over and on our way, this time the 5pm closing time came as a great surprise. It definitely crept up on us.

Oh and I have loot too ...

Perhaps not as utterly packed as some years but still plenty to see. Lots to look at.

Curious people making their way around the exhibition. Whatever could be in that case ?

Who will he next be smuggling across the galaxy ? When all else fails, send in the Wookie.

Maybe it was this strange lovely creature ?

Don't let the Red Mandalorian find her ...

This fella just wanted hugs.

Lovely merch on display.

And a little more too.

And some lovely people selling the merch too.

Definitely good for a ride home.

There were many shiny things.

Keep an eye open for the Family.

Although sometimes, deadly opponents can put their feuds aside for a time.

Two heroines on their way to save the world.

And if they can't save it, then they shall secure the rebirth of the world. (Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, a great take on post-apocalyptic games).

Possibly the best cosplay of the day, this is Gaige from Borderlands 2. I quite enjoyed playing this character during the time I had in the game.

And there is always a need for a humble hero and his pig.

Definitely a need for more shiny things.

I came away with a little bit of loot :

The mini Lego XWing in the pic above, plus a small adorable Toothless. I also acquired another mug which may find it's way into work next week. And a t-shirt which will definitely join the round of subversive Friday t-shirts.

I also picked up my next book, a Blakes 7 follow up by Paul Darrow aka Kerr Avon which should be good.

A good day out. I'm still tired now though !