- brief comments from Louise Badsey

I managed to catch the radio play "The Syndeton Experiment" - on the whole it came across as being better than the first play - The Sevenfold Crown. I've only heard it the once as yet, but intend to study it further when I get the chance. First impressions/comments - all the actors sounded more like the actors than the old characters we know and love! Well, at least they did to start with - Avon sounded much older - and more Paul Darrowish than the sharp wit of Avon.

I think it just seemed to take them all a while to get back into their characters. Servalan really sounded like Jacqueline Pearce until later on - this being evident during the lunch she was having with her man friend. Servalan would never have giggled like she did, and would never have served food to any guy - she almost sounded like a housewife having dinner with her husband after work in the evening! NO!!! This is not Servalan's style I'm afraid!

However, it did improve a great deal toward the end - when Avon and Servalan met up eventually - they got into character really well and it was just like another episode. It's always great to hear all the characters together again!

What else do I remember? Ah, yes, Dayna's character was pretty good, getting into the role well but Soolin unfortunately just seemed to become teleport operator! I'm sure they could have done much more with her character - she's much too wooden.

There was also a dodgy bit where it immediately turned into a Doctor Who episode. You had some squeeky dalek type sounds and thought "Oh No! It's now a Doctor Who story" - luckily though, it was only some guy in a helmet which made him talk like a robot, so when he took it off and talked normally you breathed a sigh of relief! I mean I do like Doctor Who, but Blakes 7 is Blakes 7 and they should stay far apart from each other. I believe it's the strong characters in Blakes 7 that make it stand out from the rest, the plots can be fairly weak, but the character interaction always makes up for it as they are all just great characters and it's fantastic to hear them all together again in something new!