clocketpatch: A small, innocent-looking red alarm clock, stuck forever at 10 to 7. (Avon)
clocketpatch ([personal profile] clocketpatch) wrote2013-10-10 04:04 pm
Entry tags:

Blake's 7 02x11 Gambit

I... what did I just watch?!?!

WHUT. No, really, whut. There is an elderly lady in a burlesque outfit talking about chess in a bad French accent. I'm fairly certain I just saw the guy who plays all of the Ompa Lumpas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there's another man with the most insane wig-hat-idek I have ever seen, and SERVALAN IS WEARING RED.



…!?!?

Space Vegas + Versailles

WELCOME TO FREEDOM CITY EVERYONE!

I really want Servalan's red dress. It's gorgeous. I'd never be able to pull it off, ever, and it looks very uncomfortable and impractical, but still... I have dress envy.

The characters in story are questioning the ridiculous wig. Brb, dying.

Meanwhile, on board the Liberator…

Avon and Vila are scheming and playing tricks on Orac. I am actually in tears from how much I am laughing. Avon gives Vila, "a warm feeling, right in the money belt." Trying to rip off a major casino (in space) with the help of a sarcastic super computer in mini mode and a two hour deadline… gah, no way THIS can POSSIBLY go wrong.

Oh, and did I mention that the Casino is decorated with Christmas tinsel? That's how you know it's festive and full of bling. :D

I don't really know what my feelings are towards down-on-his-luck neck beard!Travis. He's come a long way from his immaculate sex shop leather suit, that's for sure… I do like his new hat.

Lol, whut, is this random guy playing Live Chess? Against Deep Roy?(And it IS Deep Roy, I just looked it up. This could not get more cracky if it TRIED)

(And yes, LIVE CHESS! Just like in A Good Man Goes to War. I… My words… the background music… the retro digital chess board… all of it… WHAT AM I WATCHING RIGHT NOW?!?)

Vila and Avon are the most hilarious thing ever. I just want to watch them attempt dismally stupid hoaxes all day.

Ah, and now Vila has been drugged and coerced into playing Live Chess. And Avon is encouraging this.

Comedy Vila and Avon is the best thing ever. I want more of this.

AND SCENE!

Since I'm getting near the end of the season I feel like the next two episode are probably going to be really depressing and full of people randomly dying and awful cliff-hangers and all of that... which I will watch with anticipation and enjoyment, but I really enjoyed this crack. It was just so much crack. :D

ETA: I just watched the finale, and yup. Check. Check. Double check on the cliff-hanger. But I loved this bit of dialogue:

Vila: "Avon, this is stupid!"
Avon: "And since when has that ever stopped us?"

Ahhh!! Time to mainline series 3 me thinks.

[identity profile] a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com 2013-10-10 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Surprise!Crack is the best - especially when it is silly and stupid like this. I wanna hug this post!! It has made my day SO. MUCH. BETTER. Eeeee!!

*SQUISH*

OMG, that picture is just SO MUCH WIN!! *CACKLES*
Edited 2013-10-10 21:48 (UTC)
ext_23799: (Default)

[identity profile] aralias.livejournal.com 2013-10-10 10:05 pm (UTC)(link)
GAMBIT IS THE BEST OMG.

i dont know how much i have to add, except that robert holmes writes some amazing dialogue, and i also want avon and vila to steal things forever.

and the wighat is great.

in fact, everything is great! i love this episode and how perfect and silly and brilliant it is.

(just rolling into your journal...)
ext_23799: (Default)

[identity profile] aralias.livejournal.com 2013-10-10 11:29 pm (UTC)(link)
i agree with her - if you can stay unspoiled, stay unspoiled.

as it happens... the first blake's 7 fic i ever wrote was to this exact spec: http://archiveofourown.org/works/640690 (it has various pairing tags, but it is super gen)
and because i am addicted to it as an idea, i wrote a gambit scene in my elizabethan seafaring blake/avon... but that is spoilery. and not gen.

the master of the avon and vila gen friendship fic, though, is [livejournal.com profile] vilakins. here are some that aren't spoilery (i'm pretty sure. there may be some dramatic irony, she's good enough that you may not see it if you dont know to what it refers...)-
http://archiveofourown.org/works/137873
http://archiveofourown.org/works/27059
http://archiveofourown.org/works/46674
and a fun star trek: TNG crossover, if you enjoy that sort of thing: http://archiveofourown.org/works/61121
Edited 2013-10-10 23:31 (UTC)
ext_23799: (blake)

[identity profile] aralias.livejournal.com 2013-10-10 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
there are... at least four major things that i think you should ideally not know until they happen. obviously everything else is a bonus :)

btw, if you are looking at my previous posts... they are all full of spoilers, but particularly: DONT look at the colouring book post. [livejournal.com profile] praedestinato thought it would be ok to look at it without having finished the series, because it was just a colouring book and probably wouldn't have any massive spoilers in it... but it has the most massive of all spoilers in it.
thisbluespirit: (b7 - Vila)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2013-10-11 07:07 am (UTC)(link)
And I was just thinking that I so had to link you to aralias's marvellous Vila-and-Avon fic, but she beat me to it. You should read it. It's still my favourite B7 she's done so far. (I'm a heretic who only ships Blake/Avon in a sort of probably non-romantic, I-don't-even-know-what-this-is way).

You should definitely also now read Vila's Emails for series two, though!! :-D

From hereon, the show is completely rubbish. (According to some people. I dispute that, but see what you think. ;-D)

Also, this is the point where I warn you about Ben Steed: Ben Steed is nearly upon you! I don't know whether it's better to know or not know, but I think better to know. Basically, there is a writer who did 2 S3 episodes and 1 S4 (and that is ALL! This is a thing to be grateful for) who is not really the worst B7 writer, but... he's incredibly misogynist. So much so that some people can even enjoy some of them as a parody. It is worth being warned for, so when you see his name in the credits, you know what you're getting. There are compensations, except possibly not really in Power.

Anyway, ♥ Also, the guy in the outrageous wig is John Leeson and this is the second time you've seen him in B7, if you hadn't already worked that out. Gambit is indeed pure crack and also, as you will already have noticed, Robert Holmes loves writing Avon and Vila.

Next-up - the Space War! (You will like the Space War, I promise. All five minutes of it. ;-D)
ext_23799: (blake)

[identity profile] aralias.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 09:43 am (UTC)(link)
and unexpected mike yates!

also - i dispute that there is no compensation in power - i think power has the worst stuff that ben steed does, but it's also got some stuff that i genuinely like. unlike moloch, which is just made of bad.

From hereon, the show is completely rubbish.

like lost_spook, i also disagree with this. but until now it has been consistently excellent really (apart from voice from the past, but i actually quite liked it on rewatch, um, probably five... about a week ago), and now it becomes so that some episodes are actually not good. but plenty of them are! there's two more bob holmes, three more terry, aaaaand... (quick mental count) six more chris boucher (i think). plus, series 4 has some more cracking theft plots.

also... i am sure i will write more gen at some point...
thisbluespirit: (b7 - Vila)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2013-10-11 12:05 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it's only 5 more Chris Boucher (4 in S2, 3 in S3 and 2 in S4. Sadly).

See, now I find Moloch the most enjoyable of the three (for a certain value of enjoyable, given its writer). Kairos has the most obvious crack, which helps a little, and Power has a tiny nice bit at the end and just about nothing else except generating a sort of horrified fascination in me. Anyway, this is not at all the sort of thing we should be discussing here. You have already made Mike Yates significantly less unexpected for Clocket.

;-p
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[identity profile] aralias.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 12:40 pm (UTC)(link)
you're right, of course. i just like talking about blake...

also, i accidentally counted death watch twice. that'll be it.
thisbluespirit: (b7 - Jenna)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2013-10-11 12:50 pm (UTC)(link)
you're right, of course. i just like talking about blake...

Do you? You hide it well. ;-D ♥

Counting Death Watch twice is perfectly understandable. :loL:
thisbluespirit: (b7 - dayna)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2013-10-11 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
(I was killing myself laughing during Aftermath because the Avon/Dayna and Avon/Servalan meme prompts were practically writing themselves.

From this point on, the cracky fanfic is completely all there on the screen. I wrote an Avon/Servalan fic for Yuletide and the realisation slowly dawned on me that there was literally nothing I could do with them that would be more cracky than things that actually happened. And, er, it's not limited to those two. Wait till you get to Ultraworld... ;-D

And you were talking about Avon/Dayna and that sounds weird to me now (because I think Avon actually does get how young she is in more ways than one) but I remember I kind of did at that point too. (Avon/Everyone never fails!)

Ben Steed is... Well, I am resolved never to look him up on IMVD because I hope these were the only things he ever wrote before they took his typewriter away, but I fear that can't be true. Anyway, you can indeed make your own mind shortly. (Rest assured there is at least some extreme crack at a couple of points in the episode. It helps.)

Anyway, I can now use my Dayna icon without being at all spoilery! :-)
thisbluespirit: (b7 - dayna)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2013-10-12 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I can Avon/Everyone in a casual way, but he's got so many shields up that I cannot imagine him (at this point in the series anyway) willingly opening up to any kind of healthy serious relationship. I can see dysfunction in spades, but.. yeah...

*nods* I only have one even slightly serious ship in B7, mostly I'm intrigued by the idea of random, possibly just one-off pairings and the way everybody interacts in general. I think the universe is kind of against them, really. (The one ship I can probably mention by now, which is Dayna/Tarrant.)