Dana wrote: "I think the show would have been stronger by starting out with something about the Freedom Party, its goals, and operations; then Blake's arrest and mindwipe; then send him to Cygnus Alpha and start from there."
Possibly they could do this in the Platonic Blake's 7 we all dream of :-) but in practical terms it was probably impossible to keep a several-episode arc going before they even got on the London. (And I've read enough complaints about the fact that we had to wait a whole one episode to see Avon as is - keeping all of the real cast on ice like Cally wouldn't have been a realistic option, methinks).
I rather like the fact that these bureaucrats (and remember, they *are* just that, not the series villains) are calmly prepared to go to such horrendous lengths *against* someone who's just a perceived possible threat - as you said, a patsy - and to use total innocents as a convenience (as Servalan uses the Marryatt family - they are all part of the same corruption). I'm not sure the impersonality of the menace would be as effective (for me) if Blake had done anything at all to deserve the abuse.
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