Blake's 7: "Redemption"

It's 9 January 1979, and time for the Season 2 premiere of Blake's 7.

When we last saw Blake and his crew, they had just stolen the super-computer Orac. As a demonstration of its powers, Orac shows a prediction on their scanner screen: the Liberator will be destroyed. Soon this prediction is the last of Blake's worries as the Liberator is attacked by two unknown spacecraft, and its entire systems are taken over by an outside force.

"Redemption" is a very strong and entertaining season opener, combining action, drama and the now-familiar biting dialogue and finally answering one of the lingering questions left over from Season 1. When Blake took control of the Liberator, it was an abandoned alien ship floating in space. "Redemption" doesn't simply answer the question of who built the Liberator - the original owners have returned to take back their rightful property.

The West Wing: Leo, Toby, C.J and Mandy

Previous instalments of this blog series have covered the casting of three of the seven original lead characters in The West Wing. Today we cover the remaining four. An eighth regular character, Charlie Young (played by Dule Hill), was not cast until the series was underway.

Aaron Sorkin wrote the role of Leo McGarry, Bartlet’s Chief of Staff, with actor Judd Hirsch in mind. The character’s original name was Leo Jacoby. While Hirsch was the top choice going into the auditions process, Sorkin and Wells remained open to other possibilities.

John Spencer auditioned for the role with enthusiasm. ‘I thought, “I gotta do this”,’ he told the Washington Post, ‘I chased the role.’(1) Spencer was born John Speshock in New York in 1946. He made his television debut in 1963, appearing on The Patty Duke Show. He then didn’t appear on screen for 13 years, returning in a pair of episodes of Ryan’s Hope. A string of small parts followed in a variety of films and TV programs: Wargames (1983), The Protector (1985), Miami Vice (1986), Spenser: For Hire (1986) and Black Rain (1989). In 1990 he was cast a lawyer Tommy Mullaney in the popular prime-time drama L.A. Law – he remained in the role for four seasons, leaving in 1994.

John Spencer’s audition for Leo impressed the producers so much that they cancelled all other auditions and offered him the part.

The Pull List: 3 June 2015, Part I

All the way back in 2011, Nate Simpson made a huge impact with the first issue of Nonplayer, a science fiction comic book in which a massively-multiplayer online game had become the predominant cultural phenomenon in the world, and where the artificial intelligences within that game appeared to be growing self-aware. It was a genuinely clever science fiction story, but what readers - including myself - seemed to really respond to was the artwork. It was beautifully composed and coloured, rich in intricate detail but incredible easy to read at the same time. The issue sold out through three separate printings, and Simpson even got a Hollywood deal out of that single first issue.

It's now four years later, and Nonplayer #2 has finally been released into comic shops. Talk about delays in your schedule.

This issue expands the story considerably, devoting much of its time to a police siege to stop a runaway AI inside a giant robot, and introducing the arrogant, ultra-rich creator of the game that's central to the narrative. It's great stuff, although it understandably left me straining to remember what happened in the last issue four years earlier. There's also a strong debt owed to Mamoru Oshii here, but that's no bad thing.

The artwork remains astonishing, and providing Simpson can stick to a regular schedule this time Nonplayer could become something really special. (5/5)

Under the cut: reviews of Darth Vader, Edward Scissorhands, The Omega Men, The Wicked + the Divine and Winterworld: Frozen Fleet.

The West Wing: Casting Sam and Josh

Under the initial “President-lite” plan for The West Wing, the primary focus of the series was going to be on close friends and colleagues Joshua Lyman, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Samuel Seaborn, Deputy Communications Director.

One actor considered for the role of Josh Lyman was Bradley Whitford. Whitford came to the series after a string of roles playing sleazy businessmen and movie villains – most notably in the Adam Sandler comedy Billy Madison. Whitford said: ‘I honestly didn’t want to play those parts but it’s very difficult because you wanna make a living, you wanna practice film acting, and if you’re a high hair-lined white guy, the villains are now, y’know, yuppies, and that’s what I got for a long time.’(1)

Whitford was already known to Aaron Sorkin, having performed in A Few Good Men on Broadway. He was already known to John Wells for his performance guest starring on a critically acclaimed first season episode of ER, “Love’s Labors Lost”. He auditioned for Sorkin, Schlamme and Wells, as well as Warner Bros casting agent John Levey. According to his brother David Whitford, who wrote about the casting process for Esquire: ‘He nailed it; they laughed out loud. When my brother was on the way out the door, Levey’s assistant whispered in his ear, “Nobody has done it like that! Wow! Wow! When he got home, there was a message on his answering machine from Sorkin: “You hit it out of the park’.”(2)

Captured (1959)

In 1959 the British Army hired documentary filmmaker John Krish to direct a training film that would educate soldiers on what to expect if they were captured by their enemies. To help him develop the material the Army provided Krish with extensive reports on interrogation and brainwashing techniques used by the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War.

At the time Krish was tiring of making nothing but documentaries and training films, and was keen to segue into dramatic filmmaking. To this end he convinced the Army brass to let him make their training film as a short narrative feature, the idea being to better engage the soldiers watching by giving them a bit of a story at the same time as informing them of enemy interrogation methods. Once the film was completed Krish hoped to use it as a calling card to film producers around the United Kingdom. Sadly his adaptation of Chinese-style interrogation was too effective. Horrified by the effect the film might have on soldier morale, the Army reclassified the film as secret and refused to show it to anybody for 45 years.

Captured is now available via the British Film Institute's excellent Flipside DVD series of under-appreciated films, and it turns out to be a great little movie.

The West Wing: Development, Sports Night and Martin Sheen

For several months after pitching the series, Sorkin held off from writing a pilot script. In the end he wrote the entire 42-minute script over the 1997 Thanksgiving weekend. (I will go into more detail on the pilot script later.)

The last-minute rush to put words onto the page was not unusual for Sorkin. He had a notorious – and self-admitted – difficulty in generating plots. ‘Of all the storytelling elements there are, plot is the one I'm least comfortable with,’ he said. ‘I wish that we lived in a world where we could be entertained by a half hour's worth of crackly dialogue and nothing else, because plot frightens me a little bit.’(1)

Last minute and rushed scripts would become a significant problem for The West Wing during its first four seasons, with almost all episodes shot based on a first draft script – often completed after shooting had actually began. Thankfully John Wells was a very hands-on and organised producer. It could be argued that the combination of the well-prepared and methodical Wells and the freewheeling and unreliable Sorkin was the magic ingredient that sparked The West Wing’s creative success. Wells did admit to occasionally getting frustrated with Sorkin’s fast-and-loose writing style. ‘I try to get him to be more like me,’ he said, ‘and he tries to get me to be more like him.’(2)

Ga-Rei-Zero: "Manifestation of Hatred"

Episode 1 of Ga-Rei-Zero concluded with its entire lead cast brutally slaughtered by a mysterious sword-wielding young woman in a school uniform. Episode 2 picks up events a short time later: there's a new team of anti-demon operatives in the field, one of the "Level B" monsters has inexplicably regenerated itself, and the Department of the Environment is forcibly taking over the operation from the military.

This second team has its own set of odd characters, included twins with identical facial scarification, a bearded guy with drill-bits for hands, a guy backed up by a team of psychic ferrets, and a schoolgirl with a sword of her very own. Certainly they're a more interesting group than the original set; although at least one of them doesn't appear to make it out of the episode alive, so who knows how long it will be before the series has to introduce a third team.

This new team's fight against the revived monster takes a turn for the worse when they're forced to tackle a horde of zombies and the return of the evil schoolgirl with a sword - who turns out to be Yomi Isayama, a former team member turned evil. The episode climaxes, rather predictably, with the first of what I assume will be several schoolgirl versus schoolgirl swordfights.

The West Wing: Introducing John Wells

The West Wing was born over what was supposed to be a casual lunch in 1997.

With a developing career in motion pictures, Aaron Sorkin was not even looking at developing properties for television. Years later, when The West Wing was about to go off the air, he said ‘It never occurred to me to try to write a TV show. I had nothing against it – I just didn’t know anything about it.’(1) It was Sorkin’s agent who pushed for the writer to meet with television writer/producer John Wells. Sorkin was already a fan of Wells’ work, and agreed to an informal lunch with him. By Sorkin’s later admission, the idea of actually producing a television drama with Wells had not actually entered his mind.

John Wells was and remains one of the most prolific and successful producers in American television history. He was born in Virginia in 1956, and attended the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University would later name a video production soundstage in his honour.

He began his career producing the movie Nice Girls Don’t Explode in 1987. The following year he made his professional writing debut on an episode of CBS Playhouse, “Roughhouse”. In 1988 Wells was hired as a producer for the ABC drama China Beach. The series, created by John Sacret Young and William Broyles Jr., centred on a group of doctors and combat medics during the Vietnam War.