Man of Iron

Fanfiction
Title:	Man of Iron
Author(s):	Paul Darrow
Date(s):	1981
Length:
Genre:	scifi
Fandom:	Blake's 7
External Links:
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Man of Iron is a 1981 never-used script for Blake's 7's fourth season. It was written by Paul Darrow, the actor who portrayed Kerr Avon.

a page from the script by Darrow

poster by Nicola Mody, with "screamer headlines" by Marian

Fans have been highly critical of the script, citing its poor writing and characterization. Fans also thought it was boring as well as silly with its inclusion of pump action shotguns, robots, and bubble baths.

While the script generates almost universal negative comments, fans have turned it into a highly popular convention activity in the form of dramatic turkey readings. These have taken place since 2001 at the con, Redemption.

Fans of Avon/Vila also appreciated what they felt to be Darrow's promotion of that pairing.

Not to be daunted by negativity, eight years after he wrote, "Man of Iron", Darrow wrote a backstory for his character in the for-profit novel, Avon: A Terrible Aspect. That story, like "Man of Iron," was also highly panned by fans.

The Script's Plot

The plot of the script loosely concerns an attempt by Servalan to regain power using androids created by the scientist Algor on the planet Epsilon. It includes Vila saving the day, which Darrow referred to as a bit of fan service for his fellow actor, Michael Keating.

Sold With Darrow's Permission

Darrow gave the fan club, Horizon, permission to sell the script.

It was also offered for sale in 1989 at the auction at Scorpio, an auction that was moderated by Paul Darrow himself. It fetched $560.

Origins of the Script

Shortly before the production on the fourth and final season of the show, Darrow said:

We had all kinds of problems with the scripts in the last series. A lot of new writers were brought in and they didn't understand the format of the show or the characters and such like. So I took myself off to the seaside and wrote one myself - and they rejected it! They were very polite and said it was very good, but that it would be too expensive to actually make. Perhaps they were just saying this to save my feelings.

In 1991, Darrow recounted this script to a group of fans at Visions:

Paul wrote a script for a B7 episode titled "Man of Iron" in one weekend because the company was on location and the technicians and writers had gone on strike. "I thought, as I'm writing about my own character, if I make myself a hero all the time, they'll look at it and go, 'oh, building up his own part,' so I thought I'd build Vila up. They all leave me on a planet and I'm getting beaten up. Servalan looks at me and says, 'I thought you were a man, my kind of man, but you're a weakling.' I'm in pain and agony. Great stuff. Up in the spaceship, Tarrant's going, 'Where's Avon? Spending time on the planet, so now might be a good time to leave.' So they leave. Then Vila walks in the door with a sawed-off shotgun and says, 'We're going back.' They go back and with one bound, I'm free. As we fly off into the sunset- several sunsets -Servalan looks at my picture and says, 'My kind of man.' It was a great episode but we didn't do it. The director said to me, 'Actors should stick to acting. Writers should write.' And I said, ‘You mean like William Shakespeare, who was an actor, Harold Pinter, who was an actor, John Osborne, who was an actor...' That didn't go down so well."

While Darrow described submitting the script and getting a rejection, according to script editor, Chris Boucher in 1992, this script was never officially commissioned:

I never saw the script or knew anything about it until it was mentioned to me recently. It certainly never came across my desk at the time, and definitely wasn't commissioned by me. So why it was written and who it went to I have no idea, but as far as I was concerned it had nothing to do with the official scripting of Blake's 7.

Darrow was disappointed that the script was never used:

It was a shame because I had all kinds of exciting things happening in there. I showed it to Jacqueline Pearce who absolutely loved it because it gave Servalan the chance to torture Avon. They kept our characters apart in the last series which I thought was a shame so I made sure I brought them together because those scenes were always great fun to play. I also gave Michael Keating plenty to do otherwise he would never have forgiven me! In fact, Vila saved the day - which didn't happen often.

Does an Actor "Know" a Character Best?

The reactions to "Man of Iron" by fans and by Darrow himself explores the topics of do actors have special insight into the characters they portray, who "owns" characterization, as well as other topics such as audience, close reading and authorial intent.

In an interview with "Starburst," conducted shortly before production started on the fourth season of Blake's 7, Paul Darrow discussed the possibility of writing a script for the show:

I wouldn't mind [writing a script] actually. the only trouble is that, if you write for yourself, everybody says, 'Oh dear me! He's just writing that so he looks much better!' So that's a dodgy thing. I'd probably have to write it for another character, so they wouldn't be able to say that. But then you defeat the object of the exercise because your character's the one you know about. If an actor does a particular character for any length of time, he gets to know that character better than anyone else. You also get to know how that character reacts with other characters and consequently you know more about the other characters than perhaps a lot of people.

The belief that an actor knows their character "better than anyone else" also touches upon, at least in Darrow's case, this actor's statements about "being" Kerr Avon. See Darrow and Avon.

Related Fanworks

• Foes by DarthRushy ("The Scorpio crew escape from heavy fire only to become stranded on the desolate moon of Hostis. There, Avon and Vila come face to face with an old enemy... A full 45-minute Blake's 7 episode, written in the same script style as Paul Darrow's "Man Of Iron".")
• an undated excerpt, with fan-added screenshots: SERIES D: MAN OF IRON; archive link, does not include the screencaps; archive link, with screencaps

Fan Comments

Unknown Date

If I'd been the BBC, I'd have rejected it too, on the other hand if you enjoyed Avon: a Terrible Aspect, then you might well enjoy this. If you want a story that presents Avon as superman having great fun shooting lots of robots with a pump action shotgun, then this is clearly just the script for you. Although Paul Darrow did a superb job acting Avon, I personally don't think he writes well for him. The character who works best for me in this script is Vila. Bearing in mind the price, I can't recommend that you buy this, but you might want to borrow a copy out of curiosity.

I can understand why this script was rejected. If it had been used, it would not have been a good episode. It was too thin, and too predictable. As chevron said, one long chase scene.

(-- spoilers --)

The most commendable bit was where everyone but Vila leaves Avon for dead, so Vila desperately forces them to return. Unfortunately this elevates Vila at the expense of the other characters. I do not really think they would have been quite that callous. Not Dayna, anyway.

The continuing crisis with fuel is inconsistent with all the other episodes where it is never mentioned at all, and as it is rather central to the plot, that makes it rather hard to fix.

Other elements of the plot make me wonder when he wrote it, since they seem to be very similar to other episodes: * Servalan plotting with Evil Genius is like ORBIT * The Ultimate Robot is like HEADHUNTER * the being-chased by an unstoppable foe is by no means new * robots shorting out in water. You'd think an Evil Genius would consider decent waterproofing, wouldn't you.

It is quite possibly too violent, too. Besides lots of robots getting their heads blown off, you have Avon being badly beaten up, looking half-dead, and then the scene where Avon kills the Evil Genius with his bare hands by drowning him in the bath!

However, the random pick-up and put-down for the teleport was a good idea to confuse the robot, though I am not so sure their teleport technology was good enough (or set up in such a way) to differentiate between bracelets. It also made for a fun end to the story! (Poor Vila!)

Another thing that puzzled me is why Avon was so het up about this Evil Genius in particular. What was so different about him that could not be said of the whole Federation? What were these human/robots? What made them different from androids or mutoids, both of which were produced by the Federation.

Comparing it with DEATH SQUAD, another unproduced script (this time by Pip & Jane Baker of Doctor Who fame) even though I do not have the whole script, DEATH SQUAD struck me as better written, with more suspense and tension than MAN OF IRON. Maybe it had more good lines too, but I wasn't counting.

Sad as I am to criticsize anything put out by Horizon, unless you feel like donating to charity (which is what this script is doing), don't waste your money.

Sid & Nancy scale: a cheap BBC Special Effect of an exploding android.

1989

On Saturday, we had the auction [at Scorpio] - later re-named "The Paul and Michael Show" in honour of the principal auctioneers! It was mostly artwork on offer, and actual B7 souvenirs were scarce, but one interesting item was a horned head-dress used in 'Animals'. Michael modelled it for us, probably generating more entertainment in five minutes than the whole episode ever did. Considerable interest was also shown in an original Series 4 script which was never used - 'Man of Iron' by Paul Darrow. (I'd have liked a chance to read that myself, but couldn't afford to out-bid the buyer's $560 for the privilege.

1992

Darrow's rejected script for a 4th season episode. Avon is stranded on a planet and only Vila wants to rescue him...about what you'd expect from the author of "Avon, A Terrible Aspect".

2003

Go to best attended event so far: reading of stunning work of art called "Man of Iron." Audience helpless on floor in face of genius. Have learned many things:

Evil Overlords spend a lot of time in bubble baths

Electric robots don't work in water

Tarrant is stupid enough to commandeer the party's only gun from the ship's acknowledged sharpshooter. (Hang on, I believe that....)

Favourite lines, as far as memory serves:

"Even Servalan is shocked at your perverted excesses (*pardon?*)

(Tarrant): "All right Vila, you're on top. Make the most of it."

Did not make last one up. Honest. You couldn't make any of it up.

After that I went to the Freedom City party, had tea, ate crisps and a flapjack, and read "Man of Iron" - to myself at first, and then out loud by insistence because I could not stop snickering and the people sitting next to me wanted to know which bits I was laughing at. I still think it would have been better if Avon had landed in the arch-villain's bubblebath. Thereafter anyone who had been at the Freedom City party could get a laugh from any other attendee merely by raising their arm with a cry of "Gaydor!" or by comments such as "He is taking quite a beating" or "pump action shotgun".

I was given the copy of the script I had read from, and it is truly awfully hilarious. I could almost feel sorry for Paul Darrow: I doubt he knows that his 1981 effort at script writing is being turkey'd 22 years on by happy fen. (But I do admit that if I were ever at a con with him, I might try to get him to autograph it.)

The next thing I remember attending was the reading of "Man of Iron", the script that Paul Darrow wrote for Blake's 7. It's not a bad script. It's an atrocious script. The audience nearly fell off their chairs laughing at parts that was probably meant to be dramatic and exciting. Not to mention the probably not intentional slashbait in it ("TARRANT: For once you are on top, Vila. Enjoy it while it lasts."). Oh, and it uses pump-action shotguns a lot. In B7. In a script written by an actor who'd been making it for three years.

Hrm. I wonder whether they count as Mary Sues? :)

...he can't write. His script (Man of Iron) and his book are absolutely horrible.

Having said that, he accepted a lot of user input on how to fix the problems. Unfortunately, after publication, and the publisher refused the alterations.

Paul Darrow is a classic example of a person who would work best in an Open Source environment - good ideas, willing to listen, willing to accept good patches, willing to do follow-on research - but is in a media that all but prohibits any kind of cooperative work.

2005

Ah, Blake's 7. Walking cabbages, giant spiders, deadly candy floss (cotton candy) and some of the most disastrous costume decisions ever made.

How I love it!

It's one of the reason I'll be at Redemption this weekend. I'll even be playing Servalan at the traditional recital of "Man of Iron." For those who don't know MoI is an unproduced script written by Paul Darrow and the only thing I've ever read which is worse tripe is his novel Avon: A Terrible Aspect.

It's going to be so much fun!

2007

"Man of Iron" is a truly dreadful script for season 4 of Blake's 7, written by lead actor Paul Darrow. Chris Boucher, the script editor, claims never to have seen it. I have. He's lucky. Characterisation, plot, structure, premise, dialogue; all are abysmal. Anyway, some time long ago someone obtained a copy of the script and it has been a tradition ever since to perform a staged reading at each Redemption. I had never seen it, but I ended up joining the cast as Tarrant at short notice due to gaps in the roster of performers, along with Joanna who played Dayna. The reading was organised by kalypso_v, who agreed to lend me her curly novelty wig to enhance my performance. It was all terrific fun, with energetic and entertaining performances all round. Kudos to

pinkdormouse, who carried on despite being inadvertently punched in the nose by an exuberant co-star. As an inadequately-rehearsed performance with no opportunity for retakes, in which the actors use all their performing skill to inject life into a dire script, it was an only slightly exagerated version of the production conditions of a number of Blake's 7 episodes, although I fear the general hilarity may have masked its educational value.

2009

Perhaps the highlight of the con was the now-traditional dramatic reading of "Man of Iron," which started in 2001 and now has to be scheduled in one of the biggest conference rooms the hotel has to offer, because the audience gets bigger every time. Now, "Man of Iron" is a never-produced script written for Blake's 7 by Paul Darrow, who played one of its leads, Avon, and, in the words of the person sitting behind me at the reading, it reaches levels of bad never before attained by humans. It was, alarmingly, the only specifically Blake's 7 item on the programming this year, and I'm pretty sure there were people watching it who had never seen any of the original show, but this doesn't seem to detract from the sheer joy of it.

By now, it's becoming a sort of Rocky-Horror experience, with semi-formalized, semi-spontaneous audience participation (eg the explosion of applause and catcalls at the line, "Water is your ally, Tarrant! Water! Water!"). Again, it's the sort of thing you could only get at a convention: it's a celebration of a shared world, a shared knowledge of genre conventions and their uses and abuses, and a shared mythology of Paul Darrow and his curious mix of self-delusion and canniness (one of the things that is most mocked by fans about Darrow's performance in B7 is his running; one of the things we love the most is his capacity for Beautiful Suffering; and the "Man of Iron" script consists in roughly equal measure of Avon running and Avon being beaten up).

And the performance works so well because of its skilled amateurishness: more of a professional gloss would ruin the tone of it, and make it less of a shared experience between audience and actors (also, would we start casting according to physical type, and lose our fifty-nine-year-old, walks-with-a-cane, portly, white Dayna and our skinny, blonde, female Avon? Not to mention our mad scientist in a silver PVC knee-length kilt?); less skill in the performance, and it wouldn't come across at all.

2013

Blake's 7 Lucifer

When Big Finish announced that Paul Darrow was writing a book set after the last episode of Blake's 7, I couldn't work out what the fuss was about it. I could see the appeal, it was just the author I couldn't see the appeal of. I've been to Redemption, I've seen Man of Iron, I know what Paul Darrrow's writing is like.

Except I thought that maybe it's improved, after all he did write Man of Iron a long time ago. And I am intrigued to find out what he thinks happens after Blake. So I bought it.

It's taken me a week and a half to read it, not because it's long because I kept stopping to read other books. The trouble is, it's boring. Which shouldn't be a surprise. I think of Man of Iron as being funny (performed) but terrible. Whereas if you were to sit and read it on your own, it would be dull.

2014

"Man Of Iron" Paul's writing shows he's clearly interested in the action sequences more than anything else. He enjoys a story on the run.

What I'm saying is, Darrow has written a BUARA A/V fic. And it could be worse.

Some of the dialogue is actually quite good. Not great, but quite amusing in lots of places (it helps that Slave is a good character). Indeed, for the first few pages I thought - I really don't see what the problem with this is! It's much better than I expected.

I also do like that there's this business with Vila insisting the others go back and rescue Avon, who is the final member of Blake's 7 (again - see, this is such a fanfic) and someone he trusts far more than the others. At the end Avon is told Vila is the one he owes his life to, and almost says thank you. I think that plot thread would work really really well in series 4, which obviously culminates in first the destruction of Avon and Vila's relationship, and then the discovery of the only other living member of the original crew. And there are trust issues, etc. I like this A/V stuff so much that I almost wish we could have kept it in a different episode. Bob Holmes could have written this idea, rather than 'Traitor', which is disappointingly dull.

The problem with the A/V plot as it stands is that it necessitates what I consider to be the biggest problem with "Man of Iron." The lack of a plot is forgivable, what I really don't like is that Soolin explicitly says she doesn't give a shit about Avon, and Tarrant has be held at gunpoint to go back and rescue Avon. This just doesn't seem like the series 4 Tarrant or the series 4 crew to me. Yes, they say they just work together, but they've clearly come to trust and rely on each other. What's interesting and powerful to me is not them hating on each other, but those moments where the others come to support Avon in his quest to avenge Anna or find Blake, or when they all go and rescue Vila in City. I don't want a whole episode about how Tarrant is glad Avon's probably dead.

Interestingly I assumed that Darrow would write a thing that made it embarrassingly clear that Servalan and Avon fancied the pants off each other. But what he's actually written is a thing where Avon has the shit kicked out of him, and Servalan says - well, I'm not interested in you any more, enjoy bleeding to death. It's very odd. I guess he likes Michael more.

What he has done is written a scene where Avon (having been badly beaten) pulls himself free of his handcuffs (I think. I might be making this part up, but I am not making the rest of it up), beats up a killer robot (again, unarmed), picks a lock, and then continues to beat up more robots. Also, he has a two-handed shotgun that he uses to kill more robots before it gets taken away. Guns over girls. Bros over hos. Etc.

References

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