"Counting yourself, that makes two people who think you're wonderful."
REVIEW: While I enjoy the extra serialization that happens in Deliverance, it also at times feels like the season finale ran long and this episode ran short, and a compromise was struck between them. This is mostly due to one of my television bugbear - when a story takes a step forward, then an immediate step back, just to pad things out. Here, we have Jenna escaping some caveman types - because she can take care of herself - and then immediately being captured again. Structurally more important, we have the Liberator forced to go on a mission of mercy, but then flying back to get the away team once "forced" isn't part of the equation anymore.
Unlike Doctor Who, which seems to run out of funds in the last episodes of the season, Blake's 7's production team seems to have saved enough money to stick the landing visually. We start on a shuttle that's an actual build, actually in space with people inside. The computer graphics have improved immeasurably (it's all been blinking dots to date). There's a rocket model, several sets, and the wintry location looks good.
Script-wise, it takes a while for Avon and Vila to get their banter up, but it's good to see them on an away team for once, while Blake stays aboard ship. I've read this was a change to accommodate location scheduling problems as well not quite nailing Avon's characterization in the B-plot, so Terry Nation was preferring Blake here. I get it, but I like it when a show makes good use of its entire cast (see also early Star Trek TOS compared to later episodes). The team goes down to check on escape pods and finds one survivor, but has to go back down to find Jenna. This is the second time on the series that someone fails to beam back up and no one notices until later. This is a pretty stupid plot device, though at least Blake and Cally man the transporter console while they're away. In other episodes, there's a tendency to leave it so they miss the urgent calls. Cally plays with her phone--I mean with VR--but she's still alert enough. Of course, on the second trip down, the Liberator will have to leave orbit and leave the crew to their own devices. In the Blake's 7 drinking game, you HAVE to finish your drink at that point.
The planet was bombed back to the stone age (literally) centuries ago, with grunty cave people on the surface, and civilized people underground. Your basic sci-fi set-up, one that Nation has used many times himself, with the underground folk building a religion around the rocket ship filled with cell samples their ancestors meant to send to another world, with the promise of god-like strangers showing up to launch it. From where we're sitting, making the NASA center operational again was pretty simple for our guys, so one wonders how they lost the expertise. We only meet one member of the community, Meegat, who is wonderstruck by Avon in his shiny new silver jacket, kneels at his feet, and explains the situation. Suzan Farmer really sells it in the way she looks at him, and the other characters are all, like, "oh brother" about it. Typical SF tropes they may be, but the way the characters react to them is what makes the episode.
Now back to the guy they rescued. Ensor is taking special power cells to his father before he dies from some disease and he's ready to take the ship (well, Cally) hostage to get there, away team be damned. I don't really buy the execution. Blake should just have said he couldn't fly the Liberator without a crew, which he really shouldn't. Ensor is dying himself from the crash, and completely irrational, ready to kill them both to get what he wants. But if he kills them, who's going to fly the ship?! The fact they don't address this is what sinks the B-plot. What saves it is the Servalan/Travis material. He's been whipped and almost broken by his suspension, but she's ready to give him another chance. But she also shows she's wayyyy more ruthless than he is. Truly evil. This is a woman who sent one of her men (Travis is shocked because this is the medic who saved his life) to die on a sabotaged capsule to follow Ensor to his father's secret weapon (Orac, the title of the next episode), and to cover her tracks, she's more than ready to sell his family into slavery. It's the way she puts it, all smiles and pragmatism, like none of these lives matter, that sends a chilld down Travis' spine, and ours. Avon may have enjoyed his few hours as a god, but it's her particular normal.
NOT MY FEDERATION: This is the first episode to refer to the Federation's military as Space Command. Star Trek's is run by STARFLEET Command.
WHO?: Tony Caunter (Ensor) was Thatcher in The Crusade, Morgan in Colony in Space and Jackson in Enlightenment. Betchworth Quarry, used as the planet here, stood in for Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks, and the Matrix in The Deadly Assassin, just not in such wintry conditions.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - They tease the season finale, but we're forced to wait for the interesting bits by padding and a stock plot.
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