"I'm finished. Staying with you requires a degree of stupidity of which I no longer feel capable." "Now you're just being modest."
REVIEW: This script was apparently rewritten heavily and it shows. It feels like two different episodes were smashed together, resulting in a clumsy structure. In the first half, Gan's limiter goes haywire and he turns into a brutish killer, throwing crew mates around like rag dolls. Blake and the gang are lucky he has debilitating migraines that make him clutch his head in pain or they'd never get the respite required to immobilize him. As with the previous episode, a very mobile camera gets in close to the violent moments and makes fight scenes that use a martial art best described as roughhousing look more visceral and dangerous than otherwise.
So we're off to find a neurosurgeon and the quickest path to one is through space Zen has identified as too dangerous, indeed, a suicide run. It shuts itself off and the episode becomes a really rather boring bottle show about pushing buttons, fixing panels, and shouting out coordinates. Sure, there's jeopardy, with the Liberator caught in the electromagnetic field of a "vortex", but it's still just the actors spouting technobabble until the situation is resolved. When Zen is being uncooperative, I think it may be more annoying to the audience than to the crew, I dunno... Gan escaping to cause more problems is our only break from the "astronaut action", but it doesn't bring anything new.
So it's probably a good thing that the climax occurs with 20 minutes yet to go and we can get to the "second episode" of the mash-up. This one has Avon seriously thinking of leaving, and some brief but interesting conversations about it. It has Julian Glover as the guest-star (a surgeon who may work at a neutral station, but is actually a Federation sympathizer). And it has a much better use of the ticking clock in Gan's head. We might question why Blake lies about being a Federation crew, but it becomes clear. He and his crew are famous, and a neutral party might not want to break that neutrality by helping him. Do we necessarily blame top surgeon Kayne when he chooses to call the Feds and delay Gan's operation? It soon appears that we should. He's not doing it to protect the research center, but rather because he believes in the fascist order and is more than willing to break the Hippocratic Oath in service of it. Even at gunpoint later, after he's rumbled, he proves difficult. Nice of Vila to figure it out and protect his friend; these two have been codependent since the early episodes. If his intern Renor hadn't been there, we shudder to think. The kid starts as a sexist womanizer, but soon proves to have the medical ethics his mentor lacks. Still, no one thinks of shedding a tear for him when, at the end, the station is blown up by a stray missile that missed the Liberator. By that point, Kayne has strangled the station commander, and is staring at his own hands in mad worship. Had the episode used Kayne more, skipping over the space anomaly stuff, they could have better explored this character flaw. As is, Blake coldly threatens to destroy those hands to get him to cooperate - a fine threat against a surgeon - but in this shortened role, it seems like Kayne goes from obstructive physician to mad scientist in no time. We needed more time to establish his psychosis.
Avon's subplot therefore outshines even Glover's performance. He's sick of the danger Blake's heroism put him in and means to defect to this neutral "bolt hole". He understands that they can't easily give sanctuary to such a prized rebel, so he's ready to trade transporter technology for his safety, but also, notably, for his friends' safe passage away from here. Once the pursuit ships have been called, you can almost see Avon calculating if he WILL be able to hide here even if the Liberator escapes or is destroyed. Or perhaps he IS motivated by loyalty to Blake's group. Either way, he feigns going back to get his stuff, and never means to return. There are a lot of things left unsaid. Back on the ship, Cally - who really has the wrong kind of telepathy for this line of work, see how she gets jumped by Gan, for example - asks Blake if he's angry. He says he isn't and that Avon can do what he likes (as he's always said), but his body language gives Cally reason. It's these ambiguities that make the characters fascinating.
A few random notes: Love Blake's appearance on the space station. He's so good at deadpan. Gan's implant is fixed, but not removed or modified, despite this being the perfect excuse to get rid of it. I'm torn. I don't want a character to lose their difference, but I can see how this would be a plotting impediment for the writers in the future. The plot convenience of the week is that the doctors are sent back to the station with teleporter bracelets, the very thing Avon was bargaining with and ultimately withheld from them. So it's good the station gets blown up at the end, through no fault of Avon's. Finally, whoever decided the crew should have a cringy laugh at the end, like some parody of Star Trek: The Original Series, about nothing in particular, should have their own limiter implant checked. Yuck.
NOT MY FEDERATION: Zen has a Prime Directive, but it's that it can't self-destruct, something Starfleet ships have no trouble doing. Having a member of the crew go on a rampage has been a Star Trek trope since The Enemy Within, but only the Cardassian Garak could say he had a malfunctioning implant. Interestingly, Station XK72, has "K7" in it, which was the name of the first Deep Space station on Star Trek (The Trouble with Tribbles).
BUT MIGHT BE MY EMPIRE: Julian Glover (Kayn) was a nasty Imperial officer in The Empire Strikes Back (General Veers).
WHO?: Julian Glover was first seen in Doctor Who as the heroic King Richard in the The Crusade, but the same year as this episode of Blake's 7 as the villainous Scaroth in City of Death. Ian Thompson (Farren) stuck to the first Doctor era: He was Hetra in The Web Planet and Malsan in The Chase.
REWATCHABILITY: Low Medium - The guest stars and regulars almost pull this off, but the episode has massive structural issues.
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