"By the time the oxygen runs out, we'll be bored as well as dead."
REVIEW: Good beginning. The Seven need fuel for Scorpio and Avon gambles on hiding in the shadow of a massive asteroid to get to a mining planet, but the ship ain't no Liberator and gets damaged in the attempt. We see the engine room and the crew dealing with damage as power seems completely drained. I was expecting or hoping for a tight survival episode. But when Federation interceptors explode right in front of them, a mystery that will lead them to the planetary base of the Space Rats - speed freak pirates - to steal a new stardrive, what's really happening becomes more clear. The season is still trying to recuperate from its faux-finale and the episode pushes us closer to what we had with the Liberator. Now the Seven can once again be on the fastest ship in the galaxy. Note also the magical hull "regeneration" not unlike Liberator's self-repair. It was magic then, but at least they all thought it was inexplicable. The crew effecting similar repairs here is less acceptable.
So for the most part, Stardrive is a mission to get to an engine console from the Space Rats and/or Dr Plaxton, its inventor, who is more or less in cahoots with the speed demons responsible for destroying that Federation formation (she's either slow to get Dayna's plan, or only realizes late that she can't work with the Rats anymore). This is where it falls apart. In addition to a lot of padded scenes of our heroes running around a quarry (their escape is much better thanks to a utility vehicle chase, but the approach is nothing), we have to contend with what they find. The Space Rats are a very small group to have such a reputation with Vila, and their costumes and make-ups are extremely goofy. They are visually garish, have their own annoying sci-fi slang (that objectionably includes the insult word "gook"), and their leader sexually harasses Dr Plaxton before our very eyes. Oh, he doesn't consider himself a Space Rat, but he dresses like one, acts like one, has the same priorities... Motivated only be speed, these cartoon villains are so obnoxious as to almost wipe away everything good in the episode.
Because there ARE good things. The effects, for example, have really ramped up since the Liberator days. We actually see what's happening in the space sequences. Scorpio takes off from a planet surface in a hurry. The use of green screens is more casual. And the characters do pleasantly act like the rogues they are. Dayna has some great grifting chops. Vila gets drunk during the initial emergency just so no one gives him a task (and is then despondent that Avon would task him with scouting the planet). Soolin finally gets to shoot people, and shoots a lot of them. And that climax. Plaxton, having been freed from the Space Rats (a moment that doesn't work - no one notices Tarrant's slow-acting and very noisy wall-melting ploy), offers to plug her stardrive into Scorpio's engines, but it's gonna be tight as interceptors are in pursuit. Avon doesn't wait for her to get out of the engine room and she's fried by her own machine. "Who?", he responds when asked about the sacrifice. Cold. Perhaps TOO cold. You be the judge.
MIGHT BE MY EMPIRE: The episode starts on the trademark Star Wars opening (stolen from Space 1999), with a ship slowly flying in from the top of the screen. It also features a Kurasawa wipe, unusual for the show.
WHO?: Barbara Shelley (Dr Plaxton) was Sorasta in Planet of Evil. Dunstable was used as a location for several Doctor Who serials, including Terror of the Autons and The Macra Terror. It was referenced on a map in the Peter Cushing film, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. Suzanne Jansen, the make-up artist responsible for the Space Rats' unusual face tattoos, was make-up assistant on Doctor Who for Terror of the Zygons, The Masque of Mandragora and The Ribos Operation.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium-Low - Jim Follett is 0 for 2 after Dawn of the Gods and this. Oh, the script is okay, but it REALLY fails on the production end.
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