"If you were the girl next door, I'd move." "Where would you move to, Tarrant?" "Next door."
REVIEW: Tanith Lee returns (and even references her own Sarcophagus though it has little relevance) and the episode starts with a fantasy narration, and ends with a fairly fantastical alien "creature" - intelligent sand. But where Sarcophagus was rather ill-fitting, I quite like this one. On the one hand, it's got really cool special effects. Lots of model work, including some unusual planet shots. The slitscan(ish) approach. Sand moving by itself. Really cool skies when the characters are on the planet. I've seen worse CSO integration on British TV - this looks quite good. Lovely transitions between the planet and the ship too.
On the second hand, this is a Servalan story, much more so than any of the Seven's. Both she and the anti-heroes are heading to this same planet to uncover the mystery of its trace element, and consequently of its plague and pervasive computer bugs. And while that's all well-handled (we're always a step ahead of the characters), the most engaging mystery is whatever is happening with Servalan. She seems to show compassion and sadness at the tapes of the presumably long-dead base commander. She's out of sorts, distracted, and when the base commander is shown to be, well, not alive, but preserved as food stock, she's genuinely distraught. He was her lover when she was 18, and it seems her new, addictive lover - power! - never completely replaced him. While it's super-creepy that she seduces Tarrant in this story (especially since it seems to have stuck on his end, to Dayna's dismay), there's a certain transference there and her feelings for Keller shift to Tarrant! This is Pearce's most emotional performance since Servalan lost her clone children, and the script is full of great lines, especially hers. Just the way she handles Commander Reeve's advances - frostbite indeed! - is a highlight.
While Servalan and Tarrant go to bed (yep!), back on Scorpio, is Vila drunker than usual, or is the sand Dayna tracked in trying to suck him dry? These ambiguities - see also the flirtations of the two planetside characters as dictated by the computers spitting out love poems - enhance the underlying mysteries. And the answers and solutions are logical too. At least, more than the vague explanation as to how Servalan survived the Liberator's destruction (a power surge teleported her to a Federation planet?!). Of course, it's not clear she survives this episode to kiss Tarrant another day. Her pilot claims to have shovelled all the sand out of the ship, but bam, there it is at the end on her console. Quarantine fail! There's no way she won't be back, but it's always a nice pulp ending when the villain seems lost.
NOT MY FEDERATION: The TNG episode "Home Soil" also features tiny mineral life forms that kill, but they aren't allergic to us bags of mostly water.
WHO?: Stephen Yardley (Reeve) was Sevrin in Genesis of the Daleks and would be Arak in Vengeance on Varos. Daniel Hill (ship pilot Chasgo) played Chris Parsons on Shada. Servalan's assistant is played by Peter Craze - his second role on Blake's 7 - he was Dako in The Space Museum, Du Pont in The War Games and Costa in Nightmare of Eden. Jonathan David (Keller) played Lintus Stratton in Attack of the Cybermen (we might also note that "Keller" was the Master's alias in The Mind of Evil).
REWATCHABILITY: High - It's a bit melodramatic - Servalan is such a BIG character, that comes with the territory - but this is a very strong episode, in terms of character, story, dialog and effects. A Series D highlight.
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