User Reviews

Servalan comes up with a plan to destroy the Auron race of which Cally belongs to . She captures a pilot , has him infected with a virus and lets him return to the Planet Auron where he infects the rest of the planet who send a distress call requesting help

This is an episode that had potential but the potential is never fully realised . Perhaps one aspect is that it resembles a certain film that was released a couple of years earlier based on an Ira Leven novel that saw Laurence Oliveir battle Josef Mengele played by Gregory Peck and a film that is memorable for all the wrong reasons . It's also yet another episode where Servalan is at the forefront of a diabolical scheme and micromanages every single detail .. This concept of Servalan figuring so prominently is one of the few fundamental flaws of the show because it lacks any sort of internal logic . Did Hitler have to visit the visit the Eastern front every time there was a battle? . Did Hilary Clinton have to visit Pakistan to take part on the raid of on Osama Bin Laden ? Does a scientist have to travel halfway round the world and administer a vaccine to third world children ? The overuse of the series arch-villain undermines her

As in the following and preceding episode Children Of Aron is again character-centric and goes in to detail of Cally and the humanoid race she originates from . I've never been a big fan of Cally and most of the impact that the episode might have had is that as a character piece for Cally it's undermined by a superb story featuring her a couple of episodes later

The revelation that the younger generation of Auronar (those aged about 30 or under) are all clones is a bit of a retcon as previous episodes implied - though I can't remember if it was ever directly stated - that, in spite of the superficial resemblance, they were not human. However, that's only a minor detail in this thoroughly entertaining episode in which Jan Chappell, the series' most underrated performer, gets another chance to shine. Given that she's been given so much good material in Series Three, I'm surprised that she decided not to return for Series Four. On the other hand, given how much she was sidelined in Series Two, I wouldn't have been surprised if, like Sally Knyvette, she had decided to leave then. She excels not only as Cally but as her twin sister Zelda. Of course, being clones, they aren't twins in the conventional sense but I got the impression from their relationship that they were raised together. Cally mentioned her parents in "The Harvest of Kairos" and at first I thought that this was another retcon but she would have to have been raised by someone in the normal way, especially since cloning is a fairly recent phenomenon on Auron.

In this episode, Deral and the first non-Caucasian Federation officer Ginka, the most memorable of Servalan's many one-off lackeys, vie with each other in the hopes of gaining the new President's approval. Both Rio Fanning and Ric Young deliver great performances and, while necessary for the plot, it was a shame that they had to die. I always love it when there's a power struggle among the villains. Among the rest of the guest cast, Ronald Leigh-Hunt stands out as the well intentioned but misguided CA One and it was nice to see Michael Troughton pop up as Pilot Four Zero, who has the dubious distinction of being Patient Zero. Servalan's reaction to the deaths of her clones is fascinating as, in spite of the fact that she doomed hundreds of millions to a painful death, she still exhibits a maternal instinct, one of the few examples of any finer feeling on Servalan's part. All of the regular characters get something to do in this episode, though Dayna still hasn't returned to the heights of "Aftermath" and "Powerplay". As in the previous episode "City at the Edge of the World", Tarrant shows his softer side when he supports Cally in her request to travel to Auron and help her people. This episode ends with a big laugh when Avon asks Tarrant, Vila and Dayna if they would want to stay with Franton and Patar on the new Auron colony and raise 5,000 children. I like to imagine the three of them laughing like mad for about a minute and then feeling terrible about themselves for doing so since Servalan has just committed genocide!