The crew of The Liberator try to find Avalon a resistance leader only to learn that she has been captured by the Federation . Meanwhile Space Commander Travis reveals he has a plan to eliminate Blake and capture The Liberator
BLAKES 7 was always a bleak , cynical , nihilistic show and it's summed up by this bloodthirsty episode . Set on a frozen planet it sees a bunch of rebels shot down in cold blood by a Mutoid unit . The fact that one of the rebel party contains a Federation informer who pleads for their life cuts no ice and is proof that you can't negotiate with fascism . There's also a scene where Travis needs to demonstrate a virus Federation scientists have developed so picks out a labourer at random and uses him as a human experiment . The connection between the Terran Federation and Nazism isn't subtle but very effective
The Liberator crew are on a mission to rescue Avalon who is held prisoner so get hack in to the prison system computer to find out what cell she is being kept in . At no point however do they make any attempt to rescue any of the other prisoners being held and they are left to their fate which will no doubt involve torture and execution . You could claim that it's impractical to rescue everyone and you'd probably be right . One can't help thinking that if this series was made today that the heroes would always win , the villains would always lose and innocent bystanders would all live to see the end credits but real life isn't like that and this downbeat pessimistic tone makes BLAKES 7 a more compelling show than you could ever expect it to be
What also helps this episode is the production team have resisted the temptation to make everything too futuristic . Medical personnel wear the same overalls and gowns as surgeons wear in the 1970s and the rebels are armed with the M-16 Armalite assault rifle . Of course from a logical point of view that's like 20th Century resistance fighters fighting the Nazis being armed with bows and arrows but this is much preferable to designers trying to second guess what weapons will look like hundreds of years in the future . Some very good location in this episode too
BLAKES 7 was always a bleak , cynical , nihilistic show and it's summed up by this bloodthirsty episode . Set on a frozen planet it sees a bunch of rebels shot down in cold blood by a Mutoid unit . The fact that one of the rebel party contains a Federation informer who pleads for their life cuts no ice and is proof that you can't negotiate with fascism . There's also a scene where Travis needs to demonstrate a virus Federation scientists have developed so picks out a labourer at random and uses him as a human experiment . The connection between the Terran Federation and Nazism isn't subtle but very effective
The Liberator crew are on a mission to rescue Avalon who is held prisoner so get hack in to the prison system computer to find out what cell she is being kept in . At no point however do they make any attempt to rescue any of the other prisoners being held and they are left to their fate which will no doubt involve torture and execution . You could claim that it's impractical to rescue everyone and you'd probably be right . One can't help thinking that if this series was made today that the heroes would always win , the villains would always lose and innocent bystanders would all live to see the end credits but real life isn't like that and this downbeat pessimistic tone makes BLAKES 7 a more compelling show than you could ever expect it to be
What also helps this episode is the production team have resisted the temptation to make everything too futuristic . Medical personnel wear the same overalls and gowns as surgeons wear in the 1970s and the rebels are armed with the M-16 Armalite assault rifle . Of course from a logical point of view that's like 20th Century resistance fighters fighting the Nazis being armed with bows and arrows but this is much preferable to designers trying to second guess what weapons will look like hundreds of years in the future . Some very good location in this episode too
