The Federation, led by Servalan, have made contact with the Pyroans and they intend to take the planet, due to its strategically important position. She lures the Liberator crew there with false rumours of Blake having been there recently and intends to take the Liberator and kill its crew.

The Pyroans have renounced violence in all its forms and are living a peaceful life on their planet. They have a hidden weapon though that ensures they are left alone. Will they use this now the Federation and the Liberator crew are showing an interest in using their planet?

The Pyroans.

Though as Cally notes at the end of the episode, it’s not really a victory since their entire population is wiped out to stop their planet becoming a part of the Federation.

Avon kills two of the Federation troopers that come up to the Liberator, along with the crew of several pursuit ships.

Mori and his guards kill the two Pyroan messengers.

Tarrant makes his distrust of the rest of the crew clear:

DAYNA: Zen told us it was here.
TARRANT: He didn't tell us how big it was. I don't have much faith in Zen, or anything else on the Liberator.
DAYNA: Then why didn't you stay up there and leave this mission to me?
TARRANT: I don't trust anyone except my self. That's why I'm still alive. Which way?

Vila states his distrust of Tarrant:

VILA: My classification might be grade four ignorant but I'm not stupid. I bought that classification from a friend at the testing center. I didn't want to be a space captain now, did I? And I was right. They all ended up getting killed, didn't they?
CALLY: Tarrant survived.
VILA: Oh, yes, Tarrant says he was a space captain, but then he says a lot of things, and you don't have to believe it all, do you?
AVON: I'd be more inclined to believe that he was a captain than that you could have been.
VILA: Well, never mind about me. But it's Tarrant you should be worried about. And not just because he's been out of contact for an hour.
CALLY: And what about Dayna? Don't you trust her either?
VILA: Dayna's a different case entirely.
CALLY: Well, she's pretty, for one thing.
VILA: Pretty? Yes, I suppose she is. I hadn't really noticed.
AVON: We've seen you not really noticing, frequently.

Dayna and Hower discuss Hower’s philosophy:

DAYNA: … as the galactic war has just demonstrated, aggression seems to be programmed into the human psyche.
HOWER: It can be programmed out, perhaps.
DAYNA: Would that be wise, even if it could? Would homo sapians be able to live without conflict? Wouldn't they just die from lack of excitement?
HOWER: We have not found it so. It is our belief that every man is at war with himself. His reason is at war with his instinct, his animal and his spiritual natures clash together and the brain of homo sapians has developed too much for the animal to bear.
DAYNA: You mean your people have become passive because you have reduced their brain power? Is that it?
HOWER: On the contrary. We have taught them peace from the cradle, and we have blocked, usually with a minute electric shock, every tendency towards an aggressive act. Plus of course, daily psychological propaganda.
DAYNA: Does it work?
HOWER: We have no war, no fights among ourselves, no lawlessness, no crime. Our people devote themselves to creation and not destruction. We are at peace here on Obsidian.
DAYNA: No violence at all? It's breathtaking, if it's true.
HOWER: The truth is absolute.

Servalan considers the threat of Avon and his friends:

Servalan has a new ship. It has a rather different design to any other Federation ship we’ve seen so far in the series. It has a far more organic feel than any other Federation ship. It has three green lights on its underside.

The President's New Ship

Federation communications use teletext according to this episode!

Both Avon and Servalan carry hand held detectors. Avon’s is green with a telescopic aerial, while Servalan’s is spherical. Servalan’s guards are handed a detector that produces a tone to guide them to the entrance to the Pyroan underground city.

The Pyroans have narcotic spray guns (or as Hower says, "something like that") that can knock out humas with two sprays of their fine mist.

They also have silver serving robots with huge hands that carry drinks around for their masters.

The have a beam approach detector, which shows when a ship comes into orbit around Obsidian.

Their main defence is a huge nuclear device buried at the centre of the planet beneath the volcano that they can detonate with a big red button if the planet is threatened. However it is leaking radiation and poisoning the Pyroans.

As noted in the Powerplay review, Cally wears a sky blue jumpsuit that has a v neck collar with beige boots and Vila is wearing a beige top with a lace up front, a black tied karate style belt and dark brown trousers.

Avon has a new black velour costume. It too has a v-neck (this is a bit of a theme this year it seems) with black leather cuffs, collars and piping round the edges of the top. He wears this over a black polo neck sweater and black trousers.

Tarrant goes for a classic Blake look with a lace up peasant shirt underneath a brown studded V-neck sleeveless top. He wears this with brown trousers and brown boots.

Servalan has a new white ensemble- a tight fitting white jacket and long skirt. The jacket has U shaped silver sipping across each shoulder and a tight waistband also decked in silver piping. The edges of the jacket are also edged in silver.

The Pyroans also wear white outfits. They have huge tapered quilted tops worn over white sweaters with white trousers and boots.

The Federation troopers in this story have new helmets. These are rounder than the previous ones and have round protrusions where the ears would be underneath. The visors of these helmets can be raised to reveal the face beneath.

Dayna wears this episode’s most outrageous costume. She’s wearing another jumpsuit this time in salmon pink with weird pleating across both legs and the top. Over this she wears a really odd almost opaque white jacket that seems to belong to a completely different costume entirely. And white shoes, useful for a muddy volcanic environment. It’s really not a good costume at all.

Vila drinks some adrenaline and soma again (so this really is an Allan Prior script!)

Hower drinks a lot of water throughout the episode as he takes his anti-radiation drugs.

We only see the flight deck and the teleport bay this episode I’m afraid.

Cally operates the teleport 3 times during the episode (and probably sends Tarrant and Dayna down to the planet as well) while Vila operates it twice and Orac operates it to bring Cally, Tarrant and Dayna back to the ship.

No teleport bracelets are lost this episode.

Orac operates the Teleport once again to take Cally and Vila back to the Liberator, but also shows that he will give his information to anyone who asks, when he reveals a safe flight path to the planet for Mori.

Servalan creates a rumour that Blake has been seen on Obsidian. Avon comments that they could spend the rest of their lives chasing all the possible sightings of Blake that they hear, which suggests that they won’t be chasing up very many more of them.

There’s absolutely no hint of anything remotely romantic going on in this episode.

It has to be said this is not a great Servalan episode, however, we do see her scheming and showing why she’s risen to be the President of the Federation. Her grasp of tactics to get what she wants almost works here, as she manages to get troopers onto the Liberator for the first time and her run away and then come back tactic almost works too.

This episode’s big guest star is Michael Gough who’d played The Celestial Toymaker in 1965. He would go on to appear as Councillor Hedin in Arc of Infinity in 1983.

Ben Howard who plays Mori had played Hinks in 1973’s The Green Death.

The stock footage of the volcano features some of the material that had been used as the background to the titles of Inferno in 1970.

The control panels used for the Keller Machine in The Mind of Evil is seen again in Hower’s control room.

This episode tips towards the bleak end of the scale due to the rather grim ending with the self-sacrifice of the Pyroans.

There’s nothing really wrong with Volcano, but after the top class episodes that precede it, this one falls a bit flat. It’s a perfectly serviceable script and a reasonable premise for an episode but it doesn’t ever seem to reach above the average in any way.

It feels like an episode of Star Trek, and maybe that’s the problem with it. All you’d need is the Captain Kirk striding in to offer them membership of his Federation and for the Klingons or Romulans to arrive to try and take it by force and you’ve got a standard Trek episode. As such this doesn’t actually feel much like Blake’s 7; it’s a generic sci-fi idea, that’s written in a flat and rather dull manner.

What’s missing is a big showdown. Hower’s sacrifice of the planet and his people almost feels tacked on, as if now it’s been revealed that he’s got a big nuclear bomb in the volcano that he has to use it. They could have at least had Servalan come down and threaten him a bit or something to provoke him. The bombing of the planet happens off screen and the episode limps to a wholly predictable ending.