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by Simon Hart |
Blake has decided that now that his new crew can adequately pilot the Liberator, it’s time that they started to attack the Federation. Blake wants to liberate the planet Saurian Major, which had been free but was annexed to the Federation and the population were butchered. Now it serves as the nerve centre of Federation communication, all transmissions are beamed through their station on the planet. ‘Destroy it,’ says Blake ‘and you blind, deafen and silence them.’ He also, seemingly against the judgement of Zen decides to take an old, derelict spaceship they find floating in space aboard the Liberator. That may not be wise…
The Federation are a bit inept in this episode. They don’t know that they’ve got intruders in their base until it’s too late and then they only seem to make a token effort to stop Blake and co and that doesn’t do much good as the base is destroyed.
The space ship Blake salvages is actually a Cryogenic Capsule containing three frozen guardians from the past. They begin to wake up and menace Jenna and Gan while the rest of the crew are on the planet… Just what is it they’re so fiercely protecting?
Blake: He destroys the Saurian Major Communications base, and gains the final member of his original crew, Cally.
Blake kills all the Federation staff and soldiers on Saurian Major. It’s not stated exactly how many that might be, but it’s certainly a lot. Jenna kills two of the frozen criminals and the third is killed by Blake on his return to the ship.
The early scenes on the Liberator have some sparkling banter between the crew: AVON: I thought it was agreed we wouldn't do anything without discussing it thoroughly. BLAKE: True. It was also agreed that anybody could opt out at any time. Just tell me when you want to leave. AVON: Oh, I will. But in the meantime I think we have a right to know what it is you're planning. BLAKE: Zen, set a course for Saurian Major, speed standard by two. ZEN: Speed and course confirmed. AVON: That falls a little short of my idea of a thorough discussion. GAN: We can talk and travel. We're safer on the move. AVON: Another one who's prepared to let Blake do his thinking for him
Cally gets some nice feisty lines including such greats as: "May you die alone, and silent." "I do not need to read minds to know that you lie." And "My work was in communications. But there will be companions for my death. I plan to raid the complex. To destroy until I am destroyed."
And in the final scene Jenna shows a little prejudice and dare we say it jealousy when she looks Cally up and down and says: "It seems to me it should have taught us something. Something about the wisdom involved in bringing aliens aboard." Ooh! Get her!
Fed-Tech Gan’s limiter is possibly the most interesting piece of Federation technology on display in this episode. It was fitted to his brain after he killed the guards that "killed his woman" and it controls and inhibits his ability to kill. This type of brain surgery shows once again that the Federation are quite adept at manipulating brain functions. This also perhaps explains Gan’s tendency to be easily led, as he relies on other people to kill for him. This possibly isn’t a useful time to reveal that, not when there are 3 evil killers on the loose on the Liberator!
The criminals come from the past and were shot into space in a basic cryogenic ship, which has controls necessary for a safe landing, a distress relay, auto-navigation and a propulsion unit, and nothing else. Obviously the most important part of the ship is the cryogenic units, of which there are three. These are designed to house the guardians which protect the full unit contained within which will breed many more such people when it gets to wherever it was going. We see our first glimpse of a Federation base on another planet and this one, like many others seems to be based on the design of 20th century power stations, oil refineries or gas works. Obviously Federation architects are into retro-industrial design. The base has a central computer which takes up most of a functional grey room. It has massive struts that fix it to the floor and roof and has panels that can be removed for maintenance and which are useful for the placing of bombs. Avon is able to perform this task using a tool that has a grabby hand type attachment. Back on The Liberator, we see Jenna use some electronic probes similar to the one Avon has used in Space Fall and Cygnus Alpha. There are 5 of them in a toolkit in the hold. There’s also a lovely standard blue metal wrench in the hold too. Obviously they’re just as useful in the second century of the third calendar as they are now, or maybe they’re just good for knocking out members of the crew. Vila has his own personal probe for unlocking doors which has a small extendable nib for the fine work required. The Liberator medical kit is shown for the first time. One part of it is used to miraculously cure Gan’s damaged arm. It does this with a nice soothing buzzing noise.
Jenna’s wearing the same top as seen in Cygnus Alpha only this week she’s wearing it with lilac trousers. Whether this makes the top look better is difficult to say. The boots certainly help to take your eyes away from it. They’re fabulous! They’re a mottled green colour with purple bands around the top and the heels. Avon goes to the wardrobe room for the first time and picks up a mostly brown set of clothes. His top has a light brown centre with not quite full length sleeves in a slightly darker shade of brown and a white stripe around the neck line. There’s a dirty white chest piece, with has brown splatters over it. The top is worn over a brown roll neck sweater. Cally is introduced in this episode, and she gets a fantastic first costume. She’s a guerrilla fighter on a planet that has a largely red atmosphere, so she has a combat suit in red. Magnificently, even her gun is mostly red! It’s a colour that really suits her, but she seldom wears that colour again. The cryogenic criminals have very fetching costumes that show off lots of very white flesh. They have boots that are attached via straps to their knees, which doesn’t sound very useful at all. Food No-one eats or drinks anything at all this episode.
The Liberator crew steer the ship so that the Cryogenic Ship is taken on board in the hitherto unseen Hold no. 5. Excitingly this means that there at least four other holds just like this one on board. It’s a pretty functional sort of room- all grey with a few power outlets on the wall and a dais on which the ship is placed. There are power cables in this room which are used to recharge the cryogenic ships that look suspiciously like disco wire, but they seem to do the trick reviving the ship and it’s occupants. The hold has a security door, which is operated by pressing all six buttons on the door in.
Avon operates the teleport when Blake and Jenna first go over to the Cryogenic ship, and when Blake, Vila and Avon go down to Saurian Major, Jenna operates it. Gan later brings them up.
There are 16 teleport bracelets seen in the storage rack at the start of this episode, as far as I can tell, none of them get destroyed. After the losses last week, that’s a bit of a result for Blake!
Just before Blake and Jenna teleport over to the cryogenic ship, Blake tenderly touches her shoulder to reassure her that their teleporting will be fine. Later, when the air starts to run out on the cryogenic ship, Jenna and Blake end up breathlessly holding hands.
Cally takes an instant liking to Avon and spends a lot of time in their first scene eyeing him admiringly and he even smiles back at her, which hasn’t happened much before.
None of the guest cast this week has been in Doctor Who, which is something of a rarity. That said, there are only 3 of them, and they don’t really say much. Instead, we see our first recycled costume, as Avon’s new set of clothes is a slightly modified Time Lord costume from Colony in Space, so it’s probably little wonder that no-one really notices that! Avon uses a kind of grabby had wrench thing when he’s setting a bomb in the control room on Saurian Major. A little later in the year, this could be seen in the hands of Mary Tamm, as she repairs K9 in The Stones of Blood. Both the locations used in this episode, Betchworth Quarry and Oldbury Power Station had previously been seen in Doctor Who- Betchworth in Genesis of the Daleks, Oldbury in The Hand of Fear.
This episode gets a perfect balance rating as it’s not really bleak and it’s not really camp either.
This is the first real clunker of an episode. It’s not actually bad, just dull and more than a little tedious. It’s a shame because the early scenes on the Liberator are snappy and the entertaining as Avon and Blake continue to snipe at each other, with the new crew beginning to take sides against each other. Yet the later scenes on the Liberator with the criminals feel as if they have been included to simply pad out the episode giving Gan and Jenna something to do while the others are down on the planet. These scenes should be really tense and dramatic, but instead are slow and dreary because the direction is pedestrian at best. It feels as if little attempt has been made to rack up the tension, despite the use of the hand held camera in the fight scenes which was a rarity back in 1978.
Still, there is some nice character development for Gan, which is one of the rarest things in the series. He’ll become a rather neglected character sadly, possibly because the limiter rather limits what he can do. The book Liberation by Alan Stevens suggests that Gan is a sex offender, and that the Limiter is linked with his crimes, as he often gets a headache when he’s left alone with women and it’s possible the limiter is limiting his emotional or sexual drive towards them, but I’m not wholly convinced by that theory. I’m not sure there’s enough evidence on screen to say whether that theory is correct or not. It’s certainly an interesting reading of the scenes, whether you agree or not.
The best thing about this episode, other than when it ends of course, is the introduction of Cally. She’s very a different character her to how she’d eventually end up, being very feisty and an athletic combat trained guerrilla, rather than the conscience of the crew. In fact many of her lines come across as being very like the kind of things Leela would say - which is hardly surprising as that character was devised by Chris Boucher. Her telepathy is an interesting character trait, allowing her to speak in "voice over" which make’s Jan Chappell’s life a bit easier if nothing else.
The only other interesting part of this episode is Zen’s acts of self preservation. The ships computer seems to be unable to warn the crew about taking the cryogenic ship on board, and can only do so by not helping them when they ask and later it’s implied that the teleport malfunction is down to him too. Fortunately for the crew his willingness to help would improve in time, but for now it does make the ship seem a somewhat hostile place to be at times. So Time Squad is essential for the introduction of Cally, but forgettable in just about every other way.
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