The Liberator is out of Blake’s control and under the influence of an unknown force. Can Blake regain control of his ship and will he manage to do so before all of his crew disappear?

The Liberator is under the control of the System, a vast complex that has united three warring planets under the control of a master computer. These are the people who originally built The Liberator, or DSV2 as they know it and they want it back.

Space World

Orac.

Orac manages to hack into the Systems control systems and cause the computer to break down. He also manages to fix it so that The Liberator’s sister ship the DSV1 is destroyed those validating his prediction that the space vehicle will be destroyed. He was just sneaky enough not to say which ship he was showing the crew at the end of the previous episode!

Blake kills one of the Alta’s guards (leading to a magnificent fall from a high gantry). Orac’s sabotage of the control system leads to the destruction of Alta One, though it’s debatable whether she was actually alive in the traditional sense.

In action at Oldbury

Blake and Orac discuss paradoxes:

BLAKE: Orac, why won't you give us the background to that prediction?
ORAC: Because that would invalidate the prediction.
BLAKE: And if we knew the future in detail we could change it, and so it wouldn't be the future.
ORAC: Correct. That is the paradox of prediction.

Vila finds an analogy for what’s happening to the Liberator:

BLAKE: Well, the computers seem to be making decisions for themselves. They're resisting all interference.
JENNA: But that's not possible.
BLAKE: [Motions to Avon] Avon.
AVON: It is if you think of the ship as a living entity with massive networks of electronics acting as a nervous system.
JENNA: All linked into a central computer.
BLAK: The brain.
AVON: Carry the analogy a stage further. When a living creature is hurt -- a cut or a wound -- antibodies gather around the injury to repair it and to fight infection.
VILA: You mean the computers are treating us like germs.
AVON: [Brief smile at Blake] Crude, but accurate.

And Blake explains what the episode title refers to for the viewers at home:

Blake: Just taking back what’s theirs. Redemption.

Spaceworld is a huge space station located at astro point 781. It houses The System, a computer that united three warring planets. Now the system is in control and uses the populations of the planets as slave labour. Gigantic computers are never good things.

The guards of the system carry wands that can inflict many levels of pain, up to destruction level. The level is voice activated by the wands user.

The crew have all had a haircut and found new clothes between seasons and you know what, they’ve finally found the leather!

Blake is wearing a green leather peasant shirt with whooping great arms over a brown cotton peasant shirt, with brown cord trousers and boots.

Avon is dressed head to foot in black leather. The trousers have a slight flare, and the top has studs around the top and down the shoulders and sleeves.

New look!

Jenna is in a tight fitting black Lycra top and leggings over which she’s draped a silver patterned top. It’s a great costume and it really suits her.

Cally has a long green dress worn with white tights. The dress has the most outrageous white tapered lapels you can imagine. She has gold accessories.

A worried looking Cally

Vila has a pair of yellow trousers with a grey chamois leather top and a wide yellow belt.

Vila looks horrifed at the prospect of having to do some work!

Gan is wearing a white cotton peasant top with a heavy blue robe over the top. The top has gold braiding over it.

No reply! Gan and Blake keep trying

The System’s guards are dressed in black with helmets that have a red visor.

The slaves are dressed in traditional slave chic, brown and beige ragged rags that just about cover the bits you really don’t want to see.

June Hudson has arrived and there’s a marked upturn in the camper qualities of the costumes! Her first great outrageous costumes for the show are those of the Altas. They’re dressed in skintight pale blue Lycra body stockings, over which is a transparent plastic sheet with circle designs punched into it. This is worn with silver high heels! Marvellous!

Destruct!

Both Avon and Cally are seen drinking something from white cups.

We see sub control room 1 (suggesting there are a number of other sub control rooms on board the Liberator). The room is green and grey with hexagonal motifs on the wall and a hexagonal screen. There is a control panel where the auxiliary power can be switched in and lots of lights showing the computer control and two reel-to-reel tape decks.

The teleport area has gained a new back wall showing how it leads to the rest of the ship. This is grey and again has hexagons of varying sizes cut into it.

On the flight deck, the view screen has been subtly upgraded to include a green line around the edge of the image. There is also a new hexagonal glass table positioned next to Vila’s seat with white chairs arranged it.

Cally and Avon race to the teleport area just in time to see some guards teleporting onto the Liberator. Cally operates the controls just in time to send them back with their grenades!

Between seasons the crew have obviously been busy making new teleport bracelets, as the holder is full again now!

Aside from managing to change his voice over the season break, Orac proves that trying to predict the future is really a very futile thing to do. At least the way he does it anyway. His prediction comes true, but only because he was economical with the truth and didn’t actually show the Liberator being destroyed at all. It is no wonder the crew never ask him to predict anything again!

Avon and Blake share a tight hug as the coil attack ends. This is after Avon drapes his arm over Blake after they are knocked over by the first strike against the Liberator. The only other thing that is close to intimacy is Jenna fussing over Vila’s cut on the head. I’m not sure it really counts.

Avon shows his protective side

All this episodes guest stars have appeared in Doctor Who. Sheila Ruskin, who plays Alta One was Kassia in Keeper of Traken in 1981. Harriet Philpin, who had played Bettan in 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks, played her second in command, Alta Two.

Altas One and Two

The slave was played by Roy Evans, who had appeared a number of times in Doctor Who: as Trantis in The Daleks’ Masterplan, as Bert The Miner in The Green Death and as Minor the Miner in Monster of Peladon.

Slave to the system- Roy Evans

The reel-to-reel tape decks seen several times in Doctor Who (notably in Resurrection of the Daleks) appear here in the Liberators sub control room.

Location filming for this episode was again done at Oldbury Power Station, where Hand of Fear had been filmed. Unlike in Time-Squad it is recognisable as the same place, as many of the same areas are seen.

Matt Irvine, model maker extraordinaire, beings his work on Blake’s 7 with this episode. His work on Doctor Who as a visual effects designer included The Face of Evil, Stones of Blood, The Creature from the Pit, Warriors’ Gate and Warriors of the Deep.

Camp! This is the first of the rather camp episodes of the show and so gets a lovely high rating on the Campometer.

It’s difficult to be objective about this episode, because on one hand we’ve got a typical Nation hack job. The script isn’t really up to much and the story is a bit duff really, it being yet another giant computer gone wrong and subjugating human beings. The idea of explaining where the Liberator came from is a good one however, though in many ways it seems highly unlikely that the System could have come up with such a beautiful ship: you’d imagine its effort would have been more functional and without all the comfortable and stylish touches that make The Liberator such a wonderful ship.

On the other hand, what made it to the screen is a really rather production of a duff Nation script. There seems to be a tremendous effort between seasons to really up the ante production wise. Everything seems to be that little bit better. The direction is still rather pedestrian, but Vere Lorrimer really gets the best out of the regulars, who mile the early scenes on the Liberator for all the tension they can muster and this carries in trough the scenes where the Liberator begins to fight back. Even the scenes with the live coil, which could have been very silly feel quite dangerous.

A live in coil in every sense!

It makes for a tense and exciting opening to the season and compared to some of the lacklustre space battles that were to come in the rest of the season, this is top class. It’s also notable that the scene where Blake, Jenna and Avon are taken around the System for the first time and the music synchronises with the pace of the walking seems a new and exciting development for the show,

The design work also helps to lift the episode. The set design is carefully considered so that the design of the System ties in with the earlier design of the Liberator, meaning that there is a convincing feeling that the two are products of the same background. This works extremely well with the two ships that attack the Liberator, with their design consciously echoing the gun turrets of the Liberator and its power unit. In fact the whole of the model work is uniformly brilliant- with the Space World model being very well shot and a very good space battle which doesn’t work against the tense scenes on the flight deck, as some of the show’s model work does. Even June Hudson’s costumes add glitziness and a touch of glamour that hadn’t really been seen in the show before. Whether ultimately this was a good thing is open to debate, but at this point I think it’s definitely a good thing.

Mini Liberators

So season 2 is off to a really strong start. Not faultless, but ever so exciting!