A little time has passed after the futile attack on Control that led to Gan’s death and Blake is plagued by self-doubts. He needs time alone to think and so teleports down to an uninhabited planet. Will the rest of the Liberator crew still be in orbit to collect when his time is up?

Servalan finally wants to be rid of Travis. In order to save her reputation, she has Travis tried for the murder of 1417 of the civilian population of Serkasta, knowing that with Travis out of the way her own mishandling of the Blake affair becomes conjecture. Will she get away with her devious plot, and will there be anyone left that she can trust?

The planet Blake teleports down to may not be as uninhabited as he first thought. What effect will this have on Blake and what catastrophic effects will this have on the balance of a living planet?

Blake.

He regains the trust of his crew and his own peace of mind after he meets Zil and begins his crusade against the Federation with renewed vigour after a successful lightning raid on Servalan’s headquarters, unwittingly saving the life of his nemesis Travis in the process.

The Lightning raid

Travis was responsible for the death of 125 civilians on the planet Zircaster three years previous to this trial. He also kills a guard as he escapes from the courtroom.

Blake’s visit to the unnamed planet leads to the death of Zil, and his attack on Space Command kills an undetermined number of people which almost certainly include Rontane and Bercol, Samor, Tharnia, the two other members of the Tribunal and a number of guards.

Avon explains what he knows about guilt:

JENNA: What would you know about guilt?
AVON: [Smiles] Only what I've read. Your move, I think.

Rontane and Bercol comment on the political reasons for the trial:

RONTANE: We know that she's sending Travis to his death in order to keep his mouth shut, but she is doing it with such an impeccably honest and painstaking tribunal that her real motives can't even be hinted at.
BERCOL: Has, um, a date been set for the Blake inquiry?
RONTANE: Does it matter? Without Travis' evidence the mishandling of the Blake affair becomes a matter of conjecture. The inquiry becomes a formality.
BERCOL: A Presidential stay of execution so that Travis can give evidence? After this, he should be more than willing.
RONTANE: After this he'll be a convicted mass murderer.
BERCOL: It could still damage Servalan. 'Slime sticks,' as the old saying has it.
RONTANE: Yes, but the President can't be seen to throw it.
BERCOL: Servalan picked Travis.
RONTANE: The President picked Servalan.
BERCOL: So she's outmanoeuvred us once again.
RONTANE: Let's say she's outmanoeuvring us, but it's not over yet. She could still make a mistake.
BERCOL: Which is presumably why we came. I was beginning to wonder.
RONTANE: We came, Bercol, because Servalan's ambitions threaten us all. And the President particularly dislikes being threatened. Shall we dine?

Blake abandons the crew to go off and think:

BLAKE: Thank you. I must confess I wasn't sure whether you'd trust me or even care enough to ask if there was a message. In your place I'd probably have just said I don't give a damn and cleared off. I think -- well, that's just it, I need time to think. We all do. That's what all this is about. I must apologize for the somewhat dramatic exit. I had to stop myself coming back. At least until we've made some decisions, you and I. I took one hell of a risk with your lives when I went ahead with the attack on Central Control. I thought it was justified, I thought we had a chance to win. And I was wrong. Completely, utterly, stupidly wrong.
AVON: I noticed that.
BLAKE: I almost killed you all. I did kill Gan. For nothing: an empty room, a trick, an illusion. Now I find myself wondering if that's what it's been all along: just a dream. I don't know anymore. I don't know whether we should go on, whether you would even supposing I could ask you to. So, that is what we've got to decide, you and I: where do we go from here?
AVON: So that is what we have got to decide, is it?
BLAKE: I'm taking a homing beacon down with me. It will start to transmit in thirteen hours. The detectors should be able to locate it and guide the ship to the rendezvous. It's an automatic beacon. I shall leave it on the ground when I land and make my way back to it with a hand detector. It seems more fitting somehow. Besides, if either of us chooses not to keep the rendezvous, then we needn't think too badly of each other. Maybe the detectors failed.

Blake leaves a goodbye message?

And Avon is not exactly pleased to see him return:

AVON: One of these days they are going to leave you. They were almost ready to do so this time.
BLAKE: Yes, I thought they might be.
AVON: You handle them very skilfully.
BLAKE: Do I?
AVON: But one more death will do it.
BLAKE: Then you'd better be very careful. It would be ironic if it were yours.

Avon is yet again unimpressed with Blake

Servalan realises what she’s about to lose:

SERVALAN: Travis knew, right from the beginning. It really is a pity he's got to die. He's so much better than anything I've got left.

And an old fan favourite from Vila:

VILA: They missed us! Avon's gadget works!

Fed Tech:

Although the courtroom is rather different to the one seen in The Way Back, the trial itself is carried out in a similar way, by a judgement programme in a computer. For Travis, this is Judgement Programme Jenkin 1Oblique 3. Data for the prosecution and defence are entered and the programme determines if Travis is guilty, before the tribunal decide on the penalty.

Blake uses a hand held homing beacon which he programmes with some kind of probe to set the time before he wishes it to activate.

Blake programmes the homing beacon

Avon has been working for some time on a detector shield that will keep the Liberator off all but the Federation’s close range detectors. It works too, would you believe!

Fashion:

Blake again wears a variation of his clothes seen in Redemption. He wears a brown polo neck sweater underneath the green leather waistcoat.

Avon wears a grey leather tunic, with grey suede patches across the top corners, with a darker grey stripe across the top of the shoulders. He wears this over black trousers and black boots.

Jenna wears a tight fitting burgundy leather catsuit style outfit, with grey patterning on the top section. She also has a pair of matching burgundy leather high heel boots.

Jenna in leather

Cally wears green for the first time in ages. She’s also gone for the leather look with a top in green leather with suede arms. She has tight green leather trousers and green high heel boots.

In fact leather all round: Cally and Vila

Vila is dressed in brown chamois leather trousers with a brown chamois leather top that zips up the middle. It has a v motif on it and it is worn over a brown roll neck sweater.

Servalan is wearing a very tight white formal dress with three buttons down the two sides of the dress. Simple, stylish and effective.

Rontane and Bercol wear variations of the same costume; brown tunics and trousers with brown satin tops underneath the tops.

Samor and his fellow arbiters wear grey uniforms with silver detailing on the top.

Tharnia has a very tight fitting black dress with a very narrow waistline and black boots. It accentuates her figure, like every major’s uniform should.

This episode’s most outrageous costume:

Barbara Kidd takes over responsibility for the costumes with this episode and takes a step back from the outrageousness of the June Hudson designs. Her most outrageous contribution here is the costume for Zil, which is an all over body stocking that covers the head as well. There is an extra rigid bone attached to the head that extends right down the nose. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

Zil

Food and Drink:

Par brings Travis a flask of some kind of red spirit. He drinks a capful and it’s clearly something strong. Travis later pretends he drank the rest of the bottle, but he’s smarter than that.

Travis pours Par a red drink

Orac teleports Blake down to the planet, and Cally is on duty after Avon has adjusted the controls to pulse over the area the Liberator is flying above. She brings Blake back up after he appears momentarily.

No one loses a teleport bracelet this episode.

Orac analyses the information Zen gives him about the chemical composition of the planet’s oceans and determines that the planet is a plane size single living entity.

There’s a single moment where Jenna looks really upset about the way Avon is accusing Blake of running out on them and she flounces off the flight deck. Could it be because she cares about Blake more than she is prepared to say?

Servalan is rather more restrained than we’ve seen her for sometime in this episode. She’s at her politicking best, manipulating events to maintain her position. It’s quite fascinating how she’s manipulated the whole trial to get rid of Travis who’s become a real liability to her, which therefore means that when there is the inevitable inquest into the mishandling of the Blake affair, without Travis’s evidence the whole thing will become something of a farce.

Her finest moment this episode comes when she confronts Tharnia over the handling of Travis and she realises that Travis, despite all he’s done is so much better than anyone else she has working for her. Anger and regret rolled into one sentence. Brilliant.

Supremely devious

Veteran Doctor Who director Derek Martinus directed Trial. He was responsible for some of the most highly regarded stories from the first seven years of the show including The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors and Spearhead from Space.

Of the guest cast, we have the return of Peter Miles and John Bryans, reprising their roles from Seek-Locate-Destroy. They are joined by the mighty John Savident playing Fleet Warden General Samor, who had a minor role as Sir Charles at the start of 1982’s The Visitation.

Old Star Killer: John Savident

New costume designer, Barbara Kidd worked on a number of Doctor Who stories; The Green Death, The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars and Kinda.

The location filming for the unnamed planet was carried out at the Royal Alexandra and Albert School near Merstham, Surrey. This was the same place that David Maloney had filmed some of the nightmare trip into the Matrix for The Deadly Assassin in 1976.

If I were being particularly unkind, I’d also mention that we see Peter Mile’s toupee from Genesis of the Daleks here, but I’m not that mean…

Really rather bleak is my verdict on this episode. Everyone seems rather restrained and they’re going for the drama here, not the camp.

Quite simply this is one of the finest episodes of Blake’s 7. It’s one of the rare episodes where they got the tone just right, and it stays the right side of camp (not that the camp bits aren’t fun, it just would have been out of place with this subject matter), despite the inclusion of what by rights should be a silly alien (Blake’s 7 wasn’t really very good at aliens) but it all works very well.

The emphasis here is very much on the Federation side of things, with Blake and his crew relegated to the B-plot. Indeed it’s 7 minutes before we even see the Liberator crew, and they’re not missed that much either. Travis’s trial full of political intrigue, with so many people playing off against each other that the viewer’s attention is held throughout. The return of Rontane and Bercol is a masterstroke, as it allows them to comment on the action as outsiders and make some thing clear that may have slipped past otherwise.

Rontane and Bercol comment on the action

Brian Croucher is often criticised for his portrayal of Travis, but here he is magnificent, not giving anything away until the end. It’s very cleverly emphasised as the episode progresses that he knows he’s being set up, he’s just biding his time until he is absolutely sure. This makes his scene in the cell with Par and then Tharnia very interesting, as he seems to work it out when Par brings him a drink. By the end, you’re even glad he survives.