Blake's 7: The Keeper

“Don’t you trust me?”

“No, of course not!”

Allan Prior does his best with making the dialogue sound realistic, but the first few lines of this episode consist of possibly the most blatant case of “as you know, Bob” syndrome ever. Characters keep falling over each other to explain things all of them already know for the viewer’s benefit; a surgeon called Lurgen left his brain print on the planet Goth, and this brain print is being worn around the neck of a tribal chief. It apparently contains the location of Star One and, given that this is the penultimate episode of the series, we know damn well that they’re going to find it.

This is a bit of an Avon-lite episode, but there’s plenty of the ongoing tension between him and Blake, with Avon winding Blake up by asking why they don’t just take over Star One and rule the galaxy rather than destroying it. But he and Cally are this weeks teleport operators, while Blake, Jenna and Vila get to teleport down. This may not be entirely unconnected with the fact that Sally Knyvette and Gareth Thomas are leaving soon.

As is traditional, the planet Goth bears an uncanny resemblance to the South-East of England, although I’m glad to see some more of the recent tendency to give all alien planets an interesting natural feature; in this case it’s a sulphurous atmosphere, poisonous in the long-term. This doesn’t really affect the plot, but it’s a nice touch.

The only locals we see are a tribe called “the Goths”. As this is also the name of the planet are they the only people living on this world or is their name of the tribe just a big coincidence. Whatever, they’re great. Bruce Purchase chews the scenery magnificently as Gola, the chieftain. He has a sister, a mysterious seeress, and a fool, in good mediaeval tradition. The whole look of the costumes, sets and hairstyles are all way cool, too, partly mediaeval but with a large hint of the Gauls of Asterix, complete with a drug-addled religious figure.

Unfortunately, our herpes are all captured fairly quickly because the Liberator, in typical Blake’s 7 style, has gone out of teleporter range. This has happened because Avon has spotted Travis’ ship and, in sharp contrast to Blake’s constant shilly-shallying about killing him, coldly sets out to shoot him in the back. He apparently does this, as the ship blows up.

Except Travis isn’t aboard, as we soon discover after Blake is finally teleported up to have a bit of a shouting match with Avon before buggering off back to the surface again. Travis is staying with Gola, as is Servalan, and they’re also on the trail of Star One for reasons of their own personal gain, a fact which should entirely fail to surprise us.

Blake rescues a big shouty bloke called Rod, who proceeds to speak of a brother and, er, shout a lot. Both of them head towards the chief’s tent, where Jenna is to be “pair-bonded” with Gola (isn’t she lucky!) although apparently she’s not supposed to touch him- being chief doesn’t seem all that much fun in that case! Vila, meanwhile, is expected to become the new fool. Naturally, he proves to be quite brilliant at this.

Sally Knyvette is brilliant in her scenes with Gola; her facial acting is particularly superb. You always feel that, despite appearances, she’s always in control of the situation, but the mysterious seeress is another matter. Still, Jenna eventually discovers that the seeress’ amulet is not the one they want.

Vila is thrown into a cell after an unfortunate incident with some ventriloquism, where we discover that his neighbour is a mysterious old man. I wonder if there’s anybody who’s ever seen this episode and didn’t immediately work out that he’s Gola’s father and the ousted previous chief?

Jenna continues to manipulate the rather thick Gola, to Servalan’s great annoyance, and soon discovers that his amulet isn’t the one they want either. So, it must be someone else. Cue the arrival of Rod, who we all worked out was Gola’s brother from the get go. They proceed to fight a dual with rather odd weapons, but are both killed, and Rod’s amulet isn’t the right one either.

We end in the old chief’s cell as he dies. The royal line is extinct and it seems the amulet has gone, until a verbal trigger leads the fool to start chanting the location of Star One. Time for a season finale…