Blake's 7: Star One

“Avon, for what it’s worth, I have always trusted you, from the very beginning.”

The final episode is written by Chris Boucher, which is fitting; a symbolic changing of the guard at script level which mirrors the changing of the guard aboard the Liberator in this bold, amazing and pivotal episode. Whoever said that season finales weren’t supposed to have been invented in 1979?

The first tension-filled scene, with a ship being rammed by a mysterious small vessel, looks amazing. It’s uncannily similar visually to the opening scene from Star Wars, and that’s deliberate: this is 1979. And it’s the perfect indication of the epic nature of what we’re about to see unfold over the next fifty minutes.

We get the backstory from Servalan thereafter. (And this is where I first notice the prominent Federation symbol; interesting how closely it resembles the symbol for the Federation in Star Trek, but from an entirely different perspective on what such a Federation would be like!) The attack is just one of many catastrophic events happening throughout the Federation’s outer worlds, most of which seem to involve weather control malfunctions. Ah, weather control! Such a very old-fashioned sci-fi trope, isn’t it? It belongs to a past era which believed in progress more than we do, an era of Concorde and Butskellism where the state spending money was seen as a Good Thing, chaos theory (which nixes weather control) had yet to enter popular culture and people believed that it would one day be possible for mankind to explore space. Happy days, or at least I’m told. Alas, I was born in 1977.

Er, anyway, Servalan’s underling tells her that all this can only mean problems at Star One, something which Servalan refuses to believe. She has to; not only does she not know where it is, no one knows where it is. Even the scientists living there are marooned forever, and both selected and conditioned to be the types of people who would never attempt to communicate with outside.

Er, is this wise? If Star One is so important, and disorder in the universe is always increasing (the good old Second Law of Thermodynamics, says that clever Professor Brian Cox), then surely there will be problems in store when the scientists are all dead and Star One inevitably starts to go wrong?

Blake and co know where it is, though. The co-ordinates take them to a spot a little outside the galaxy, into the dark, intergalactic board. They’re off the edge of the map. Here be monsters, inevitably.

And this where we get an incredible, pivotal scene. We’ve seen lots of arguments between Blake and Avon, but this time it’s final. Things are said which cannot be unsaid. “Show me something who believes in anything, and I’ll show you a fool”, says Avon. He doesn’t mean it, of course. By now we know that he doesn’t like tyranny any more than Blake does. It’s just that he’s horrified by Blake’s recklessness and is deliberately saying the most hurtful things he can. Beneath the exterior, Avon is a very moral man who is loyal to his friends and cares a lot. That’s why he loathes Blake’s casual attitude to other peoples’ lives.

He basically Admits, too, that all that stuff at the end of last episode about using Star One to rule the galaxy is just him lashing out at Blake and again trying to be hurtful. This would be quite as morally objectionable to Avon as it would be to Blake. No; Avon has an ultimatum for Blake: they destroy Star One, and then they’re finished. It’s over. Blake gets dropped off on Earth and the Liberator is Avon’s. He even calls Blake a fanatic to his face.

But Blake lacks the confidence to really argue back; this is the episode where he comes the closest to what he wants, and yet he’s racked with doubt, as are others; even the normally loyal Cally points out that with out Star One, many people would die. Is all this really worth it? There are some powerful ethical issues at work. Yet, the end of the scene, whatever the supposed caveats, Avon gets exactly what he wants. He, not Blake, is the Alpha Male now.

Meanwhile, Servalan speaks of chaos spreading across the Federation leadership. She has decreed the President and the Council to be incapable of dealing with the crisis. She has launched a coup and had them arrested, no doubt to be “disappeared”. The scene ends with her senior underling addressing her as “Madame President”.

Avon and his crew discover Star One to be a tiny, barely habitable world orbiting an isolated white dwarf. Avon notes that this is the nearest point to the Andromeda Galaxy. Implying that, with human technology, it would take thousands of years to travel there, he has nevertheless spotted that there are thousands of satellite generators lying beyond it; a “minefield” place there by the Federation! Does this imply a known threat from the direction of Andromeda, a threat which would most likely arrive through this exact point? Orac confirms that these minefields extend around all those parts of the Galaxy’s edge which are occupied by humans, and this implies that the Federation (and humanity) does not occupy all of the Milky Way or even necessarily very much of it.

Oh, and I’m not sure about the concepts of minefields, what with space being three-dimensional and all, but never mind. I think a bit of handwavium is justified, because this is great.

Avon, Blake and Cally teleport down, and are separated. Blake and Cally do the “take me to your leader” thing while Avon walks around being cynical. But another ship is landing, one identical to the small vessel form the opening scene. Blake, meanwhile is expected, but it soon becomes apparent that he’s been mistaken for Travis.

Events start hurtling forward apace; Blake sets his bombs, but other things are afoot. All of the scientists but one are impostors, alien beings from Andromeda sent as an advance party to destroy the minefields. Gazillions of alien ships are heading towards Star One, from Andromeda, to launch an invasion. Oh, and Travis is here, in league with the aliens in a betrayal of his own species- and it’s implied that the aliens intend on committing genocide, or something pretty damn close.

Blake is a lost figure by this point, forced to abandon all hope of fighting against the Federation because of the need for humanity to unite against this greater enemy. Even his being shot and seriously injured by Travis, which should be dramatic in itself, is almost merely a symbol of his more general impotence from this point on.

Servalan has a big decision to make, too; given the new threat, she contacts Servalan and asks for Federation military back-up. Suddenly, all previous quarrels have become a luxury which no-one can afford.

One quarrel is ended for good, though. It’s fitting, given the constant tension between Blake and Avon about whether to kill Travis, that Avon should shoot him dead so casually and irrevocably. It’s yet another moment which signifies which of the two of them is now on top.

Servalan sends a fleet, but it will take an hour to arrive; the Liberator, facing hopeless odds, is the only thing which can possibly fight them. Blake briefly tries to return, but he’s yesterday’s man; Avon insists that he buggers off back to Star One. Accepting his new lack of status, he agrees and duly sods off. It’s Avon, showing his true heroic colours, who leads the crew of the Liberator in what must surely be a hopeless last stand against the invading hordes…

What an episode!