“It doesn’t make for the most reliable of leaders, does it?”
I’d never heard of writer Roger Parkes before, until glancing at IMDb just now, but there’s something a little off about this story. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that the tone of this political intrigue is a little off, and that the revelation that there are idealists in high positions rather undermines the Federation’s credentials as a Big Faceless Invincible Totalitarian Thing.
The crew of the Liberator begin, rather sensibly in the light of both how knackered they were last episode and what happened last time they over-tired themselves, by heading for a bit of a rest. But it’s not long before Blake, behaving even more oddly than usual, orders Zen to head towards an obscure asteroid instead, and haughtily refuses to explain this to anyone. I don’t think this attitude can be entirely blamed on external influences and, as we’ll see, the episode ends by pointedly not absolving him.
The crew (with a lot of guidance from Avon, clearly the alpha male in Blake’s absence) soon discover that Blake is being controlled in some way related to the brainwashing he received after his trial some years ago. Things go a bit mad for a while, but eventually Blake is restrained and the Liberator resumes course for the Planet of the Health Farms.
Except that Vila is a bit of a gullible muppet- which is, I’d say, just a little out of character. Nevertheless, Blake manages to convince him to lock everyone else up and resume their course towards the obscure asteroid.
Blake teleports down to the surface, in a short scene which is quite the most cringe-inducing yet; Blake is clearly stood just a foot or so in front of some god-awful matte painting. It’s the sort of sci-fi exterior set you’d expect to see at an infant school assembly, not from the BBC. Arse-clenchingly embarrassing stuff.
Mercifully, though, Blake eventually finds some indoor sets, rather safer ground for the production. There are also a load of people, apparently rebels, led by a chap called Ven Glynd, a former senior Federation politico who seems to have defected. Unfortunately there’s also an utterly absurd bandaged figure with silly false eyes, who is apparently the legendary Shivan, a revolutionary hero who has been presumed dead.
Blake is quickly persuaded- rather too quickly persuaded according to Avon, who is invariably right about these things- that the group have a foolproof plan to legally expose various pieces of Federation skulduggery, including Servalan’s dodgy dealing with Orac at the end of last season and the killing of Blake’s defence barrister. Blake seems to swallow this, simply because of the mention of an apparently “sane” Federation ambassador called Le Grand. And yet, if the Federation can indeed be successfully challenged through its own legal system, and with the help of apparently decent and reasonable Federation apparatchiks, does this not undermine the sense we’ve always been given that the Federation is an extremely nasty, arbitrary, 1984-via-Brezhnev, totalitarian police state? The revelations we later discover in no way make up for the fact that our image of the Federation as an uber-scary and powerful entity has been badly damaged by the fact that this sort of thing is even considered plausible by the characters we know.
Still, Avon’s having none of this and Orac backs him up; Blake is still being mind-controlled. We begin to receive hints that he’s intended as a figurehead in a “triumvirate between himself, Le Grand and Ven Glynd, with Ven Glynd clearly seeing himself as the Octavian.
Le Grand’s ship lands on the planet Atlay, where the conference is due to be held, in a magnificent piece of model work from the one and only Mat Irvine. But it’s a trap; the arena is empty apart from a load of Federation troops and Servalan on a screen; Le Grand’s treachery has been known all along, and she lets out a few tears at the end of her dream. Then the shooting starts. Meanwhile, on the Liberator, it’s revealed that the bandaged figure was Travis all the time. He seems to be losing more and more dignity with each appearance.
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