Blakes 7: Time Squad
May 10, 2016 12:42 AM - Season 1, Episode 4 - Subscribe

The Liberator crew intersects a strange ship, and finds a group of killers from the past on board who will stop at nothing to kill Blake's Six and take over the ship. But why? And can Gan and Jenna stop them? What is Gan's dark secret? Meanwhile, in the other plot, Blake decides to become a terrorist with a fiendish plot to blow up a Federation communications outpost, but does he have the skills to avoid flesh-eating plants, the Federation's crack security forces, a super-high tech killbot? And can he, Avon and Villa trust a silent, mysterious stranger?
posted by Mezentian (5 comments total)
 
We finally meet Cally, and Blake finally has his Seven! And she's telepathic... semi Alien or wholly alien?

B7 gets its first proper quarry, and another factory setting.

When I sat down to write this, I'd quite forgotten the Saurian Major plot, and only the B7-ish take on Star Trek's Space Seed, except the Space Barbarians are lacking in any character, so they basically blunder around.

The early parts, where the crew are clearly seen to be multi-tasking are pretty great. Having Avon pilot the ship seems brilliant, it breaks up the military role thing you might expect from Trek.

We see Gan's limiter for the first time, which is also nice, because it's a bit subversive. He's the big guy, you'd think he'd be the muscle (and he was a bit, earlier), but he's not actually violent. And he gets a backstory!

Why were the time squad in place? We'll never know, as they didn't have a historian on board. We know they come from a less advanced civilisation (to crib from Trek, pre-warp) but while they dress like Romans and travel slowly they seem to have some race bank technology, so I assume that makes Avon responsible for genocide.

Not sure why Zen becomes limited and useless and unhelpful, and I don't think we ever find out.

This isn't the best episode, but it's not the worst. We have two ideas that really would have felt padded as two separate episodes, and while what we have isn't tight, it works, and it continues the trend of there really being no formula for the show yet.
posted by Mezentian at 12:54 AM on May 10, 2016


Restore factory settings should be the name of the fan protect to get them to do a new series.
posted by biffa at 2:13 PM on May 10, 2016


This is definitely not a terrible episode, but I have always felt like the writing on the ship-side plot was pretty sloppy. There are so many obvious holes in the way Jenna and Gan act that I think are out of character with characters as smart as they have previously seemed to be. The planet-side plot works better. I've never been clear on if the Auronar are really aliens, or just humans with telepathy?
posted by DiscourseMarker at 6:21 PM on May 10, 2016


I've always assumed the Auronar were an offshoot of humanity, but I guess we'll get to that when we get to that episode(s).
posted by Mezentian at 1:14 AM on May 11, 2016


I agree with Discourse, this is not a terrible episode, but the ship-side plot was very weak, and didn't really go anywhere or lead to anything, other than as a plot device as an inconvenience to the planet-side story. The planet side thing was pretty good, and finally we meet Cally.

Interesting that she is able to use her telepathy with Blake but not Avon or Villa, as if he is more open and receptive, whereas they are more closed in and set in their thought-patterns/ways.

And having gotten Cally on board, we move to next week, where she becomes central to the plot!
posted by marienbad at 7:30 AM on May 19, 2016


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