Duel

Or: Blake & Jenna, sitting in a tree….

After a whodunnit Space Jape last week we’re back to Fight the Feds territory with Duel. Sort of. Sure, we’ve got Travis back, continuing to Seek, Locate & Avoid Blake, but in a neat twist we swerve back into Space Jape territory as the episode goes full Star Trek: TNG.

The premise then is that the crew of The Liberator are chased to a lonely planet on the edges of the galaxy, where they need to hide out for a bit to recharge Zen’s batteries. Blake, Jenna & Gan beam down for some shore leave but stumble across the ruins of an ancient civilisation: one that wiped itself out after a total war. The last two remaining survivors, imbued with fantastic Space Powers, pit Blake, Travis and their nearest & dearest against one another in a fight to the DEATH…

Pure Star Trek. The ruined world, the mysterious beings with incredible powers, the moral message and the learning that our characters have to go through in 45 mins before we’re all wrapped up: we will see this so many times in early Next Generation Trek as Roddenberry’s influence is still felt. In fact, swap Travis & Blake for Kirk and a Gorn, and teh New Forest for the California hills and we’re in TOS territory. All we’re missing is for Giroc to be portrayed as a floaty head on the main scanner… Of course this isn’t Trek though, so the story is told through a very Blake’s 7 lens – and is all the better for it.

Nation’s preferred scripting model this week is B plot followed by A plot as he gives us a languous set up to the main action. Having introduced the mystery of Giroc & Sinofar and their war ravaged planet (Not at all Karn. Not one bit) the action swiftly flips back to the Liberator, and we get the first 15 minutes or so of the story being Blake and Travis trying to outflank each other. This really works for me. Firstly we actually get to see The Liberator in action in a dogfight for once: this is something I feel that’s been sorely missing, with the crew seemingly running away from The Feds up until now, so it;s great to see them stand their ground and actually fight back with their vastle superier craft. Best part though is that we get to compare & contrast the leadership styles of Blake & Travis. We’re told in Seek-Locate-Destroy how much of a harsh bastard Travis is, but he gets to prove it here: his willingness to sacrifice both his other pursuit ships to take down Blake demonstrates how ruthless & single minded he is. I’m sure his gaffer will have something to say about his disregard for her fleet budget & what he’s done with those shiny new ships she just got him, but she’s not here – and he wouldn’t care anyway. All that matters is the success of his mission, and he doesn’t care who or what it costs.

Travis’ plan comes unstuck though because he assumes that Blake will think like him. Of course he doesn’t, because they’re fundamentally different people: Blake isn’t interested in sacrificing anyone, so when he sees the pursuit ship out of power he ignores it, rather than wasting energy destroying it like Travis would. It’s fair to say Blake hasn’t acquitted himself tactically so far this series – in fact you could easily say he’s come across as a bit of a dunce – so to see him being able to out think and out maneuver Travis like this is quite refreshing. He really demonstrates his leadership skills, not least by checking with Avon – his de facto second in command & best asset in a situation like this – if there’s a better option than going for the ram. He’s a leader but not a totalitarian one, as opposed to Travis, who could stand to learn a thing or two by listening to his minions.

The opening battle also gives us some rather lovely spaceship porn, as we get some terrific model shots of both The Liberator in action and the pursuit ships: another really fantastic bit of design work, and another element I’m sad that we don’t get to see more of going forward. It really helps that these scenes are set to a wonderful bit of music by Dudley Simpson, that is ethereal and atmospheric and haunting, and quite unlike anything he’s given us to date.

Because of course it’s not a Dudley Simpson score. This is a Douglas Camfield production, and he won’t have Simpson anywhere near his work, for reasons that are probably lost to scholars now. So we have stock music used here, and as with certain Doctor Who episodes the effect is no doubt better than if we didn’t. Aside from the space battle suit we get a very Tristram Cary-esque soundscape for the planet in question (Blake’s 7 wiki tells me it’s called Amersat but I can’t see that in the script anywhere so I’m sticking with “The Planet”) before the militaristic drums we get over the final fight. Camfield is a director renowned for his action scenes in Doctor Who so it’s a shame that they fall quite flat here: Blake & Travis taking each other on with quarterstaffs feels rather laborious, while the less said about the Mutoid knocking out Jenna the better. But if this is a safe space for Roberts, P. then you can bet it’s also a safe space for Camfield, D. His editing really sells Blake’s disorientation in the first attack by Travis, and while we don’t really get the Camfield Shot (Character faces camera & talks to another character behind them who is framed over their shoulder) then we do get some shots that come close. Action by Camfield could do with some Action by HAVOC; makes you appreciate the job Terry Walsh did with the fight scenes on Doctor Who.

I’ve skipped to the end there, so to cycle back to the middle of the story this is where the best stuff is to be found. Isla Blair and Patsy Smart as Sinofer & Giroc respectively deal with the big ol’ chunk of exposition they’re given with amplomb – although much as I found last week in Mission to Destiny it’s expertly written by Nation & Boucher. I love stories that don’t hold your hand & allow you to come to your own conclusions: we’re never told why these two are playing Duel with random space travellers, we’re just lead to understand that until they get the desired outcome they must repeat these actions. What’s the result they’re after? Again, it’s not clear, but it seems to be to get two warring parties to realise the error of their ways and turn to peace. And this is where this story takes it’s biggest turn from being a Star Trek episode: neither Blake nor Travis learn a damn thing from this. On Blake’s part he doesn’t need to learn this lesson, he’s already not a killer – as shown above – whereas Travis is just too obsessed and arrogant to think he needs to learn anything.

Back to the middle though. Once the stakes are explained, Travis & Blake are set against each other with Jenna & a Mutoid as their companions. In keeping with last week’s format this foregrounds two of the crew & leaves the other 4 to provide some background. Blake and Jenna make an obvious pairing: as I mentioned last week there have been some weak attempts to “ship” the two so far, reduced to some gooey looks etc. but nothing that would make it seem obvious that this is the route the production team want to go down. And they have the perfect opportunity here; stuck up a tree together isn’t the best way to enjoy some “alone time” – especially if you know everyone else is watching – but it would still be a good chance to stir something between these two if they wanted to. There’s nothing though, other than the chance for Jenna to open up a bit and explain some of her background – how frustrating it is then that when she does we cut back to the Liberator crew and miss it all. I do like this element of the story though, the rest of the crew playing Greek chorus, if for no other reason than it gives Avon the chance to complain nothing’s happening, the story’s boring so he’s going to bed. Not the first time Mr Nation has been (un)intentionally meta…. These scenes also give us a bit of depth to Avon: watch how wounded he is when mocked for being uncaring & robotic. The Anna Grant in his closet is still to come, but we’re left in no doubt that there’s something else going on there. That Avon gets more character development in a Jenna story than Jenna does is really telling: we all know how hard done by Gan is in this series, but he’s got nothing on poor Jenna really.

Travis gets the best of the character work this week, which makes sense given it’s only his second appearance. We’ve already discussed an example of his callousness, which comes as no surprise after his introduction, but we also get to see his cruelty. The scene in which he needles The Mutoid about her previous life to get a rise out of her is really great; it’s needless provocation by Travis designed to provoke her, and Greif sells the disgust when she doesn’t rise to his bait & he doesn’t get his sport perfectly. You can tell why this is Greif’s favourite story, and I do think it’s one of the best Travis stories overall, but by the end I can see why he wanted to leave: every story is going to end the same for Travis, Blake is always going to best him (The Sheriff of Nottingham never beats Robin Hood after all) and so he’s always going to have to do the “I’ll get you next time…!!!” ending. Travis is a gift to an actor wanting a solid bad guy part to play, but if you want some complexity & depth then you’re going to end up lacking (this episode is the exception of course, but come Season B it’s a lot more pantomime for Travis¹)

The other one to get some neat development is The Mutoid. Mutoids have been mentioned before, and they’ll pop up again, but we’ll not see them as effectively used or developed again as we do here. We learn as much as we ever do about them here: Mutoids are modified humans, genetically engineered to serve The Founders Federation and dependant on a supply of Ketracel Green blood serum to keep them in line. Utterly subservient and little better than machines, they are the perfect drones for Travis: as expendable as human troops but more dependable in as much as they don’t answer back or question your orders. For the most part, that is: once the blood serum is depleted she’s not much use, and here’s probably the biggest lesson for Travis: treat your subordinates better then you get better results. But of course he can’t see that, and it’s all the Mutoid’s fault, despite her warning him what would happen (Vote Travis for Reform UK in a by-election near you soon!). I wonder how this episode would have played out if they’d swapped companions & given Blake the Mutoid; would have been an interesting angle for Travis to learn a lesson in effectiveness when Blake treats the Mutoid with compassion & still hands him his arse. It would be easy to say that Carol Royle isn’t doing the best with what she’s given but that would be to totally miss the point: she’s supposed to be apathetic & indifferent – it’s an acting choice, and to play it any different just wouldn’t work.

Wrapping up then, no one learns anything so no one wins, and everyone goes off on their merry way to have some more adventures next week. There’s none of the moralising or philosophising that would go with a Trek story (TNG or TOS) other than Blake’s half-arsed explanations as to why he didn’t kill Travis. “Because we need him to come back next week” kinda gets lost in translation and we get some guff about him being too easy to beat. At this stage not being able to get one over Blake is a pretty low bar that you’re scraping against…. What’s the point of the episode then? To get to know our arch villain better; to measure him against our hero and by doing so define him better. To that effect it does it’s job very well.

It feels somewhat customary at this point to do a bit of a “trope watch” and see what else has been nicked from Blake’s 7. We’ve already had the Jem Hadar lifted for DS9 but Blake sleeping in a tree getting attacked by giant insects is pure Hunger Games. And do we have a Blake’s 7 first this week? Course we do: this is the first single word episode title, which we will see again almost exclusively for the rest of the series to come.

In summary then this is a really good episode IMHO. It’s one that invites you to have your cake and eat it, with some great space action and decent character work. Camfield might not have his best day in the office but that’s only cos he’s done better work elsewhere, but his presence brings added bonuses in terms of the score. Nation does Star Trek and he does it very well indeed.

And look, I managed the whole review without mentioning Isla Blair’s nipples once…!

Dammit………

NEXT: Project Avalon

1. Oh yes it is. ↩︎