Subject: Series 1, Episode 10 - Breakdown - Asynchro-watch
From: Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:30:54 GMT
Newsgroup: alt.fan.blakes-7
Having found my Blake's 7 tapes again after a long search (they were hidden in the attic), I've been reviewing certain episodes as 'research' for my forthcoming "Blake's 7 meets Phantom of the Opera" story, a.k.a. "Phantom in Space". (After all, B7 has always been open to other genres -- the detective story, the Western, the casino, the gladiator arena...)
The Project Avalon/Breakdown tape turned out to have been left wound halfway through, which was very convenient as it was "Breakdown" I was actually after: but this reminded me that I'd missed out on reviewing "Breakdown" back when we were doing the 'Synchro-watch" as long ago as 2001. I didn't realise quite so much time had gone past!
So I thought I would take the opportunity to make some notes as I was watching...
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We get some interesting glimpses into life outside the Federation in this episode -- again, it's a Terry Nation-penned episode, so this is presumably part of the original series concept. The planet Epinal is apparently home to a highly civilised non-humanoid species (although in retrospect, I do wonder how useful an alien brain surgeon would be in operating on a human), something that the special effects budget prohibited ever being shown on screen. Meanwhile, space station XK-72 is a 'neutral' territory, the independence of which is evidently tolerated by the Federation: it's within a few hours' flight of at least one Federation base, so clearly they could easily take it over if they wanted to. Perhaps the research coming out of 'independent' centres is more technologically adventurous than that carried out under the aegis of the Federation, and thus it's worth allowing them to operate at arm's-length... or perhaps the Federation-dominated galaxy isn't actually as monolithic as I tend to envisage it.
One can certainly see why David Jackson was apparently disappointed by what was billed 'as Gan's special episode' -- he barely gets a line of dialogue throughout, and in fact spends most of the running time unable to emote save by opening and closing one hand! Gan is really little more than a plot device here: the emergency of the week, serving as a rationale for the Liberator to risk a shortcut through uncharted danger and to make direct contact with a potentially hostile high-tech base.
We do get a powerful demonstration of just how strong Gan is, though -- when Blake tries to tackle him on the flight deck, he is clearly no match for him whatsoever, being thrown around like a discarded toy. (Although weirdly Blake doesn't appear to realise this: he keeps attacking Gan, despite his obvious total inability to make the slightly impact on him, and despite his later conclusion that Gan very nearly killed him -- although I think the latter refers to the eventual strangulation attempt once the others arrive, rather than to the knock-down fight that precedes it.) Perhaps Blake is afraid that if he gives Gan a moment to reflect, the madman may finish what he has started and kill Jenna instead? In fact, as we see at various points in this episode, Gan's mania seems to lose interest in motionless bodies, so the unconscious Jenna is probably safe enough.
Even when the rest of the crew arrive, Gan is still more than capable of taking them all on at once, just as he fought three men together in Vargas' temple on Cygnus Alpha. Blake eventually brings him down only by hitting him over the head from behind -- attacks to the groin and stomach having proved entirely ineffectual! Under the circumstances, I felt that Cally really should have obeyed Blake's urgent instruction to bring the tranquillisers to immobilise Gan, rather than pausing to ask Jenna how she is feeling...
Is this the first episode where Avon admits that there is an area of technical expertise that is beyond his abilities? From the tone of Blake's suggestion that he might be up for a little neurosurgery, the series' tendency to endow him with universal competence has clearly been observed and not entirely appreciated by the others...
Blake demonstrates unexpected 'equal opportunities' traits at two points in this episode: first of all when he asks the two women to help carry Gan instead of co-opting Avon, and secondly when he volunteers to take over the donkey-work holding the vor-ray(?) scanner, simply standing and moving it in response to instructions, so that Jenna and Cally can watch the results and do the analysis -- although in practice, it is Avon who does all the analysing! On the other hand, Blake's suggestion that the callow Dr Renor might be amenable to a little 'vamp' attention from Jenna doesn't work out too well: while Jenna agrees cheerfully enough, when it comes to it she apparently can't bring herself to play up to the young man, and embarks on a sustained effort to squash his pretensions.
It's interesting that while Renor is introduced here as a somewhat obnoxious character, he turns out to be the better 'doctor' of the two: he genuinely cares about his work and the welfare of the patient, while Kayn reveals himself as a narcissistic psychopath -- a "genius" surgeon with no concern for others.
Avon's eagerness to embark upon the trip into the Prohibited Zone struck me as unusually gung-ho for a character usually risk-averse: I wonder if this is in part a reaction against Zen's warnings, an attempt to demonstrate that Zen is only a computer, after all, an element that Avon stresses throughout the series. However, he rapidly reverts to type once Zen's warning proves all too justified. (No explanation is ever suggested as to why the presence of the gravitational vortex in the Prohibited Zone is not documented -- obviously, space traffic needs to be warned off the area, but there is no top-secret installation or anything else involved that would require the very *nature* of the danger to be kept under cover. Just a handy plot device, I'm afraid.)
Effective use is made of distortion on the screen to suggest first of all (by localised manipulation of the Liberator's image) the stresses being placed on the ship and subsequently, by total blurring of the characters' faces, the disorientation experienced on the flight deck. This episode probably features the fastest and slowest speeds ever attained in the series: we are told that the Liberator cannot survive speeds above standard by twenty, we see her accelerating above standard by twelve under the influence of the gravitational vortex, and Jenna pulls away from station XK-72 at 'standard 0.01', one-hundredth of 'standard' speed. It is perhaps surprising that the Liberator doesn't have a separate drive/speed scale for in-system work, given the differences in demand between interstellar travel at faster-than-light speed and manoeuvring around solid bodies under the influence of gravitational fields from nearby stars and other bodies...
It's also worth noting that this episode gives some idea of 'real'
flight times between star systems, with distances to nearby planets
quoted as several hundred hours of travel (although travel to the planet
Destiny, in "Mission to Destiny", is only eighty-odd hours!) The
fifty-hour flight time to XK-72 implies either that the crew are
seriously short of sleep by the time they arrive (they've all been up
for two days non-stop?) or that a certain amount of down-time must take
place off-screen between crises
I couldn't help wondering exactly what Blake was proposing to do versus an escaped Gan when he recruits the shaken Cally into the flight-deck team and charges off to track down Gan single-handed: after all, he has already tried this once and signally failed to make any impact on the man whatsoever. However, we see later that he has at least learnt the 'hit him over the head with a heavy object from behind' lesson.
And while I'm usually on the Blake side of any Blake vs Avon argument, I can't help feeling that Blake comes across as distinctly unappreciative of Avon's efforts in getting the vital auxiliary systems back online in time to save the ship from being pulled apart by the gravitational vortex -- all the acknowledgement he gets is an offhand "yes, all right, now help me carry Gan, will you?"
Apparently Gan's wholesale assault on the computer linkages doesn't actually destroy the systems as Avon had predicted...
It's unclear why Blake, when talking to Cally, rules out any attempt to persuade Avon to stay with the crew after his announcement that "staying with you requires a degree of stupidity of which I no longer feel capable" (a statement which, at the time, Blake appears to shrug off with a cheerful retort). The obvious interpretation would be that he considers an unwillingly convinced Avon to be a liability: but given that any Avon-derived reasons for staying on the Liberator are likely to be deeply self-interested ones, this merely reinforces the likelihood that Avon will bail out at some future point when self interest suggests an alternative direction (which, to be honest, is most of the time!) The impression actually given in this scene is that, despite his statements to the contrary, Blake *is* angered by Avon's comments and isn't prepared to raise a hand to stop him leaving the crew. (And aren't Vila's comments about "the trouble with a genius is that you're never quite certain what he's up to" a sidelong poke at Avon in his absence?)
On the other hand, it is not at all clear why Avon, on learning that the Liberator is in danger, decides to return on board rather than avail himself of the freely-offered sanctuary of XK-72, not to mention the compliment to his abilities thereby implied. In fact, he even lies to Farron to suggest that he is not returning: as it turns out, he is lucky to get back at all, having blithely assumed that Vila would hang around indefinitely waiting to teleport him up. As events turn out, of course, he saves his life by leaving the station before it is accidentally destroyed in the firefight that ensues -- but there is no earthly way anyone could have predicted that the outcome would have been that way round.
So one can only assume that he is prompted by stirrings of conscience at the realisation of the others' plight... and perhaps by the demonstration that anyone on the supposedly 'neutral' XK-72 could betray him to the Federation at any time, without any means of escape. (We also learn in this episode that the entire crew are under a 'death sentence' in absentia.) We have already seen, after all, that Avon was prepared to make the others' escape a condition of his own acceptance on board XK-72 -- somewhat to my own surprise, I confess: I'd assumed that the sale of the Liberator was have been the bargaining chip he planned to use to buy his place! He is clearly not quite as self-interested as he likes others to believe.
Blake's arrival on board the space station is used to create a humorous interlude, as Farron commands the technicians at the station's arrival bay to ensure that he is not armed on disembarking from his supposed 'shuttle': Blake's first words are "Don't worry, I'm not armed". This does, however, raise the question of how he was able to overhear what Farron was saying immediately before his teleport arrival. Or is just just coincidence?
After unexpectedly volunteering to be the one to fetch Kayn's tools and assistant from the station (I strongly suspect Blake intended Vila to be the one to go, and by his hopeful volunteering of Jenna Vila evidently assumes the same!), Avon only appears to take one teleport bracelet from the rack. I originally assumed this was a continuity error; then, when Avon announces that he is not coming back, a neat bit of prefiguring. But he clearly *does* take a spare bracelet with him for Dr Renor to use, since he is able to teleport back on board when he changes his mind; and after all, he couldn't possibly have guaranteed that he would be able to get a good deal out of the station administration, or indeed any acceptable 'deal' at all, so it would have been most unwise to give his bracelet to Renor.
We get an interesting glimpse into the perception of Blake and his crew among ordinary people: Renor exclaims over "*the* Blake" and calls Jenna a "celebrity". Perhaps this sort of thing contributes towards the promised death sentence -- the Federation can't be very pleased at the lionising of its opponents!
It always seemed very dodgy to me for the crew to attempt to force Kayn to carry out a risky operation at gun-point, as he could easily simply have killed Gan -- or the additional stress could equally have caused him to make a mistake. I note that despite Vila's concern that "Blake's got a conscience" and might not be prepared to be ruthless enough, it is in fact Blake who comes up with the clinching threat: he will not kill Kayn (a threat the surgeon obviously believes to be an idle one, since they need his skill), he will instead cripple him if they are forced to flee before he completes the operation.
This ties in neatly with the final shot of Kayn, after he snaps
altogether and murders the base commander. (One can't help feeling
sympathy towards Farron, who behaves decently throughout and has to cope
with what is obviously routine scorn and abuse from scientific prima
donnas like Kayn on a regular basis.) We see Kayn, now apparently
completely round the bend, staring mesmerised at the hands -- his
precious hands -- which have just killed a man. Is it possible he is
actually suffering remorse, or is he just worried that he may have
damaged himself with the unaccustomed interpersonal violence?
Either way, it's a moot point: his action has not only doomed Kayn himself, but all the other 'neutral' personnel on the station, when a stray plasma bolt heads directly towards XK-72 immediately after the murder of its commanding officer. Although, to be fair, it's uncertain quite what Farron could have done in any case to protect his command under the circumstances, even without the headless-chicken scenario that ensues -- still, given that the station supposedly specialises in weaponry as well as space medicine, there might well have been some kind of counter-measures that could have been launched in time.
--
Igenlode Wordsmith
Blake's 7 fan-fiction & reviews - http://ivory.vlexofree.com/Tower/B7.html
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