This was like the third part of a three-parter setting up the premise of the show. In part one, we meet Blake, part two he gets his ship and two of his team and tonight he gets the rest of his seven (or six, since he’s one of the seven – right?). Of the four other members, I know one stands out as big and strong and another as semi-cowardly comic relief. Not even sure who the other two are, but I imagine we’ll find out in time.
Most of the show takes place on Cygnus Alpha, the prison planet the London was heading to. Blake, Avon and Stannis find out that the ship has a treasure trove, a guidance system and bracelets with a compound that allows you to be transported from the ship to a planet it orbits a la STAR TREK. Good thing for Blake he had Jenna with him on the ship as Avon was sorely tempted to grab the fortune in jewels and leave Blake behind, not wanting to join Roj in fighting the dreaded Federation.
On Cygnus, the remaining prisoners find the place run by a religious cult which kills any nonbelievers. There’s also a poisonous element that must be countered by daily doses of a drug. Blake beams down with spare bracelets to invite the crew aboard, but runs afoul of the cult leader Vargas. I thought I recognized Brian Blessed as playing Vargas and I was right. I still remember him from the FLASH GORDON movie of the 80’s which was pretty cool, but never got a sequel. His characters are usually a little over the top, but this one was way over – although he was power-mad so it fit. I’m not fond of stories that are anti-religious, but there is a certain logic to Vargas creating a religion to unite the bickering convicts and then falling prey to the corruption of his absolute power. I’m not sure what made him think he could spread his message to other worlds. All he had was a fake figure and the supposed cure to his planet’s poison which he admits was all just trickery anyway. He’s rather easily dispatched by stepping onto the transporter area and being sent into open space. He suffers explosive decompression although it looks more like he blew up like a firebomb.
Too bad they had to kill off Vargas’s second in command, a lovely lady. She gets a spear thrust through her after trying to warn someone about it. She would have made a nice addition to the seven. Oh, well, just one woman in the group, I guess.
One big boo-boo involves the eight month trip to the prison planet. Last week, it didn’t seem to take long for the inmates to revolt; the meds would have rendered them docile otherwise. But this week, they’ve arrived on C. Alpha without even having sent out their report about the revolt yet. There’s no indication that Blake and his crew have been travelling on their ship for months – if they have, they’re awfully slow about finding out anything about it. So where did we lose the eight months? At first, I thought even the writers had forgotten about it, but one of the London crew comments “After eight months on this ship, I’d like to stretch my legs.”
The transporter effect is a little weak. I’m okay with the person diffusing to start, but then they show a drawn figure like a chalk mark of a murder victim and have them appear inside it. Looks rather silly; why don’t just have a reverse of the earlier effect instead? And why when they were bringing the sacrifice in did one of the men claim that the prisoners had tried to jump them but they got the best of them? Obviously, just for our benefit so we’d think the big guy was really going to get sacrificed. But it was a dumb move; what if Vargas had realized that it was a stranger’s voice saying that? In fact, why didn’t he notice it? And when you’re planning to jump Vargas’s crew during a ritual sacrifice, it would be a little smarter not to wait until the last minute when he’s starting to plunge the knife into you.
Overall, the episode was still interesting. I’ll give this one a 7.
