Review Rescue: Episode 40

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
While I like the fourth season, I cannot help but think that huge coincidences are at play in the narrative.

They just happen to be rescued by someone in a ship that has a ready to be completed teleport. What is Dorian trying to make a teleport for on a ship that he can land?

And, while Cally dies, a ready made replacement is in the wings.

And, oh look, Dorian's ship just happens to have a sentient talking computer, just like Zen.

This is where I feel the show was shortsighted. If they really wanted to replace the Liberator with a similar type of ship, what I think could have been done was for Orac to find a way of - using some kind of relay sytem - remote command another sister ship and have it arrive from The System. So the Liberator would be back. Sort of. That would have avoided the high coincidence factor of the Scorpio.


Or, if they wanted to go in a different direction with the series, they could have shown us the group disintegrating. Perhaps even separating. Going their separate ways. All to a tragic fate? Would Avon have stuck with Vila? Still looked for Blake? What aspects of this galaxy could we have seen, now that their ship was gone?

Instead, I think they felt duty bound to replace everything in a way that stretches coincidence.

These reservations aside, I love Season Four.

This may be down to the fact that it was the one season that I audio-recorded at the time and listened to almost religiously alongside the Davison/Colin Baker shows. So I know this season better than any.

And I love it more than the others.

Dorian is a clear rip off, of course, of Dorian Gray

Poor Glynis Barber. Thrown in at the deep end as a shallowly conceived Cally replacement. It wasn't until about halfway through the season that she was able to get some traction on the character - or had rethought Soolin as the glib, dry, somewhat sad gunfighter - and from there on in she was excellent. Paul Darrow has said that replacing Cally, Soolin was "a kewpie doll in place of a siren", but I think that Glynis was excellent once she got her bearings.

Vila is starting to become a cliche of a drunken buffoon. Having said that, he is the one to save the day. A shame writers were lazy with his character. Save for that nice scene in STARDRIVE, where he pretends to be drunk, too often he runs into a bottle and offers unhelpful soundbites. A shame.

As Chris Boucher has said, this is really the first episode of a brand new show. So, as a pilot, it seems, to me sound enough, if a bit undaring in concept.

Better - and worse - was yet to come. But from the halfway point the quality thankfully headed onwards and upwards, that makes the shakiness of the first half of the season forgivable.
 
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