Horizon (1979) Review

Horizon includes some good character work, but it's buried under dull direction, an inconsistent script and a story that doesn't really go anywhere.

WRITTEN BY

Allan Prior, also known as the most boring Blake's 7 writer.

PLOT

Out of curiosity, Blake follows a Federation freighter to a secret colony on the planet Horizon, where young ruler Ro struggles to make his voice heard. When the rest of the Liberator crew are captured, Avon must choose whether or not to claim the ship.

ANALYSIS

Dreary is probably the best word to describe it. The jungles and sets on Horizon are all dark and damp, giving the impression of a truly miserable primitive planet. That might work if we had more of an idea that this was once a cultured world as Ro implies, but the only places we ever get to see are his throne room(which doubles as an interrogation room) and the mines.

The episode raises a lot of points that seem to just peter out. For example, the crew's exhaustion is established early on, but apart from a few Vila gags, seems to have no effect on the rest of the episode(in fact, it's rather impressive how much work they all manage to get done in the mines despite being worn out).
1) Cally's adrenaline and soma mixture is formally introduced, only to be revealed to be a frequently used and familiar drug moments later.
2) The planet's security is impressive enough to capture the entire crew, yet some gadget from Orac allows Avon unimpeded access to the mines.
3) Orac clearly states that Avon is capable of working the Liberator on his own, but he changes his mind last minute due to the arrival of three pursuit ships(which he could easily avoid).
4) The Kommissar seems to go back and forth on his confidence in controlling Ro. He ignores the assistant Kommissar's advice to send a message to Control, only to do so moments later. He puts in a lot of effort to disguise his murderous intent, yet casually admits to having planned to kill the man. Somehow, he's confused by Ro's revenge with his dying breath, despite having previously understood Ro to be a savage.

It's basic scripting errors like these, coupled with the repetitive scenes down on the planet and the lack of any kinetic action that completely tanks the episode.

CHARACTERS

Avon is the highlight of the whole thing. His initial refusal to go to Horizon is hilarious, and seeing him alone on the Liberator is genuinely intriguing. It's Darrow's best acting so far - with nobody to guard his emotions from, Avon lets his inner conflict shine through. Despite all the snappy comebacks and veiled threats, he's clearly grown used to being part of Blake's crew and doesn't feel entirely comfortable abandoning them, not when he's their only chance.
This dilemma is only let down by its nonsensical solution - the three pursuit ships are set up as the minimum lethal force the Liberator can encounter, but since Avon can operate the ship fine on his own, I don't see why this would push him to rescue the crew. He could easily activate the battle computers, man the force wall and perhaps even get Orac to man the neutron blasters at the same time if necessary. So the resolution to his conflict feels empty.

The dynamic between the Kommissar and Ro isn't a bad one - a teacher who takes advantage of his relationship with his pupil is easy to hate, and Ro clearly is well-meaning, but nothing much happens here. It's just endless scenes of Ro cowering and him passive aggressively pushing him around without any signficant build-up to the obvious conclusion. And as for the Kommissar's assistant, I'm amazed he'd let the former take all the credit for the Liberator without blinking an eye. Their relationship was very vague.

NOTES

*The Federation freighter in this episode is shown via reused footage of the London. Though presumably they're just the same type of ship.

*What exactly is Orac supposed to be teaching Gan?

*The Liberator's Standard By Two appears to match the Federation's Time Distort Six.

*I love how quickly Blake turns Cally down. "But I could come-" "NO!" That's probably how Jan Chappell felt like talking to the producers.

*God, I miss those climate suit parkas. Jenna in particular looks absurd with her dress.

*Blake's talk of establishing a base is a bit out of the blue. It's a reasonable enough suggestion, but clearly ignored by the other writers.

*Apparently some time has passed, since the crew are suddenly at Series A levels of personal tension again.

*For the first and I hope only time, the rebels are referred to as "Resisters". Even worse, hours are simply called "time units".

*I'm not sure what to make of the Kommissar's suggestion that resistance is caused by faulty genes. Some kind of absurd racism?

*Gan's violent growling and staggering after getting shot with a dart gave me flashbacks to Evil Gan from Breakdown. Maybe the drugs briefly broke through the limiter?

*Ro suggests that the fuel from Horizon will enable the Federation to send ships into "new galaxies". So, um, that seems like a massive development that is absolutely never mentioned again.

*How exactly does Ro even think he's bettering his people? I know he's all for the civilized Federation, but it's not like he's opening any schools.

*Blake randomly dictating how prisoners eat in the Horizon mines is a bit weird.

*Cally suddenly has Counselor Troi empathic powers, directly contradicting Time Squad where she couldn't read people's minds unless they were telepathic themselves.

*The copy machine thing they used to torture Selma was just plain silly.

*"There's no organic damage, but the pain will kill her, yes." That's... not how that works. Is it?

*So, the Kommissar just forgot to warn his pursuit ships about the uber magnetic shield around the planet? That's more than a little oversight.

INFORMATION!

*The Federation Central Control, which the Kommissar tries to report to, was established in Weapon as Blake's next likely target.

*Zen derives the existence of Horizon and the Federation's annual visits there via a Federation cipher, which could be a reference to the cipher machine captured in Seek-Locate-Destroy. However, somehow he's also able to decode current Federation transmissions. Which means that either the cipher machine provided some kind of decoding instructions for more "basic" Federation communications or more likely, the crew captured another machine and covered their tracks better.

*Blake suspects that Avon might abandon the crew in a crisis. He last attempted to jump ship in Breakdown.

*Blake recognises the specific qualities of the ore mined from Horizon, hinting at his scientific background established in Cygnus Alpha.

*Ro's friend Paura was killed on the London during its voyage to Cygnus Alpha, presumably during Blake's failed hijack. This would ironically mean that Blake himself is responsible for his death, despite putting the blame on Ro.

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE

"I'm not expendable. I'm not stupid. And I'm not going."

CONCLUSION

Expendable. Stupid. And gone from my memory.