Animals (1981) Review

 

There are few bright spots in Animals. 

WRITTEN BY

Allan Prior, who I suppose could be called the most 'workmanlike' of the show's writers, seeing as how all of his episodes are pretty much disposable filler. 

PLOT

Dayna travels to Bucol Two to recruit her former tutor Justin, a geneticist, to Avon's resistance movement. There, she discovers that Justin is involved with Federation experiments into radiation-resistant command troops...

ANALYSIS

Like Prior's previous episode Volcano, the biggest problem with Animals is that for the majority of the runtime, nothing of substance happens. It's all talk, talk, talk and the script is nowhere near interesting enough to justify that. Most of the crew get caught up in a truly enthralling subplot about fixing the ship's septic tank whilst Dayna gets eyed by her creepy teacher for half an hour. 

Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed Servalan's role in this episode. We see her passively investigating Bucol Two, interrogating subordinates, assassinating political enemies... it's the most Supreme Commander-ish she's been since Star One. It's not much, but her scenes did at least hold my attention. 

With Mary Ridge behind the camera once more, there were a few neat directorial flourishes. The crane shot as the crew observe Servalan's ship taking off was a great way to finish off the episode. I also loved the close-up of Avon dramatically unholstering his pistol upon hearing where Dayna was kept. It almost made me forgive the disastrous Mutoid redesign and some of the awkward action towards the end(I'd like to believe that Avon magically finding a different way into the sealed compound was scripted, rather than a fault of Ridge).

The design of the Animals appealed to me. They look like creatures straight out of folklore! However, I would have much preferred to see that design used on an actual alien race, because I can't imagine anyone specifically creating them to look that way. It didn't help that the show had already done this exact concept in The Web. 

CHARACTERS

It's obvious from the script that we're supposed to have a lot of empathy for Justin, and care about the bond that he has with Dayna. The first problem is that Peter Byrne was clearly born to play slimy characters, or at least is doing his very best to be one here. His googly-eyed, maniac expressions get old very fast when you realise that he's not written to be a villain, and it turns a potentially touching relationship into something very creepy(even ignoring the implications of their backstory). 

The second problem is that Josette Simon is terrible. I'm glad she went off to have a great career and I hate having to come back to this every other episode, but she's actually devolved from underwhelming to a legitimately awful actress in Blake's 7. At this point, it's just cringeworthy to watch her play up her attraction to Justin, the weeping... ugh. It's wooden and it has no subtlety, the worst combination imaginable. 

I don't know if Pearce liked this script or was just feeling tired, but she's more lowkey than she has been in ages, which is partially why I was reminded of her earlier performances. Suddenly, there's a sense of gravitas and authority to Servalan again, which caught me offguard. Maybe Dayna's love for Justin reminded him of Don Keller? Who knows. I do wish they'd spared us the vulture outfit, though. What the hell was that? And why is nobody wondering why a Federation Commissioner dresses like a diva?

Hey, Kevin Stoney's back to be wasted again! Joban and Ardus are definitely the same character in my headcanon. It's too good of a connection not to make, especially as Stoney's character recognises Servalan by her voice. With that context, it's also somewhat satisfying to see him robbed of the confidence and power he had back in Hostage. 

Not much of the rest of the crew, but I did have some fun watching Avon and Vila negotiate the quantity of wine Vila gets for cleaning out the septic tank. And of course, Paul Darrow's chairknocking and slip are the stuff of legend.

NOTES

*I wish any of the crew thanked Slave. Just once. Poor guy is trying his best. 

*Why did Dayna not respond to Tarrant's call over the bracelet? She just ignores the beeping for no explained reason. 

*I adore Avon's grumpy phone call to Tarrant after the latter got the ship smashed up. He's definitely cutting Tarrant's allowance.

*Whoever decided that modelwork in space should be replaced by CSO should've been fired. All of it, ALL OF IT has dated badly. Couldn't they tell? They reused both the awful composite of the three pursuit ships from Stardrive and the wonderful model shot from Duel and couldn't see which one worked better?

*For a gun expert, Dayna sure holds her finger on the trigger often. 

*Justin appears to have invented the same mixture of adrenaline and soma as Cally did. I wonder if that was supposed to be their 'thing' in the original version of the script, which featured Cally in Dayna's role... now that I think of it, would this have made Justin the original Gustav Nyrron?

*I don't think much of Servalan's new beige spaceship set. It's a bit cluttered. And beige. 

*Given her predilection towards violence, what is Dayna's problem with the animals? Probably another leftover of Cally's personality. 

*I love how everyone in futuristic sci-fi shows just know how to repair spacecraft because they do. Like, I see Vila fiddling with a console and I'm like "how does he know what he's doing, he breaks electronic locks for living!!"

*The Scorpio has inertial guidance glycolene ballast channels. I just wanted to say inertial guidance glycolene ballast channels. It's peak technobabble.

*Why would a test flight of the Scorpio take 24 hours when ordinary lift-off takes one? Is getting drunk part of the routine or something?

*I thought having Dayna be brainwashed was quite interesting, given that the show's dabbled in it before(going all The Way Back), but the way it's executed here is hilariously bad, and it doesn't even make much sense. Dayna is conditioned to despise Justin, right? But how does that make her obedient to the Federation?

*Not sure why Servalan latches onto Joban/Ardus using her name when he was clearly just listing people who might've known about the Bucol project... which is the question that she asked him.

*"They have, the animal! They, have, him!" 10/10 line delivery, Jackie.

*I swear they reused the same audio of Simon yelling "Just-IN!" three times straight at the end.

INFORMATION!

*Justin was one of Dayna's specialist tutors on Sarran, and a friend of Hal Mellanby's. 

*Most of Justin's students died during the (Inter)Galactic War. His research facility on Bucol Two was specifically set up during the War to allow Federation troops to enter devastated, radioactive areas. 

*Avon wants Justin on Xenon to potentially help counteract the pacification drug introduced in Traitor. 

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE SOOLIN QUOTE

VILA: "Why do I get all the messy jobs?"
SOOLIN: "Typecasting?"

CONCLUSION

Is this the bottom of the barrel? Well, it's not far, but I think I'll name Volcano as the worser episode, just because of how completely devoid it was of anything engaging. Here, there were a few things that I remembered. 

Still pretty draining, though.