Sabotage is a stunningly good concept trapped in a stunningly bad story.
WRITTEN BY
No specific credit.
PLOT
The Liberator crew infiltrates a Federation chemical plant in the Arctic, with the intention of neutralising the pacification drug that keeps the civilian population under the Administration's thumb. There, they stumble onto a stasis chamber containing two frozen chemists from 1994.
ANALYSIS
What makes this so frustrating is that this is most likely the only canonical Blake's 7 adventure to feature a meeting between Blake and someone from contemporary(or close enough) Earth, before the Federation. You'd think this would be an iconic, mindblowing encounter that would change the man forever. A chance to talk to someone who hails from a version of the human race that didn't systematically oppress its citizens! A part of history that Blake no doubt idolizes with every fiber of his being.
It's an idea that's bursting with oppurtunity for good drama, yet Sabotage wastes it on an extremely mediocre heist-type yarn. The writing is padded and drawn out to the extreme, with entire paragraphs detailing the technobabble it takes to open doors, overelaborate descriptions of nonexistent props(perhaps hoping the BBC would make them and sell toys?). We're never really given a clear understanding of what Blake's mission is about. What is the exact nature of the facility he's attacking? Aren't there any other ones? Why are the 1994 scientists even kept there in the first place?
And once Blake does meet them, the conversation is mostly off-screen(or off-page, as it were), and purely exists to catch the 1994 characters up with Federation history so they could be of some use to the Liberator crew. In terms of story, Blake could have easily just found a computer, and made the antidrug himself. The tremendous discovery of men from our time only exists to fulfil a minute part of the story, and is otherwise irrelevant.
Who am I kidding? The whole thing feels irrelevant.
CHARACTERS
Pretty much everyone is off. Blake expresses no awe towards the 1994 scientists, no interest in life before the Federation(then again, he's somehow able to recognise an old telephone switchboard, so perhaps he's been extremely well educated in ancient history). He also seems extremely non-chalant about being on Earth again, despite both visits in the show being major events.
Vila forgets his cowardice and volunteers to touch a live wire and go exploring on his own. He also has no idea how to open a locked door that has no keyhole(????).
Avon is swiftly taken out of action by a twisted ankle(?????????) and his only contribution is explaining the process of opening a security door without a tripping an alarm in painstaking detail.
And Cally and Jenna are there.
Not much more luck with the 1994 scientists, of whom there are two. One is Mitchell, and the other pointedly has no name. The author draws attention towards the fact as if it meant something, but if it did, only he knows why. Despite being chemists, they're evidently incompetent, accidentally creating a poison gas in the middle of the room. Mitchell does not appear all that interested in exploring a brave new world, and instead pleads with the crew to put him back in the freezer. What a miser.
NOTES
- This story was published in the 1980 Blake's 7 annual.
- The actual mission doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The crew want to stop the Federation from using its pacification drugs on the populace by lacing it, but wouldn't the Federation catch on soon enough and start using untainted drugs again? And is there really only one facility for producing the drug? This seems awfully short-sighted.
- It has to be mentioned that the focus on the Federation's pacification drug is very similar to the main storyline of Series D, which hadn't been produced yet.
- The plot depends on the crew having gas masks that filter out the poison in the air, which catches the troopers offguard. Despite the fact that gas masks are part of the standard trooper uniform!
- Amusingly, there's several oblique references made towards the Cold War despite the scientists originating from 1994, three years after it ended. The American scientists are paranoid of the crew being "anti-American". Blake makes a comment about things being more 'equal' in the Old Calendar.
- This marks the second time that the Liberator has returned to Earth, after Pressure Point.
- After being injured, Avon selflessly orders Cally to fend for herself and leave him. He does the exact same thing with Blake in Hostage.
- Blake tells the scientists a truncated recollection of how he assumed command of the Liberator, as seen in Space Fall.
- The mind-control drug that Blake hopes to destroy was seen in action in The Way Back.
"Of course we know about chemicals. We are chemists."
No comments:
Post a Comment