Damage Control feels exciting and dangerous. Its disaster movie/lost in space premise is a fantastic hook for the new season.
WRITTEN BY
Trevor Baxendale. I haven't liked all his stories, but I will admit he's one of the best at capturing the voices of these characters.
PLOT
The Liberator is hurling uncontrollably into deep space. Its crew are now on a desperate mission to repair the ship, based on vague clues left by their defunct flight computer. Meanwhile, Tarrant continues to struggle with his recent trauma.
ANALYSIS
Although the original Blake's 7 series visited the distant edges of the galaxy (or galaxies, depending on who was writing), it rarely felt like the Liberator was truly lost and alone. This idea is of course hardly original in science fiction, but it does feel fresh for this particular show. All the squabbles of the Federation have been left far behind, and all that's left is a group of damaged people in a damaged spaceship out in the middle of nowhere, trying to survive.
The story is really very simple (solve the mystery, get rid of the baddie), but it's carried by this newfound sense of mystery. Where are they in space? What is Zen doing? What is this planet the ship is flying to? What's down there exactly? What's in the creepy glowing caves? The puzzles were fun to work out, and at the same time you had the tension from everything (ship and crew) being on the edge of falling apart. Tarrant and Cally in particular are so frayed at the edges, so Baxendale smartly pairs them up during the second half so they can help each other. Meanwhile, Avon, Vila and Dayna go adventuring in an ancient labyrinth straight from a Lucas/Spielberg movie. It's a good time.
The second half is slightly weak. I'm not a fan of Zeera Vos at the best of times, and I feel that having her turn up here damages the idea of the Liberator being helplessly lost and alone. Her subpar Travis shtick brings a touch of the mundane that this script did not need, especially when she becomes the main threat inside the alien caverns on the planet. The episode would have been significantly better if Baxendale chose (or was allowed) to develop the environment of the planet to the full instead of distracting us with Zeera. I also don't fully understand how Tarrant and Cally recover from their mental stresses. I get the idea that they're supposed to support each other, but there's never a specific moment where they seem to get better or have some realization that restores their confidence. They're just inexplicably fine at the end.
Still, it's nothing that detracts from the experience. Obviously, the main purpose of Damage Control is to set up the new status quo for the season in a reasonably entertaining and plausible way, and this it accomplishes.
CHARACTERS
Paul Darrow used to say that the writers always gave Avon two distinct motives for any action: one evil, the other good. This way, you could always arrive at your own interpretation.
But I would argue that this was more of a guideline than a rule in the original series, and that Darrow's own performance often decided which was the real truth. Terminal is a great example. Avon could be rescuing Blake for treasure or sentimentality... but Darrow's visibly devastated face when hearing about Blake's death makes it very clear which is the intended reason. Or at least it makes Avon's sentimentality much more plausible.
In the audios, both Darrow's detachment (presumably caused by ailing health) and the writers' insistence on absolute ambiguity has become so total that it's hard to believe there's a human being in Avon. He's become more of an idea than a person, a mythical larger than life figure who is omniscient and beyond human concerns. He's never angry or amused or intimate, he always knows more than anyone else, every word is a manipulation. The show has forgotten the radicalised white collar worker on a crazy power trip, and replaced him with a perpetually brooding 4D chess player. He's just not that interesting.
On the other hand, the audios continue to serve Steven Pacey remarkably well, and vice versa. I really loved that Tarrant was genuinely willing to sell the Liberator to save his own skin. It's sometimes hard to remember that he started out as a mercenary and doesn't have the same emotional connection to the ship as Blake's original crew. It was also such a contradiction to the heroic image Tarrant likes to perpetuate that you immediately felt how brutally traumatised he's been. All his early bravado has been knocked out of him, and you can now easily see how he evolved into the humble, mature version of the character we see in Series D (let's just ignore Assassin).
I think Cally's character greatly benefits from the timeline placing of the audios. She's such a non-entity in Terminal that you could really do anything with her. All the important Cally storylines are already in the past, so Big Finish can go wild and write some storylines that thematically hint towards her upcoming death. This is a little taste of that. Cally's breakdown only seems to last a single scene, but it's an impactful one, with her huddling with Avon, confessing her fears and utter exhaustion. The crew's moral and mental deterioration (that becomes a main theme for Series D) is palpable. Everything's going downhill now.
NOTES
- Ever since Farscape, I've always loved when sci-fi includes the slingshot maneuver. It's just one of the coolest tropes ever.
- At one point, Avon activates Orac only to say "I don't remember asking for your opinion". Why'd you switch him on then? Feels like the sound editor added the switch-on noise to justify him saying something at the end of the scene. Conversely, there's another scene where Tarrant and Cally talk about the total silence on the Liberator, and it's spoiled by the constant drone of Orac in the background lol. They should've switched the two. Have Orac be active throughout the earlier scene and only switched on at the end of the latter.
- I love the little nods to Terry Nation, with the voray scan, the tranquilizer patches, getting "kitted up".
- While I enjoyed Tarrant and Cally's scene by the porthole window, I couldn't help wishing they'd reused the observation dome from Warship. It feels like the writers have forgotten that room exists. And it would've made perfect sense here.
- I don't understand the purpose of teasing that Zen is up to no good. I get that Zen was a little shady in the early episodes of Blake's 7, but this is late Series C era.
- "I'm not a scavenger, I'm a predator!" Zeera is such a cringeworthy character.
- It's weird how Cally and Tarrant reversed their stance on whether or not to shoot at the pursuit ship. It's Tarrant who brought up the idea, while Cally insisted on trying to communicate. Then Tarrant is all about cutting a deal and Cally is the one who uses the gun?
- Can the Liberator really fly completely on manual, without a computer? Breakdown suggested otherwise. But I suppose Orac might be helping somehow.
INFORMATION!
- This episode is a direct sequel to Death of Empire, dealing with the immediate consequences.
- Avon mentions that Cally has been in a telepathic trance before, alluding to her various possession stories.
- Zen previously used telepathy to possess someone in Cygnus Alpha (when he took control of Jenna).
- Vila mentions that Blake used to force the crew to take routine medical exams.
- Dayna performs the Voray scan on Cally, last seen in Breakdown.
- Zeera Voss travels on the Starburst class of pursuit ship, mentioned in Seek-Locate-Destroy.
- Vila screams "wait for meee" and runs after someone, a cute callback to Cygnus Alpha.
- Avon alludes to the Federation's previous attempt to deport them to a penal colony.
- Tarrant mentions his brothers Deeta and Dev.
- Vila describes his thievery as "more of a vocation than a lifestyle", much like he did in The Way Back.
- Cally reminds Orac that he was able to take direct control of the Liberator when they first met, in Orac.
ORAC: "Vila could have done this in a couple of minutes."
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