TV Review - Blake's 7: S1E07 Mission to Destiny

After introducing Servalan and Travis as the effective face of the Federation in "Seek-Locate-Destroy" the series initially alternated encounters between them and the crew for six episodes with self-contained stories that took a more peripheral approach. Actually, the next five would all be self-contained and could work in any order before the twelfth episode, "Deliverance", sets up the first season finale. This is one of the Federation's episodes "off", the second and last of the season to not feature them in anything other than a parting reference. There seems to be a simple reason for this; having taken the money to write all 13 episodes of the series himself, Terry Nation often used to retell with some humour how draining this was, and of pacing around his house telling his wife there were no more stories to tell. "Mission to Destiny" presumably comes after all the stories ran out.



Because "Mission to Destiny" is just a random murder mystery in space. The Liberator stumbles across an old shuttle with the crew asleep and one murdered and the crew just decide to get involved. There have been - and will be again - worse ideas for a B7 episode but few are as blatantly unimaginative as this one; it would take minimal work to rework it for basically any TV series you'd care to mention. The crew of the shuttle when roused turn out to be just the right spread of characters to create a template whodunnit; considering the titular mission involves transporting an invaluable crop neurotope across the galaxy you wonder why some of these sketchy characters have been invited along in the first place.

There's also a staggering use of convenience. As a fan of Doctor Who I always used to find it quite irritating that the Doctor and his sidekick would spent so much of the first episode or so trying to persuade the powers that be of where they landed that they weren't dangerous, and always liked any episode that found a half-decent way around this. But "Mission to Destiny" simply has its' drugged-out space farmers awaken from an artificial sleep to find a murdered crewmate and a group of strangers who've teleported aboard and do not for a single second think this boarding party might have anything to do with it. I mean, they're right because of course Vila or Jenna didn't murder Rafford, but seriously - they even go on a wild goose chase looking for a possible stowaway before acknowledging stowing away would be impossible! For God's sake Tel, you could have killed twenty minutes having the Liberator crew under suspicion, span it out into a two-parter and binned off "Project Avalon". And later on Blake then leaves Avon and Cally on the ship while he takes the isotope on to Destiny, leaving the pair with a bunch of people he doesn't really know.

And yet somehow despite the random nature of the adventure and the cruiser's idiotically trusting crew it's alright. The characters are crudely defined but defined nonetheless and the acting's largely good, or at least good enough. The real triumph though is the unexpected forefronting of Avon. It's a bit weird that he'd care so much about the murder but then it's odd that any of the Liberator crew would be too fussed, so why shouldn't Avon take the lead just because it utterly contradicts the cold, logical self-interest character he's been so far? Paul Darrow certainly takes the opportunity with both hands and while it's a long way off this possibly planted the germ of him being a viable lead. And yes, he batters Sara but then she was planning to murder him and everyone else, so fair enough really. God knows what it was all about, maybe Gareth had to stage a one-man performance of King Lear on one of the studio days. He gets to lead the initial boarding party but there's not much space for most of the rest of the regulars to do anything.

That early change-around aside it's all inessential and as said very flawed and odd structurally  And yet somehow it's strangely enjoyable and rarely all that boring; the neutrotope is a smart macguffin and it's interesting to see some colonists who seem to not care about the Federation one way or another.