So you've got mano a mano combat on an alien world, watched by all-powerful aliens but around it there's actually some decent garnish. Firstly this is actually Travis' only episode without Servalan; he has a near-miss in Season 2 but this is it. This doesn't really make much difference to the character and he's given a Mutoid foil to bounce lines off instead, though at least he gets to spend the episode not getting told off. The Mutoids were seen in "Seek-Locate-Destroy" but this gives them a more thorough exploration - though what exactly they're for is a bit of a mystery. They don't have emotions or human needs but they do need a serum that's hard to find (and judging by the episode at a faster and more constant rate than a person needs food and water) and when you consider the Federation has and will continue to have an inexhaustible supply of loyal brainwashed troopers you wonder what the Hell it's all about. I mean, presumably processing Keira took funds and effort. Maybe they just wanted someone Travis could talk to without taking their helmet off? Dunno.
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The large amount of location shooting makes this one of the better-looking episodes of the first season and thanks to the imagination of the veteran Douglas Camfield it's the best-directed since "The Way Back". However, while it's a good episode for Blake, Jenna, Travis and that Mutoid it's not so good for everyone else. The other four crew members watching from the viewscreen would in theory make for some good Greek chorus fun (the idea is revisited with better results in Season 3's "Death-Watch") but the problem here is the characters are still somewhat undeveloped. Only Avon's vague disinterest really sticks in the mind. Vila (who Nation will never really got the hang of writing for), Gan and Cally largely just deliver clunking exposition and it's probably for the best they're not used much. The problem for them is that before the whole duel business there's a running space battle with Travis' trio of pursuit ships (three being established as enough to give the Liberator cause to run and thus always used to avoid pricey battles and allow maximum stock footage reuse) and it's Vila, Gan and Cally who don't really have any jobs on the bridge, so they dip out there too. Gan at least gets to teleport down to the surface early on but it's very much as third wheel.
Sinofar and Giroc - on a very dodgy set compared to the location footage, presumably there wasn't money to ship them out of the studio - are a bit airy fairy silly sci-fi for B7, or at least B7 up to this point. Largely the show would either make a point of avoiding totally knobbing Star Trek or totally knob Star Trek in a way that made the B7 universe look altogether more realistic or at least hard-edged (cf. the Federation being an oppressive dictatorship) but they're basically a straight lift of the repeated Trek trope of all-powerful bored aliens who enjoy mucking around with man for shits and giggles before disappearing with minimal consequences. Watch the stuff they do and remember it every time in the next 44 episodes someone claims something's impossible - you met a couple of god-ghosts who transported four people out of two different ships down to a dead planet and brought a Mutoid back to life, guys, it's entirely possible the teleport isn't working properly.
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One weird fact I learnt lately is that (going by the alternate chart that gives it 3 million extra viewers), the same week Doctor Who got its highest ever viewing figures, more people watched a repeat of Star Trek. So yeah, reworking an episode of a series that was still doing great guns for the been was incredibly cheeky.
ReplyDeleteShame Camfield didn't direct more (it would have been interesting to see him handle the gun battles), though this does suffer from an odd compromise over his falling out with Dudley Simpson of no music at all. I suppose we're lucky he got the theme tune.
It is a shame but then I think part of the reason Duel works is that it's so unlike the rest of B7, being the closest to Star Trek in atmosphere as much as content. I actually like the lack of music, gives it a weird dream-like feeling. It's a pretty druggy episode actually.
ReplyDeleteI suppose more wouldn't have done his heart much good.
DeleteAnother interesting fact: The Star Trek episode wasn't written as an adaptation of the short story. Gene Coon wrote what he thought was an original idea, and when the legal department spotted the unintentional similarity they decided it'd be easier to by the rights than chuck the script.
Clearly they were more conscientious than whoever signed off on Tel's work!
I suppose the fact the arch-villain Servalan was not present in Duel was a case that she could not fit into this story
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