TV Review - Blake's 7: S4E03 Traitor

Robert Holmes didn't actually contribute anything to the third season (his script "Sweetly Dreaming... Slowly Dying", which doesn't sound like a very B7 title but then cancelled scripts always sound weird, was abandoned as unworkable) but did contribute two to Season 4. "Traitor" was the first and has the task of retouching with the Federation while also getting the crew back on track as revolutionaries while also bringing Servalan back into the mix; the result is another story with a lot of work to do.

Firstly the Federation seem to be undergoing a major resurgence thanks to their pacification programme, heavily dependent on a new medical laser that instantly makes rebels docile. Presumably there's a new unnamed president back in charge and he/she is clearly doing a much better job than Servalan, who (perhaps fittingly considering her career beforehand) used brute force and military threat whereas Pylene-50 seems more a throwback to the first season's early episodes; the dosed-up Helot seen in the opening scene is close to the civilians seen in "The Way Back". The script does a good job of making the previously-unmentioned Helots seem like determined, doughty fighters and a list of conquests makes the Federation suddenly seem a lot more credible.

The crew seem to be back on a more proactive path too, despite lessened resources. Avon certainly seems more driven; maybe the more subdued crew allow him to focus or maybe he realises he wasted his tenure in command of the Liberator effectively waiting for Blake to show up and now needs to come out of the wings himself, or maybe it's that he needed to be out of the comfort zone of a ship that could outrun anything. Either way it is nice to have some direction back; Season 3's internal bickering was fun but ran its' course. But why are there sunloungers on Scorpio?

The format for Season 4 was intended to be that Avon would build up an army of allies across the year for an anti-Federation alliance; this doesn't really come off due to the impracticalities of recalling guest actors at the time (contracts were episode-based, so a cameo by Hunda or someone in "War Lord" would have meant booking the actor for both episodes even if it was all filmed at the same time) and the need to keep the filming order fluid. More often the solution is that the allies are killed off but here Helotrix is all but free at the end, at which point the crew just run off anyway, which is a bit incongruous. It's another 'if only it was being filmed now' moment.

After two borefests if anything there's too much plot going on here; the Helotrix threadhas enough to sustain the episode and the Sleer thread takes up too much space. The mysterious Sleer is rapidly revealed to be Servalan under a new identity, clearing up a few loose ends and effectively doing the job she took it upon herself to do last year (roving trouble-shooter) while presumably biding her time for another bid at power. It's no great surprise she survived "Terminal" (again, she was a major asset to the series which had for the second year running lost long-serving elements) but I can't help but feel blowing the mystery out in about 30 minutes is a shame. 

Obviously if they're paying Jacqueline Pearce they want her face on screen but with her contracted for eight episodes it might have been better to hold her back for a couple, especially as she's not got anywhere near the average screen-time in most that she had last season. This is more like Season 2, where one appearance she has a major role and in others she only has a handful of scenes, often not even meeting the crew. But it might have been a better idea to at least have a whole episode of a body double or someone else shadowy playing Sleer to allow a bit of mystery to bubble over; here it just trips up the double agent plot already going on. It also makes it three episodes on the trot where something's happened just to get it over and done with; a quarter of the season gone and the basic building blocks are still being put in place - though to be fair this is really just because they worked so hard to kill the show in "Terminal".

Over-abundant plot aside there are actually some nice character moments throughout; Tarrant and Dayna acting idealistically down on Helotrix while Vila gets to air some acidic feelings about the former, though on other occasions he does seem to be complaining just to fill silence. Only Avon blows the deal; here he seems to be objecting to everything out of sheer stubborness and once again Paul Darrow's performance is bad; his ham in the final scene especially is dreadful, though he laughs far too hard at a mild Orac line earlier. Soolin meanwhile has to make do with a few second-hand Cally lines, another fifty minutes of her character hanging in limbo - though she gets to recognise Federation pursuit ship formations. But what is with Dayna suddenly asking if she'll blend in on Helotrix? One of B7's more interesting things is that her race isn't brought up either way and now suddenly in "Power" Pella points out her skin colour for no reason and then she's asking if there are black people on the planet when she's never given a shit before and neither has anyone else. Is it an attempt to show Helotrix as an enlightened colony under the heel of the fascistic Federation? Vere Lorrimer wasn't the most progressive of thinkers but you doubt he'd be sending Chris Boucher notes saying "mention Dayna is black more often" or anything... And Josette Simon can't say "gallant", which is quite irritating.

The guest characters do well, though - Hunda is plausible (and allows Holmes some cheeky observation on typical lefty rebels by noting so many of them are former academy teachers) and Leitz is suitably oily but the stand-outs are the General and Major Quute, two suitably colonial officers. Quute is clearly bored senseless by the General's endless anecdotes and boorish observations but unable to simply call his superior a stuffy old twat. Plus it's nice to see some traditional Federation Troopers back - when did we last see those? On top of that the fight scenes are rather good despite a parping Dudley Simpson score running through most of them, and for once the thing doesn't look like it's taking place in a lightbox. Against that is the overdone comical appearance of Forus in his neckbrace, phone flex and John Lennon glasses combo, played by Edgar Wreford as a Poundland Doctor Strangelove. 

"Traitor" has lots of good bits and is undoubtedly the high point of the first half of the season but that's not exactly a sign of greatness. It's less than the sum of its' parts and feels like a loose collection of decent scenes which need some stronger glue to find them together - much of the first half of the year will suffer from feeling like it could be made servicable with another draft and a tighter hand from the script editor, and as it's nearly good it's perhaps more frustrating here than in the outright dogs around it. It's a step in the right direction but a very uncertain one with some key weaknesses (notably Avon) still needing to be seriously addressed.