Episode 4: Horizon

Last week, Rashel, an ex-slave, got freed from slavery, ordered around by a bald berk, then banished everyone from her planet, before setting up to play houses with Xerox-Blake. Presumably, she'll have lots of large-collared, curly-haired children and repopulate the planet I was forced to name British Home Stores.

This week, a completely different planet fights for its independence from Federation rule and slavery.

Freighter? I hardly knew her!

The episode starts with a shot of the same class of ship as The London - the ship on which Blake and the gang met up Well, not Cally or Zen , while being transported to Cygnus Alpha. It appears as if Vila and Jenna are thinking back to those months they spent together on The London, because we see them going all sadface, while churchy music plays.

Captain's holiday

On The Liberator's banquette, Cally's telling Blake that the crew are all stressed and it's causing all manner of illnesses. She's pumped them all full of lovely drugs, but it's practically leaking out of their ears. Blake accepts that they all need a wee holiday, but doesn't know where they can go.

David Haig as Pangol in The Leisure Hive Doctor who episodes that start with we all need a wee holiday are surprisingly common. As previously noted, Doctor 7 takes Mel on a lovely package deal involving psychopathic robot cleaners. The fourth Doctor takes Romana and K-9 to Brighton, where K-9 fetches a stick and gets full of seawater (true story). Then they go to the Leisure Hive where they meet Bernard off-of Four Weddings with green hair. The Doctor gets aged by a weird computer and spends the rest of the story with a long white beard and a necklace that strangles him, I'm betting he doesn't give it a favourable review on TripAdvisor.

Zen pipes up to tell them that the ship we saw in the opening shot wasn't just some wistful flashback, but a Federation freighter which is on a collision course with them right now, in the real-world present Our glorious future, of course .

The freighter is running minimal scans and is miles OK, parsecs away from anything interesting. Blake is intrigued. Zen tells him that the freighter is heading for a planet code named Horizon Well, at least the planets in this episode have names . So of course, Blake cancels the holiday and goes directly to Horizon.

Should've put a ring on it

Blake follows the freighter to Horizon and it flies through a bunch of rings, like it's playing Superman 64. Blake decides the rings look fun, so orders Jenna to fly through them too. This causes a VIDEO EFFECT to mess everyone right up:

But then everything's fine again. Sorry for worrying you.

Travel insurance

Blake decides to go down to the planet, on the off-chance it's like Disneyland, but free and with a no-questions-asked policy on freelance space-terrorists. In the teleport lounge, Blake admits he asked Jenna to accompany him because she's such a good pilot that Avon is less likely to leg it, if she's with him on the planet surface Blake is the king of terrible complements . While he's saying this, Avon creeps into the room and overhears him. #AWKWARD. Avon somehow sarcastically teleports them down to the planet's surface.

The part of Horizon in tonight's episode is played by Clearwell caves (plus a healthy amount of dry ice) in Gloucestershire. The same location has been reused by New Who a couple of times since. I won't ask Charlotte to pipe up. For her, New Who is like the Jefferson Starship to Original Who's Jefferson Airplane.

It was clearly marked in my contract. No New Who. Right under the bit about being paid, which also seems to have been overlooked.

Blake and Jenna are observed by a noisy camera which pokes out of a nearby rock. Ro, a slender geezer dressed in burgundy velvet with gold trim, watches them on his floating plasma screen. He alerts some Federation guards to the intruders and the guards scamper off toward Blake and Jenna.

/img/characters/ro.png Ro Ruler of Horizon Ethnic pawn Selma The headdresses

Blow pipes

Beads

Nips out The Fu Fighters

Ro is the king of Horizon, the duties for which appear to include monitoring. Jeeze, Ro: learn how to delegate.

Blake spots some native types working in a mine and passes word back to The Liberator.

Blow-off

The Federation guards catch up with Blake and Jenna but they've got some geezer with them with a ruddy great blow pipe. He sends both Jenna and Blake to sleep faster than William Shatner sings the greatest hits of David Gray. Ro spots their teleport bracelets and orders the guards to remove the jewelry and bring the prisoners to his palace, thus closing numerous potential plot holes.

In the teleport lounge, Avon suspects something's up on the planet's surface, as Blake's not called in. Cally feels that they're in trouble and Avon gives her a row for using her secret lady-power: telepathy, rather than his preferred method: cold, hard logic. Gan offers to go down and volunteers Vila to come with him.

Racking their brains

Ro's got Blake and Jenna tied to racks in his cave / palace. They start to come round and he quizzes them, in a slightly friendly way. Blake turns the tables and asks him if Horizon is a Federation colony. Ro claims it's not.

This is the first appearance of a sort of running joke in the episode: Blake appears to submit to questioning, but immediately bombards the interviewer with questions himself.

The Prime of Kommissar Jean Brodie

Elsewhere in the cave, a Kommissar and an Assistant Kommissar are discussing Ro. Seems he was taken away from Horizon as a child, in order to receive a Federation education, then returned to take his rightful place. The Kommissar was his trusted tutor and has just arrived on the freighter wot we saw at the start of the episode. The Kommissar tells Ro that production from the mine isn't meeting the quotas and is curious about Ro's prisoners.

/img/characters/kommissar.png Kommissar Kommissar (nominative determinism) / Tutor at the Central Educational Complex Evil face of the Federation Chips Chips Chips Goodbye, Mr. Chips Deep Purple

The Kommissar is played by William Squire who appeared in such productions as Jason King, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and a version of H.G.Wells' Invisible Man. But that is not the crowning glory of his page: later the same year that this episode of Blake's 7 was broadcast, he appeared as The Shadow in a fourth-Doctor story called The Armageddon Factor. Charlotte! Deets , please.

Armageddon out of here These days, fans of New Who will be used to the idea of a story arc. Back in the 70s certain years had a feel to them, mainly due to the Producer and Director involved (gothic horror, comedy ) but stories were normally stand alone. Land on a planet, defeat the baddies, then push off. The Key to Time was unusual in featuring six deliberately linked stories. The Doctor is given a charming assistant and a job reassembling some bits of key that have been scattered throughout the universe by the White Guardian. Presumably the Guardian is above doing his own tidying. We've all shared houses with people like that. The Shadow: If Skeletor became Mayor, then his mum forced him to wear a balaclava Anyway, Armageddon is a fairly anticlimactic end to the season, although we do meet Lalla Ward for the first time, who later regenerates into the second Romana. We don't get a regeneration scene with then both, which is a shame, but do see the two actresses on screen together. Apparently they were thrown into giggles by the line about K-9 being reduced to slag and clinker.

/img/characters/assistant.png He doesn't seem to have one Assistant Kommissar Lackey Clear Wi-Fi signal

Marmite

Servalan's show where different people compete to be her assistant, before she bumps them off Pure Purple

The assistant Kommissar is played by Brian Miller, who has been in all kinds of interesting stuff: New Who (2014), The Sarah Jane Adventures, Brazil as Mr. Archibald Buttle The man who is executed by mistake, instead of Robert De Niro's character and he supplied Dalek voices on Resurrection of the Daleks. But he got his face in front of the camera first on Doctor Who during Snakedance, a fifth-doctor story.

Dugdale from Snakedance: an almost literal snake-oil salesman Brian Miller is better known as Mr Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane). Well, better known to those of us who've read her autobiog. Anyway, I actually quite like Snakedance and Kinda, the preceding story that introduces the Mara theme. I'm not a big Fifth Doctor fan, but these two were interesting with some brave themes. Tegan, the mouthy Australian air hostess, gets really put through it by a malevolent source that drives her mad. There are some disturbing sequences that are quite dark, but frankly you wouldn't know it from the ridiculous outfit they make Martin Clunes wear. Because nothing is more attractive to the ladies than cloud themed shiny nighty paired with a single orange glove and solid gold, multi-pointed hat. That said, it's probably all the rage in Camden. Martin Clunes in Snakedance Worth mentioning that while Tegan is going through her mental torment, Nyssa spends the entire story of Kinda in the with a bit of a headache .

Ha ha - remember jokes? Good times. Well, now's the time for the jokes to stop, I'm afraid. I've tried to put Horizon in some sort of context below. I think Horizon is an attempt to acknowledge some of Great Britain's terrible behaviour in it's past, through a lens - both in terms of injustices (and worse) inflicted upon indigenous people, but also the attempt to civilise those people in British culture, with little or no regard for their own. It's ... not a happy story.

The 's struggle to come to terms with the end of empire The British Army fire upon a group of non-violent protesters, killing 379 and wounding 1,200 in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab. The hitherto peaceful protests for independence in Iraq turn violent. The British respond with gas and bombing campaigns. The book The Lost Dominion: The Story of England's Abdication in India by A. Carthill is published, predicting the end of empire in India. The Purna Swaraj (Declaration of the Independence of India) is made by the Indian National Congress, advocating self-rule for India. The Round Table Conferences discussing constitutional reforms in India end with significant disagreements remaining. The book Twilight in Delhi by the Indian novelist Ahmed Ali is published in English. Set between 1911 and 1919, it looks at the effects of colonialism. Between twelve and twenty-nine million Indians starve to death under the control of the British Empire. In India, Nationalist leaders representing different interests groups agree to a partition of the country. The British Nationality Act come into force, allowing any subject of the British Empire the right to work and live in the without a visa Immigration rates are around 3,000 per year. The King's African Rifles massacre 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters in Chuka, Kenya. Immigration rates are around 46,800 per year. The leader of the Mau Mau Uprising is captured by British Forces, effectively ending the conflict in Kenya. The Aden Emergency - an insurgency against the British in Aden - starts. British forces use torture on prisoners. The British withdraw from Aden in 1967. The series Till Death Us Do Part is first broadcast in the . The main character, Alf Garnett, is racist, but the show was intended to satirise his views. Curry and Chips is first broadcast in the . Spike Milligan blacks up to play an Asian immigrant. From the writer of Till Death Us Do Part. The Immigration Act restricts immigrants to those who have a work permit or whose parents or grandparents were born in the The sitcom Love Thy Neighbour is first broadcast in the . A couple from the West Indies moves next door to a white, working class couple. The movie Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures is broadcast. It's the tenth feature by Merchant Ivory Productions The episode of Blake's 7 Horizon is broadcast in the The film Gandhi is released in the . The titular part is played by Ben Kingsley.

This Orient? No, disorient

Blake and Jenna are being sort of tortured by a Disorientor VIDEO EFFECTS, which Blake understands (from his experience with torture) is intended to disorientate them Nothing gets past Blake. I bet he's worked out that ramekins are for the storage of sheep. .

Sarah-Jane and the Doctor during The Android Invasion These days, New Who barely has time to mentally torture any of the regulars. No locking up, no bad guy explaining the plot so the Doctor can defeat them, no running up and down corridors. Back in the 70s, barely a story went by without one of the cast being strapped to a glittering dentist's chair and practising their best tormented expressions. Here's a nice exchange from the Android Invasion: The Doctor: I feel disorientated

Sarah: this is the disorientation centre

The Doctor: that makes sense

Jenna passes out. The Kommissar tells his assistant to double the input of the Disorientor, which will probably kill Jenna. Ro doesn't seem happy at the thought of killing them, but nods his assertion to the order anyway.

What the hell is a Kommissar anyway? The word suggests either Commissary or Commissioner, but I doubt that was what was intended. I suspect it's closer to the Russian political officer, a role created in the Soviet Union to ensure that experienced military officers would be forced to follow the party line. Political officers might have less military experience than those they worked along side.

Gan and Vila are taken down by the blow-pipe man, less than two (screen) minutes after landing on Horizon It takes two darts to take down Gan, naturally .

Monopasium monarchy

Blake agrees to talk, but just to Ro. He tries to persuade him that the Federation are the baddies. Ro tells him that Horizon is one of only two planets which has Monopasium 239 - an element which is essential for hyper-spaceships which can travel between galaxies. Unfortunately, the ore is radioactive, so miners don't last long, before dying of radiation sickness.

Blake tells Ro about Paura, a man he met on The London who originally came from Horizon Paura doesn't seem to appear during Space Fall but then they were on The London for months , or to use its original name, Silmareno . Ro knew Paura, but was told that Paura had gone on a really, really long course, which would take the rest of his life. And then he'd go and live on a farm.

Jenna wakes up and Ro gives them both a drink of water out of the same cup, because he's such a primitive.

Mining is my minor

All of Blake's captured crew are put to work in the mines. Worst of all, the men are forced to work topless. This proves to be a damning indictment of the catering department.

Romana in the mines in Destiny of the Daleks Down t'pit Romana gets sent to work down the mines in Destiny of the Daleks. She gets to keep her top. It's a family show people. (Although Katy Manning, rather famously...)

Jenna meets Ro's bride-to-be Selma there. She explains that The Kommissar suggested to Ro that she go for training and when she refused, she was sent to work in the mines.

/img/characters/selma.png Selma Freelance miner Ro's moral compass Ro Photocopiers MacramÃ©

The hairstyles of A New Hope

Night's Watch cosplay

Sharing is caring

The Federation guard comes with a bowl full of food, which the miners scrabble for. Blake doesn't like this, and demands that they all take turns.

The problem with any story like this is that Blake and his crew are all white and (mostly) come from a Federation upbringing Cally aside . This means that if they are agents of change in such a situation, the people of Horizon end up swapping one set of white person ideas for a different set of white person ideas. The original inhabitants of Silmareno (to use Horizon's original name) are just passive pawns in this game. Having said that, taking command of the situation and imposing his own rules is a very Blake thing to do.

I've probably mentioned this before, but basically, as a superhero, the Doctor is really just a shaker-upper. For every story it is assumed that whatever is, is wrong, presumably according to his Time Lord code. (Actually not even that as he abandoned the Time Lords, so it's just the Doctor's code.) The Doctor lands, pisses off the authorities, somehow avoids anyone punching him in the face, blows up some expensive equipment and starts a revolution. Then he leaves. We never actually find out whether the resulting new set up was any better than the last one. Fortunately in many of these stories everyone you've been introduced to, bar the folk, gets killed off, so there's no-one to fill in a complaints form.

The Prince and the Paura

The Kommissar finds Ro watching Selma working in the mines on one of his creepy cameras. Ro questions the Kommissar about his friend Paura - the one Blake met on The London. The Kommissar denies Blake's tales and assures Ro that he and Ro are like brothers. Like those two nice boys from the pop-group Oasis .

Back on The Liberator, Orac has been researching Horizon The new name for Silmareno. Ask about our job-for-live guarantee! . He's found a list of people who've left the planet which the Federation has bumped off. Avon's not interested and wants to leave but Cally has a feeling that everyone is still alive. She teleports down with the information Orac has found. She's captured in less than a minute, setting a new record for Blake's crew. Avon's had enough of this jazz and decides to fly off in The Liberator.

Telepathic telegram

Cally's being tortured on the Disorientor by The Kommissar. By reading his mind she relays to Ro that the Kommissar has personally killed Ro's father. Then she proves her mental powers by telepathically warning him to watch out for the Kommissar's attempt to murder him by speaking directly into his brain.

Earlier episodes have established that Cally's telepathy-fu is not strong: she can send and receive messages only from people who open their mind to her. Who knows - perhaps the Kommissar is an exhibitionist and a part of him wants Ro to know what he's done.

Bargaining basement

Cally is carted off to the mines, perhaps literally. Ro needs to make a decision about his fiance, Selma, so he wanders off, to do some ruling. The Kommissar and his assistant have a wee chat. The assistant suggests Googling Blake, to see what comes up and reporting all this mischief to Federation central command. The Kommissar stops him: he already knows who Blake and his crew are and plans to turn them, and The Liberator in for a huge reward. He plans to split the reward with his assistant 100-0 in his own favour. His assistant reluctantly agrees to these terms.

Selma is taken from the mines. Blake finds one of the tiny cameras and asks to speak to the Kommissar.

On board The Liberator, Avon is making Orac run through The Liberator's Top Trump card. It looks like this:

1a The System The Liberator Required crew 1 (automatics can cover everything else) Food reserves (one person) 1,000 years worth Power Self-regenerating Combat strength Powerful enough to take on up to three Federation pursuit ships at once The Liberator (The System) Scorpio (Wanderer class planet hopper Mark II) Series V (Space Master) The Ortega

From this, he realises that he doesn't need Blake or any of the rest of the crew. And if he fancies a pointless argument, there's always Orac.

Miner difficulties

Blake is brought to Ro's throne room, with a blouse on, to cover up his revolutionary nipples. Selma is there too, in a powder blue number with some feathers across the shoulders. Blake warns the Kommissar that should they try and leave the planet, Liberator will blow up the freighter. He proposes that he stays and the rest of his crew are allowed to leave. Selma wants to let everyone go. Ro needs time to think about it, so sends Blake back to the quarry .

On board The Liberator, Orac intercepts a message from the assistant Kommissar to Federation Command warning about Blake and his crew and notifying them that they'll be overthrowing Ro shortly. Orac only reads out some of the message. But I like to think it continued on a little something like this...

Horizon: Secret mining planet in an up-and-coming part of the galaxy @federation-horizon @FederationCommand: Top priority signal to any Federation pursuit unit from Kommissar planet Horizon. Request assistance: ruler of Horizon unreliable and disposing of him. Rebel spaceship at grid reference 10 by 13WZ. Request you destroy this spaceship at once. Also inform Federation central control of this action. Await confirmation.

Federation Pursuit Flotilla 13 @screaming-crabs @federation-horizon: Coming to your immediate aid. Regret cannot relay your message to @FederationCentralControl. They are out of range. Planet fall two hours from now.

Prell, Encryption specialist by day, lover by night @theRealPrell @screaming-crabs @federation-horizon Are you idiots still using code 9? Any script kiddie could crack code 9. Get with the program, granddad. #L33T #HAXXOR

Carnell, freelance Psychostrategist. Find me on LinkedIn. Ask about my special ladies rate. @CarnellKnowledge @screaming-crabs @federation-horizon @theRealPrell I could have predicted this would happen.

Federation Pursuit Flotilla 13 @screaming-crabs @theRealPrell @CarnellKnowledge This is a secure channel. Do not force me to block you, or involve the authorities. I know people. I can get you banned.

Prell, Encryption specialist by day, lover by night @theRealPrell @screaming-crabs COME AT ME, BRO.

Zen tells Avon that @screaming-crabs consists of three pursuit ships. He enjoys the irony of exactly the number of ships Orac predicted would be too much for The Liberator to handle.

Camera obscurer

Against his better judgement, Avon decided to teleport down to Horizon, but asks Orac to put him down somewhere where there won't be any of those pesky cameras. Avon's brought a detector with him It's the same detector which Cally used on him during Orac, to check for radiation and uses it to destroy the cameras which pop out of the shrubbery. He finds the mine and blows away four Federation guards, then is startled by the sight of Blake's nipples and almost blows him away too:

Ro's discovered that all of his surveillance equipment - even the stuff which Avon hasn't blown up - has been disabled. Selma tries to persuade him he's about to get murdered and says he must hang with Blake and his crew. Ro refuses and demands that Selma flees the palace, for her own safety.

In the mines, Blake and his crew have found their cache of weapons and teleport bracelets and return to The Liberator. They look all weird, topless under the studio lights and smeared with dirt It appears as if the make-up team was given approximately five minutes to replicate the cast's distressed appearance from the location shooting .

The torture device used on Selma

Death by office equipment

The Kommissar arrives and Ro asks him about the broken scanners. Selma has been captured and The Kommissar tries to persuade Ro to interrogate her. Ro reluctantly agrees. Selma has her hand put in a sort of torture photocopier. She doesn't give anything up, then faints, pulling her hand out of the machine at the same time. The Kommissar suggests that Ro is a good leader for not appearing to have any emotion.

Fisher Price record player Why does the torture photocopier have a handle? Is this his side line? Like those people who are nail technicians and carry their box of varnish and files about in a briefcase? (It also looks like Fisher Price my first record player. Not that I'm old enough to remember that.)

On The Liberator, Blake has a plan to teleport inside the throne room. Avon is working on finding the co-ordinates.

Dekommissioned

Daftly, the Kommissar admits to Ro that he would have killed him, had Ro gone against the wishes of the Federation. Ro says he needs a little lie down, and wanders off. When he returns, he's dressed in his traditional garb. The assistant Kommissar, startled by his costume, goes for his blaster. Blake, who has just teleported down, hits him with a shot first, then points his blaster at the Kommissar. Ro raises a blowpipe and the Kommissar gets a dart to his tit before Blake can pull the trigger, or however the blaster works.

It is worth mentioning Ro is also sporting a solid gold multi pointed hat. Maybe I was wrong and the ladies DO love impractically heavy lampshade headgear.

The Kommissar collapses onto the Disorientor. Ro has not used a stun dart. The Kommissar dies.

Ro thanks Blake for saving his life and offers him a place on Horizon, if he's passing. Ro intend to fight the Federation, should they return to attempt to mine their lovely Monopasium 239. Then Blake teleports away, which blows their tiny primitive minds.

Event Horizon

Upstairs in The Liberator, the three pursuit ships have arrived and are preparing their attack. Zen and the battle computers Well, that's my synth-pop band name sorted advise him to leg it, but Blake just sits there. All three ships explode on the force wall, because apparently it's so top secret even the @screaming-crabs don't know about it.

Watch Horizon on YouTube