The Haunting of the Liberator

Here’s a hypothesis to mull over: the reason that so much television science fiction, particularly that from the 1960s and 1970s, is not very good, stems from the fact that it simply wasn’t possible to make a living writing SF TV scripts back then. (And this was when TV SF was a much more frequent element of the TV schedules.) As a result, most ostensibly SF TV shows ended up with scripts written by journeyman authors who were likely much more comfortable knocking out episodes of Z Cars and Crown Court. As we have discussed, Terry Nation, arguably one of the most prominent creators of SF throughout the 1960s and 1970s, actually spends most of his time writing nothing of the sort – if you’re an SF purist, anyway. Nation writes action-adventure stories, often very well, but genuine science fiction? Not so much.

And so it is something of a surprise whenever an actual genre writer gets tapped to contribute to broadcast SF. Christopher Bidmead had a go at getting proper SF writers on board to write Dr Who for its 1980-81 season (perhaps in the process misunderstanding the essential nature of that series, but not being a Dr Who fan it’s not for me to comment); one of the names Tom Baker mentioned in an interview as a possible candidate was Tanith Lee, a prolific writer of fantasy and SF novels and short stories.

It never came to pass, but the very fact Lee’s name was in the frame at all was probably the result of her having already been employed by Chris Boucher to write two episodes of Blake’s 7. Given that just the other day I was suggesting that Blake’s 7 isn’t really a proper SF show, Lee’s first contribution, Sarcophagus, has a damn good try at proving that it can be. Put together with Rumours of Death, it constitutes a major late-season spike in quality for the show – the fact that both episodes are directed by Fiona Cumming is clearly not a coincidence.

The quality of Sarcophagus (yes, let’s not beat about the bush, this is another good one) is even more surprising given it is that usually ill-favoured beast, a bottle show – an episode constructed to take place largely on a programme’s standing sets and featuring a minimum of guest characters. This is usually done for budgetary reasons, though Cumming manages to squeeze a fairly lengthy film sequence into the opening moments of the episode.

This takes place in what looks like an exotic pavilion on an eerie alien world, where robed and masked figures perform a strange ritual; it’s all a bit interpretative dance-y and (initially at least) wilfully impenetrable, until the figures all withdraw and the pavilion lifts into space – yes, it was a spaceship all along.

The alien ship eventually crosses the path of the Liberator, which is on the way to do a little speculative prospecting on an asteroid with unusual properties (the crew still seem to just be wandering about doing different things from week to week). However, the appearance of the alien, apparently a derelict, puts an end to this, as they decide to go aboard – even after it seems to start sending psionic messages to Cally. Almost at once things get a little bit ominous, as the teleport seems to be malfunctioning and the alien ship is completely unmanned, except for a dessicated corpse. Something causes the ship to explode, and Avon and Vila are only saved from the blast by Cally’s bravery.

Before the crew can get back to their plan originally in progress, it becomes apparent that they have brought more than dust back with them from the alien craft: a presence which has somehow bonded with Cally by means of her telepathy and has the power to disrupt the functioning of both Zen and Orac. The intruder takes Cally’s form and proceeds to have a good try at taking over the ship, informing the others that she has a liking for ‘intelligent menials’ – slaves, to you or me – but this is not an essential requirement. If need be she will kill them all and operate the ship alone…

This almost sounds like a Star Trek plot – in some ways it’s about as close together as the two series ever get – but it’s hard to imagine a Trek episode indulging in the same extravagant weirdness which makes Sarcophagus so memorable. This is here in the episode right from the beginning, with the long scene at the start of the alien’s funeral. The episode is crediting the audience with both intelligence and attention span here, as the significance of this only becomes apparent later (and even then is partly implied). The masked figures seem somehow to be archetypes, performing ritual functions – the Clown, the Troubadour, the Warrior, and a more ambiguous individual dressed entirely in black. On-the-ball viewers may guess what’s coming and not be entirely surprised when members of the Liberator crew later appear in those same robes – it’s no surprise that Vila is the Clown and Tarrant the Warrior, though presenting Dayna as the Troubadour feels like a stretch (though Josette Simon even gets to sing a bit this episode and does not disgrace herself). Avon, of course, is the man in black.

In the end the episode turns out to be as much about Avon as it does Cally – or about their relationship, anyway. One gets the impression that Tanith Lee was a fan of the show before coming on board to write it, as she certainly seems very familiar with the characters and their past history – she still struggles to find anything to do with Tarrant beyond just making him a loud alpha-male bully though, but he does get a fairly good speech acknowledging the fraught nature of his relationship with Avon. There’s a sense in which the episode almost feels like a certain flavour of fan fiction, in that it’s predicated on the existence of an unspoken attraction between Avon and Cally which, to be perfectly honest, there has been very little sign of in past episodes (I suppose if you look hard at Mission to Destiny there may be something going on there, but Blake’s 7 is very much a show of its time where this sort of thing wasn’t wallowed in). It’s implied that Cally is incapable of killing Avon, due to her feelings for him, which turns out to be rather important given the alien’s bond with her. Jan Chappell makes the most of an unusually good episode for her, and Paul Darrow supports her well.

Once again Fiona Cumming lands all the key beats and gives the episode the atmosphere and treatment it deserves; as I’ve mentioned, the direction really shines in both this and the previous episode. (Now that I think about it, her work on the various Dr Who stories she did was also pretty good, though my non-fannish recollection is that the scripts usually weren’t as good as the ones she has to work with here.) So far she seems to be the only third-season director who’s found a way to make the scripts sing – though she has been given unusually good ones. The fact she was never invited back to work on the show again seems to me a terrible oversight, though we seem to be approaching something of a changing-of-the-guard as far as the series’ directorial staff goes, as it enters its final phase. Nevertheless, Cumming’s work on the series is an outstanding testament to her talent.