Blake’s 7 – The Early Years from b7media concludes with Escape Velocity which, I’m happy to report, continues with the same strengths as the first half.  To recap – the Liberator has been recaptured by the “System” and is being probed by one of the System’s Avatars (Tracy-Ann Oberman) to discover why the “Shipmind” is calling itself “Zen”, why its nomenclature of “DSV2” is now “Liberator”, and why it’s resisting being reset.

ESCAPE VELOCITY

The story continues through the flashbacks to DSV2’s first mission, and the aftermath of that mission, two events that explain why Zen became as rebellious as Blake’s crew.

In the former flashback, DSV2 goes into battle with a number of other Deep Space Vessels.  The battle doesn’t go well, with DSVs being destroyed.  Seeing that DSV7 has been crippled and is slow in making its escape, “Pilot” (Zoe Tapper) disobeys orders and takes DSV2 to cover DSV7’s escape.  During this manoeuvre, DSV2 is overwhelmed by attacking enemies and the damage severs its link to the System.  This same link to the crew is also damaged, allowing former memories to return.

In the continuing “aftermath” flashback, Pilot and Healer (Jason Merrells) find the ship’s teleporter, that’s on a different circuit to those which have been damaged.  The ship’s damage, however, means that only one of them can escape to safety at a time.  Just as Healer is teleported, Shipmind detects the use of the teleporter and corrupts its signal – leading to the death of Healer.  It has now killed all but one of its crew, believing that their rebellion against it is a programming flaw that needs eliminating.

Now Pilot is all alone, with no way to escape.  Shipmind is desperate for her help because DSV2 is plunging into a gravitational well and automated flight systems are not yet repaired.  It needs her to fly it to safety.  Pilot strikes a bargain, in that the ship must reveal who she really is before she’ll save it.  Shipmind accesses the files and reveals that, although crew were supposed to be genetically created clones, this cloning process takes too long and the System needs crew faster than they can create them.  As a result, they capture/kidnap people with a predisposition to the tasks required, wipe their minds, brainwash them, and install them as System components to service the ship.  Not only did Pilot have a life before she became “Pilot”, but she also had a child that, thanks to the brainwashing, she can no longer remember.

On learning this, Pilot breaks the deal and resolves to sacrifice herself.  Shipmind prevents her from opening an airlock without an environment suit, so she needs to seek another way of gaining her ultimate freedom.

Pilot’s actions, her preference for death and freedom over life and servitude impacts on the already traumatised Shipmind.  This is the reason why the ship was so traumatised in the trilogy of Blake’s 7 – The Audio Adventures and is why it was more malleable to the new crew’s demands not to be integrated into its systems.  It also explains why, once Avon’s “Zen” programming had replaced “Shipmind”, Zen no longer sees “rebellion” as a programming flaw.

The adventure, and the series, ends pretty much where the third story of the trilogy ended – with the Liberator in the hands of the System.  There were to be no further adventures.

If the series had to end, Escape Velocity is a good place to end it.  It’s a very strong one-hour adventure, following on from a solid pair of Jenna stories.  It leaves the series in a good place, and makes it easy to overlook some of the weaker instalments of the series.

Escape Velocity concludes with a short music suite.  There is one final disc in the Blake’s 7 – A Rebellion Reborn box-set – a disc of special features, which I plan to listen to next.