Blake’s 7 “Sarcophagus”

What’s this?  Another episode allowing actress Jan Chappell to play a second role?  And also more or less settling Avon as the man in charge?

I can go along with that.

Apparently, some ancient civilization had some ceremony involving a lot of fancy tricks by people in robes, but the bottom line is there’s a ship with a corpse floating through space.  It’s a really old corpse, and the ship is more or less its coffin.

Naturally, the Liberator found it.  Vila, Cally, and Avon teleport over, and Cally, for reasons she cannot explain, decides to bring something back with her.  But something weird happens:  only Cally can teleport back at first, and she only has barely enough time to go back for the two men before the coffin ship self-destructs.

That is soooooo not a good sign.

It turns out the artifact has a telepathic intelligence of a dead woman inside of it.  She takes over Cally’s subconscious mind and is soon more or less walking around the ship.  She drains power from the Liberator, shutting off both Zen and Orac.  And the form she takes basically is Cally with a greener skin tone and different hair.

By the by, Avon and Tarrant got into an argument over who was more or less in charge in this episode, and I actually wondered if that was caused by the alien exciting people.  It looks like that wasn’t the case.  However, the alien was slowly killing Cally and opting to use the others as servants on her long flight home to her home planet, a trip the others wouldn’t survive.  Vila was scared and surrendered pretty fast.  Tarrant tried resisting and failed miserably.  A lot of tough talk doesn’t really get one too far against a seemingly all-powerful psychic alien.  Dayna had already gotten a good shock and was more worried for the other two men.

But then there’s Avon.  Avon would never just play servant to anyone, but he also doesn’t necessarily seem like the kind of guy who would risk his own life if he was reasonably sure he was in danger. So, he must be the one to think of a way out of this.  He does:  he essentially dares the alien to kill him.

And nothing happens.

Why can’t the alien kill Avon?  She hurt the others without too much effort.  Something about the process allows Avon to do something to force the alien to disperse, and she was begging the whole time for Avon to, you know, not do that.  But Avon don’t play that way.  As for why she didn’t kill him, Dayna thinks it’s because Cally wouldn’t let her.  Meanwhile, the alien didn’t try to kill the others, so there was less need to stop her.  Avon more or less figured out that Cally had enough control to keep the alien from killing anyone.

Excellent thinking.  And he seems to be in charge now.

Maybe don’t argue with the guy who can out-think a long dead psychic alien without too much trouble.