Killer is the 20th episode of Blakes 7, and was the first of four episodes written by Robert Holmes. He may have written some of the best Doctor Who stories of all time, but even there he didn't start out with his strongest pieces, and it wasn't until he managed to get hold of some Quatermass tapes that he really got going.
Let's see if we can spot his inspiration for this story, shall we? There might be a line of dialogue that subtly hints at it if we really pay attention...
It starts with Avon and Vila teleporting from the Liberator to a location shoot while facing the wrong way, lol. They see a big dome in the distance and head towards it. While the dome is obviously a matte painting, there is a simple but good bit of SFX to superimpose them into the corner which helps sell the shot. This is a promising start, helped by the fact that we don't have to wait ages to see Avon like we did with, say, Animals.
Back on the Liberator, Blake looks at an old spaceship that Zen has spotted. Jenna and Cally are there too, and as this is season two they are doubtless desperate for something, anything, to do with the plot. Cally detects life on board, because her telepathic powers can apparently do that this week, but she is confused if it is a manny or not.
"They're ready. They're watching."
she says mysteriously, but she can't give Blake a straight answer when asked what that means, other than to say there is something "malignant" on the ship.
Avon and Vila stealth around the location - another power station no doubt - avoiding Federation soldiers. They are looking for the "base commander."
Back to the Liberator already, where Blake says "I don't like mysteries" and gets Orac to help him investigate the spaceship by looking up Federation records, trying to identify it. I think for a manny who claims not to like mysteries, he is going to a great deal of effort to involve himself in this one. Gamma Longcat thinks Blake means that he doesn't like unsolved mysteries, which I suppose would make sense.
Disguised by costumes that are particularly silly even by Blakes 7 standards, Avon and Vila get in to see Avon's old friend Tynus (Ronald "Evilest Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark" Lacey), and he seems pleased to see them... or Avon, at any rate, he mostly ignores Vila. I can't say I blame him, purr.
Avon soon tells Tynus why they've come to visit him, and in doing so gives us the exposition about the plot - they want to steal a crystal for use in breaking Federation codes, and Tynus has one here in his base. Avon has several plans for how to go about this, but Tynus doesn't like the risk to him if the Federation find out he helped Avon and Blake. When he leaves the room saying he'll have to think about it, Vila says
"I hope you can trust him.""I told you, he's a friend of mine.""Yes, I always knew you had a friend. I used to say to people, 'I bet Avon's got a friend... somewhere in the galaxy.'""And you were right. That must be a novel experience for you."
Dr Bellfriar is played by Paul Daneman (who I have most recently seen playing Richard iii in An Age of Kings). He takes Blake's warning seriously enough to want "full quarantine" for the spaceship when it lands, which puts him one up on the British government.*
Tynus allows himself to be persuaded to help, but he introduces enough problems into Avon's plan to stretch it out and make it take 10 hours, so this could be a looooong episode!
Blake teleports down and meets with Bellfriar and his assistant Gambrill. He tells them what he knows, and that he is Blake, to which they reply
"Yes, but then we're absentminded scientists, you see. In fact, we've forgotten your name already. Haven't we, Gambrill?""Whose name, sir?"
Lol.
The mannys take a supposedly ded body out of the spaceship for Dr Wiler to examine ("standard drill with a space death," apparently). By the time Wiler gets started, Blake and Bellfriar are best friends and they sit down to watch the examination on TV together. Wiler finds identification on the body that confirms what Blake already found out from Orac, as well as confirming to us that mannys sometimes have their names on collars just like cats and doggys often do.
Wiler confirms that the manny is ded, which is a clever bit of writing from Robert Holmes for two reasons - firstly, because we know the manny has been ded for 700 years, so it gives us a quick lol to see him making sure, and, secondly, so that there is an extra-scary moment when it immediately afterwards comes back to life and strangles Wiler.
Wiler is killed, then the ded manny dies (again). Two mannys rush in to help Wiler too late, and they soon afterwards become ill. Bellfriar is worried that there might be "space contamination" (are we quite sure Terry Nation didn't write this?) and this is confirmed when the mannys who help them get ill too. It is serious enough that the first two mannys quickly die, and the sickbay they were taken to is sealed off. Probably should have done that already, but at least they're doing it now - if it was the British government in charge their top priority about now would be setting up a scheme to encourage the sick mannys to visit space restaurants.
Over in the other plot, Tynus starts his plan, which is a fire to distract the Federation mannys, allowing Avon and Vila to stealth to where the crystal they want to steal is. After they have set up the malfunction that is intended to allow them to get at the crystal (which they can't steal yet because, as Avon explains to Vila and therefore to us as well, they don't want the Federation to know they have stolen it, so they need the Federation to think it is borked so that they'll throw it in the bin) and are back in Tynus's office, Tynus tells Vila to get rid of the evidence that he started the fire.
As he is doing so, Vila accidentally sees traces of the message sent by Tynus to Federation Headquarters, enough to reconstruct the whole thing for reading to Avon (and us):
"Servalan, Federation HQ, urgent. Liberator in orbit, Fosforon. Detaining 10 hours. Make speed. Tynus, Q-Base."
Blake lays out his whole theory of what has happened to Bellfriar, including an analogy to an event that may just be Robert Holmes trying to be too clever by including his inspiration for the story as part of the story:
"Have you ever heard of Lord Jeffrey Ashley?""Who?"
No, Bellfriar, that's Dr Plaxton you're thinking of.
"Pre-space age, planet Earth. He was the commander of a British garrison in America, having trouble with hostile natives, redskins. Ashley ordered blankets from smallpox victims to be baled up and sent to the hostile tribes."
Blake teleports back to the Liberator to escape get Orac's help in curing the virus. All the mannys except Bellfriar start to panic and try to escape the lockdown. Gambrill catches the virus and he goes
The virus hasn't reached the plot with Avon and Vila in it yet, so they are still more concerned with Tynus's betrayal. They hear Tynus talking to Bellfriar about the other plot, and Avon decides that the virus is enough of a distraction for them to steal the crystal and make it look as though it was destroyed not stolen. Vila starts to panic and says
"I don't like bugs. You can't hear them, you can't see them and you can't feel them, then suddenly you're dead."
Tynus knocks out Vila and points his pewpewpew gun at Avon.
Vila distracts Tynus, allowing Avon to turn the tables on him. They have a fistfight that ends with Tynus getting electriced by his computer.
Avon and Vila then teleport away with the crystal they were after.
Bellfriar telephones Blake on the Liberator to tell him what he has found out about the virus, but before he can tell them about the cure he forgets how to read his own formula. That's unlucky, mew.
Avon thinks they can kill Servalan by letting her land on the planet and then catch the virus, but Blake wants to warn the Federation so they don't catch the virus, then leave, and take it with them to other planets.
"There has to be a warning, Jenna, there has to be."
Given the effect the coronavirus has had on world leaders who have had it, I would expect that if Servalan caught the virus she would only recover from it and then go on to be even more evil incompetent evil.
Killer is an interesting episode structurally, but it isn't particularly good and is one of the weaker episodes of season two. Robert Holmes writes well for Avon and Vila (and we see this again in later episodes written by him), but he doesn't seem to know how to properly write for the other characters, with the result that their plot is not as strong as it maybe could have been.
Killer is also not helped by its placing within season two. With the aftermath of the death of Gan in (no, not Aftermath) Trial immediately before it, and the start of the epic hunt for Star One beginning in Countdown two episodes after it, this leaves Killer (along with Hostage) stuck in between a number of far more memorable episodes, due to their significance to the ongoing plot of Blakes 7.
Killer? More like Filler.
Or at least this was the case until 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic happened to make the plot of Killer feel far more topical and memorable than any of us would ever have liked.
* Final score is Blakes 7, British government 0
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