Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Harvest of Kairos

Servalan has a new manny working for her - Jarvik - and he has a plan to take over the Liberator. Only Avon has the brain to stop him.

This is Duncan's worst episode of Blakes 7, so I had to be on my best behaviour to get to watch it again. No touching the buttons on the remote control, and no showing my red bum to anyone (hee hee, I am a naughty cat sometimes). But because I was a good cat I got to watch season 3's The Harvest of Kairos, by Ben Steed.

It starts in the middle of the action - Avon and Vila are already on a planet, and Tarrant has realised there are Federation ships after the Liberator. Avon comes back with Sopron rock, and Zen thinks it is a brain.

Servalan meets Jarvik. He is a manly manny. He kisses her then steals her guard's gun. Servalan hears the Liberator has escaped her trap. Jarvik then laughs and tells her Tarrant knew where her computers would set the trap.

Jarvik reveals to Servalan that he knew Tarrant when he was a captain and Tarrant was his lieutenant (long word is long). Servalan puts Jarvik in charge of capturing the Liberator and then says she wants him to kiff her again. In this scene she is a naughty Servalan who just wants kiffs from a manly man.

In the next scene she is back to being evil Servalan when she is more concerned with getting valuable kairopan than workers off the planet Kairos, leaving mannys behind to get killed by something mysterious. Woo-oo, it's a mystery! This is exciting, what could it be?

Tarrant wants to pirate the harvest of Kairos and get rich. Vila approves of this but Avon is more concerned with his Sopron. He gets Cally and Orac involved, even when there is a battle going on. It is hard to take the battle seriously because Avon is not interested in it and it is not exciting like most battles in Blakes 7.

The best bit of the battle is when Tarrant blows a kiff after he has destroyed a Federation spaceship. He goes "Mwah!"

Tarrant teleports on to the ship with the kairopan (is it like marzipan?) and he lets Vila, Cally and Dayna on as well. They get captured by Federation guards but Avon rescues them straight away. Avon was the only one clever enough to think there might be guards, but even he doesn't think there might be even more guards.

The Liberator gets captured off-screen between scenes - we see Jarvik's captain teleport on to Servalan's ship to show success. Servalan goes on to the Liberator and takes over, forcing Avon to let her command Zen. Avon outsmarts her and gets to make a condition that they get put down on the nearest habitable planet first. But the nearest planet is Kairos, which is deadly!

Servalan sends Jarvik down after them to kill Tarrant and the others. It is always Tarrant that they are interested in, not Avon or Vila or Cally or Dayna. I like Tarrant but I don't understand this bit, maybe it's because I'm only a cat. If I wasn't a cat, I might think that it was meant to be Blake instead of Tarrant, but Blake is gone now and Tarrant is here instead.

Jarvik finds a scary monster! It must be the monster that killed all the mannys that Servalan left behind. Dayna is menaced by the monster but Jarvik saves her, then when Tarrant sees his teleport bracelet he realises Servalan sent him. They fight. Jarvik wins and teleports back to the Liberator with Dayna.

Avon finds an old spaceship. He has a plan to escape using the Sopron but the others don't believe him. They take off in the old spaceship and Avon makes it work like Sopron to fool Zen, who thinks their ship is more powerful than the Liberator. Jarvik sees through their bluff but Servalan still runs away. Jarvik is then killed when a soldier is going to shoot Dayna but shoots him instead.

This is a very silly episode. It is all about Jarvik and his plan to capture the Liberator, which is supposed to be very clever. Jarvik is a manly manny but I don't think he is very clever. His plan only works because Avon and Tarrant are not being as clever as they usually are.

Jarvik isn't cleverer or more of a manly manny than Avon or Tarrant (nobody is more of a manly manny than Avon!) but the story makes everybody act as if he is, and that is why I think it is very silly.

Although it is a silly story there are some good bits to it - my best bit is the mystery of what kills all the mannys on Kairos. Everybody is scared but they don't know what about. Then it turns out to be a monster!

The monster doesn't do much except be scary (woo-oo, scary!) to Dayna and the audience, because everybody gets away from it. But if it hadn't appeared when it did then Dayna would not have been teleported up to the Liberator with Jarvik at the end.

This is not my worst episode of Blakes 7, as it still has Avon in it being clever (just not as clever as usual), but it is not one of the best and is definitely not up to the fabulous standard of the rest of season 3. Maybe I should have stuck to being a naughty cat...