Blake's 7 The Keeper (1978–1981) Online

The intrepid Liberator crew as well as Servalan and Travis travel to Goth to find Lurgen's brain print in the hope of locating Star One. This is an extremely fun episode which whets the appetite for the series finale. As when he played the Captain in the "Doctor Who" story "The Pirate Planet" the previous year, Bruce Purchase plays the role of the blustery warrior chieftain in a wonderfully over the top way, at times putting BRIAN BLESSED to shame with his energetic and loud performance. Freda Jackson is very effective as Tara, though it is somewhat strange that she plays Purchase and Shaun Curry's sister in spite of being about 30 years their senior and Arthur Hewlett's daughter in spite of the fact that she was only eight months his junior. However, that's only a minor thing that doesn't detract from how enjoyable this episode is.

Michael Keating is even better than usual as Vila when he forced the play the role of Gola's fool and it gives Sally Knyvette, in her penultimate appearance, a chance to shine as Jenna, who has to suffer Gola lusting after her so that she can access the brain-print. Paul Darrow gets less screen time than usual, disappearing almost entirely in the second half but is as impressive as ever as Avon.

Blake's 7 improves substantially with age. It's now long enough ago for the 1970s effects to be retro, rather than just so-so. This allows the true SF nature of the series to shine. On the surface of it, this is a mundane piece of space detective work, where the crew go through a list of suspects until they are left with the only possible solution. Except that the solution fails. It is at that point when the inevitable (but entirely unexpected) result of the story-arc catches up with them, and we are treated to a true science-fiction twist based on real extrapolated science, not just a technical hand-wave attributed to 'science like magic'. I remember watching this in 1979 and being blown away by the climax. This episode also bears all the marks of Blake's 7 realism: endings are seldom happy, deaths are tragic and time is taken to mourn them, the main characters are fragile and may at any time die.

After receiving information by Docholli on Freedom city that the man he wants is called Lurgan The Liberator crew travel to the Planet Goth to track him down finally find out the location of Star One

Another episode by Allan Prior and while never being disposable doesn't have much of a function except to set up the events for the following episode which changes the whole fundamentals of the show . The Keeper is directed by Derek Martinus who has a long tradition of working on DOCTOR WHO and did direct some of the classic stories for that show along with episode Trial earlier in the season but here the budget seems to have run out and the director fails to do much with the story

The story itself is very mundane , dare one say boring and involves nothing more ambitious than some of the regular crew bring stuck in a prison cell . The chief villain is one of those barbarian kings who acts like he's a Norseman villain in some children's BBC production and if thre's any enjoyment in he episode it's Vila finding himself as being conscripted as a court jester . The episode isn't helped by the planet being named Goth whilst may have been acceptable in 1979 is a word more associated by a musical movement involving sullen introspective teenagers