The clue is in the title, folks! When last we left our heroine, she was faced with a horde of Imperial Alliance soldiers flooding aboard the grounded X Bomber. While Dr. Benn, Shiro, Hercules, and Lee are in and out of consciousness in sickbay, Lamia only has PPA and Kirara to repel the invading force. It isn’t looking too good for her at all.
It’s worth pointing out, since we so rarely see them in action, that the termoids don’t walk so much as bob up and down. Their legs seem to be permanently fixed in place.
Shiro and Hercules are the first back on their feet. PPA is assigned to take care of Lee and Benn, while the boys rush to help Lamia.
The girl who was prepared to turn herself in at the drop of a hat is now ready to put up a fight.
When they see Lamia and Kirara in the corridor, the termoids go absolutely berserk. They fire wildly and with reckless abandon. Could it be that they intend to kill Lamia?
As the gun battle rages, it is clear Lamia is outnumbered, but the cavalry is on the way.
Kirara is hit! He goes up in a blinding flash in what should have been a killing blow. But this is Saturday morning, surely they’re not going to kill off our friendly Chewbacca type? Right?
As Lamia turns to aid her fallen guardian, she’s suddenly greeted by a faceful of bug.
Ordering Lamia aside, Shiro and Hercules open fire. They blow away at least three of the bad guys in what is obviously a team effort. Nevertheless, Lamia thanks only Shiro in a typical act of favoritism. The other guy (his name is Hercules, remember?) keeps his head and orders her to get to sickbay out of the firing line.
But two villainous rapscallions appear from nowhere and get Lamia in their clutches. How did this happen? Shiro and Hercules react to seeing them, but they don’t take action until it’s too late. Lamia seems to have given up shooting back in all the confusion, even though at this point she’s still armed.
“Now what?” The guys seem just as flummoxed as I am by this comeuppance.
As they back away to make good their escape, the termoids are beset by Kirara, who did NOT die.
Ignoring the fact that Kirara has miraculously recovered from taking a flashbulb to the chest, Lamia and the others make a move.
Meanwhile, termoids have conquered the sickbay. This is easily the most successful Imperial Alliance campaign of the series so far– probably because Makara and Orion aren’t micromanaging it.
Lee, somewhat uncharacteristically, cowers behind Dr. Benn who refuses to surrender even at gunpoint. The termoid hesitates at his brazen defiance, but then prepares to execute them.
PPA saves their bacon with a blast of laser energy from his eyes. Has he always had this ability?
Quickly gunning down two out of three, PPA pauses, which gives this termoid time to swear revenge and blast him.
But that pause gives Lee his opportunity and the sickbay is back in friendly hands. Benn and Lee advance to try and clear the rest of the ship, leaving the damaged or destroyed PPA in a pile on the floor. Poor little guy.
As Shiro and Hercules engage the enemy, they leave their rear position undefended.
Lamia is snared again– what happened to her gun?– and Shiro and company are ordered to keep their distance. Unfortunately, Kirara is not very good at following orders.
For the second time today, Kirara takes an apparently mortal gunshot wound to the chest. I guess we shouldn’t count him out, despite his evident flammability.
As Lamia mourns her injured friend, Shiro and Hercules look at their hands. They have absolutely no clue what to do in this situation. I guess I’ve forgotten that they’re still cadets and not experienced in this particular kind of fighting.
Helpfully, this termoid puts an end to their confusion by chucking a hand grenade at them.
Gone. Lamia and her termoid captor vanished. Like they were never even here.
Hunting and calling for Lamia, Shiro and Hercules rush towards the sound of more gunfire. They find Dr. Benn and John Lee in a pretty tight spot.
Lee is holding his own, but gets some extra help when Shiro and Hercules come up behind the invaders. Having made mincemeat out of the baddies, the heroes are reunited. The only problem is, the other baddies have Lamia.
Hercules and Shiro want to go straight after Lamia, but Dr. Benn says the ship needs to be repaired before they can go chasing battleships. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to catch up with the termoids before they get Lamia back to Makara?
Yes friends, it’s the promise of the premise. Lamia, in many ways the most important character, has been captured by the Imperial Alliance.
Ignoring the soldier who just risked his life to successfully capture the Emperor’s prize, Makara contemplates Lamia, who she calls “F-01.”
Orion goes into full creep mode, asking her how old she is, presumably for very inappropriate reasons. Makara rightly castigates him for his leering buffoonery.
With Zen-like calm and zero fear, Lamia innocently asks what the Alliance wants of her. “Now that we know that you are F-01, the Alliance will never let you go.,” Makara says, “You will go with us now.”
At Makara’s order, Orion pulls their ship back out into the planet’s orbit.
Makara is not her usual shouty self now that F-01 is actually in her grasp. Perhaps I’m reading too much into what could just as easily be Denise Bryer resting her voice from all the usual cackling, but I think Makara may have some compassion for Lamia once they are face to face. After all, it could have been a similar scene when Makara joined the Alliance. Perhaps she, like Carter, was an unwilling prisoner in the beginning.
Setting course for the Aurelian Star Cluster, Makara orders Orion to leave behind a minefield for X Bomber. She’s evil that way!
Of course, she could just hang out and destroy X Bomber now that they are crippled and she has Lamia, but why bother? Probably better to just leave them a minefield to navigate. That’ll definitely do the trick on it’s own.
In any case, X Bomber is grounded once again. This time, they’ve lost at least one crew member. But at least Molphane is a planet of apparently endless sunsets.
Apparently, PPA was also not killed and since Lamia’s capture also means that no one else is left who cares about taking care of the robot, he is doing his own repair job. It consists mostly of paint.
Heartbreakingly, Kirara is completely despondent. Having guarded Lamia since her infancy and living for little else other than her well-being, I’m surprised he has the wherewithal to even stand up straight and stay relatively still.
PPA begs Kirara to stop crying. He is reassuringly certain that Lamia will be found and saved.
Shiro reports that all repairs are completed. It must be record time.
Benn orders Lee to trace Makara’s ship. No problem, sir. We’ll just track that right down.
But before Lee can kick things off, he is interrupted by our old pal Captain Halley of the Skull. The crew seem less than pleased to see him. After so many incidents of X Bomber and the Skull saving each other at the last minute, his arrival is tardy.
Hercules, to his credit, checks with Shiro to make sure that this is the guy who Lamia met aboard the Skull a few episodes back. Shiro grudgingly confirms it before asking what they are all thinking. “Why didn’t you come when we needed your help?”
In a very lame fashion, Halley only offers a weak apology. He also asks to have a one on one chat with Doctor Benn.
Benn’s a bit incredulous. Lamia’s trail went cold while repairs were finished, now they need to have a tête-à-tête? But Halley is insistent and the Doc eventually caves.
Fortuitously, it apparently does not take him long to arrive. Was he once again waiting in the wings just off stage for some unknown reason or does the cut signify the passing of time?
Shiro is very anxious to move on, but Lee reminds him that they owe Halley a hearing for saving their lives on more than one occasion. So, they wait stoically until at last Halley and his crew approach.
With great fanfare, (literally there’s a fanfare on the soundtrack) the Captain and the Doctor meet at last. Their introduction is sealed with a handshake.
“I’ve come a great distance to ask this question. What is the F-01?”
Halley promises to spill the beans and keep it brief. It can’t be too brief for Shiro, who is still annoyed at the delay.
Aboard the Imperial Battlecruiser, Lamia is getting cozy in a nice green and gold cell. Although she doesn’t seem to be under lock and key exactly, she is heavily guarded and the interior decorator has thoughtfully barred the window in case she wanted to try floating home. Trying to use her new telepathic powers, Lamia fails to reach anyone. She is cut off here and getting further away from her friends every second.
In the Lord of the Rings, there is an infamous round table scene where all of the major characters give the audience all the exposition they need to know about the plot, what needs to happen, and so on. This is the round table scene for X Bomber. It establishes most of what you need to know for the rest of the story. But is it elegantly constructed and breezy? Or clunky and slow? Let’s find out.
To begin with, Halley puts to bed the mystery once and for all. SPOILER ALERT. Lamia is F-01. I know, I know. With all the subtlety, you never saw it coming. Seriously, did anyone NOT suspect? The story could have used a few more red herrings to make the mystery a little more mysterious. Nevertheless, the fact is out in the open now and there is no more need for beating around the bush. But just what is F-01? And what do the Imperial Alliance want with her?
First of all, Halley says that F-01 is just what the Alliance call her. It’s a cold and clinical term like a reference number or a chemical label. To Halley, Lamia is destined to become Queen of his planet, which he calls Esper. That would make her a Princess.
Shiro can hardly contain his incredulity as he asks why the Alliance would care about the Queen of Esper. Halley, perhaps missing the latent hostility or perhaps ignoring it, goes into storyteller mode and we are off on a flashback.
Residents of Esper have special intuitive powers. (ESPer, E.S.P., get it?) They are ruled by a dynasty called the Pizarees, which just sounds made up.1 But apparently they were a benevolent royal family because the people just can’t wait for a new baby girl/heir to the throne to be born. For some reason, whether because of a matriarchal monarchy or because of something that’s just about to be revealed, it was important that the child be a girl and all the people were waiting on Lamia’s birth.
Stock footage of fireworks stands in for what Halley describes as many days of festivals. Sounds lovely.
If you’re thinking you’ve seen this baby puppet before, then you’d be right. This is Lamia folks, and the people of Esper rejoice at her arrival.
Things start to go pear-shaped for the poor kid almost immediately. An unnamed seer, or fortune teller, prophesies that Lamia will possess a “tremendous power” in the year 3,000. Who was this guy? On a planet of ESPers he must have been particularly clairvoyant. We never find out his fate or the exact nature of his prediction and he is never mentioned again.
Halley’s retelling is vague. What is this power? We are only told it is capable of dominating the entire universe.
Anyway, since someone mentioned power, the bad guys now have to show up. Because they either don’t want the Espers to possess such a power, because they want the power for themselves, or just to be jerks… they blow up the planet.
The special effects department delight in exploding the lovely Persian style cityscape they built.
In the chaos of mass destruction, a group of elders escaped with Lamia, apparently aboard the Skull. It makes me think of all those refugees fleeing from war in these turbulent times.
Halley says they set course for Mars to leave the baby in the care of the Earthlings, who they believe are compassionate.
“Now I understand,” Shiro says. I’m glad somebody does, because I still have questions. What happened to Lamia’s parents? Does she have any surviving family at all? If it was just elders and the baby that escaped, why does Halley appear young? Why not keep the baby and raise it yourselves? How could the people on Esper have heard of the Earth institute on Mars? What other aliens have the humans contacted in the Star Fleet timeline? What did the Alliance hope to gain by destroying the whole civilization?
Pushing pause on the questions, Benn introduces Shiro formally as the son of Professor Hagen. Hagen, for those of you who forgot, raised Lamia on Mars while his own son grew up on Earth without a father.
Halley and Shiro met before, but Shiro’s role in this story was not clear to the Captain at that point. Now he stares at Shiro hard enough to make the cadet nervous, which only prompts Hercules into teasing.
It’s played very lightly, but this is a tense moment. It’s as if the telepathic Halley is trying to read Shiro’s thoughts. But we move back into exposition quickly.
“Lamia is to dominate the universe using her great power in the year 3,000,” Halley says calmly, “the Imperial Alliance fears this above all else. They want to use her.”
He’s still being vague and evasive. Lamia seems like a nice gal, but is she capable of dominating a universe without being corrupted by such terrible power?
Lee cuts through the baloney by asking the Captain directly if he intends to join them on their mission. But Halley once again does an artful dodge. He is under the protection of “the Callinean star cluster.” This means if they get involved in the fighting, then “their benefactors” will face retaliation from the Imperial Alliance.
This makes no sense at all since the Alliance is openly hostile to everyone, including the Callineans, and since the Skull has already been involved in several battles with them, anyone harboring the Skull would surely face Imperial retribution. Besides, if the fate of the entire universe is at stake, surely that one treaty doesn’t matter so much?
Hercules sensibly points out that Halley is asking them to “take over your risk and fight for your cause.” How can he ask them to make so many sacrifices when he is unprepared to take the same steps himself?
Shiro echoes isolationists everywhere by saying he owes loyalty to his own home before expounding; “If it’s so important to the universe, shouldn’t we all risk our lives to get Lamia away from them?”
Halley seems to acknowledge the justice of their protestations and almost seems pained that he cannot join the fight. Yet, he reveals something telling. “I must live into the year 3,000. Lamia will need my help in order to use her new powers fully.”
“Nothing like passing the buck,” snarls Hercules. Lee advocates for the benefit of the doubt before Halley drops a bombshell. “Lamia and I are to become one.”
Shiro is infuriated. “The age of chivalry!” he scoffs, “We’re supposed to fight so that your little romance can bloom.” Halley firmly lectures that it is his duty to “help Lamia use her powers for the good of all.” Pausing to think, Shiro asks Halley if can prove he is the only one who can be with Lamia. Of course, Halley cannot. He wants the X Bomber crew to follow his instructions on faith.
First of all, it’s pretty clear that Shiro has an alternate agenda. When he asks if anyone else could show Lamia the way, there is one person he has in mind and that is himself. His feelings for her, clumsily expressed shortly before her first adult encounter with Halley, as well as petty jealousy are clouding his judgement. Plus, it’s a bit arrogant to think that he might have the ability to help someone bring peace and govern a whole galaxy.
Despite that, he brings up a few good points. Halley is asking for a big leap of faith. Not only is the alien making some big claims without evidence, he is also being extremely light on detail.
Disgusted by Shiro’s rejection, Halley gets up to leave. He’s a lot more skeptical about Earthlings now, despite the fact that they’ve fought hard to protect the Skull and raised Lamia at the risk of Imperial invasion. How many EDF soldiers died when they invaded? I guess it’s up to Dr. Benn’s diplomacy to save the situation now.
Dr. Benn dismisses both Shiro’s pettiness and legitimate concerns as “the cynicism of the young.” Trying to recall the momentum from his earlier speech in the very first episode, he challenges Shiro to take on ideals without physical proof. It falls a bit flat for me, if only because my issues with Halley’s presentation aren’t limited to the lack of physical proof.
Unsurprisingly, Lee is on the Doctor’s side. He urges his friends to “have ideals.” Frankly, I’m not sure what ideals or general principals Halley is even asking them to follow. It seems more like they’re being roped into a war which doesn’t concern them directly, but the ruthless enemy of the Espers is also hostile to Earth and must be stopped at all costs. What ideal would that be? The ideal that good must prevail and evil must be defeated?
With Lee determined to fight for Halley’s cause and Shiro firmly against it, Hercules is on the fence for a three way tie. “I might be persuaded to believe him,” Hercules says before bringing the conversation back to a less abstract reality.
Lamia has gone missing. How are they going to find her in all of “infinite space?”
As the radiant synth pad cue from Paul Bliss’ soundtrack to the opening of the series plays out, Halley explains that Lamia’s powers are beginning to awaken and he can contact her. So he gives it a try and the round table scene comes to an end for now.
It’s a doozy of a scene that presents lots of interesting ideas, but overall it leaves me unsatisfied. Garrick Hagon’s depiction of Halley is a bit shifty– I feel he’s either some sort of more evolved being (like the character Hagon played in the final chapter of Doctor Who: The Mutants) or else a duplicitous fraud.
He calls up Lamia on his telepathic interstellar telephone. She’s still aboard this battlecruiser.
With practically zero interference, Halley gets straight through to Lamia, who tells him she is “where the rainbow coloured stars cluster.” Halley also mentions that the X Bomber crew have promised to rescue her. They haven’t, but it kind of seems obvious that they will since they would be doing that by now if Halley hadn’t delayed them.
Lamia replies to Halley by speaking aloud as well as mentally, so the guards are alerted to her efforts to communicate with the outside. After she is given a quick shove, a termoid reports the incident to the bridge.
Makara is pissed and orders her bound to the dissimulator– presumably the same device used on Captain Carter way back in episode two. She tells them to torture her if she tries to make any more unauthorized calls.
As has been previously demonstrated, Shiro has no problem accepting on faith that Halley can communicate with Lamia telepathically over long distances. Hercules wants to know the details and Halley provides them. She’s in the Aurelian Star Cluster.2
Dr. Benn has had enough backstory and is ready to get going. While Lee is ordered to chart a course, Halley retreats to the planet Callinean.
While Halley is making a hasty retreat, Lamia is trying desperately to reach him with her thoughts from within an Alliance torture machine. There’s something twisted about Halley leaving her in the dark this way, but at least he gave her the hope that X Bomber is on the way.
I’ve mentioned (a lot) how much I love Sean Barrett’s performance as Orion, but he’s in full sleazeball mode today. He taunts Lamia about her inability to use her “supernatural powers.”
Lamia demands to know where she is being taken. Like all freaks, Orion just wants her to be silent. He then leers much too close to the camera for comfort. Someone come get your drunk Uncle!
It’s kind of played light, but it’s truly sinister. Lamia is in real danger here and the allusion to her sexual jeopardy is much more real than in something like the Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
As Lamia is forced to smell Orion’s breath, the Skull takes off. Remember that last bit.
Shiro is being snippy on the bridge. Hercules and Lee prod him a little and the truth comes spilling out. “I just don’t trust that guy,” Shiro says of Halley, “if all that stuff were true about the millennium, he’d be the first to go out there and try and rescue Lamia.” That’s a valid viewpoint.
Hercules and Lee, of course, see past the surface reasons. For Shiro, finding Lamia is a “personal crusade” according to his friends. They know he wants to be sitting in the tree with her, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
Lee continues the teasing by mentioning that Shiro seemed especially perturbed when Halley said he was going to marry Lamia. We all know Shiro has feelings for her. He tells Lee to shut up.
After having their adolescent chuckle at poor Shiro’s expense, Hercules comes in with a reality check. According to him, Star Fleet fighters are trained to put aside their personal feelings. Bushido, the code of the Samurai rested on seven virtues3 and none of them is celibacy or anything that could be considered emotional detachment. Perhaps the idea that Shiro has to lay aside his romantic aspirations for his societal duty is less influenced by Japanese society and more by then-contemporary views in modern Japan stemming from Buddhism and a honor-focussed work and military culture. It also owes a lot to the then-unfolding romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies.4
Hercules urges Shiro to move on and abandon any idea of closeness with Lamia. “After all you can’t very well marry the goddess of the universe, can you?”
Hercules, as we know, has had to put that thought aside for himself. Perhaps he is jealous of Shiro’s growing closeness with a woman who apparently can’t ever be with him either.
As Shiro daydreams about his goddess, Dr. Benn returns from another pointless delay. His salute was honorable, but time is ticking. Unbelievably, he says it will be another 20 minutes until the launch. It feels like forever! Poor old Lee has been assigned the seemingly impossible job of finding the EXACT location of the enemy, but he goes about it with his usual gusto.
One person who has run out of gusto is Kirara, who is still heartbroken over the loss of Lamia. The quivering beast has to contend with PPA telling him to calm down and behave logically. Dying of a broken heart won’t do Lamia any good, of course, but feelings rarely respond to logic.
On the bridge the launch sequence begins at last. Contrary to Shiro’s earlier statement, Benn now says there is more repair work to be done but that it can be done en route. Hercules reports there’s a fault in the laser system but it’s fixable and everything else seems tickety boo. Could we finally have liftoff?
We could! HOORAY!
X Bomber flies away from the world of a thousand sunsets; hopefully never to return! Of course, there is a tiny detail that hasn’t been mentioned yet…
Lee has set course for the Aurelian star cluster, which for those of you who care to speculate about such silly details, is 80,000 millitons from this Callienan star cluster where they currently are and is located in the upper quadrant5 near the Volga nebula.6
As we sail out of the atmosphere and into orbit with all engines firing, we encounter a little problem you may be already thinking about. The mines!
Yes indeed, the mines– conveniently encountered just as we near the end of an episode. As you recall, the Skull just left this planet and somehow managed either to avoid the mines unawares or else work their way around them without telling the X Bomber crew to expect them. Either way, it doesn’t really make sense. As I said, Makara should have just blown them all to bits before. It’s purely a device to give us a quick action scene and a cliff hanger for the tail end of the tale.
But it’s a fun little action sequence though! In an episode that has been pretty talky, it’s nice to get some of the exciting music back in and watch X Bomber do a few evasive maneuvers. PPA wails that they are surrounded.
Dr. Benn reckons that this route is too dangerous. Another solution is needed. And fast!
Dr. Benn makes the call to return back to the planet Molthane AKA where they just left. That’s right. After a whole episode and a half trapped there, they are going back. But before they can do that, Benn suggests Hercules take out a few of the mines with some laser torpedos.
This strategy actually goes really well and X Bomber seems to be carving a path out for itself. But I guess they were too heavily damaged because next thing you know they’re back hovering above the surface of the planet and not looking too good.
We get a nice sequence of a crash landing that is, frankly, a beat for beat remake of the first episode where they crash on the moon, only this time the special effects technicians have stepped up their game and the results are a lot prettier. It’s a shame they lose a bit of their dramatic weight by how the story is written.
You can feel a great sense of speed as they come in way too fast and skid along the surface, crashing into rocks and utterly destroying all the repair work they’ve just spent ages doing. There’s even a few comedic clanking sound effects and a hilarious “WHOA” from John Lee. Great crash sequence.
And that’s the end of that! X Bomber has crashed, Lamia is captured, and their only ally has scarpered to safer quarters. It’s all a mess.
This episode has a lot going for it. I especially love the powerful and scary image of Lamia, the peace lover of all peace lovers who wouldn’t even hurt a Mon Mon if her life depended on it, taking up arms to fight the Alliance. It raises a lot of ethical questions about her own hypocrisy and validity or non-validity of violence in the face of a vicious enemy. Could a being who is forced to use violence to fight violence truly be transformed into a deity of peace? The idea of Lamia attaining godlike powers is terrifying, especially considering her youthful tendency to throw out good judgement in favor of a reckless compassion.
Also, there is the fascinating revelation of Lamia’s background and a bit about what she is going to become. It’s just hints at this point, but it’s all very tantalizing.
However, I think the second half of the episode is pretty weak. The exposition is communicated through a flashback and not in a particularly compelling manner. It feels like we get a bit bogged down in all the talk.
Although it’s interesting to talk about Shiro’s feelings for Lamia and how he might feel to learn that she is an alien princess with magic powers, it is evident to me (even when I was a child) that he would ultimately be on Halley’s side, despite the efforts to disguise which side Halley is really on. There is nothing else Halley could be, really, besides on Earth’s side although in his best moments he exhibits shades of a third party who is not really on anyone’s side but his own.
For the third time in this review, I have to point out that Makara had no reason to abandon the destruction of X Bomber behind to lay mines instead. You just have to suspend your disbelief for the duration. Personally, I think the drama of Lamia in jeopardy is cliff hanger enough by itself. Of course, the original writers have cut themselves off at the knees by giving away her location thanks to the power of F-01, but there is still plenty of alternative endings that don’t need to resort to a contrived device like the mine field.
The dramatic stakes are lowered, but Lamia is still in danger and next week we will see her in the rainbow coloured star cluster… an event which is not to be missed!
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As far as I can tell from my very, VERY limited knowledge of Japanese, the original version doesn’t give Lamia’s family a name at all. This section of Halley’s dialogue seems to refer to the people of Esper as Psy-Okes, a play upon the word Psychic, I believe.
Not to be confused with the Callinean Star Cluster. What a cluster!
Those virtues are justice, bravery, benevolence, politness, veracity, honor and loyalty. https://katanaswords.info/samurai/bushido/
The Empire Strikes Back premiered in Japan in the summer 1980, while X Bomber began broadcasting that October, so it’s likely all scripts were written before the second film in the franchise came out.
This use of upper and lower seems to suggest that Star Fleet has a more three-dimensional model of space navigation than is typical in sci-fi. Most writers succumb to the temptation to ignore the vastness of space and treat it as if it were closer to a more familiar terrestrial perspective. For example, there is no real up or down in space but a ship like the Enterprise-D is always shown what we perceive as the right way up. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtisticLicenseSpace
As far as I can tell, there is no real-life Volga nebula. Volga is a region in Russia, named after the Volga river which is the longest in Europe, stretching from the center of the country to the Caspian Sea. The word comes from a proto-slavic word meaning “wetness.” Is water wet? The slavs thought so! Possibly in his hurry to meet the impossible deadlines, writer Michael Sloan grabbed an atlas or map and picked the name at random. SPOILER ALERT: There is a lot of ice in the next episode, so he may have thought about the need for water in order to create that.