Mortal Combat in the Gravity Graveyard - Part Two
Episode Seven of Star Fleet Continues
Welcome back to X Blogger! X Bomber, drained of power and stranded in a spatial “Sargasso Sea,” has one shot left. Dr. Benn, goaded out of energy conserving eco mode, has decided to go down fighting. Shiro, Hercules, and Lee prepare to use the enemy fire to calculate their position. Will this be their last stand?
As Lee continues his attempts to track the enemy outside this intergalactic briar patch, Shiro raises the X Bomber goose neck in a sharp arc to reveal the twin barreled laser cannon hidden within. I’m not sure how this configuration works with the crew corridors. Are the bridge crew now cut off from the engine room?
Disinterested in these sorts of quandaries, Captain Orion is moving into position amongst the colorful clouds of Sargasso. He is quite confident that his moment of victory has finally arrived. Assuming X Bomber is crippled, he doesn’t know that his enemy is still armed and prepared to fight.
We are treated to a lovely closeup of X Bomber’s canon 1
On the bridge, tension is mounting. The crew waits patiently for the enemy to make the first move.
Orion pulls the trigger!
As laser torpedo fire rains down on them, Hercules is anxious to fire back. Dr. Benn urges patience, but there isn’t long to wait.
Lee detects two incoming targets. Shiro gets one in his sights. Hercules gets the OK from Benn. The enemy is history.
One carrier is destroyed but one more is still out there and it’s firing on them. Shiro is very concerned about the loss of power. Benn urges them to do some more power redirection. Lee is worried that this could be the end of X Bomber but Hercules is determined to die with his boots on.
Meanwhile in sickbay, the faulty PPA thinks the explosions are fireworks celebrating an EDF victory. Should you tell him or should I?
Lamia, stuck playing nursemaid to this lunatic, carries the heavy burden of the knowledge of their imminent doom. In true self-flagellating fashion, she blames herself for all of it. Only Kirara seems unaffected by the malaise. But who knows? The grunts are not subtitled.
Shiro’s got the “main shield” charged up again with an appropriate beeping sound effect. Hercules fires another laser blast!
Orion, failing to make his usual hasty retreat, survives the blast although he is knocked off his feet. Makara calls and orders him back to her ship. Her anger isn’t really justified in this case, as Orion courageously charged the ship that just destroyed his wingman and, in so doing, continued to cause a very effective power drain. The facts don’t seem to matter much inside the Alliance.
Apologizing without need, Orion doesn’t defend himself and turns the ship around.
X Bomber returns to its standard configuration and Shiro cheerfully reports that the “battlecruiser” is retreating. As a bonus, they still have enough power left for X Impulse! After that, they’re dead in the water.
Lee has a pragmatic thought. What if they used the last of their power to escape? He has a point. They’ve discovered, thanks to Makara’s careless approval of Orion’s plan to attack them inside Sargasso, that there is a way in and out of the quagmire they are stuck in.
However, to Hercules way of thinking, that’s just a coward’s way out. He’s gone into full samurai mode and is ready to die on this battlefield. Retreating is an unthinkable alternative to him.
Lee reckons X Impulse will be enough to destroy Makara and put Earth out of her reach forever. Doing so seems like suicide.
Helmeted hero Shiro points out that they will not be able to escape from Makara in their power starved condition even if they did manage to follow the Imperial trace to the relative safety of normal space. His train of thought is interrupted by an explosion.
Makara’s battlecruiser has moved into range and is firing on X Bomber from outside the anomaly.
Shooting first and asking questions later, Makara phones up her victims to order them to hand over Lamia. Total capitulation is what she demands. 2
“Surrender,” the Doctor says heroically, “is a word not found in the Academy manual!”
Furious, Makara declares that she will bury all of them in “this graveyard of space.” As if to prove her point, she inches her spaceship even closer to get a better shot at them.
Having sealed all their fates, Dr. Benn tells his crew that they will use every last of ion of energy in the power banks to defeat the aliens. X Impulse is on deck. He tells Shiro to disconnect “all circuits except communication systems.” 3
Shiro complies and the bridge goes dark.
This episode of X Bomber is looking increasingly film noir and more like Alien (1979) than Star Wars (1977). All of our characters are cloaked in darkness.
Makara, still outside the Sargasso Sea, continues to creep closer and closer. She’s firing pot shots as she comes!
One of these starts a fire in the “engineering room” according to Lee. Hercules is dispatched to put it out.
Jay Benedict as Shiro is given the incomprehensible line “every level holding at sub-quantum,” which he delivers in a monotone. Before you can ask “just what the hell does that even mean?” We cut to Hercules firefighting efforts.
Hercules is in fact in the engine room, not the engineering room, but perhaps the two terms are interchangeable?
Hercules, like PPA, uses a firehose to fight the fire, but it isn’t explained where the water comes from. Are there large tanks of non-potable water on standby for emergencies like this? Or is Hercules blasting the crew’s drinking water supply into the flames?4 It is certainly intriguing to think of a vast reservoir or cistern somewhere aboard X Bomber.
The blaze is beyond Hercules’ abilities to stop. Just as it appears X Bomber will burn down before Makara reaches it, Lamia appears, also with a fire hose in hand, to join the fight against the flames. Thanks to her assistance, the emergency is contained.
For those of you who would ship Hercules and Lamia, this is your moment. When those puppet eyes meet, they are certainly feeling the heat– one way or another.
Makara continues to fire! Lee warns that salvos of laser torpedos are on the way.
Fortunately, the main shield has been recharged which means it is time to fire X Impulse. Dr. Benn gives the order!
The Termoids, always a step ahead when it comes to avoiding pain, dive for cover.
Makara, a little slower on the uptake, seems unaware that she is facing down X Bomber’s secret weapon once again.
It doesn’t go well for Commander Makara. Caught in a glowing white light, her and her crew panic and scream as pyrotechnics go off everywhere.
On fire, the ship retreats. Shiro celebrates.
Lamia and Hercules return to the bridge to report that the fire is out. They take their positions and cross each other’s paths without so much as a hug or a handshake. So much for blossoming romance.
Shiro, still in an ebullient mood, asks for some lights.
Lee, offering him a bite of a reality sandwich, points out that there is no power. They are literally dead in space.
Shiro is actually surprised, even though Dr. Benn predicted this. Testing the controls for himself, he discovers it is true. In a moment of homesickness, he asks Lee how far they are from Earth.
The answer is too far to get back, even if they weren’t stuck in Sargasso.
They are trapped.
Silence.
This sequence is helped tremendously by the total absence of music. All the fun and excitement of the preceding battle scenes is drained away and the audience is left with fear and apprehension.
Shiro, now feeling a bit preachy, lectures that any battlecruiser without power is just a piece of junk. Remember that, kids!
Lamia, like Lee, is feeling emotional, but instead of fear, she is feeling guilty for not surrendering herself to the Alliance. She weeps on the bridge as the others try to comfort and reason with her.
Shiro reckons they did their best and gave it their all.
Kirara, with the unmistakable glint of evil intent glowering in his eyes, wheels PPA onto the bridge to torture the crew while their life support slowly runs out.
The Perfectly Programmed Android is tunelessly singing in falsetto tones “Pretty song, PPA,” Hercules says, “but it ain’t gonna get us out of here.”
Dr. Benn, who’s been staring straight ahead into space for this whole time, turns in his chair to make a little speech.
The camera dollies in as he tells them all the oxygen system is damaged. They are running out of air, they have no chance of survival, and there isn’t much time. Dark stuff for Saturday morning kids shows.
His first priority is recording everything in the log book. Shiro finds this idea preposterous. After all, who would ever journey into the void to read it?
In a moment of shining optimism, Benn speculates that in the new millennium the graveyard of space will not only be explored but also colonized. “The wreck of X Bomber will be found. It’s our duty to leave a record.”
Benn orders Lamia to transmit a distress signal on the off chance someone will hear them. Calm now, she agrees.
The plot has slowed to a crawl here, and unlike the slowdown at beginning of the episode, I am a huge fan of it. It is a stark contrast to the series’ normal high energy approach. It increases the sense of peril ten fold.
Lamia isn’t just sending out a general SOS. She’s reaching out to the Skull.
It is unsurprising that Lamia would reach out to the Skull in time of dire distress. What is surprising is how she chooses to do it. Perhaps to avoid being overheard by the crew, she is typing her message into some sort of a machine. Presumably, to broadcast like a text message or (in the early 80s) a telegram. Adding the confusion is the fact that Lamia is narrating her message as she types, but what is on screen is some sort of code.
If any fans out there have cracked this code and can now transmit messages to each other this way, please let me know.
Lamia updates the Skull on the X Bomber’s distress. Instead of asking for their assistance directly, Lamia asks for them to contact Star Fleet Command on Earth. Probably an extension of her humility and sense of decorum and honor. She is literally in danger of asphyxiation but her email tone is ‘so sorry to have bothered you, could you possibly ask someone from my team to bring me some oxygen?’
Before she can finish the message, something stirs.
X Bomber lurches and moves forward once again. Could it be?
Shiro and Lee are flabbergasted! PPA is thrown against the bulkhead! Dr. Benn realizes they are being pulled. The controls aren’t responding and music returns to the soundtrack. It’s the danger theme suggesting X Bomber is being dragged down deeper into the abyss of Sargasso.
Astonishingly, there is something up ahead of them. And it isn’t more of Sargasso.
Even as the danger theme continues to play out, Lee jumps up from his chair. He realizes, as they all do, that they are being saved.
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That’s right, folks! The days of fog and green lights are behind them. With one last Imperial Alliance sting, the music transitions from X Bomber in Distress to X Bomber victorious. Our heroes have somehow escaped their certain doom. Phew! That was a close one.
As soon as they are back in free space, normal lighting kicks back in. It appears that Sargasso didn’t completely drain their power, just made it look as if it was totally drained. Convenient that.
Shiro, sounding mystified and overawed by this sudden turn of events, informs the Doctor they are in the clear. Lee now acts as if he was never worried, for the sake of comedic effect.
Hercules marvels at the stars.
Dr. Benn spots their savior first.
Lamia leaps to her feet. “It’s the Skull!”
Yes indeed, loyal readers. The mysterious sailing ship has been waiting in the wings to get a signal from Lamia. As soon as the coast was clear, they swooped in with their tractor beam to rescue them all.
Dr. Benn makes a decisive move. He orders Shiro to approach. However, even though some power has been restored, there isn’t enough for them to close the gap between the two ships.
The Skull, ever mysterious, turns and sails away. John Lee sounds heartbroken as he watches it vanish on the radar.
There is a real poetry in the images of Star Fleet. Look no further than this simple juxtaposition of two seemingly allied vessels flying in opposite directions, unable to unite.
Shiro wants to know if the Skull is really on X Bomber’s side. Benn concludes it must be, although they must be wondering if the crew have an ulterior motive for rescuing them. “Lucky they happened to be around,” Hercules observes, still unaware of Lamia’s transmission. 5
Lee, wishing they had stuck around for longer, is feeling grateful to be alive.
But Lamia, knowing more both by experience and intuition, says nothing. What is really going on here? What is the link between her and the Skull? Could they be hoping to capture some of the power of the F-01? Why rescue X Bomber and then avoid making contact? She remains silent.
Dr. Benn turns his attention to finding a safe harbor for the crew to conduct repairs.
Shifting tone a bit, PPA is back to his normal irritating self. Kirara, unable to tell the difference between sane bot and mad bot, restrains him until Lamia orders him to stand down.
Chattering PPA, after calling Kirara “stubborn socks” and thanking Lamia for her nursing, issues a “toodle-oo” and literally buzzes off.
This brief and jarring interlude over, we return to Lamia and this time we hear her inner thoughts. “Who are you?” she wonders. She means the Skull, but she could easily be thinking of herself as well.
Episode Seven is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, there is the highly rocky scientific concepts that even had me scratching my head as a child. Although the slower pace in the final act is a welcome respite, the first act is a bit slow.
Nevertheless, the Sargasso Sea of Space is one of the most memorable environments from the whole series, if only for the stunning visuals on display. There is also room for some fascinating character moments, especially for Dr. Benn, Hercules, Lee, and Lamia. Overall, there is a darker tone that the series will continue to explore as it continues.
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This weapon is very similar to the twin barreled gun used by Makara’s battlecruiser when destroying the Earth’s missile defenses. I have a theory as to why this might be. By this point in the series, you may have noticed that Earth’s forces are powerless to fight the Imperial Alliance, with the exception of X Bomber designed by Shiro’s father, Professor Hagen. Hagen is, as far as we know, once of the only humans to have had any contact with alien civilization, having raised Lamia in secret on Mars. He later disappeared from the red planet under mysterious circumstances. It is quite conceivable that, by studying Lamia’s ship and associated gear and by making a few unofficial and secret expeditions into the Thalian Zone, that Hagen actually incorporated superior alien technology, weapons, and alloys into his designs. Pure speculation, but it is a possibility!
Fortunately, Lamia is stuck in sickbay and unable to hear this. Otherwise, she would likely head for a shuttlecraft and attempt to give herself up despite the fact that the Alliance is unlikely to show leniency to X Bomber’s crew in any case. The fact that Lamia is blaming herself already, only goes to reinforce the saintly sense of putting others first in her character.
I could point out that this would be disconnecting weapons systems too, but there isn’t much point. The scripts play so fast and loose with technical terms there is almost no means of keeping it straight, even as pure head canon.
In space, you would fight fire by sealing off the burning areas and opening an airlock to space. Without oxygen, fire would die a quick death.
One wonders why the Skull failed to come to X Bomber’s aid while they were under attack. They must have been nearby unless they have some sort of secret faster than light engine.