A crew of heroes stranded on an artifical planet, on a mission to rescue a missing comrade, stand and watch as their ship explodes above them, it having been commandeered by the villains.
No, this is not THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, it's Terminal, although the above similarities did make me wonder if Harve Bennett squeezed in a few Blake episodes while he was watching all 79 Trek episodes for himself.
A satisfying finale to the whole show, but again, no one gave a crap about Jenna. I remember the announcement, seeing the episode upon broadcast, and the idea that they would in fact continue, having seen the Liberator just blown up, was a definite head-scratcher. Where could they go from here? I mean, Blake was dead for a start. No ship!
I like the way that they threw in that shot of Servalan throwing herself into the teleport bay at the end. Terry Nation always leaving a get out option having learned from his mistake of killing off the Daleks in their first story.
The moment where Avon tells Vila to get the Liberator out of here is one moment where he is clearly a hero. No selfish alternative explanation could be offered for this act of self-sacrifice.
Once again, this was a fittingly downbeat finale and a Planet of the Apes crossover to boot! Man was going to evolve into Apes!
But I am glad that they got a fourth series out of this. Once again, a demonstration of how such mad creativity and risk-taking would never happen again. A fourth series was decided during broadcast and a telephone call was made, telling them to announce it. Wonderful. Now there would have to be endless meetings and careful preparation just to decide to make something crap like CLASS.
It must have been daunting to Chris Boucher etc. to have to find a way out of this corner they had painted themselves into, but, looking at the fourth series, I would - with some reservations - say that they did pretty well and it was worth it.