User Reviews

It would be easy to overlook Deliverance simply as a prelude or lead into the Series one finale, Orac. The episode's key function is to build up who or what Orac is, and add in a mystery, pitting Servalan against Blake to get hold of it.

It is a good episode, and it does have some fine moments, as well as some not so fine. I liked the character of Meegat, I thought the scenes between her and Avon were fun, not totally convinced that he needed his ego built up much more than it already is.

On the downside I didn't care for the primitive cavemen, they could have been more interesting, better developed, or perhaps more creatively written, you expected the word ugg from them.

It meanders along casually, but it does its job, building up the finale. 7/10

The Liberator crew witnesses an explosion on a passing space ship that then crashes in to the Planet Cephlon . Teleporting down to the surface the injured survivor Ensor is saved by the crew but Jenna is captured by the primitive natives while Ensor tells Blake he is on a mission to deliver life saving drugs to his father and Ensor is in no mood to let the rescue of Jenna slow down his mission

As the debut season of BLAKES 7 draws to a close you're struck by the consistency of it , after all each and every episode is written by Terry Nation and it'd be impossible to imagine an entire series of thirteen episodes of any show being written by one sole writer . The drawback to all this is that there's not a lot of variety on offer and if season one has a major problem it's down to the fact that nearly all the boring average by the number episodes nearly all take place one after the other in the final third of series one

Like a couple of less than stellar episodes from this season Deliverance is not toe curlingly awful it's just rather mundane . During the Christmas period of 1978 BBC one broadcast Deliverence and the following episode Orac as a feature length episode with some of the running time edited out . To be blunt much brevity could be used and both this episode and Orac could easily have been produced together as a very tight streamlined 50 minute episode

On the planet Cephlon The Liberator crew attempts to Ensor Jr. the son of the creator of Orac, Ensor Sr. as well as Federation medical officer Maryatt whose ship crash-landed following the sabotage of engines by Serverlan. On Cephlon, Avon discovers he is about to become a legend.

"Deliverance" is a very good episode which sets up some of the events in the season finale while remaining a solid standalone story as well. There are some nicely executed action scenes and the planet Cephlon is quite well-realized. While "Deliverance" is pleasant viewing and very entertaining I find it doesn't take long for me to forget about it almost entirely so I can't rate this too high.

7/10