These EpisodesMission of the Darians
These EpisodesFrom the These Episodes documentary originally on the 2005 Network DVD boxset.
This is an example of a story that was inspired by an actual event, when a plane crashed in the Andes and people were forced through necessity to commit cannibalism. They find the devastated areas where there'd been some nuclear accident a thousand years before. Parts of the ship had become over-run with now mutant Darians. The mutants had been given a religious belief in order to kind of focus their attention, and to provide what would be the necessary proteins for the super-civilized Darians who are in a hidden part of the ship. Anybody who had some disfigurement of some kind was considered mutant, and they were put into this protein dis-integrator, where the body was simply dissolved into protein and fed into whatever the life support systems were. In order for the leaders to stay eternally young, throughout this period, they had like-wise used the bodies of the mutant people for their organs and for their transplants to keep them going.
The intervention of the Alphans into this situation reveals to the desperate people who've been there for a thousand years, not knowing, thinking that they were the only ones, with their pseudo religion, thinking that they were the only ones there, that the people they consider as gods are actually their masters or oppressors. On the other hand the masters or oppressors are saying what else, what choice do we have? It's important for the whole race to survive. By the time we get to it, we will have eliminated all the bad stock from these people, who will be our people. How can you blame us? What else could we do? You tell us. And course it's a question that nobody can really answer.
So the big question at the end of the episode, is if they were in the same situation as the Darians, the people who are in the crisis, would they have behaved the same?
I think the matte shots were absolutely divine. I think the people in the rougher element, the survivors I think they were called, they look as if survivors should look, they were hairy, they wore ornamental little bits of computer chips and things like this. When I had that Joan Collins was going to play Kara, I was absolutely delighted. I thought she was wonderful, pouting, gorgeous, specimen of someone who had survived on pirating the organs of all kinds of unfortunate people; maybe she does that for real now.
I did think that Joan's hair was absolutely amazing. With a fruit salad on the head and a little slip on toga. I think Ray Austin got shots of between her legs, and things like this. Wonderful.
Contents copyright Martin Willey