Sevencyclopaedia - O

OBSIDIAN

A planet in the 6th Sector. Said by Servalan to have real strategic value, since it could control command and supply routes through much of the sector. Its most prominent feature appeared to be a large, active volcano, which Vila called "the only active one in the entire place", probably but not necessarily referring to the whole planet. The Federation had investigated the planet, submitting a report designated "10 sub 5 date code 303", to which Vila said "That's a long time ago". No further invasion or colonisation took place, and no-one aboard the Liberator could think of another investigated planet that had not later been developed. Obsidian had not been officially accorded neutral status. Lots of battles took place in its vicinity during the Intergalactic War, including three major ones, but no wreckage was detected on the surface. A rumour of Blake being there after the War was untrue, and implicitly planted by Servalan to lure the crew to Obsidian.

The planet was inhabited by the Pyroans, who lived near the volcano under the leadership of First Citizen Hower. He had been present on the planet when the Federation surveyed the planet. The whole planet was contaminated by fallout from a nuclear device (origin unspecified) buried in the volcano, and Hower mentioned Servalan by name as having been warned of it.

OG

One of the labourers created by Justin, presumably from one of the deserters he was supplied with as experimental material. Og was the most advanced animal he had created, and the most intelligent. He could understand simple speech, although unable to talk himself. He feared and hated Justin, who had performed several painful brain grafts on Og, but all that was needed to "complete" him was some painless psycho-instruction. Og was responsible for throwing Dayna over a low cliff when she tried to lure him back to the laboratory for food. He was captured alive by Servalan's mutoids, one of whom eventually shot him, albeit accidentally.

OLD CALENDAR

Avon told Blake that Albian was first settled in the last century of the Old Calendar. Quite when the Old Calendar gave way to the New is difficult to determine - see FEDERATION, NEW CALENDAR.

OPEN PLANET

Planet on which the penal code had been suspended. In Gauda Prime's case, this allowed mining companies to dispossess the original agricultural settlers without encountering any legal difficulties. Settlers who refused to make way for the miners were simply disposed of, as happened with Soolin's family.

ORAC

Device invented by Ensor after he fled into hiding. Servalan agreed to buy Orac for 100 million credits, telling Travis it was worth "ten times that much". She also said that there had been rumours about Orac "for years". Orac was more than just a computer, Ensor describing it as "a brain", and it could draw information from any computer containing a Tarial cell. It had in its construction acquired many of the mannerisms of its creator, and could be difficult to deal with. Some technical details were revealed over the course of various episodes:

• Orac: Orac predicted the Liberator's destruction at astro point 781, and (in Redemption) scrambled the missile launch systems of another DSV to satisfy that prediction. It could also control the computers of the System, and indeed needed to be able to do this in order to destroy the DSV.

Reduced in Gambit

Shadow: Orac was revealed as having the capacity to operate the teleport, by means unspecified. Its signals also passed through the same dimension as Cally's telepathy, though Orac was not itself telepathic. Hostage: Orac mentioned its own "unique" ability to intercept and decode transmissions, such as that Travis sent to Blake from Exbar.

• Gambit: Orac could reduce itself by stabilised atomic implosion, in this (only) instance to one eighth normal size for a period of two hours and six minutes. It was implied that the time it could reduce itself for was inversely proportional to the degree of reduction.
• Star One: Jenna used Orac to notify Space Command of the impending alien invasion, on the grounds that its carrier beam was the fastest way to contact Servalan.
• Aftermath: Orac assumed control of Avon's life capsule as it entered the atmosphere of Sarran too fast.
• Dawn of the Gods: Orac joined the crew in playing a board game, and expressed intense annoyance when the game was abandoned (while Orac was winning). It later assumed control of Zen to study the black hole into which it supposed the ship had been pulled.
• City at the Edge of the World: Orac was able to specify the precise location of the tracer given to Vila, although it was admittedly attached to a tracking device.
• Sarcophagus: a sensory device was seen attached to Orac, allowing it to study the alien artefact brought back to the ship by Cally.
• Ultraworld: Orac reflected the Core's wave emissions back to the Core, destabilising it, though whether it could do this independently without use of other ship systems is unspecified.
• Traitor: Orac was seen to delegate orders given by Avon, having them carried out by other computers: as Avon said to Soolin, "one of the almost human things about Orac is that it does not like to work".
• Games: Orac made an ambiguous reference to sensors whilst on Belkov's Orbiter. This might suggest some inbuilt sensory capacity, or perhaps more likely referred to information gleaned from the attached circuit from Belkov's Gambit computer.
• Blake: Orac simulated two signals on Gauda Prime. The first was of a distress beacon, to attract passing bounty hunters and allow Avon to acquire their transport. The second was to imitate one of Blake's fliers and allow the crew to enter a landing silo in Blake's headquarters.

Orac was seen to extract useful information in Horizon (from which Cally learnt of Movo's death), Gambit (allowing Avon and Vila to win 5 million credits on the Big Wheel and force the Klute to offer a draw against Vila at speed chess), Traitor (where Colonel Quute told the General that "whatever it is" could learn about military traffic and vital strategic details, and in Games (where it admitted difficulty in accessing Belkov's Gambit computer). Its predictive capabilities seemed to appear only in Redemption, in StarDrive, where it referred to Federation pursuit ship design falling behind its predicted degree of development, and again in Headhunter, where it predicted terminal prospects for "organic humanoid life" until Muller's android was destroyed.

The extent of Orac's ability to control other computers was ambiguous. It could certainly, if it wished, assume command of Zen and the Liberator's computer systems, and caused the destruction of another DSV. If it could have done the same with all computers, it would have been a powerful tool indeed, crippling attacking pursuit ships and other craft that threatened the Liberator. This was never seen to happen, and so presumably was beyond its limits. In Hostage it decoded the message sent by Travis to Blake from Exbar, but the crew still needed to acquire new decoding equipment for most Federation transmissions (in Killer, for example).

In Animals

Orac was taken over by the Darkness in Shadow, prompting Avon to fit a small disruption charge that would detonate if Orac's energy levels deviated from their norms, and again in Headhunter, where it came under the influence of Muller's android. It was also affected by the electrical interference above Virn. On both of these occasions, the disruption charge installed in Shadow failed to detonate. The charge may have been deactivated by the damage Orac suffered on Terminal, but it seems more likely that the android and the sand did not communicate through the telepathic wavebands and the charge was specifically set to explode if the communication channels were tampered with.

Orac suffered damage in Rescue, during the explosions arranged by Servalan (Avon went back underground to retrieve Orac) and needed to be repaired by Dorian. Further damage was sustained in Warlord, when it was hit by a girder brought down by the explosives planted by Finn.

In Shadow, Hanna was electrocuted as she attempted to remove Orac's key. It is therefore possible to attribute Orac with a body count, albeit a very small one and arising from control by a malevolent outside agency.

Orac's "key" (referred to by Vila in Ultraworld as an "activator") played a vital role in some episodes. The key could not be removed in Shadow until Cally did so by telekinesis. In Voice from the Past Blake took the key to prevent Avon allowing Orac to interfere with Ven Glynd's telepathic control box. In Terminal Avon took the key down to the surface with him, preventing the rest of the crew from using Orac (and hence possibly preventing the Liberator's destruction.

Orac was a negotiable commodity from time to time. Belkov demanded Orac as part of a deal with Servalan. In Orbit Egrorian offered his tachyon funnel in exchange for Orac; Avon supplied him with a facsimile. This replica, built by Avon as a contingency measure, was fitted with only a short-range communications relay, suggesting it was completed in a hurry.

Most of the time Orac remained on board the Liberator (and later Xenon base or Scorpio), but was taken down to the surface of UP-Gambit, Sarran (placed in a life capsule with Avon), Obsidian (by Mori), Terminal (taken down by Vila on the pretence that it was "a sculpture"), Malodar (in Egrorian's shuttle), and Gauda Prime. It was also taken across to Belkov's Orbiter.

Orac was frequently critical of the crew's indifference to "the more fascinating aspects of the universe" and bordered on the contemptuous at times. In a rare admission of defeat, it reluctantly conceded that it perceived Sopron as a highly sophisticated computer with a marginally greater capacity for reasoning. Vila in particular held a low opinion of Orac, calling it "a rat in a box" in Shadow and "Trooper Orac" in Traitor. Dayna in Rumours of Death summed up Orac as "too useful to destroy".

The last time Orac was seen was in the flier acquired by the crew as they made their way to Blake's headquarters. The crew were next seen in the tracking gallery of this installation, and Orac was not with them.

ORBITAL BOOSTER

ORBITAL DRIFT COMPENSATORS

Part of the Liberator's flight systems. Activated by Gan.

ORBITER

Ship belonging to Belkov, and references to it suggest that it was the ship's actual name, rather than its model. It supposedly contained Belkov's non-existent store of feldon crystals. Avon, Vila, Tarrant and Soolin defeated the defence systems, including a launch-and-flight simulator and a fingerprint lock, but were forced to leave when completing the final game sequence locked the feldon panels onto the black hole of Cygnus XL.

ORE EXTRACTION PLANT

Mentioned by Blake as present on Asteroid P-K118 and described by him as "standard".

ORGANIZATION, THE

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