| Federation officer with the rank of Major, and together with Arlen and Servalan, one of the very few female officers seen in the series. Assigned by Servalan to "defend" Travis at his court-martial, she in fact did her best to ensure he received a death sentence. She insisted that the tribunal hear details of every one of the 1,417 civilians Travis was accused of having massacred, claiming that she might wish to query some of the evidence. Rontane saw this for what it was: a means of prejudicing the tribunal against Travis. Travis replaced her defence statement with one of his own, which lost her favour with Servalan. As Travis told her, "Majors can die quite anonymously". She probably perished as a result of Blake's surprise attack on the space station where the court-martial was conducted. | |
A medical facility, and apparently quite efficient since it healed Pinder's broken arm within a matter of hours.
| The crew wore thermal suits in several episodes, notably Project Avalon (Blake, Vila, Jenna), Hostage (Blake, Vila and Avon) and Countdown (Avon and Del Grant). Those in the latter two episodes were of a different design to those in the first, but all incorporated a temperature adjustment mechanism. |  In Hostage |
 In Countdown | In Project Avalon this was set at 75% with a surface temperature of -120° (Celsius?), although Blake and Jenna teleported into caves below the surface where it may have been warmer. |
Popular name for the Terran Ague, referred to by Bellfriar.
Mentioned by Avon when taking Scorpio up from the surface of Terminal.
| Described by Toise and Krantor as "a trekker", he challenged the Klute at speed chess and died after being defeated in 28 moves. Like many people seen in Freedom City he dressed in period costume, in his case strongly based on 17th Century European fashion. |  |
Few references to time are given, some more meaningful than others. In The Way Back it was announced that the London's departure from Earth was advanced to "1700 Earth time", and Vila noted that this was only eight hours distant (ie: about 0900). It was night when the London left the dome city, despite it being summer (as evidenced by the leaves on the trees, and the implicit date - see below). This suggests that Earth time was applied to the whole planet, with no local time (at least as far as launchings were concerned). Keiller, In Gold, advised the Space Princess" passengers to "tune all chronometers to frequency seven for synchronisation with Federation Standard Time".
In Hostage Servalan's planetfall on Exbar was scheduled for "2159 standard". In The Harvest of Kairos the kairopan shuttled was scheduled to take off from the planet at 0815. Both of these times fall within the scope of a 24-hour clock.
Several date codes were seen in The Way Back. Study of the medical records of Renor Leesal et al show an apparent chronological progression from years 42 to 52, the day before Blake's alleged assault being 52.6.8. This might be taken to mean either June 8th or August 6th (it might mean something else entirely, of course). If so, it is more likely to be June 8th, since Renor Leesal was apparently born on 42.1.5 and vaccinated on 42.4.3 - these dates are more likely to be January 5th and April 3rd respectively than May 1st and March 4th. The year "52" can mean several things - see FEDERATION.
Other dates given were less meaningful. Travis" massacre of civilians on Zircaster is given the date code "beta 2001". The Federation's investigation of Obsidian is listed as having "date code 303" which Vila called "a long time ago". It could not have been that long ago, however, since Hower was on Obsidian at the time of the investigation, after having trained with Hal Mellanby at the Federation's Central Science Complex.
References were made to "Earth years" in Moloch, "Earth hours" in Power, and "standard days" in Gold.
See also TIME UNIT
The mechanism used by Federation and other ships to exceed light speed, though by how much was never made clear.
See also HYPERDRIVE, PHOTONIC DRIVE, SPEED, INTERGALACTIC DRIVE.
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The Mark X pursuit ships in The Harvest of Kairos were described as
the newest and fastest at Servalan's command, yet Zen noted a modified fin
that implied "primitive Time Distort facility". Pursuit ships in earlier
episodes (eg Hostage) had been seen to travel at speeds of up to
TD-10. No explanation for this apparent anomaly was given.
|  |
The following timeline is based on the various (frequently vague or approximate) references given by various people in various episodes. Some of them are possibly contentious, and since there is little indication as to how much time each season represented (Ven Glynd mentions two years separating The Way Back and Voice from the Past), the relative placing of some of the more recent events is rather conjectural.
| 3,000 | years before City at the Edge of the World, the people of Keezarn launch their ship to find them a new home. |
| 700 | years before Killer, Wanderer K47 disappears in 61 Cygni. |
| 411 | years before Avon's visit, Terminal is built. |
| 200 | years before Pressure Point, the Federation begins to expand. |
| 200 | years before Powerplay, Chenga is settled. |
| 200 | years before the crew reach Xenon, Dorian discovers the underground room on the planet. |
| 125 | years before Cygnus Alpha, the first prisoners are landed on the penal colony (approximate - might be 100 or 150 years). |
| 100 | or more years before Traitor, the old monorail tunnel on Helotrix is sealed. |
| 100 | years before Mission to Destiny, Destiny is settled. |
| 50 | years at least before Mission to Destiny, the Ortega is built. |
| 40 | years before Orac, Ensor goes into hiding (according to Blake - see ENSOR). |
| 30 | years or more before Children of Auron, disease is eliminated from Auron. |
| 30 | years before Pressure Point, Control is moved from Earth (according to Travis). |
| 30 | years before Rescue, Dorian begins work on developing a teleport system. |
| 23 | years before The Way Back, the Fletch expedition is massacred by the Waazis (inferred date). |
| 20 | years before Aftermath, Hal Mellanby leaves Earth with Dayna. This is before Servalan becomes a prominent political figure. |
| 20 | years before Power, Maravik defeats the Seska. |
| 15 | years before The Harvest of Kairos, Tarrant takes his first command on the kairopan shuttle. |
| 12 | years before Bounty, Sarkoff becomes President of Lindor. |
| 12 | years before Games, Belkov begins mining feldon on Mecron II. |
| 7 | years before Bounty, Sarkoff is voted out of office. |
| 10 | years before Assassin, pirates begin operations on Domo. |
| 10 | years before Orbit, Egrorian flees from the Space Research Institute with Pinder and several million credits. Tarrant studies at the SRI shortly afterwards. |
| 4 | years before The Way Back, Blake's first rebellion is defeated and Travis badly injured (Blake again met Ven Glynd two years later, or 6 years after his first trial, before going to Star One). |
| 6 | years before Star One, top secret experiments begin on Bucol-2. |
| 5 | years before Sand, the first expedition to Virn is wiped out. |
| 4 | years before Death-Watch, Deeta Tarrant becomes Champion of Teal. |
| 3 | years before Trial, Travis massacres 1,417 civilians on Zircaster. |
| 3 | years before Stardrive, Dr Plaxton begins working with space rats. |
The date given for Dr Havant's treatment of the three children allegedly molested by Blake is 52.6.8 - see FEDERATION and TIME for further discussion on what this might mean. Although 20th Century and earlier events were mentioned on a number of occasions, no indication was given as to how far back such events might have been.