Blake instantly realised that Cally was telepathic, suggesting that the ability was widely known, if rarely encountered. Cally used her telepathy irregularly, most significantly to interrogate Blake when she ambushed him on Saurian Major, to voice her loneliness when overcome by sono vapour on the Ortega, to warn Blake of approaching guards on UP-Bounty, to help Blake convince Largo that Liberator carried four shuttles, to communicate to the moon discs on Zonda, to warn Ro of the Kommissar on Horizon, to warn Avon not to enter the control complex on Star One, to tell Avon that Liberator had been boarded in Volcano, and later to direct Dayna and Tarrant to Mori's position on Obsidian, to tell Vila to run from an approaching vehicle on Crandor, to reassure Zelda of Liberator's coming to Auron, and to inform Tarrant of the combat environment chosen by the computer for his duel with Vinni.
In Shadow and Death-Watch she expressed doubts about her ability to contact people on the surface of a planet from orbit, and in Volcano she had trouble making contact with Avon even though they were both on the Liberator together, albeit in different places. Contact with Zelda was possible under far greater distances, however, presumably due to what Zelda described as "optimum telepathic affinity". In Death-Watch Cally implied that the ability to contact an individual might be related to the degree to which s/he was known by the telepath.
She was telepathically contacted by the Lost, the Darkness, the Thaarn, the undead alien in the sarcophagus, and the Ultra (apparently, using the power of the Core). She also detected the inimical nature of Wanderer K47. The undead alien described a telepath as "rare", and the Ultra catalogued her "humanoid vertebrate, subcategory telepath". Dorian referred to her death making it more difficult to integrate the crew into a gestalt creature to absorb his corruption, and specifically cited her telepathy.
Other possibly telepathic beings included Zil and Sopron. Zeeona was instantly aware of her father's death despite the distance between them, so she and perhaps others or even all of her people may have had some telepathic ability. Tara of Goth's powers might also have had a telepathic basis.
Orac in Power dismissed teleportation by mind power alone as impossible, since "unless directed by an outside agency, matter transmuted to energy will dissipate". This was apparently contradicted by the way Sinofar could bring Blake and Travis, and later Jenna and Keera, down to UP-Duel. The undead alien in Sarcophagus could also transport herself at will, at least over short distances.
Liberator, however, had such an outside agency, as did Scorpio, and the Federation had tried but failed to develop a matter transmission system of their own. Blake talked of such devices sending solid objects "like radio signals". Aquitar was an important element in the Federation's project, and Blake recognised this or something like it in the teleport bracelets on Liberator. Little was said about the technology itself, but in Dawn of the Gods the outer teleport transducers were damaged when the force wall collapsed, preventing use of teleport (they were presumably seen to by the auto-repair system soon afterwards). In Moloch the teleport's operating frequency was blocked by the inner energy field surrounding Sardos, which blocked all medium-wave emissions (from gamma rays to radio waves). Cally adjusted the teleport to operate on an omicron pulse frequency in order to by-pass this. That the Federation never developed a teleport system of their own, despite acquiring a number of bracelets, suggests that the vital elements of the technology resided in the apparatus aboard Liberator rather than in the bracelets themselves.
The following people used the teleport system (those who used it several or many times first did so in the named episodes): Blake, the first person seen to teleport, and later Vila and Gan in Cygnus Alpha; Vargas; Jenna and later Cally (Time Squad); Dr Kendall, Sonheim, Grovane, Pasco and Levett; the android Avalon and Chevner; the real Avalon; Professor Kayn and Renor; Sarkoff and Tyce; Ensor Jr.; Altas One and Two and three guards; two other Space World guards; Bek and Hanna; Molok; Del Grant; Ven Glynd, Travis (as Shivan), Nagu, Governor LeGrand and an uncertain number of aides (see BRACELETS); Dayna (Aftermath); Tarrant (Volcano); Mori and three troopers; Shad, Jarvik, two guards and Servalan (The Harvest of Kairos); Patar; Deral; Moloch; Kostos and two of Servalan's aides - a total of 51+ persons.
Tarvin and his henchmen may have teleported aboard or docked with Liberator. At least one did arrive by teleport.
Liberator's teleport malfunctioned three times: in Time Squad when Blake and Jenna were running out of air aboard the cryogenic capsule, in Aftermath when battle damage necessitated evacuation by life capsule, and in Sarcophagus the undead alien allowed Cally to teleport aboard whilst leaving Avon and Vila stranded on the sarcophagus vessel. The teleport console also blew up in The Web, but was not in use at the time. Blake and Cally could not be teleported up from the Control complex on Star One, Avon surmising it was "shielded", and teleport to Sardos was not available until Cally had adjusted the operating frequency. Teleport was also not an option on Crandor with the outer transducers damaged.
Kate told Avon that the Seska had worked on developing a teleport system "for generations", and Dorian with their help had tried four different approaches over a period of thirty years without success. Avon, assisted by Orac, installed a working teleport system with consoles on Scorpio and Xenon base, and it was used by the following people:
Avon, followed by Tarrant and Dayna and then Vila and Soolin in Power, Muller's android, Vena Muller, Gerren, Keiller and Zeeona. It failed to work properly when first used, leaving Vila behind on Xenon, and was deactivated on Orac's insistence in Headhunter, although Avon later ordered it restored.
All of the crew performed teleport operation duty at some time or another. This is summarised below. The "average" figure reflects the different number of seasons in which the characters were present: 4 for Avon and Vila, 3 (Cally and Orac), 2 (Blake, Jenna, Tarrant and Dayna), 1.5 (Gan) and 1 (Soolin).
| SEASON | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | Total | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cally | 3 | 9 | 5 | - | 17 | 5.67 |
| Vila | 5 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 20 | 5 |
| Avon | 9 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 19 | 4.75 |
| Soolin | - | - | - | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Orac | - | 5 | 4 | 2 | 11 | 3.67 |
| Jenna | 5 | 2 | - | - | 7 | 3.5 |
| Dayna | - | - | 4 | 3 | 7 | 3.5 |
| Blake | 3 | 1 | - | - | 4 | 2 |
| Tarrant | - | - | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1.5 |
| Gan | 1 | - | - | - | 1 | 0.67 |
| TOTAL | 26 | 26 | 22 | 19 | 93 |
(The precise accuracy of the above data is open to query. For instance, does putting someone down and then bringing them up again count as one teleport duty or two? However, the figures do indicate the relative frequency with which each member of the crew operated the teleport.
No teleportation took place in The Way Back and Space Fall: these episodes come before the discovery of the teleport system on Liberator. The only other teleport-free episode preceding Liberator's destruction was Dawn of the Gods. Teleportation did not feature in two 4th Season episodes, Rescue and Orbit.
The only episode in which the teleport was used between two points on the planetary surface, rather than between ship and surface, was Pressure Point.
One other civilisation was seen to have developed teleport, that of Keezarn some 3,000 years previously. The people there had developed the technology to transmit matter from terminal to terminal "over any distance". One terminal was in the City at the Edge of the World, another on a spaceship thousands of light years away by the time Vila and Kerril arrived. It was used by the people of Keezarn, and Kerril, to reach their new home. Liberator's teleport range was much less: at least 1,000 spacials, since this was a standard orbital distance. In Seek-Locate-Destroy Travis was told that Liberator was "a quarter of a million out", presumably 250,000 spacials, and he said that this was beyond teleport range (this may have been a guess, or he could have tortured the information from Cally).
Zen noted that the tests undertaken by the assessment team on Obsidian were "collated in Federation teletext".
The space rats monitored activity within their territory on Caspar by means of television cameras, which Vila described as "ancient".
| A Subterron / member of Avalon's resistance group, who betrayed her location to Travis and confirmed that she had contacted Blake. He did not benefit from this betrayal, being one of those who later died in the massacre of that group by Travis' mutoids in the caves beneath the surface of UP-Project Avalon. | |
An artificial planet (described by Dorian as "an artificially modified planet"), built by scientists of a consortium of united planets 411 years before Liberator's visit. Originally positioned out towards the orbit of Mars, it somehow came to be located on the edge of Sector 6. The planet was supposed to have broken up, but was quite intact when the crew arrived. Tarrant called it a "historical curiosity". Avon was lured there in the belief that Blake was on Terminal with an unspecified secret that could make them both invincible and rich. This turned out to be a trap carefully prepared by Servalan, and the crew of Liberator were stranded there by her. She left on the Liberator moments before its destruction. Cally was subsequently reported dead by Avon as a result of explosives planted by Servalan in the underground complex and abandoned space craft. The survivors were rescued by Dorian arriving in Scorpio, ostensibly to salvage equipment from the underground bunkers on the planet.
 |
Terminal was ovoid rather than spherical, and its surface comprised of large
land masses and oceans. Native life included the links and a large,
apparently immobile, predatory creature that lay in wait for its prey. Vila
described them as "snakes", but this was a rather loose application of the
word. One of these was destroyed by Avon as it attacked Dayna, and two more
were killed by Dorian before they could get to Dayna and Vila.
|
The recording heard by Vila and Kerril identified their language as "Terran", and Norl appeared to be fluent in it. It is convenient but not necessarily accurate to refer to the language used by the crew and everyone else in the series as Terran. Language barriers were rarely met: people who, even if of human origin, had been isolated for a long time spoke "Terran" with ease - the Lost, Sinofar and Giroc, Meegat, the Altas, the Goths, the Sarrans, the Sardoans, and the Hommiks might all have had their own languages, but apparently did not. The message heard by Vila and Kerril mentioned "translator units" and Tarrant referred to the "old tongue" of Keezarn.
Zil was initially incomprehensible, but soon came to speak to Blake in Terran. Zen uttered some phrases in an alien language before "dying".
See also FRENCH.
Also called the "three day sweat", the Terran Ague affected anyone who travelled in deep space, altering the body's nucleic structure. The virus introduced by Wanderer K47 only infected those who had suffered the Terran Ague and was conjectured by Blake to be intended to restrict the human race to Earth, but there were surely many people not born on Earth who had never travelled in space.
|
Criminal organisation present throughout the Federation. Their most
lucrative field of operations was the addictive drug, shadow, and the source
of shadow was the planet Zonda, apparently not very far from Space City.
That Space City was run by the Terra Nostra was, according to Blake, "an open
secret". On Earth, by contrast, they were more covert.
|  The chairman of the Terra Nostra |
 The President's personal security force | Since the Moon Disc plantations on Zonda were guarded by the President's personal security force, the Federation and Terra Nostra were acting in tandem, allowing the Federation to control both sides of the law. It is not impossible, but unlikely, that the Chairman of the Terra Nostra was also President of the Federation. It was never made clear whether the Terra Nostra was a clandestine wing of the Federation, or a bona fide criminal organisation co-opted by the Federation. |
Vila claimed he bought his "Grade-4 Ignorant status" from "a friend at the testing station".