User Reviews

Professor Kayn is needed, to help Gan who is suffering terrible consequences as a result of the Limiter fitted to him. The journey to reach him however is fraught with danger.

You would be forgiven for finding this episode slow, it is, the last ten minutes or so are good, with action and deceit, but it ambles along for the first forty minutes.

It is however well made, it has a quality feel to it, it's still solidly written, the issues lay with the pacing of it, it's very slow. Avon is interesting, his dubious character was implied early on, but we see he's a little more devious than expected. Zen was also more interesting, a computer that could think.

Julian Glover is very good as Kayn, although he's not given enough screen time.

Slow, but a decent watch. 6/10

Gan's limiter that stops him from killing starts to fail . As he becomes more violent and psychotic the crew realise that the only help he can receive is from the scientist who fitted it who is unfortunately a long way away and can only be reached by travelling through an uncharted and dangerous sector of the Galaxy

The problem with this episode is that it's fairly boring and generic . Any telefantasy episode taken up with a space ship flying across the universe trying not to get sucked in to a black hole has a seen it all before quality to it . Or should that be a lack of quality ? As it stands much of Breakdown shows the episode what it is - pure padding

One would have thought with the casting of Julian Glover the very highly regarded stage actor as Proffesor Kayn the episode would have been rewritten as Kayn being the main focus of the episode rather than the boring nonsense about the dangerous journey to reach space station XK72 . That said Glover does save the episode somewhat and the audience get to hear some very incisive bitchy dialogue :

" I like a girl with a sense of humour "

" Yes I see why that might be an advantage "

And to be honest if boring is the worst thing a BLAKES 7 episode can be then it's not a fundamentally bad show

When Gan's limiter implant malfunctions and he begins growling and attacking people in an embarrassing and ridiculous fashion The Liberator heads to space station XK72 where they seek the help of surgeon Professor Kayn. Kayn is predictably unhelpful and informs the Federation that the crew is on the space station.

"Breakdown" is really as boring as "Blake's 7" ever gets, really. Mainly a lot of growling and really fake-looking attacking. Some good lines here and there maybe but other than the Federation discovering the crew is on board absolutely nothing remotely interesting happens. But if you want to see Gan growling for 50 minutes, by all means enjoy.

3/10