Mano a Mano duel, courtesy of godlike superbeings.

[ciphergoth]

I watched an episode of Blake's 7 the other day which seemed to have a very familiar plot. Godlike superbeings pluck two major characters - most usually the main character and their main opponent - out of their spaceships to force them into a mano a mano duel, in which they are armed with more primitive weapons than their familiar blasters. The fight is to be to the death, but the hero, having evaded the villain's trickery and gained the upper hand, refuses to kill the villain at the end; this turns out to win the approval of the godlike superbeings, who let them both go.

I feel sure that this exact plot has been replicated many times by cheap TV SF, but we could between us think of only one other example, an episode of Star Trek. Does anyone know of any others?

For that matter, could someone arrange for some godlike superbeings to pay us a visit?

Comments

[skx.livejournal.com]

Star Treck

 IIRC there were at least two episodes of treck which had this exact same plot, unfortunately I don't recall the titles and google didn't help.

 The first episode involved Kirk, who used some sulpher to make explosives, against a lizard like man.

 The second episode involved Picard against another reptilean beast. In that case it was the reptileans idea, he kepts saying 'foo & bar at location' - and inspired Picard to translate with pictures. The idea was that the two of them would fight a third enemy and in doing so form bonds of friendship.

[djm4]

The Original Trek episode is Arena - the Next Gen one is Darmok, which happens to be one of my personal faves, as it contains one of the best attempts in TV SF to construct a genuinely alien way of thinking about language.

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

The TNG episode was called "Darmok". (I remembered this one myself, and used google to check.. dearie me, I guess I'm still a trekker at heart).

Oh, and it was "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" that he kept saying.

The original series episode was called Arena. (thank google entirely for that one; the beastie was called the "gorn", hence why I had more luck)

Babylon 5 did the same thing, except that the "god-like superbeings" don't take pity on the major character (captain Sheridan) for his mercy. Instead, he escapes with his new chum, eventually leaving the ship in an escape pod. The aliens later throw all their test subjects out of the airlock, just as Sheridan's mates turn up, allowing a moment of "oh my god they killed him!" horror. They then proceed to blow the alien ship into tiny little pieces. It turns out that the aliens are scouts for the nasty horrible bad guys (the imaginatively named "Shadows") who turn up later and start a huge war, which is the main plot of the series as a whole.

I think Space: Above and Beyond did a similar episode, but I'm not certain.

There was also an episode of Star Trek where the godlike aliens took away the whole ship's weapons, and the enterprise crew and a bunch of klingons were forced to fight with swords. Can't remember how it ended, though.

[selectnone.livejournal.com]

In "Space: Above and Beyond" there was an episode where the Main Guy is marooned on a dangerous planet and eventually becomes friends with one of the residents who is guarding an egg-hole or something, and fights of the Chigs (I think that's what the enemy boyos where called...).

Of course in the last episode, when a Chig delegation arrives on the big space-carrier, one takes his helmet off... and was of the same species as the one Main Guy met! Shock!

That had a great ending... you could easily see which actors were definately up for another series if they got the chance, and which didn't much fancy it by how dangerous their cliff-hanger position was at the end. Most of them were potentially dead, but some more so than others...

[conflux.livejournal.com]

I was a child when I saw this episode but even then I thought it was an ST rip off. Space 1999 had a similar plot once when the advanced beings were replaced by a small clump of
improbably intelligent trees who were the leaders of a plant dominated world. Both sides got 3 people each but otherwise it was the same plot.

[babysimon]

That can't be a space 1999 plot! It almost makes sense...

[mangros.livejournal.com]

B7's 'Duel' appears to be a lift of Trek's 'Arena'. I'm sure that the idea had been around before Trek; most probably in a short story or something.

Buck Rogers has a go at this too, with 'Time of the Hawk': the first episode of the sinister second season. Which was lacking in space casino/disco/futuristic bars, but gained some geniuinely scary serious stories. Interesting to note that Gil Gerard was partly responsible for this change - he was sick of his character's flip attitude and wisecracks.

Back to the point. Rogers crosses paths with a humanoid bird who hates the human race due to Earth's colonists wiping his tribe out years ago. He is wanted for random attacks on Earth ships.
They get down to fisticuffs, and the event is overseen by a strange wizard type. As the series' number one champion I am embarrassed to admit that I haven't watched this one for ages, and so can't elaborate. Anyway, Rogers has 'Hawk' at his mercy, but refuses to kill him. Hawk is captured and tried, and after Rogers intervenes, becomes a regular character.

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I remember that. That was a fantastic episode. Hawk was probably the best character in the show ever.

[selectnone.livejournal.com]

But where did Hawk get his birdy space-ship from? That's what I want to know.

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

I wonder where the plot originates from? it's fairly obvious, i guess, but there's probably an older, and better, piece of prior art than Star Trek.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Short story called (wybi) "Arena" by Fredric Brown... Brown's short stories are uniformly pretty good, and fairly frequently ripped off...

[sublevel3.livejournal.com]

The same scenario also happened in an episode of Farscape.

beat me to it...

[kingginger.livejournal.com]

Crais and Cryten in the episode with the mad holograph stuff going on...

IIRC?

[sabledemon.livejournal.com]

Going back to Trek things - DS9 also had same sort of thing with the big beings in the wormhole taking over Sisko and his son, Jake, to fight it out between good and evil.

[zotz]

It is, of course, an instance of 20 Things That Never Happen In Star Trek, Number 10: "The Enterprise is captured by a vastly superior alien intelligence
which does not put them on trial."

[charliegrrrl.livejournal.com]

Aack... Season one Blake's 7 had a number of weak episodes... actually that episode has a few good moments, like the conversation between Travis and his mutoid assistant, who used to be a rich and powerful woman but has been transformed into a mindless slave. But I'd greatly recommend skipping ahead to season two, when Terry Nation was no longer dashing off all the scripts in a crazed fog!