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...