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

[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...