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

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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...