I noticed that this series used a trans-teleporter. Was Star Trek: Orignal Series the first television/film science-fiction format to use transporters on a regular basis?

The correct name for Cygnus Alpha is Alpha Cygni. Also known as Deneb.

I believe that when Varga teleports into space he screams.

Alfonso: I believe so. It was Gene Roddenberry's plan, so that the characters could be dumped straight into the action without all that messing about in shuttles.

I believe when Roddenberry was working on the visual effect for the transporter, one of the early ideas was to have an outline of the person appear, kind of like the creator's of B7 chose to use. I don't remember why Roddenberry decided against that, but one of B7's recurring nits was that the outline didn't always match up with the person.

Apparently the teleporter effect (on video at least) could be created in 5 minutes, (So Mat Irive says..) but Star Trek's transporter took 5 days to matte all the filmed elements together.

Doesn't Brian Blessed just RULE?

"Toys like THESE?!? And THESE?!?"
(sound of communicators being crushed)

Yes, he does, but has he ever played any other part?
I mean Varga here, Richard IV in The Blackadder, the Hawkman in Flash Gordon, the warlord in Trial Of A Time Lord... Is it just me or does he just keep playing the same basic person everywhere he goes?

Brian Blessed also played Fancy Smith in 60s cop show Z-cars, he was also in I Claudius & Tom Jones .

Jenna pushes a button & the ship takes off really fast. So fast you see the skin on their faces being pulled back. Problem. Blake & Avon did not have a chair to catch them like Jenna, they were probably lying on the floor, which means that the way their skin is pulled back should look different, either going up toward their forheads or down toward their chins, not back toward their ears.

Fun with Technobabble. When discussing the flight Avon says they passed through "negative hyperspace" & someone mentions breaking the "antimatter barrier". Huh? Wasn't Hyperspace good enough for Terry Nation, did he have to invent a negative hyperspace? And why throw in some nonsense about an antimatter barrier? Was it all just to sound scientific?

OK, there seems to be a serious time problem here. On Cygnus Alpha the London crewman says that they have been in space for 8 months, and yet all the action on the Liberator seems to take place shortly after they boarded her. Certainly not more than a few days must have passed for them to still be discovering things. So where did this 8 months go? Did it take 8 months for Blake & co. to open the access hatch and find their way to the computer room in Space Fall? Or did travelling through negative hyperspace cause them to go forward in time?

Blake says that the first settlers on Cygnus Alpha arrived 50 years ago, but I believe near the end when he tells the crew the truth about the drug he says that people have been taking it for centuries.

I am curious about the hand weapons that they pull from beside the screen. I believe Jenna pulls one and tries to pulls another and it will not come out but Avon pulls at the second one and comes it out for him. This leads me to believe that the weapons would only fire for the person to which it belonged. But we are shown on Cygnus Alpha that the high priest fires Blake's weapon. Does anyone have any thoughts?

I think the idea was that only 1 gun could be used by 1 person at a time. I noticed that Vila & Jenna held 2 in Project Avalon. (They could have overriden the hot handle feature or couldn't feel it through their thermal suits)

It's not that it won't come out, Lane, but that it's too hot for her to touch because she's already holding one.

Although we don't know if that hot handle feature applies to holding two guns that have already been pulled out.

However, Avon's little technobabble explanation does sound as if only one gun would work for one person, but remember, Avon was just guessing.

The pills are Trebor extra strong mints, the cupboard that Blake tries to open has a catch on the top left which Blake doesn't release. Vagas seems to have lost his robe when he's transported into space.

About the guns - when they pull them out of the armoury, they aren't plugged into the power packs. No wonder Blake isn't too worried when Avon aims at him.

In fact, now I think about it, doesn't Our Brian fire the gun without the power pack?

Another thing - the scene where they are landing the London always makes me laugh. The co-pilot (whose name I forget) is counting down while the captain is landing the thing, and the co-pilot keeps leaving long gaps in his countdown for the captain to say "extending landing gear" type stuff..

OK, maybe it's funnier when you're watching it.

Ooh, ooh! In the last scene when Vargas comes on board the Liberator he appears to teleport on in a second teleport bay that's never seen again ever. I found this very unusual.

I presume the production team were still getting used to things at the time, just like the control sequence on the teleport console is differnt to later episode, & the displays on the main screen take a while to settle down.

I had to look up the word "mutiny" in the OED to see if this was a nit or not. Does prisoners rebelling on their transport ship constitute mutiny? According to the OED (actually SOED) it wouldn't, although there was a time when the word would have included that. Of course, you could always say that the semantics of the word changed again.

That super-fast speed they discovered when first exploring the ship showed that the Liberator can go faster than is humanly tolerable; however, later in the episode, and in other episodes, Zen is ordered to go at maximum speed, but they don't go at that speed.

Don't worry about it. Starfleet habitually discovers an ultimate weapon or cure for something which it completely forgets by the next episode. Clearly this is some sort of universal constant.

So, what happened to the other prisoners? I can't see that Blake would leave them behind, and it isn't really likely that they could have been killed offscreen...

"Quick! Our temple is under attack from the unbelievers! Run away from the attackers, into the cells, and kill their doped-up friends!"

What exactly does "Time Distort" mean anyway?
Could it be thats why a journey of 8 months appears to take only a few hours? Do Einstien's laws of relativity still apply here, albiet to an acceptably limited extent?

If so, than we can assume that the "8 months" would pass on a standard galactic calendar while it would only be a fraction of the time for space-travellers.

Mr. Raiker (not Riker, right?) may have emphasised that length of time to them in his "pep-talk" just to •••• with their heads and be cruel. That would be consistent with his character. The heavily sedated prisoners probably wouldn't notice. After all, time is an illusion subjective to the mood of whoever percieves it, or in this case, somebody travelling through hyperspace in an old-tub.