Travis (Blake's 7)

Space Commander Travis is a fictional character in the British science fiction television programme Blake's 7. Stephen Greif performed the role of Travis in the programme's first series, but declined an offer to return for the second series (but returned to play Travis in the Big Finish Liberator Chronicles audio drama story "Promises" written by Nigel Fairs). "Weapon", the third episode of the second series, marked the premiere performance of Brian Croucher in the role. In this episode, Travis expresses to Supreme Commander Servalan some unease about his recent "rehabilitation". In B7 Productions' audio dramas of Blake's 7, Craig Kelly assumes the role of Travis.

Travis is a Space Commander in the Terran Federation who is infamous for his brutality and ruthlessness. Prior to the events of the Blake's 7 television series, a Federation leader commissions him to subdue an anti-Federation resistance movement on Earth. Travis and a band of troopers under his command ambush a key resistance group. When the group's leader, Roj Blake, declares their surrender, Travis commands his men to gun-down the rebels. Blake wrests a DEW gun from a trooper, and shoots Travis, wounding him severely on the left side of his body. After the troopers capture Blake, a combat medic called Maryatt partially repairs Travis' face. Later, Travis eschews cosmetic surgery, and replaces his amputated left arm with a cybernetic one equipped with an energy weapon called a Laseron Destroyer.

When Roj Blake escapes the Federation, Servalan, Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation, enlists Travis as a special agent to hunt Blake—and to commandeer Liberator, an advanced starship which Blake now captains. In his several encounters with Blake, Travis eventually captures a resistance leader called Avalon, and indirectly causes the death of one of Blake's crewmen, Olag Gan. Ultimately, however, Travis fails too egregiously for Servalan, who required of him not only the downfall of the resistance movement, but calculated assistance in her maneuvering for total galactic ascendancy. Servalan fears that Travis' blundering might expose her abuses of power, and concludes that his liability exceeds his faltering usefulness. Finally, she endorses a dilatory court-martial for a massacre which Travis ordered earlier in his career—a crime for which he was sure to be executed.

Coincidentally, the Liberator, under Blake's command, attacks Federation headquarters at the penultimate moment of Travis' sentencing. Amidst the commotion of the attack, Travis seizes the opportunity to escape his death sentence, and absconds to Servalan's office. There, he forces Servalan to provision him with an escape ship and other resources. Travis, now a fugitive, resumes his obsessive hunt for Blake.

Blake and Travis meet for the final time at Star One, a secret base and supercomputer of crucial importance to the Federation's control of its planets. There, Blake discovers that Travis has betrayed the Federation to aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy. Travis shoots Blake on sight, but is unaware that he has not mortally wounded him. When an opportune moment arises, Blake clips Travis with a shot from his sidearm. Before Travis can retaliate, Kerr Avon knocks him into an energy vortex, killing him.

External links

• Space Commander Travis at the Internet Movie Database