Garth (Robin Ward) decides he has finally had it and wants to go back to Cypress Corners - the biosphere he, Devon (Keir Dullea) & Rachel (Gay Rowan) are originally from. Devon is still searching for the elusive back-up bridge of the Ark in order to put the Ark on proper course - away from collision with a sun and towards habitable planets.
The chief (Ivor Barry - just about the last actor you'd logically cast to play a cop) of the Intra-Ark Police force (which like the medical team of episode 12 would have come in handy multiple times if Devon and his friends had known about it before) runs Garth in. The IAP had been following Garth, Devon & Rachel but for whatever reason didn't intercede in their adventures on multiple occasions where a police force would have been obliged to.
Really he wants to recruit Garth to join the force as his personal assistant which makes no sense whatsoever. What follows makes less sense. The chief works with an interplanetary police force to try to keep two planets from going to war. This is something which should be beyond his purview. Moreover if he is the only Ark contact with an interplanetary agency why the hell hasn't he facilitated an evacuation of the Ark? The obvious idiomatic the viewer can draw from what is seen is that this police force did not exist within the diagesis of the show before this episode. They may have had the script for it stashed somewhere but the concept of this police force being active on the Ark has never been alluded to in any way in the fifteen previous episodes.
The obvious reason why is that they couldn't maintain recurring elements beyond the three members of the regular cast and basic aspects like the bounce tube/Ark corridor setting. The episodes would also contain plots which would open and close within the same show so that they could be broadcast non-sequentially in syndication.
Thus the only thing in common any of the guest characters have with any of the other guest characters are that they have met Garth, Devon & Rachel. That would make sense in the case of the biosphere worlds they visit which are each cordoned off from the rest of the Ark. But those which move freely through the Ark have no apparent exchanges with each other when they would almost certainly have had to.
Each of them also generally knows that the Ark is going to collide with a sun but they are preoccupied with other things which do not include anything that might serve to find a new place for the people on the Ark to live on or evacuate them to other ships. Logically the disparate group of people we have seen depicted on the show would be working collectively on those issues. But they aren't and they resent being bothered when the subject of those issues is raised even after acknowledging the urgency.
Then there is the actual presentation of this police force - a little old police chief, a technician and the pilot of the police ship are all that we see. They couldn't afford background performers so they couldn't present it or much of anything else properly on this show. The chief talks about his staff, detectives and alludes to multiple divisions on the Ark but we need way more than a few lines of dialogue.
The chief (Ivor Barry - just about the last actor you'd logically cast to play a cop) of the Intra-Ark Police force (which like the medical team of episode 12 would have come in handy multiple times if Devon and his friends had known about it before) runs Garth in. The IAP had been following Garth, Devon & Rachel but for whatever reason didn't intercede in their adventures on multiple occasions where a police force would have been obliged to.
Really he wants to recruit Garth to join the force as his personal assistant which makes no sense whatsoever. What follows makes less sense. The chief works with an interplanetary police force to try to keep two planets from going to war. This is something which should be beyond his purview. Moreover if he is the only Ark contact with an interplanetary agency why the hell hasn't he facilitated an evacuation of the Ark? The obvious idiomatic the viewer can draw from what is seen is that this police force did not exist within the diagesis of the show before this episode. They may have had the script for it stashed somewhere but the concept of this police force being active on the Ark has never been alluded to in any way in the fifteen previous episodes.
The obvious reason why is that they couldn't maintain recurring elements beyond the three members of the regular cast and basic aspects like the bounce tube/Ark corridor setting. The episodes would also contain plots which would open and close within the same show so that they could be broadcast non-sequentially in syndication.
Thus the only thing in common any of the guest characters have with any of the other guest characters are that they have met Garth, Devon & Rachel. That would make sense in the case of the biosphere worlds they visit which are each cordoned off from the rest of the Ark. But those which move freely through the Ark have no apparent exchanges with each other when they would almost certainly have had to.
Each of them also generally knows that the Ark is going to collide with a sun but they are preoccupied with other things which do not include anything that might serve to find a new place for the people on the Ark to live on or evacuate them to other ships. Logically the disparate group of people we have seen depicted on the show would be working collectively on those issues. But they aren't and they resent being bothered when the subject of those issues is raised even after acknowledging the urgency.
Then there is the actual presentation of this police force - a little old police chief, a technician and the pilot of the police ship are all that we see. They couldn't afford background performers so they couldn't present it or much of anything else properly on this show. The chief talks about his staff, detectives and alludes to multiple divisions on the Ark but we need way more than a few lines of dialogue.