Cally recited the legend of the Thaarn, the oldest story in the Book of Auron, thus:
The story goes back to the mists of time, to the Dawn of the Gods. There were seven gods who discovered the planet Auron, and on it left the first man and woman. A million years went by. The gods returned. They were no older, even though a million years had passed. The gods returned and were pleased with what they saw, and they bestowed on the people of Auron great gifts - new types of crops which ended hunger, constant peace, and telepathy was promised. But one of the gods was very jealous - he didn't believe that the people of Auron deserved all this. He was frightened that they would one day become so powerful they would challenge the supremacy of the gods themselves, and in his rage he killed another god. The five remaining gods were so angry they built a chariot for him, and sent him beyond the threshold of space and time. The mad god swore a terrible vengeance. He said that he would return again. He said that he alone would discover the eternal secrets, and become the one great Master of the Universe.Cally compared the Thaarn with Earth stories of dragons and unicorns, and added that on Auron the Thaarn was "a symbol of darkness and evil".
As encountered by the crew of the Liberator, the Thaarn was still pursuing his plans of conquest, having developed a gravity generator on the principle that "he who controls gravity controls everything". At least some of the people he had captured with this device had been promised planets of their own to govern, and he offered to make Cally "queen of a thousand worlds". His operations were based on Crandor, described by his chief executive the Caliph as "palace of the Lord Thaarn, Master of the Universe".
| He took especial interest in Cally, detecting her presence soon after Liberator was pulled off course by the gravity generator. He told her he was "so alone" and claimed to have waited for her for "the time it takes light to cross a thousand galaxies". She persuaded him to turn off the energy isolaters, allowing Liberator to escape, and Crandor was destroyed soon afterwards. The Thaarn managed to get away. Cally saw the Thaarn, despite his insistence that she shouldn't, and found a withered diminutive humanoid with an enormous cranium. She later denied to the crew that she had in fact seen him. | |
| Federation officer with the rank of Major, and together with Arlen and Servalan, one of the very few female officers seen in the series. Assigned by Servalan to "defend" Travis at his court-martial, she in fact did her best to ensure he received a death sentence. She insisted that the tribunal hear details of every one of the 1,417 civilians Travis was accused of having massacred, claiming that she might wish to query some of the evidence. Rontane saw this for what it was: a means of prejudicing the tribunal against Travis. Travis replaced her defence statement with one of his own, which lost her favour with Servalan. As Travis told her, "Majors can die quite anonymously". She probably perished as a result of Blake's surprise attack on the space station where the court-martial was conducted. |  |
A medical facility, and apparently quite efficient since it healed Pinder's broken arm within a matter of hours.
| The crew wore thermal suits in several episodes, notably Project Avalon (Blake, Vila, Jenna), Hostage (Blake, Vila and Avon) and Countdown (Avon and Del Grant). Those in the latter two episodes were of a different design to those in the first, but all incorporated a temperature adjustment mechanism. |  In Hostage |
 In Countdown | In Project Avalon this was set at 75% with a surface temperature of -120° (Celsius?), although Blake and Jenna teleported into caves below the surface where it may have been warmer. |
Popular name for the Terran Ague, referred to by Bellfriar.
Mentioned by Avon when taking Scorpio up from the surface of Terminal.
| Described by Toise and Krantor as "a trekker", he challenged the Klute at speed chess and died after being defeated in 28 moves. Like many people seen in Freedom City he dressed in period costume, in his case strongly based on 17th Century European fashion. |  |
Few references to time are given, some more meaningful than others. In The Way Back it was announced that the London's departure from Earth was advanced to "1700 Earth time", and Vila noted that this was only eight hours distant (ie: about 0900). It was night when the London left the dome city, despite it being summer (as evidenced by the leaves on the trees, and the implicit date - see below). This suggests that Earth time was applied to the whole planet, with no local time (at least as far as launchings were concerned). Keiller, In Gold, advised the Space Princess" passengers to "tune all chronometers to frequency seven for synchronisation with Federation Standard Time".
In Hostage Servalan's planetfall on Exbar was scheduled for "2159 standard". In The Harvest of Kairos the kairopan shuttled was scheduled to take off from the planet at 0815. Both of these times fall within the scope of a 24-hour clock.
Several date codes were seen in The Way Back. Study of the medical records of Renor Leesal et al show an apparent chronological progression from years 42 to 52, the day before Blake's alleged assault being 52.6.8. This might be taken to mean either June 8th or August 6th (it might mean something else entirely, of course). If so, it is more likely to be June 8th, since Renor Leesal was apparently born on 42.1.5 and vaccinated on 42.4.3 - these dates are more likely to be January 5th and April 3rd respectively than May 1st and March 4th. The year "52" can mean several things - see FEDERATION.
Other dates given were less meaningful. Travis" massacre of civilians on Zircaster is given the date code "beta 2001". The Federation's investigation of Obsidian is listed as having "date code 303" which Vila called "a long time ago". It could not have been that long ago, however, since Hower was on Obsidian at the time of the investigation, after having trained with Hal Mellanby at the Federation's Central Science Complex.
References were made to "Earth years" in Moloch, "Earth hours" in Power, and "standard days" in Gold.
See also TIME UNIT
The mechanism used by Federation and other ships to exceed light speed, though by how much was never made clear.
See also HYPERDRIVE, PHOTONIC DRIVE, SPEED, INTERGALACTIC DRIVE.
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The Mark X pursuit ships in The Harvest of Kairos were described as
the newest and fastest at Servalan's command, yet Zen noted a modified fin
that implied "primitive Time Distort facility". Pursuit ships in earlier
episodes (eg Hostage) had been seen to travel at speeds of up to
TD-10. No explanation for this apparent anomaly was given.
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