Mission of Mercy (television story)

  This article is from an Out-of-Canon perspective  Mission of Mercy was the fifth episode of the first season of Station Zero. It was also the first episode to feature the deaths of major or recurring characters, and would be the last until the late 1970s to do so.

Summary
Alexander and Lucille Isling are part of a mission to bring a "low level" race, the fish-like Jatheel, into the Imperium. Complications arise when the apparently peace-loving Jatheel accuse a technician of damaging one of their sacred temples. Efforts to prevent further trouble quickly fall apart, and by the end the Station Zero family will be sadly reduced.

Plot
Commander Islington calls his son, Alexander, to the still room of Station Zero. An important mission is to be undertaken to the planet Haperis VI. The dominant local species, the Jatheel, are not quite up to the Imperium citizenship standards, but they are sentient with some technology that could prove useful. Alexander, an experienced diplomat, is to lead a mission to attempt to bring the Jatheel peacefully under the rule of the Imperium. A diplomatic craft will be arriving at the station shortly to take the mission to the Haperis system.

Alexander returns to the family quarters and discusses the matter with Lucille. She seems eager to accompany him; after all, they met in the diplomatic service and she is just as experienced as he is. She misses her old work, and their daughters are old enough to take care of themselves now. Though the idea makes Alexander uneasy, he agrees that she would be a great help to him. They prepare for the trip.

On a strange, misty planet, the Jatheel homeworld, delicate looking figures glide through the air and the water. These are the Jatheel in their two main developmental stages. Near a large, half-submerged stone building, two older, air-dwelling Jatheel hold an untranslated conversation in their strange, slushing language. They enter the building, a grand temple, and make obeisance before a huge and terrifying-looking statue with jewel-like eyes that seem to glow.

The diplomatic craft has arrived and docked at Station Zero. Attaché Warren Hendrey introduces himself and his aide, Hank Pear, to Alexander and Lucille. While the Islington's small amount of baggage is being loaded aboard, Lucille extracts promises from Sarah and Dierdre that they will behave and obey their grandfather until their parents return. The girls swear to do as they have been told, but Lucille catches Dierdre making eyes at Lieutenant Slade Tyler across the flight-deck. Commander Islington arrives to see the mission off, and after promising Lucille that he will keep a close eye on Dierdre, he leads his granddaughters away to watch from the observation arena as the dipomatic carrier departs.

Alexander and Lucille board the carrier. They have a few last words with the commander, Dierdre, and Sarah before external communications are temporarily cut off. As the flight check begins, Alexander straps into his seat. He complains to Lucille that even after all of his years of travel, he has never quite gotten the hang of not feeling ill at the beginning of a space flight. Hank Pear offers him a medicament, which he declines. The checks are completed, and the carrier departs.

Commander Islington reassures his granddaughters that their parents will be well, then sends them on their way for their lessons. Dierdre, of course, sneaks away to talk with Slade, though she is disappointed when he treats her rather like a child. Wandering off again, she comes to a communications area. Her friend Maisie Douglas, one of the technicians, is playing back the final post-check communications from the diplomatic craft, a routine activity. Dierdre listens in as well, and the two overhear a strange snippet of conversational bleed-through between Attaché Hendrey and his aide. It makes no sense, but it sounds like it could be trouble. Maisie reports this to her supervisor, who assures both girls that what they heard could be anything from an anomaly to old data. Nothing to worry about. Dierdre debates whether to tell her grandfather, since the information could be important, or to keep her peace in order to avoid being in trouble for skipping out on lessons.

The diplomatic carrier has arrived at Haperis VI, where the Imperium delegation's shuttle is greeted by a group of Jatheel elders, who lead them to their quarters. Along the way, Pear falls behind, and as the rest of the group turns a corner, he slips off into another room.

At the station, Sarah overhears Dierdre and Maisie once again discussing the transmission anomaly. She confronts them about what they heard and insists that the information be reported to the commander. All three go to report their suspicions that there could be danger for the diplomatic mission, but are stalled when they learn that Commander Islington is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed. Maisie toes the line and decides that the strange transmission was simply nothing, but Dierdre and Sarah continue to fear for the safety of their parents.

At the diplomatic gathering the next day, negotiations are proceeding uneventfully, when a Jatheel guard enters the room with accusations of sabotage. Alexander is quick to deny that anyone in the party could, or would, have done anything improper, but then Hank arrives, followed by one of the security officers who accompanied the negotiating party onto the planet. Hank says that the Jatheel guard is correct, that someone in the group did cause trouble, but perhaps not entirely on purpose. It seems that a technician who was with the party somehow smuggled booze along, got drunk in the early morning hours, and managed to make quite a mess of an important Jatheel temple. Just as Lucille is attempting to apologize to the Jatheel elders, a tremendous explosion rocks the building they are in. Warren is knocked unconscious against the table, two of the Jatheel elders are crushed under a falling Lintel, and a swarm of Jatheel guards arrives to arrest the diplomatic group. The temple has just been destroyed. In a last-ditch effort to keep themselves alive and possibly to escape, Alexander, Lucille, and a couple of the crew from the carrier manage to disarm some of the guards and make a break for it.

On Station Zero, Dierdre and Sarah finally bring their concerns to their grandfather, who contacts the communications supervisor and demands to listen for himself to the recording. Strangely enough, the tapes are missing, and apparently no back-ups were made. While Commander Islington tries to reassure the girls, he cannot help but be concerned as well. Once Dierdre and Sarah are safely off in their quarters, the commander contacts Lieutenant Slade Tyler and orders a detachment to follow the flight plan for the diplomatic carrier, just to get within contact range and see if there might be any trouble. Unbeknownst to Slade, Dierdre sneaks into the escape shell of his scout ship, hoping that she can somehow be of help.

Aboard the diplomatic carrier orbiting Haperis VI, the remaining crew are becoming concerned that they've had no contact from the ground mission. Just then, a faint signal crackles through on the comms. Lucille has managed to wire together the personal communicators of the shuttle passengers and boost the signal enough to reach the carrier, but barely. The ground group relay details of their difficulty, then report that they plan to try and get to the shuttle and escape back to the carrier. The crew says that everything will be ready for them when they arrive. Meanwhile down on the planet, Lucille and the others, while grateful that their transmission got through, are worried that they'll never reach the shuttle, at least not without risking their lives excessively. Alexander still thinks they need to first go back and try to rescue Warren, but Hank says that's no use. The Jatheel will have killed Warren already. When asked how he's so certain of this, Hank admits having been part of one of the early research and contact expeditions that first approached the Jatheel. He has seen that they are a hard race, proud and dangerous. He has also seen how deeply they value their religion, how they will kill almost in an instant even their own young who dare to profane a temple or similar structure. No, Warren is most assuredly dead; the rest of them must press on through the strange, swampy terrain and try to return to the shuttle.

Aboard his scout ship, Slade Tyler realizes that the power and life support systems to the escape shell are operational. That would never happen unless someone were in there. He patches through on the comm and is astounded when Dierdre answers him, admitting that she wanted to come along to see if she could help her parents. After giving the girl a good talking too, Slade manages a risky docking maneuver with a support ship in the detachment, popping the escape shell so that Dierdre can be retrieved. With one last call over the comm to warn Dierdre not to do something so crazy again, Slade flies to the head of the detachment as they prepare to breach the nearest warp gate on their path to Haperis VI.

Station Zero receives a message from the support ship about Dierdre's stowaway attempt. Maisie intercepts the communication and tries to prevent the news from reaching her supervisor, who she fears may somehow be involved with the earlier communications wipe. She makes three covert copies, stowing one near her workstation and passing one to Sarah. The final she determines to take to Commander Islington under her own power. She is stopped, however, by her supervisor. He marches her at gunpoint toward an airlock.

The detachment has cleared the warp gates to Haperis VI. Slade contacts the other ships to fall into a peace formation; officially, they are an honour guard to escort the delegation away from the planet at the completion of negotiations. They hail the diplomatic carrier on a coded channel with the truth of their mission.

Down on the planet, someone is listening to the transmission. Hank has stolen the device which Lucille wired together. After learning that the detachment has arrived, Hank readjusts the transmitter and broadcasts a message to someone unseen. His work is going ahead as planned. He will pave the way for the downfall of the Imperium.

Alexander, Lucille, and the others, minus Hank, have made their way cautiously to the shuttle. They find it surprisingly unguarded and manage to make their way aboard. They contact the carrier about a plan to return...with Hank once more intercepting the transmission. He races to the central Jatheel temple and shares some rushed conversation with a figure garbed as a priest. The figure goes to a panel and manipulates some controls.

Preparations are made aboard the carrier for the shuttle's arrival. Slade Tyler has docked his craft and boarded the carrier to greet Alexander and Lucille. He watches along with the crew on an observation screen as the scanner monitors the shuttle's lift-off. Then, suddenly, the shuttle is surrounded by a blinding glow - and explodes! The carrier crew can only watch in horror before rushing to stations to prepare to get out of range of the planet.

Some time later the detachment, including the carrier, arrives back at Station Zero. Dierdre is reunited with her sister and grandfather just in time to see Slade approaching with the awful news that the shuttle was destroyed, apparently by the Jatheel, killing all aboard. Commander Islington, obviously distraught, goes to inform Imperium High Command, nearly running into Maisie on his way. He asks after the communications supervisor, but is informed that the man is nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, in another part of Station Zero, an airlock restabilises itself. Near the inner door lays an abandoned gun, as well as a shred of the communications supervisor's uniform...

Characters

 * The sudden decision to kill off the characters Alexander and Lucille, just as filming began, stemmed from a decision that the cast was too large and that the characters were not so popular.  The original script would have seen the two as the only survivors of the mission, having been separated from the others and stealing a Jatheel craft to escape.
 * The incident with Maisie and her supervisor was part of a much larger planned arc for her character which was aborted in favour of stronger focus on the budding romance between Slade and Dierdre.  Maisie's plotline was quickly wrapped  up several episodes later in TV: Metallisis when she was revealed to be a junior member of the elite Imperium Special Forces.