A child of the colonies, Avon possesses genius-level intelligence, and is an aloof and sardonic computer expert found guilty of an attempt to embezzle five hundred million credits from the Terran Federation banking system.
First seen in the second episode, "Space Fall", as a prisoner aboard the London, a cargo vessel transporting a group of convicted criminals to the penal colony on the planet Cygnus Alpha, he assists Blake in his attempted mutiny on the journey, using his skills to take over the ship's computer.
Avon acts self-serving but in reality, when it comes to actions, he is more selfless than any of the others, constantly saving the lives of almost everyone he comes across and including the entire crew several times over, with nothing to gain for himself.
In the episode "Rumours of Death", Avon takes pity upon Servalan who is chained to a wall; similarly, it is she who reveals to him the truth about Anna Grant but still intends to dispose of him.
[6] A native of Earth, Roj Blake was a leading voice against the corrupt, oppressive Terran Federation approximately four years before the series began.
Arguably, the events in "Star One" represented his ultimate triumph as the Federation won a Pyrrhic victory in the intergalactic war that severely reduced their power.
With Thomas seeking an exit from the show at the end of the second series, Blake was written out, disappearing during the Andromedan War and Avon became leader of the crew.
Blake encountered Tarrant when examining the crashed vessel but did not reveal that he was using the guise of a bounty hunter so that he could test those who claim to be against the Federation, all the while running a large anti-Federation recruitment campaign on Gauda Prime.
Having been raised on a backwater planet, Dayna was young, pretty, lively and had a strong sense of humour; she was a marked contrast against the world-weary cynicism of the rest of the crew.
A native of Earth and a member of the lowly Delta grade criminal underclass (similar to the classes established in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), Vila is a petty thief who meets Blake in the detention cell awaiting transport to Cygnus Alpha.
This ability makes him useful to Blake's crew; in the episode "City At the Edge of the World", Avon tells Del Tarrant that "... we can easily replace a pilot, but a talented thief is rare."
Vila is a poor fighter—his confusion costs the rebels the battle in "Space Fall", and he is momentarily shocked after stabbing a fanatical monk in "Cygnus Alpha".
Vila greatly enjoys drinking and gambling, making the Liberator crew keep him away from situations where his vices could compromise the mission ("Shadow", "Killer", "Gambit").
Initially a high ranking commander in the Federation, she later organises a military coup and becomes President (in the series two finale "Star One"), before later being deposed herself and presumed dead, but actually returning under an alias; Commissioner Sleer.
"[15] Servalan's final appearance in the series was in the penultimate episode ("Warlord"), in which she successfully arranged for the Scorpio crew's secret base to be destroyed.
It could communicate verbally with the crew and handle routine flight procedures at a level of sophistication unmatched by any human-built computer with the exception of Orac.
Due to Dorian's rather strange sense of humour, Slave was programmed with an exaggeratedly obsequious and subservient personality, habitually addressing the crew as "Master" or "Mistress".
In the series finale, Blake told Tarrant that Jenna returned to smuggling and died by self-destructing her ship and taking "half a squadron of gunships" with her.
[17] The story details the events from Jenna's escape from the Liberator during the Galactic War, and her determination to continue Blake's fight against the Federation until the moment of her death.
[6] Tarrant is a skilled pilot, trained at the Federation Space Academy, who steals a pursuit ship and begins running contraband in the outer planets and getting involved in wars.
He cooperates with Avon to kill the Federation officers and take back the ship, after which he becomes a member of the crew, replacing Jenna Stannis as their principal pilot.
The very first episode of the series, "The Way Back", features a Federation security agent called Dev Tarrant who arranges the massacre of Blake's friends and the murder of his lawyers.
Later, Travis eschews cosmetic surgery, and replaces his amputated left arm with a cybernetic one equipped with an energy weapon called a Laseron Destroyer.
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 manoeuvring for total galactic ascendancy.
Zen is the master computer aboard the Liberator, formerly Deep Space Vehicle 2, the highly advanced spacecraft used by Blake and the others initially to escape from and then attack the Federation.
In the episodes "Time Squad" and "Breakdown", Zen refuses to help the crew carry out actions it believed endangered the ship, and even though it could not control the teleport, it disables the system by causing a circuit burnout.
The psychic defence barrier seen in Space Fall, was deactivated when Avon commanded Zen to allow an unrecognised ship to dock, which most likely contained Klegg and his troops.
In the episode, Zen finally reveals itself to have been more self-aware and "human" than previously thought, apologising for its failure to repair the Liberator, its last words being "I have failed you.
In the prequel release The Early Years: Escape Velocity, the original crew are revealed to have been kidnapped humans (in the Pilot's case from a Federation world) who have had their memories erased and their skills put to work operating the ship by The System (a super computer group mind).
However, damaged in battle, on a collision course and requiring manual helm control it bargains with the Pilot in exchange for revealing her true identity, and at this point its vocabulary becomes uncharacteristically human, imploring with the term "please".