Tynus

Tynus is the main antagonist of the Blake's 7 episode "Killer".

He was portrayed by the late Ronald Lacey, who also portrayed Major Arnold Ernst Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Bishop of Bath & Wells in Blackadder.

Biography
Tynus was an old associate of Avon, who had conspired with him in his attempt to defraud the Terran Federation. Avon had kept quiet about Tynus' involvement when he was arrested. In the intervening years, Tynus rose to be the base commander of Q-Base, a Federation research facility on the planet Fosforon, although he stressed he was merely the commander technician and had no authority over security personnel. He had taken to keeping locusts and sketching them.

Avon and Vila arrived on the base and tracked down Tynus, with Avon using their past association to pressure Tynus into assisting them in their plan to steal a Federation translator crystal. Tynus protested that he had no access to them so Avon formulated a plan whereby they would make it look as though the crystal currently in use had been destroyed in a fire and steal it, with Tynus requesting a replacement. Tynus pretended to agree but actually had his assistant Tak contact Servalan and alert her to the fact the Liberator was at the planet. He then stalled Avon and Vila with a recon of the computer room.

Tynus gave Dr Bellfriar permission to investigate a drifting ancient spacecraft, unwittingly causing the base to be infected with a virus designed to wipe out any humans who had left Earth. Having discovered Tynus had betrayed them, Avon and Vila took advantage of the chaos to head to the computer room and try and steal the crystal. Tynus followed them, knocked out Vila and confronted Avon with a gun, intending to kill him. The two men fought and Tynus was killed when Avon pushed him into the exposed console workings, electrocuting him.

Trivia

 * Tynus' back story becomes more curious with the later reveal that Avon's lover Anna Grant was a Federation agent who had everyone involved with him arrested. One possibility is that Tynus worked with Avon on a different, earlier fraud. Another is that Avon hid his involvement from Anna. A third is that Tynus was identified and arrested without Avon's knowledge but did a deal with the Federation, which may explain his immediately reporting Avon to them.