My aunt used to record shows on television and send them to my family (we didn't have TV reception), and that meant setting the recorder for 3-5 min before a start time and ending 3-5 min after the end time. I saw the first few minutes of either a show or a movie and I was curious as to what it was and how it ended. I will say what I remember.
It looked like it was trying to capitalize on Star Wars as it had a similar plot line and was very British. It had a title crawl that talked about an oppressive empire and a rebellion that formed to resist it but the empire had developed a new weapon to fight the rebels.
The scene then switched to some British guy who seemed to run a prison camp talking to a rebel prisoner. They were talking very cordially and politely in a stereotypically British way despite being enemies, and the guy in charge was asking the rebel everything and the rebel was answering everything as if under some kind of mind control. (The weapon appears to take control of the minds of the heroes.)
After the captured rebel tells the imperial everything the imperial wanted to know, the imperial lets him go back to the rebel base. The released rebel walks across what looks like some rocky, barren landscape somewhere in Scotland. The rest of the rebels see him and tell him to stop where he is in the open and he does.
Back at the prison, the man in charge is having tea and biscuits with another imperial officer. They see the released prisoner has stopped moving so they assume he is at the rebel camp. They push a button and the rebel prisoner explodes like a suicide bomber and takes a large chunk of the landscape with him. His rebel friends are a distance away so they survive, but have this sad look on their faces, not just because they lost a friend but because of the ruthlessness of the new imperial weapon of mind control and turning people into bombs.
Then the recording ended, like I said, it was commonplace to record just a little bit before the intended show and a little bit after. This show was a little bit after. Does anybody know what show or movie it was?