Re Fiona's interesting post.
One could postulate other reasons for the set-up in 'Aftermath'.
The episode is obviously intended to introduce Dayna. Reading 'The Inside Story' it's apparent that Josette Simon was hired primarily for her skin colour, youth, looks, and lack of ethnic or American accent. The account there mentions only David Moloney and Vere Lorimer in this context, but it's hard to see that they would have made casting decisions impacting so obviously on character without overt back-up from Terry Nation, who owned the concept and continued to write three key 3rd season episodes. On a 'give the gal a USP' principle, this blank young slate acquires the weapons tech background. From there on in, one can see the episode 'Aftermath' developing ... sexually naive young gal (the kiss in the cave), weapons tech background (all the Hal Mellanby stuff to which Fiona refers), oh dear we've lost Jenna, so we need a blonde bimbette replacement (Lauren). Hack writing at its worst (best?).
I'm not saying this is what happened, but I think it's a plausible alternative scenario.
Considering the 9 Chris Boucher episodes *as a whole*, a high proportion of them have the plot complexity, the political machinations &c that Fiona characterises as his style, though there are exceptions (Rescue, City).
Considering the 19 Terry Nation episodes *as a whole*, a high proportion of them appear to be basically hack adventure writing with any complexities sufficiently well hidden as to escape this viewer entirely.
Tavia