Sally and Mistral:
> > BTW - has anyone any ideas *on* what Avon and Cally's little conversation
> > meant? Why didn't Avon mention the signal from the ground? And while
we're
> > at it, why send the crew babies on this one?
>
> Those are related, IMO, and it's sheer pragmatism on Avon's part.
> Tarrant and Dayna haven't proven their worth or their trustworthiness to
> Avon's satisfaction, so he's more willing to risk them than Cally and
> Vila at this point.
That doesn't feel right to me. My take on it is that Avon didn't assign
anyone to the mission. Tarrant and Dayna volunteered to go; they also might
have been the ones who conceived the mission. Avon wasn't assuming a
leadership role at this point; he seemed reluctant to order the crew about.
Which we see later in the episode when he told Dayna and Tarrant about Cally
and Orac but left it up to them to decide what they wanted to do. Per what
we see throughout early third season, Tarrant was the one who typically made
decisions and tried to fill the vacancy in the leadership position. He
continued to do that until Avon accepted that responsibility. There's no
reason to think that Tarrant didn't make the decision about Obsidian.
Also, let's not forget that Dayna's father knew Hower. Which is a good
reason for her to go.
The theory that Avon's more willing to risk them than Cally and Vila seems at
odds with the fact that Avon risked himself to check up on Tarrant and Dayna
but didn't do the same for Cally. I always thought that Avon was most
protective of Dayna over other members of the crew. He might have felt more
responsibility for her since his presence on Sarran contributed to her ending
up with the crew.
Sally and Marian:
> and they would at
> least recognise Blake if they fell over him (unlike Tarrant, who never got
> up the curiosity to look up a picture of the man who ran the ship for two
> years and whose name still influences them, or even to look up some old log
> files ...)<
>
> In Powerplay Tarrant tells Avon: "You weren't Blake, I would have
recognised
> him." So he did know what Blake looked like.
Even with the physical changes I think Tarrant knew Blake in BLAKE fairly
early on. But with the testing and the bounty hunter warning he was
cautiously keeping that information to himself. He's prepared to tell Deva
who Blake is after Blake pulled the gun on him; there was no reason to be
cautious about Blake's identity at that point. That Tarrant asked Avon and
Vila to confirm his identification of Blake indicates to me that he was
hoping he was wrong. He didn't want *that* man to be Blake.
Carol Mc